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Report: “Five Killed, 285 Kidnapped In April”

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | May 01, 2012
File Photo

The International Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights (Tadamon) reported that Israeli soldiers shot and killed five Palestinians, including a 4 year old child, and kidnapped more than 285 Palestinians in April.

The child, Aseel Ara’ra, 4, from Anata, near the central west Bank city of Ramallah, was shot in the neck on October 25, 2011, and was left in a quadriplegic state before dying of her injuries last month.

Also in April, the army shot and killed Hashem Misbah Sa’ad, 17, after claiming that he approached the border fence. Sa’ad is from ash-Shujaeyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza city.

Soldiers also shot and killed Bilal Yousef As-Sa’ayda, 20, also after claiming the he approached the border fence.

Two more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. One of the deceased, identified as Rashad Shoukha, 28, was seriously wounded after the under-cover forces of the Israeli army broke into his home in Rammoun town, near Ramallah, and died of his wounds a week after he was injured.

Resident Fadi Zeitoun, from Beta village, near Nablus, was killed after a group of extremist settlers of the Yitzhar illegal settlement, south of Nablus, chased him with their guns while he was driving his tractor.

Israeli soldiers conducted dozens of invasions into the occupied territories in April, and kidnapped more than 285 residents, including dozens of women and children, and a number of former political prisoners who previously spent years in Israeli prisons and detention centers.

In the West Bank, soldiers kidnapped 45 children, and three female university students from the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Tadamon attorney, researcher Ahmad Tubassy, slammed the ongoing and escalating Israeli violations against the Palestinian people, especially the ongoing violations against the political prisoners currently holding an open-ended hunger-strike demanding their legitimate rights guaranteed under international Law.

He stated that targeting civilians, especially women and children, violates all international regulations, and the Fourth Geneva Conventions to which Israel is a signatory.

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May 1, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Streetviewed: Google cars snooping on WiFi users not an accident

RT | 30 April, 2012

Google bosses were informed their Street View cars would collect e-mails, names, addresses and other personal data from Wi-Fi users around the world, a government report shows. But the company insists the message didn’t get through.

­Neither a mistake nor the work of an unauthorized engineer was behind Google’s massive harvesting of Wi-Fi communications that included e-mails, passwords and other sensitive personal information across three continents in 2007-2010, indicates the recent report filed by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The supervisors of the Street View program were well aware Google cars would go beyond photographing streetscapes. Or at least they should have been.

On Saturday, the web giant releases their own version of report – with employees’ names blacked out. An earlier version provided by the FCC had whole blocks of text blacked out.

The search giant said it wanted a more transparent version to be shown to the public as evidence that any wrongdoing by the company was inadvertent. Apparently, the company wants to avoid speculation over what could have been withheld from the initial release and thus limit any damage.

The report confirms Google’s engineer behind the data-collecting software voluntarily embarked on a project to gather personal e-mails and Web searches of potentially hundreds of millions of people. Identified as Engineer Doe, the individual declined to speak to the FCC, invoking Fifth Amendment rights, which protects citizens from being compelled to testify against themselves.

The design document prepared by Engineer Doe clearly shows his intention to collect payload data in addition to taking panoramic snapshots, as Google’s cars drove by. The private data would “be analyzed offline for use in other initiatives,” like finding how well Google’s other services are used, the document said.

Privacy consideration did come to his mind. “A typical concern might be that we are logging user traffic along with sufficient data to precisely triangulate their position at a given time, along with information about what they were doing,” the document says.

Engineer Doe decided that no harm will be done because Google’s data harvesters would not remain in the vicinity of any particular Wi-Fi user for “an extended period of time.” Nevertheless he added the following “to do” item: “Discuss privacy considerations with Product Counsel.”

“That never occurred,” the FCC report says.

The employee also “specifically told two engineers working on the project, including a senior manager, about collecting payload data.” It actually appears that at least seven Street View engineers had “wide access” to the plan to collect payload data back in 2007.

Engineer Doe’s code was used to collect some 200 gigabytes of payload data across the US between January 2008 and April 2010. Similar logging of private data happened across the world, which made Google the butt of investigations by respective authorities.

The report further cites a number of other people involved in the project as failing to recall knowing that collecting of payload data was happening at the time. Those include an engineer, whose job was reviewing Engineer Doe’s code line by line for bugs and a senior manager, who said he pre-approved the man’s document before it was written.

Following the investigation the FCC fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation, including withholding an email, that openly discussed the engineer’s review of payload data with a senior manager on the Street view project.

It ruled that since the payload data collected was not encrypted, the act didn’t violate American wiretapping law, but said it has “significant factual questions” about why this ever happened.

Google denied stonewalling the probe and blamed the FCC for any delays.

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April 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ACTA in the EU: We Can’t Call it Dead Yet

By Gwen Hinze | EFF | April 30, 2012

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was dealt a major blow on April 12 when MEP David Martin, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the agreement and member of the Committee responsible for delivering the recommendation [doc] to European Parliament to adopt or reject the agreement, announced that he would be recommending a “no” vote. While the prospects of the European Parliament ratifying the agreement seems to have fortunately lessened, it does not mean that it’s a fait accompli that the European Parliament will reject ACTA. As we’ve noted before, ACTA is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden and extend existing intellectual property enforcement laws to the Internet. It was negotiated in secret by a handful of countries, in a process that intentionally bypassed the checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. In our second post on the ACTA State of Play, we’ll look at what’s happening in Europe and why we should all be keeping a close eye on what’s happening in Brussels. (For those interested in US developments, please see our previous post here).

While the EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA in January, the European Parliament must vote to adopt it for it to become part of European Union law. A complex process is underway involving five European Parliamentary committees. The first step involves four committees: the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), and the Development Committee (DEVE). Each must each review ACTA according to their Committee’s particular subject matter expertise, and deliver an opinion to the fifth and lead Committee, the International Trade Committee (INTA).

The INTA Committee plays the key role of recommending ACTA’s adoption or rejection to European Parliament. While INTA’s opinion is highly influential, it is not binding. The final step in the ratification process is a plenary vote of the Members of European Parliament. MEPs must decide whether to adopt or reject ACTA in its entirety; no amendments are allowed. The vote is currently scheduled for early July, but it may occur later. Here are two great infographics from the European Parliament and from French organizations La Quadrature du Net and Owni.eu which illustrate the whole process.

Apart from this process at the EU level, individual EU member states must decide whether or not to ratify ACTA. This is because the agreement requires countries to put in place broader criminal sanctions for those who infringe IP, and for those who aid and abet them. EU law is not harmonized in relation to criminal penalties for IP infringement. Criminal laws are within the exclusive legislative power of the individual EU member states and so they must ratify ACTA for those provisions to be given effect. Five member states have now suspended ratification of ACTA (Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Bulgaria) and Germany has said that it will wait to see how the European Parliament votes before deciding to ratify.

There are many moving pieces in this puzzle and they each exert different levels of influence on the European Parliament’s vote. The European Commission referred ACTA to the European Court of Justice, the highest court in Europe, on February 22 for an opinion on its compliance with EU law. The European Parliament’s INTA Committee, at the instigation of MEP David Martin, the current Rapporteur of ACTA within the European Parliament, considered but rejected its own referral of ACTA to the European Court of Justice in March. If this had gone ahead, it would have delayed the European Parliament’s plenary vote beyond July. The European Data Protection Supervisor issued an opinion [pdf] on the European Parliament’s proposed accession to ACTA on April 24 that obliquely criticized ACTA by noting that it permits measures for indiscriminate monitoring of communications that would be disproportionate for small scale infringements. Specifically, it includes voluntary cooperative enforcement measures that would permit ISPs to process personal data beyond what is permitted under EU law, and lacks the necessary limitations and safeguards to protect EU citizens’ personal data under EU law.

On April 12, the Rapporteur of ACTA within the European Parliament, MEP David Martin of the INTA Committee, announced that he would be recommending that the European Parliament vote no on ACTA, but suggested that the Commission could negotiate an alternative proposal. His recommendation concluded that:

Your rapporteur therefore recommends that the European Parliament declines to give consent to ACTA. In doing so, it is important to note that increased IP rights protection for European producers trading in the global marketplace is of high importance. Following the expected revision of relevant EU directives, your rapporteur hopes the European Commission will therefore come forward with new proposals for protecting IP.

While this should indeed be seen as a major blow to the prospects of a speedy ratification by the European Parliament and a rebuke to the European Commission which took the lead in negotiating ACTA for the EU, it does not mean that ACTA is dead in the EU.

Last week, several of the four committees involved in the first step of the process were scheduled to publish their opinions and deliver them to the INTA committee. These opinions are likely to be heavily influenced by the appointed Rapporteur for each committee. They are reportedly equally divided. Two of the four Rapporteurs oppose ACTA and two are strong supporters. EDRi has posted a draft opinion of the influential Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) rapporteur, MEP Marielle Gallo, who is a strong ACTA supporter. She had previously been proposing a fast vote on her draft opinion within JURI, but on April 26, she pushed instead for JURI to postpone its vote on the opinion. This seems like a further delaying tactic by ACTA supporters to slow down the process within the European Parliament until they’ve got the numbers for a yes vote while the fierce lobbying campaign continues apace in Brussels.

Everything comes down to how MEPs vote in the Parliamentary plenary vote. MEPs in European Parliament are members of political parties, and analysts in Europe are now trying to tabulate how the political party groups will vote on ACTA. As Joe McNamee, the Brussels-based Advocacy Co-ordinator for European Digital Rights noted in an insightful piece last week, the numbers look closer than you might think: 52.5% of the Parliament opposed to ACTA, to 47.5% in favor, if you extrapolate from the views of the Rapporteurs of the four committees involved in the first ratification step:

To put it in another way, if just 20 MEPs have their minds changed as a result of the massive lobbying campaign currently underway and organised by the European Commission and big business interests, then ACTA will be adopted. The situation becomes even more precarious when we consider that it often happens that more than 5% of MEPs do not vote (either absent or abstaining) meaning that the chances of the current tiny majority being sufficient are more a matter of luck than anything else.

We are at a stage where every single vote in the European Parliament is of huge value. If the pro-ACTA message of the rapporteurs in the Legal Affairs and (shockingly) the Development Committee prevail, this will create a new momentum and will be used to “prove” that ACTA is a legitimate proposal.

McNamee continues:

Assuming that the anti-democratic elements in the European Parliament will not be allowed to have their way, there are two possible outcomes. The first is the anti-ACTA campaign will be anesthetised by complacency – assuming victory, citizens will stop contacting Parliamentarians, will not take part in demonstrations and will reassure MEPs that our attention span is so short that we can be ignored on ACTA, that we can be ignored on the upcoming IPRED Directive, that we can be ignored on the upcoming Data Retention Directive. And we reassure our opponents that no future democratic movement will be able to sustain a campaign as long as needed. We lose. Europe loses.

Or we do our duty for European democracy and maintain our pressure right up until the vote. And then we win. And Europe wins.

The future of ACTA as an international agreement will be decided in Europe. While recent media reports have led many people to conclude that ACTA is dead, this is unfortunately not true. Worse, it’s quite a dangerous misconception to have rebounding through the zeitgeist at a time when we need every possible vote in the European Parliament for ACTA to be rejected in July. Citizens in Europe and elsewhere must now clearly and loudly voice our concerns about this  agreement to our elected representatives to counter-balance the content industry lobbyists that are hard at work in Brussels shoring-up support for ACTA. Now is the time to make your views heard. If you’re in the EU, contact your MEPs and urge them to vote no on ACTA.

~

More information on how to have your views heard is at the following resources:

EDRI’s ACTA campaign page

La Quadrature du Net’s ACTA campaign page

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April 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mashaal: Israel broke promises under Shalit deal

Ma’an – 30/04/2012

GAZA CITY – Hamas politburo chief Khalid Mashaal on Monday said Israel had broken its promises to improve detainees’ conditions under the last swap deal.

Speaking to reporters after meeting the Egyptian foreign minister in Cairo, Mashaal said the October 2011 deal –which was brokered by Egypt — included pledges to end solitary confinement and other restrictions.

Israel had toughened conditions for Palestinian detainees in a bid to pressure Hamas to release soldier Gilad Shalit. He was freed in October in exchange for 1,047 Palestinian prisoners.

Palestinian detainees launched a mass hunger-strike on April 17 to protest their conditions, with prisoner groups estimating that 2,000 people are now refusing food.

After meeting Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday, the leaders decided to petition the UN on the issue of Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israel.

On Monday, Mashaal briefed Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammad Kamel Amr on the situation of Palestinian prisoners.

He thanked Egypt for following up on Palestinian affairs, and stressed the importance of seeing through the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal with rival party Fatah.

The national government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas — as agreed between the leaders in Doha in February — must be put into place immediately, he said.

The Hamas chief’s agreement that the Fatah leader should head the government caused uproar in Hamas ranks, sparking a new impasse for the embattled reconciliation deal.

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April 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Until Freedom or Martyrdom: Thaer Halahleh on 60 Days of Hunger Strike

By Dylan Collins | Palestine Monitor | April 28, 2012

Kharas, occupied West Bank—Two year old Lamar Halahleh has never met her father outside of a prison cell. In fact, she wasn’t able to lay eyes upon him until she was nearly half a year old.

Thaer Halahleh, Lamar’s father, has not only spent the last two years in the Israeli prison system, the 33 year-old has actually been detained for the majority of the past nine years due to Israel’s exploitive practice of administrative detention.

“The only way she [Lamar] knows her father is through pictures,” says Lamar’s mother and Thaer’s wife, Shireen. “She has hundreds of pictures of Thaer. When she goes to sleep at night, she tucks his picture into bed with her.”

Always held without charge or trial, Thaer’s only officially stated wrongdoing has been his affiliation to Islamic Jihad, a political party officially outlawed by Israel.

Thaer’s most recent arrest came on 26 June 2010 during a midnight raid on his home in the small village of Kharras, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Nearly 50 Israeli soldiers stormed the Halahleh’s home. Without knocking, the armed forces kicked down the door, made the women and children go outside in their bedclothes, and proceeded to search the house with two dogs for nearly an hour.

After a thorough search of the house, the troops then told the family they had an order to arrest Thaer. When asked why, the officer in charge responded that Thaer was a “threat to the public.”

Thaer had only just recently ended a year long stretch in administrative detention. He was home for all of about 14 days before being re-arrested and presented, yet again, with a three- month administrative detention order.

Like all other administrative detainees, Thaer is being held on ‘secret evidence’ and has never been officially charged nor convicted of anything.

Cyclical and ambiguous arrests have plagued the lives of Thaer and his family. Every one of his four brothers, and even his father, has been held in administrative detention at some point. Thaer himself has been arrested 8 times and spent a collective six and half years total in administrative detention.

Thaer’s most recent administrative detention order has been renewed every three-months. The uncertainty of his detention’s length has been nerve racking to say the least. Thaer’s wife, Shireen, argues neither she nor Thaer, nor Thaer’s lawyer know whether the order will be renewed until the day it concludes. Shireen reveals that several times, Thaer has been directed to collect his belongings and prepare to go home only to be turned back at the gates of the prison with a renewed three-month detention order.

How to Fight Ambiguous Detentions

Thaer’s detention was most recently extended in January for a period of six-months. Left with few other options and encouraged by Sheikh Khader Adnan’s recent 66-day feat in protest of administrative detention, the exact same directive that has controlled Thaer’s life for the past nine years, he too entered into his own open-ended hunger strike on 28 February while in Al-Naqab prison.

Saturday 27 April 2012, Thaer entered into his 60th day with out food.

“He is determined,” said Thaer’s older brother Mohammed. “He will either be set free or become a martyr.”

When asked if they thought Thaer would be willing to accept an exile deal similar to the one Israel reached with hunger striker Hana Shalabi, through which she had been exiled to Gaza for the following three years, his family responded with a resounding no. “It was good for Hana,” says Thaer’s Uncle Wahib, “but Thaer would never agree to anything of the sort.”

On 28 March, Thaer was transferred to Israel’s Ramleh medical prison along with another hunger striking prisoner, Bilal Diab. According to Addameer, both men have been held in isolated cells in the general prison section. Despite numerous requests, Addameer lawyers have been denied access to Thaer and Bilal since their transfer.

Despite his rapidly deteriorating condition, Thaer Halaleh’s appeal against his administrative detention was rejected by an Israeli military judge at the Ofer military court on Monday 23 April.

Thaer’s wife Shireen has little faith in receiving justice from the Israeli military court system. “How can we have any faith in the court hearings. How can we believe that a just verdict will be reached when we are barred from even attending the trial, when the entire trial is conducted in Hebrew, and when the only people present are the Israeli judge, the Israeli translator, the Israeli prosecutor, and the mukhabarat [Israeli secret service]?”

Power in Numbers

Approximately 1,200 Palestinian prisoners from all political factions began a unified open-ended hunger strike on 17 April 2012 in commemoration of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day and in protest of Israel’s exploitative use of administrative detention as well as its poor treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Since its beginning, the movement has only been getting stronger.

In an April 25th update published by Addameer the estimated total number of prisoners on hunger strike had risen to nearly 2,000, a number which has most certainly risen since and has plans to increase in the coming days.

In Hasharon prison, six female prisoners have announced they will enter into the open-ended hunger strike on 1 May 2012. An additional 120 prisoners in Ofer prison are expected to join the hunger strike on 29 April.

The movement—“The War of Empty Stomachs”—has been effectively launched. It is, perhaps, a last resort by Palestinian prisoners to finally obtain just and fair treatment.

Thaer Halahleh, having reached his 60th day without food along with his compatriot Bilal Diab, is at the movement’s forefront.

Their demands, as well as those of the other active “Empty Stomach Warriors,” are neither absurd nor inappropriate. They are simply demanding a fair judicial process and improved living conditions but are risking their lives in the process.

Photo by Dylan Collins

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April 29, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Shameful Scapegoating of Omar Khadr

By Andy Worthington | 28.4.12

Last week, the Canadian government received a formal request for the return of Omar Khadr from Guantánamo Bay. Julie Carmichael, an aide to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, told the Globe and Mail, “The government of Canada has just received a completed application for the transfer of prisoner Omar Ahmed Khadr. A decision will be made on this file in accordance with Canadian law.”

Khadr, who was seized at the age of 15 after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, accepted a plea deal in his war crimes trial at Guantánamo in October 2010, on the basis that he would serve an eight-year sentence, but with only one year to be served in Guantánamo.

However, as the Globe and Mail described it, the government of Stephen Harper “has been reluctant to accept Mr. Khadr,” and “diplomatic wrangling over his transfer has persisted.” Despite this, as I noted last month, the US government has been putting pressure on the Canadian government, because US officials need other prisoners to be reassured that, if they accept plea deals in exchange for providing evidence against other prisoners, the terms of those plea deals will be honored.

Playing this down, and also playing down Canada’s own responsibility towards Khadr, a Canadian official explained, “The United States basically asked Canada for a diplomatic favor and Canada previously agreed to look at a request of this nature favorably. The US needs to get rid of this guy for their own reasons.” The source added that the Americans were “bending over backwards” to ensure Khadr’s return, and would have to “bend their way around a number of their own rules” to make that happen, and also suggested that Vic Toews had “little choice but to accept Mr. Khadr’s return, which would happen at US expense.”

All of the above was economical with the truth, because Canada’s involvement in accepting the return of Khadr was obviously discussed at the time of the plea deal, and the talk of doing favors is, therefore, designed only to make the Canadian government appear tough.

This is nothing new, as the Canadian government has persistently ignored Khadr’s rights, abandoning him at the age of 15, when officials were supposed to call for his rehabilitation as part of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both Canada and the US are signatories. Moreover, the Canadian government has done nothing to prevent the kind of racism that has involved a regular outpouring of hostility towards Khadr. This is so out of control that numerous Canadian citizens have decided that it is appropriate to talk of not allowing Khadr to return to Canada, even though he was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen.

Typical of this was a poll conducted last week on CBC News’s “Your Community Blog,” which asked the question, “Should Omar Khadr be allowed to return to Canada?” as though there was a legal option to prevent his return, when there is not. Fortunately, 53 percent of those who voted said yes, compared to 43 percent who said no, although that is still an alarmingly large minority of Canadian citizens who don’t understand what nationality and citizenship mean, and who also don’t seem to believe that a prison sentence — and any notion of punishment — should be finite.

These voices include journalist and Sun TV host Ezra Levant, who has written an entire hate-filled book about the alleged threat posed by Khadr, but whose approach is “so obsessional that it sometimes seems like a manifestation of clinical mental illness,” as another journalist, Jonathan Kay, recently explained.

Moreover, last Thursday, as the Toronto Sun explained in a news report, Vic Toews conceded that the government would not block Khadr’s return. Some commentators had speculated that the government “was considering using a clause in the International Transfer of Offenders Act to keep … Khadr out of Canada on national security grounds.”

Toews explained, “Under the International Transfer of Offenders Act, he is a Canadian citizen. He is also a Canadian citizen under the Charter which entitles him to come back to Canada, eventually.” He added, “The issue is when does he come back to Canada? That’s a determination I have to make and I haven’t made any decision in that respect yet.”

A decision is expected soon, but in the meantime opponents of Khadr’s return should also reflect that, under Canadian law, he will be “eligible for parole next year after completing one-third of his sentence, and statutory release after completing two-thirds.” Toews pointed out that “it would be up to the National Parole Board to decide when to integrate Khadr back into society.” The Toronto Sun also pointed out that the government was “bracing for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit,” based on the fallout from a Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 2010 — conveniently ignored by the government — which stated unambiguously that Khadr’s rights were violated in US custody.

In defense of Khadr — and providing some necessary humility — the Toronto Star ran an editorial last Thursday, pointing out that “the abuse he has suffered with the complicity of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government and that of its Liberal predecessors has shamed Canada,” adding, “His expected return from Guantánamo Bay, while welcome, does us no great credit either.”

Seeing through the official line about Canada doing the US a favour, the Star noted, “Such is the shabby close to an infamous case in which Ottawa refused to go to bat for one of our own,” and delivered the following verdict on Khadr’s US ordeal:

US President Barack Obama once declared Gitmo a “legal black hole” predicated on a “dangerously flawed legal approach” that “compromised our core values.” Khadr finally buckled to that ugly system in 2010 and surrendered the guilty plea to murder and war crimes that it was designed to elicit. His plea bargain was a “hellish decision” to preclude trial in a sham court and the risk of a life sentence.

The Star also reminded readers that Khadr “was pushed to fight in Afghanistan by his al-Qaida-linked father,” and that US officials “threatened him with gang rape, denied him counsel, deprived him of sleep, and set a precedent by charging him with war crimes as a juvenile.” Also noting that he had “spent far more time behind bars than he would have in Canada, had he been convicted here in a credible court of murder as a young offender,” the Star concluded its pertinent editorial by stating:

[A]s Canada’s allies successfully lobbied to free their nationals from Gitmo, the Harper government wilfully neglected Khadr. It never forcefully protested his mistreatment, criticized his prosecution, or asked for leniency. It took the obtuse view that justice was taking its course. It washed its hands of a young Canadian, leaving him to his fate. It failed a citizen, and disgraced itself.

It is rare, at Guantánamo, for another government to have behaved as appallingly as the US, but in Khadr’s case it has long been clear, to anyone capable of viewing it objectively, that the Canadian government has matched America’s abuse towards Khadr every step of the way, and it is time for this disgraceful situation to be brought to an end.

~

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield.

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April 29, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Orwellian ‘Hate Speech’ laws applied inconsistently in Canada

By Joshua Blakeney | Press TV | Apr 27, 2012

Calgary – Activists and Academics are increasingly questioning the purpose of Canada having ‘hate speech’ laws to criminalize certain forms of speech.

Critics say such laws are applied inconsistently and often serve the interests of powerful groups whilst doing nothing to prevent the tide of Islamophobia that has swept Canada since the disputed events of 9/11.

‘I can tell you that headline wasn’t in Calgary….it could be in the National Post but I can tell you that didn’t originate in Calgary’

That was the response of Rick Hanson, Chief of the Calgary police when confronted by Press TV with a hateful headline claiming that Iraqis worship the devil, printed by one of Canada’s most prominent broadsheet newspapers. The question was prompted after the police chief had given a speech in which he had affirmed his desire to use controversial anti-Hate Crime legislation to stamp out prejudice and discrimination in the city of Calgary. Canada has Hate Speech laws which criminalize certain forms of speech that are deemed to be illegitimate by the Canadian state.

Press TV was interested to discover whether or not Hate Speech laws were being applied consistently in Canada, even to powerful elites who seek to demonize Muslims. The police chief’s response was terse.

Critics say that Hate Speech laws are not applied consistently in Canada as every day we see the mainstream media stigmatizing and dehumanizing Middle Eastern people with impunity. On the other hand those anti-racists who criticize Israel’s policies of genocide and apartheid are finding their freedom of speech to do so increasingly challenged with powerful pro-Israel lobbyists seeking to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

Press TV got in touch with a prestigious Canadian professor and member of the Canadian Islamic Congress who had tried but failed to invoke Canada’s Hate-Speech laws to prosecute a journalist in Canada who had disseminated anti-Islamic conspiracy theories in an article published in a prominent Canadian magazine called MacCleans.

It is clear that Hate Speech laws are controversial. And when such laws are being applied inconsistently and in a politicized or ethnicized manner experts warn that they can only have a negative effect on society.

April 28, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ex-CIA Officer Defends Destruction of Torture Videos

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky | AllGov | April 27, 2012

In his memoir coming out this month, the Central Intelligence Agency officer who ordered the destruction of the CIA’s torture tapes defends his actions, saying he was erasing “some ugly visuals.”

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former director of the CIA’s secretive interrogation and detention program during the George W. Bush administration, had 92 tapes destroyed in 2005 after the media exposed the controversial program targeting ‘al-Qaeda’ and other ‘suspected terrorists.’

“I wasn’t going to sit around another three years waiting for people to get up the courage,” Rodriguez wrote in his book, Hard Measures.

He adds that he was “just getting rid of some ugly visuals.” Rodriguez was concerned with protecting the identities of the agents who could be seen in the videos and with the negative effect on the reputation of the CIA if the truth came out. He continues to seem clueless about the intent of the United States Constitution.

He even went so far as to write that “I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labeled ‘torturers’ by the president of the United States.” The irony of torturers being upset at being called torturers seems to have escaped Rodriguez.

Made at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, the tapes showed the waterboarding of ‘terrorists’ Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri.

President Barack Obama ordered an investigation of the program and the tapes. But the U.S. Department of Justice decided to not pursue charges against Rodriguez or any other CIA agent.

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Glenn Greenwald:

… Destruction of these tapes was so controversial because it seemed so obviously illegal. At the time the destruction order was issued, numerous federal courts — as well as the 9/11 Commission — had ordered the U.S. Government to preserve and disclose all evidence relating to interrogations of Al Qaeda and 9/11 suspects. Purposely destroying evidence relevant to legal proceedings is called “obstruction of justice.” Destroying evidence which courts and binding tribunals (such as the 9/11 Commission) have ordered to be preserved is called “contempt of court.” There are many people who have been harshly punished, including some sitting right now in prison, for committing those crimes in far less flagrant ways than was done here. In fact, so glaring was the lawbreaking that the co-Chairmen of the 9/11 Commission — the mild-mannered, consummate establishmentarians Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean — wrote a New York Times Op-Ed pointedly accusing the CIA of “obstruction” (“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation”). …

April 28, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Scottish TUC delegates join Palestine freedom struggle – unanimously!

Scottish PSC | April 25, 2012

The delegates to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the umbrella group for every trade union in Scotland, today voted unanimously and repeatedly against Israeli apartheid. The 450 delegates voted to:

  • campaign to expose the role of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) in the Israeli apartheid system
  • support the participants in the Welcome to Palestine initiative who tried to travel peacefully to Palestine via Tel Aviv Airport
  • fully support the Palestinian-Brazilian call for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine in Brazil in November
  • support the Palestinian hunger strikers and the work of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organisation.

Congress delegates congratulated the students for their work organising Israeli Apartheid Week 2012 events, who initiated action in support of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike and called for support for the Scottish demonstration this Saturday 28th April in Edinburgh.

These decisions of the Scottish TUC in support of the Palestinian freedom struggle, by a union confederation representing half a million organised workers in every sector of the economy, will be widely seen as a continuation of the international solidarity the STUC also provided to the liberation struggle in South Africa. Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, named a city centre street after Mandela in 1986 while he was still on Robben Island. How long till there is a Palestine Square or Palestine Street in our major cities?

The full text of the resolutions – all passed unanimously – is given below.

The Jewish National Fund

That this Congress notes that the Jewish National Fund acquisition and control of land in Israel and the occupied territories actively discriminates against Palestinians.

Congress calls on the General Council to:

  • endorse the international call for action against the Jewish National Fund;
  • campaign to expose the role of the Jewish National Fund in the oppression of Palestinians; and
  • campaign to have the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund revoked.

(Mover: Midlothian TUC)

Emergency Motion – Palestine

Congress:

  • notes that despite prisoner releases, over 4,600 Palestinian political prisoners remain in detention, including 203 children.
  • applauds the steadfastness of 1,200 Palestinian political prisoners who began an open-ended hunger strike on 17 April to protest against ‘administrative detention’, where detainees are held without charge or trial for up to six months and which can be renewed repeatedly.
  • congratulates the student Palestine solidarity network for organising the biggest ever ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ of educational and solidarity events and for their mobilisation across Scotland in support of Palestinian political prisoners.
  • believes that the engagement of students, trade unionists and others with Palestinian civil society can only strengthen the current human-rights based approach to Palestinian self-determination and is essential to building a future of peace and democracy in the Middle East.
  • therefore welcomes the January call by the Palestinian National Committee and the Brazilian National preparatory committee for the 2012 ‘World Social Forum: Free Palestine’ to be held at Porto Alegre, Brazil in November. Conference believes that this “Global Meeting of Solidarity with Palestine” will underline the strength and diversity of the support for the Palestinian call for justice.
  • therefore instructs the General Council to:
    • Support the work of Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, by distributing information and updates to affiliates and by supporting appeals for action where appropriate;
    • Endorse the Scottish demonstration, called by students in support Palestinian political prisoners and the hunger strikers, taking place in Edinburgh on Saturday 28th April;
    • Endorse the WSF Free Palestine as part of the internationalist activities promoted by the STUC and fully support the appeal from the Secretariat of the Palestinian National Committee for the World Social Forum “Free Palestine” to mobilise the Scottish trade union movement towards WSF Free Palestine.

(Mover: Dundee Trades Union Council)

Emergency Motion – ‘Welcome to Palestine 2012′

This Congress notes that there is no way into the Occupied Palestinian territories except through Israeli controlled airports or checkpoints.

Congress applauds the ‘Welcome to Palestine 2012′ initiative which highlighted Israel’s oppressive and abhorrent policy of restricting free and unopposed movement to, from and within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Congress condemns:

  • the actions of the Israeli government in blacklisting activists from around the world and denying them access to the Palestinian territories.
  • the detention of those activists who reached Tel Aviv wishing to visit Bethlehem at the invitation of the Mayor in order to attend the launch of an educational project to build new schools.
  • Congress asks the General Council to call upon the Israeli government:
    • to allow unrestricted passage to and from the Occupied Palestinian Territories for those wishing to visit.
    • to end the continued, illegal siege by air, land and sea of the Palestinian Territories.

(Mover: Midlothian TUC)

Palestine

That this Congress applauds the successful delivery of humanitarian aid by the Scottish FBU to the Nablus Municipality Fire Department. Congress calls for continued trade union support for Palestinian projects, and for the exploration of a Scottish Trade Union Palestinian Support Group, and report back to Congress in 2013 any progress on this matter.

(Mover: Fire Brigades Union)

President’s Address to Congress (Mike Kirby, UNISON):

“There is a growing apartheid elsewhere, in Palestine.  There have been many changes since my first official visit with Bill Speirs, Eddie Reilly and Malcolm Burns in 2001, during the Second Intifada. We were challenged by different militia, as we were escorted throughout the Occupied Lands by PGFTU, our hosts. On leaving, at the last stop at Jerusalem, we met  members of the British Press Corps, who challenged us that we had only visited one place, met with one people. Eddie Reilly’s reply still pertains “We met many Israelis on our travels in Palestine. They were all armed and wearing uniforms.” Order may have been restored in many parts under the control of democratically elected representation of Fatah, democratically elected Hamas, and other political organisations. But that order is still enforced by a circle of unlawful Occupation, and the Apartheid Wall divides communities from their lands and work, and families are split apart.”  Read full President’s address

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April 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike

MEMO | 26 April 2012

1.1 – The issue of Palestinian prisoners is one of the worst consequences of the Israeli occupation.  Since 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians, 20% of the population of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have been detained. This number represents approximately 40% of the total male Palestinian population in the occupied territories.

1.2 – Today, there are about 6,000 prisoners in 17 Israeli jails and detention centres. They include six women and more than 200 minors.

1.3 – 330 Palestinians are being held in administrative detention with no formal charges having been brought against them in a court of law. 28 elected members of the parliament, and three former ministers fall within this category.

1.4 – Israel is currently holding all these Palestinian prisoners far away from their homes, and outside of the occupied territory. This constitutes a clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Article 76 of the Convention states:

“Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”

Article 49 also states:

“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

1.5 – Article 32 specifically prohibits “murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and … any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents”. Since 1967, 202 Palestinians prisoners have died while being tortured in Israeli jails.

1.6 – Israel routinely tries Palestinians before military courts, none of which meet the most basic standards of international law; particularly the laws relating to the treatment of prisoners of war and people under occupation.

1.7 – In light of the above, there are now calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials at an international tribunal.

Download Full Fact Sheet

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April 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hundreds of Economists: Marijuana Prohibition Costs Billions, Legalization Would Earn Billions

By Ezekiel Edwards and Rebecca McCray | ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project | April 26, 2012

Over 300 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, recently signed a petition that encourages the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to carefully consider marijuana legalization in America. The petition draws attention to an article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, whose findings highlight the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate marijuana, rather than needlessly spending billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.

Miron predicts that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement, in addition to generating $2.4 billion annually if taxed like most consumer goods, or $6 billion per year if taxed similarly to alcohol and tobacco. The economists signing the petition note that the budgetary implications of marijuana prohibition are just one of many factors to be considered, but declare it essential that these findings become a serious part of the national decriminalization discussion.

The advantages of marijuana legalization extend far beyond an opportunity to make a dent in our federal deficit. The criminalization of marijuana is one of the many fights in the War on Drugs that has failed miserably. And while it’s tempting to associate only the harder, “scarier” drugs with this botched crusade, the fact remains that marijuana prohibition is very much a part of the battle. The federal government has even classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance (its most serious category of substances), placing it in a more dangerous category than cocaine. More than 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana use and possession each year, and 46 percent of all drug prosecutions across the country are for marijuana possession. Yet this costly and time-consuming targeting of marijuana users by law enforcement and lawmakers has done little to quell use of the drug.

The criminalization of marijuana has not only resulted in a startlingly high number of arrests, it also reflects the devastating disparate racial impact of the War on Drugs. Despite ample evidence that marijuana is used more frequently by white people, Blacks and Latinos account for a grossly disproportionate percentage of the 800,000 people arrested annually for marijuana use and possession. These convictions hinder one’s ability to find or keep employment, vote or gain access to affordable housing. The fact that these hard-to-shake consequences – bad enough as they are — are suffered more frequently by a demographic that uses marijuana less makes our current policies toward marijuana all the more unfair, unwise and unacceptable.

Our marijuana policies have proven ineffective, expensive and discriminatory. Our courtrooms, jails and prisons remain crowded with nonviolent drug offenders. And yet, the government persists in its costly, racist and counterproductive criminalization of marijuana. We learned our lesson decades ago with alcohol prohibition; it is long overdue for us to do the same with marijuana prohibition. In the face of Miron’s new report, and its support from hundreds of economists, we are hopeful that not only will the national conversation surrounding marijuana change, but so will our disastrous policies.

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April 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Thing Maine, Virginia and Arizona Have in Common: Opposition to the NDAA

By Allie Bohm | ACLU | April 27, 2012

This week, the House Armed Services Committee has turned its attention back to the National Defense Authorization Act and began working on this year’s bill. You remember last year’s perversion that, for the first time in American history, codified indefinite military detention without charge or trial far from any battlefield? State legislators and activists and concerned citizens on the right and the left — and everyone in between — haven’t forgotten.

On Wednesday, Arizona’s state legislature sent a bill opposing the detention provisions in the NDAA to their governor. And, last week, a similar bill became law in Virginia, about a month after Maine passed a joint resolution to the same effect. Add to that list the cities and counties that have passed resolutions urging Congress to repeal the problematic provisions in the NDAA — Fairfax, Calif.; Santa Cruz, Calif.; El Paso County, Colo.; Fremont County, Colo.; Moffat County, Colo.; Weld County, Colo.; Cherokee County, Kan.; Northampton, Mass.; Alleghany County, N.C.; Macomb, N.Y.; Elk County, Pa.; and New Shoreham, R.I. — and the map starts looking awfully full. This is not a red state issue or a blue state issue or a purple state issue. A few of the resolutions are under-inclusive, but their message is still clear: across social and political lines, no one likes the idea of indefinite detention or mandatory military detention far from any battlefield. (Okay, except maybe Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and a few other misguided members of Congress.)

Will your town, city, county, or state be the next to speak up? You can make that happen. Check out our model legislation and activist toolkit for legislative language, talking points, and tips to help you get started. Our bill sends a message from your local legislative body to Congress that the indefinite military detention provisions of the NDAA should be repealed. The model legislation prohibits state and local employees from aiding the federal armed forces in the investigation, arrest, detention, or trial of any person within the United States under the NDAA. It also sends a message from your legislative body to Congress that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force should expire at the end of the war in Afghanistan so that the government cannot continue to use the AUMF as justification for its claims that war is everywhere and anywhere and that the president can order the American military to imprison without charge or trial people picked up far from any battlefield.

And while you’re at it, head over to our Action Center and urge your member of Congress to fix the NDAA. The time is now. This year’s NDAA provides the perfect opportunity for Congress to fix last year’s debacle. And, we need you — and your state legislators and city council members — to speak up if we’re going to get Congress to finally do the right thing.

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April 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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