“Talk to us,” says Hamas in rare visit to Europe
Adri Nieuwhof | The Electronic Intifada | 20 January 2012
Hamas spokesperson and Palestinian parliamentarian Mushir al-Masri in 2010. (Mohammed Asad/APA images)
Three Hamas politicians made a rare visit to Europe this week.
A delegation of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) travelled to Switzerland to attend a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). It was the first time since the 2006 PLC elections that Hamas members undertook an official visit to a European country.
The delegation — led by PLC member and Hamas spokesperson Mushir al-Masri — left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, and continued their journey via Egypt. Al-Masri also heads an international committee for the defense of the PLC members who are held in Israeli jails.
The IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians met in Geneva on 14 January to discuss parliamentarians under threat. The IPU collected information about lawmakers who face death threats, are subjected to harassment, or are unable to carry out their parliamentary mandate without hindrance and invited the delegation from Gaza to clarify the situation of the Palestinian lawmakers.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reacted furiously to the IPU invitation to the PLC members from Gaza, according to the news agency AFP (“Israel furious as Hamas attends global parliamentary forum,” 16 January 2011).
The Swiss-Israeli Association added that the invitation represented “an insult to democratic values and human rights that represent the spirit of Geneva.” Since 1957 the association has “promoted friendship” with the State of Israel and supports cultural, academic and social exchange with Israel.
But Anders Johnsson, the IPU President, warded off the attacks. He told the website Swissinfo that “the IPU doesn’t deal with Hamas, but the IPU committee deals with the rights of members of parliament, whoever they are” (“Hamas visit to Switzerland sparks outcry,” 19 January 2012).
Swiss defend invitation
A Swiss foreign ministry spokeswoman Carole Waelti told the same website that “Switzerland, as host of the organization, is obliged to facilitate the entry of people officially invited by the organization.” Waelti added that Switzerland has regular contacts with Hamas.
Switzerland does not belong to the European Union, which refuses to deal with Hamas and has placed the political party on its list of terrorist organizations.
Meanwhile, the Swiss envoy to the Middle East, Jean-Daniel Ruch, met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Cairo on 18 January to discuss the possibility of dialogue between Europe and Hamas (“Hamas chief Meshaal meets Swiss envoy in Cairo,” AFP, 19 January 2012).
Mushir Al-Masri told AFP that the talks “come within the framework of the Hamas political bureau’s contacts with some European parties and its policy of openness towards the Europeans.”
Ongoing detention
After the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza in 2006, Israel arrested eight ministers and 26 PLC members of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform Bloc.
Israel did not oppose the participation of any Palestinian blocs in the 2006 PLC elections. Yet one year after the elections, Israel declared the Change and Reform bloc illegal. Since then PLC members with the party have been accused of “membership,” “activity” and “holding a position” in an “unauthorized association” (Addameer page on Palestinian Legislative Council Members).
At its meeting, the IPU committee on human rights examined 70 cases in 37 countries, including those of the 23 Palestinian parliamentarians who are held without charge in administrative detention in Israeli jails. Twenty of the detained parliamentarians are members of the Change and Reform Bloc.
While each administrative detention order lasts for as much as six months, the Israeli authorities frequently renew the orders, therefore resulting in the PLC members being unable to carry out their legislative and oversight functions. The IPU Committee has called upon the Israeli authorities to abandon the practice of detaining elected representatives.
Following its participation in the IPU meeting, the Hamas delegation paid a visit to the Swiss national parliament in Bern.
“We also met with the Red Cross in Geneva, the vice-mayor of Geneva and with Islamic organizations in different cantons,” al-Masri told The Electronic Intifada. “The event in Geneva was the best attended.”
Al-Masri was referring to an event organized by the human rights group Droit pour Tous (Rights for All) to commemorate the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. The event, hosted by the University of Geneva, was attended by approximately 500 persons.
“Don’t always follow the US”
In a fully-packed lecture hall, al-Masri recalled the devastation that was wreaked during the Gaza attacks.
“All persons who were complicit in the war crimes committed in Gaza should be taken to court,” he said. “Although the pro-Israel lobby has tried to jeopardize our visit to Geneva, we are here to tell you about our suffering under the siege of Gaza. We are here to defend the rights of the Palestinian people living in Gaza and in the West Bank, to defend the rights of all the political prisoners and to defend the rights of the Palestinians who live outside Palestine.”
Al-Masri called on European states to be just and impartial and not always to follow the United States.
“The European Union made a mistake by adding Hamas to its terrorist list. Hamas was elected by the people. The European countries should apply international law. Our ultimate goal is to obtain our freedom by all means. No matter the strength of our occupier, justice will win. ”
A Socialist Party member of the Swiss national parliament, Carlo Sommaruga, told the audience that “it does not make sense to bury one’s head in the sand. Hamas won the majority at the 2006 elections and then the movement and the Palestinian people were marginalized by the United States and Europe — a policy that has brought us nowhere.”
Sommaruga expressed his support for the Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
“I was an activist against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa,” he said. “We boycotted products, wanted to end financial relations and called for a cultural boycott. We have to do the same today. Every person has a responsibility. Everyone can participate in the BDS movement.”
The Change and Reform Bloc delegation was able to visit Switzerland because the Swiss authorities did not give in to pressure from Israel and pro-Israel forces in Switzerland. The IPU Committee called on Israel to end its practices that obstruct PLC members from carrying out their parliamentary mandate.
Time will tell if other governments in Europe support the call of the IPU by pressuring Israel to end the oppression of Palestinian parliamentarians.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.
Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council: I was arrested to prevent the PLC from convening
Palestine Information Center – 20/01/2012
AL-KHALIL — Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), Dr. Aziz Dweik, said on Friday that his arrest by the IOF aimed at stopping Palestinian reconciliation and to continue to disable the PLC.
Dr. Dweik added, in a letter he sent with his lawyer from the Ofer military prison, that the IOF arrested him to stop the PLC convening in early February as was planned.
He called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to call the PLC to convene and to open it for West Bank members of the PLC to discuss the occupation’s breaches against representatives of the Palestinian people and take necessary measures.
The PA in Ramallah kept the PLC gates closed since the split between Fatah and Hamas took place and it was hoped that as the reconciliation starts taking effect the PLC will be able to function as normal as possible despite the fact that over 20 lawmakers are jailed by the Israeli occupation.
Dr. Dweik was detained on Thursday evening by IOF troops at the Jaba’ roadblock near Ramallah while on his way with his family to his home in al-Khalil.
Congressmen Who Received Money for SOPA Vote
January 19 | politicol
Here is a list of Congressional politicians in favor of the bill known as SOPA and PIPA and the amounts of money they received from the SOPA backers who bought their favor in voting yes for both bills.
The Winners are:
Money Received from Pipa Sponsors:
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $864,265
Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] $665,420
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $556,525
Sen. Barbara Boxer [D, CA] $544,424
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D, VT] $416,250 (head sponsor of pipa btw)
Sen. Michael Bennet [D, CO] $347,406
Sen. Roy Blunt [R, MO] $341,700
Sen. Robert Portman [R, OH] $337,525
Sen. Richard Burr [R, NC] $275,950
Sen. Patty Murray [D, WA] $272,750
Money Received from Sopa Sponsors:
Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] $3,502,624
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $2,648,770
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $2,080,651
Sen. Barbara Boxer [D, CA] $1,431,843
Sen. Scott Brown [R, MA] $1,364,872
Sen. Robert Portman [R, OH] $1,363,009
Sen. Patrick Toomey [R, PA] $1,291,744
Sen. Michael Bennet [D, CO] $1,019,172
Sen. Mark Kirk [R, IL] $911,296
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D, VT] $905,310
Read more: http://www.politicolnews.com/congressmen-who-received-money-for-sopa-vote/#ixzz1k2NDPqWI
Seven Truths Inconvenient to U.S. Foreign Policy
By DAN KOVALIK | January 20, 2012
As George Orwell so eloquently stated, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Indeed, lying is absolutely necessary to the ability of countries such as the U.S. aiming to wage unprovoked war upon other countries – the worst form of human rights crime as recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal which noted that it is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Given that the U.S. is currently attempting to wage actual war, as well as to carry out acts of war (such as embargos or other forms of economic strangulation), against numerous countries, one is subject to a constant barrage of lies from the U.S. government to justify such acts.
In light of the foregoing, I thought it was important to set forth some truths (though, of course, not an exhaustive list) which undermine the U.S.’s cause for war throughout the world.
1. Gaddafi Troops Did Not Engage In Mass Rapes.
One of the big lies of 2011 (though hard to believe on its face) was that told by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Libya as a means to justify regime change in that country – a goal not authorized by either the U.S. Congress or the UN. Thus, with a straight face, Ms. Clinton told the press that Gaddafi was passing out Viagra to his troops so they could go out and rape dissidents en masse, and that the troops were indeed engaging in mass rapes. Of course, the compliant media was more than happy to spread such outlandish accusations. What the press was more reluctant to do was to publish Amnesty International’s later report that there was absolutely no factual support for these accusations. As Amnesty International reported, “Not only have we not met any victims, but we have not even met any persons who have met victims.”
2. The NATO-backed Libyan Rebels Have Committed Egregious Human Rights Abuses. Ironically, the NATO-supported rebels themselves did engage in verifiable acts of rape against civilians, as well as the targeted arrests, displacements and disappearance of black Africans (as opposed to Arabs) living in Libya. The most notorious such case was the military assault on the black African town of Tawarga in which the rebels emptied the entire town of its 10,000 residents, forced them into a refugee camp and then burned down the refugee camp. The rebels justified their racist attacks on black Africans upon the claim that they were serving as mercenaries for Gaddafi. This claim also proved to have no factual basis, but again, this did not stop the press from reporting it over and over.
3. The U.S. Has Been Involved In Violent Attacks In Iran for Years.
Hillary Clinton told another big whopper this past week when she adamantly denied “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.” Indeed, the U.S. has been supporting terrorist attacks within Iran for years. As Seymour Hirsch reported as far back as 2008 in a New Yorker piece, the U.S. has been supporting the terrorist group “Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K” for some time. As Hirsch noted, “The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States.” In addition, as Hirsch related back in 2008, the U.S. has been supporting “The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has . . . has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years.”
4. The U.S. Was An Enemy of Democracy & Human Rights In Iran for Over a Quarter of a Century.
While the U.S. points to provocative acts committed by Iran since its revolution in 1979 to justify the continued vilification of that country, what it wants you to forget is that the conflict with Iran began in 1953 and was started by the U.S. itself. Thus, in 1953, the U.S. instigated a coup against the democratically-elected president of Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh (whose crime was to nationalize British oil companies), and replaced him with the despotic Shaw who ruled Iran for the next 26 years. The Shaw ruled Iran through his brutal and torturous Savak – the secret police force which was created by and funded by the U.S. until the 1979 Iranian revolution. In short, Iran has a lot to be angry with the U.S. about.
5. The U.S. Began The Conflict in Afghanistan That Helped Spawn al Qaeda.
While one would believe from the press that the Soviet Union ignited the conflict in Afghanistan by invading that country in 1979, and that the U.S. reacted by supporting covert operations by the Mujahidin – the Mujahidin, who counted Osama bin Laden as one of its leaders, later becoming the nucleus of al Qaida – this is not true. Indeed, the reverse was true. Such covert operations were started by the U.S. before the Soviet Union invaded, and in fact were designed to draw the Soviets into a “Vietnam-like quagmire.” U.S. National Security Adviser Zbignew Brzezinski admitted this later, stating in an interview: “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day the Soviets officially crossed the border I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupported by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire.”
6. The Worst Human Rights Abusers in the Western Hemisphere Are U.S. Allies
While the U.S. government and press constantly vilify Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua by criticizing their human rights policies, allies of the U.S. in the region are by far the worst abusers of human rights. The country with the worst human rights situation in the Americas is Colombia, which also happens to be the U.S.’s number one ally in the Hemisphere and one of the top recipients of U.S. military aid in the world. Colombia’s human rights record is horrendous from top to bottom. Thus, largely because of the forced displacement carried out by the Colombian military and its paramilitary (death squad) allies, Colombia has the largest internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million; Colombia has around 7500 people in prison who can be characterized as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience (compared to the one hundred or so such prisoners which Cuba’s harshest critics allege it has); the paramilitary allies of the Colombian government have killed around 150,000 civilians since the mid-1990’s and have disappeared around 50,000 civilians. In terms of government violence against its own people, close U.S. ally and military recipient Mexico currently runs second to Colombia with about 47,000 civilians killed in the so-called “drug war” being run jointly by the U.S. and Mexico. However, the country that historically tops all of these countries for anti-civilian violence is Guatemala whose U.S.-sponsored military dictatorship (a dictatorship installed by the U.S. back in 1954) killed around 200,000 civilians, mostly Mayan Indians, during the civil war in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This is relevant because the new President of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina, was a general during this period, was personally responsible for egregious human rights abuses against civilians, and, of course, was supported by the U.S. in his recent candidacy.
7. Cuba Has Played One of the Greatest Humanitarian Roles in the World, Especially given its small size and scant resources.
While the U.S. continues to paint Cuba as some member of an imaginary “axis of evil” in the world, Cuba has given selflessly of itself to better the world even despite the U.S.-imposed embargo which has brought the Cuban economy to a near breaking point. Cuba has sent more doctors throughout the world to minister to the poor than even the World Health Organization. In Haiti, Cuba’s medical aid through its doctors, who were on the ground years before the earthquake of 2010, has been critical in fighting the outbreak in cholera in that country. Even the New York Timesrecently acknowledged this in a November 7, 2011 article entitled, “In Haiti’s Cholera Fight, Cuba Takes Lead Role.” This is contrasted to the U.S. which, despite its puffery, has done little to aid Haiti with medical or humanitarian assistance after the earthquake, and instead sent about 14,000 troops to repress the restless population.
One could of course go on, but this at least gives a flavor of how the world is not as the U.S. and its media mouthpieces portray it. The U.S. is not the “world’s policeman” or the spreader of democracy and human rights that it claims to be. Rather, it has done much more to undermine democracy, human rights and even stability, than it has done to promote these conditions. This is a critical reality to keep in mind as the U.S. tries to start the next war based upon lies, usually premised on false claims that it is trying to protect human rights. Of course, if past is prologue, the U.S. will be allegedly attempting to promote human rights through the greatest violation of human rights a state can commit – the invasion of another country.
~
Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.
Judge rejects Occupy protesters request
Press TV – January 20, 2012
A New York judge has blocked legal action by the ‘Occupy the Courts’ group towards earning a permit to hold a protest outside the federal court in Manhattan, Press TV reports.
200 protestors intended to gather outside the courthouse as part of a nationwide demonstration by the campaign, which is planned to be held in front of more than 120 federal courthouses on Friday. The rallies have been organized by a group named Move to Amend.
On Thursday, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the lawsuit filed by Occupy the Courts, saying the space was not a public gathering place.
However, the demonstrators say they will turn out for the rally in surrounding streets, which are not federal property, as well as a nearby park.
Move to Amend proposes a Constitutional Amendment that ends the ‘judicial fiction of corporate Constitutional rights.’
Organizers say the nationwide rallies are aimed at denouncing a 2010 Supreme Court decision that made it easier for corporations to spend money in election campaigns.
They say the decision works against the ’99 percent’ of Americans, who are distinguished from the 1 percent in possession of the greatest portion of the nation’s wealth, asserting that it robs the latter group of all chances of a fair judgment against the power and influence of the former.
Occupy the Courts is an extension of Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged on September 17, 2011 against high-level corruption in the US and corporate influence on the country’s politics.
Israeli forces ‘detain Palestinian Legislative Council head’ at checkpoint
Ma’an – 19/01/2012
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Thursday detained the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council Aziz Dweik at a checkpoint near Jerusalem, witnesses said.
Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Dweik and took him to an unknown destination, witnesses told Ma’an.
An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment on the report.
Some 23 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council are currently imprisoned in Israel, according to the prisoner rights group Addameer. Twenty of the elected officials are being held in administrative detention without charge or trial.
Almost 5,000 Palestinians, including 132 minors, are held in Israeli jails, a practice which violates international law.
George Abdallah: Exposing the Farce of French Justice
It is an open secret that radical rebel George Abdallah, largely ignored by western media, was illegally sentenced to life in prison close to three decades ago. But French authorities continue to insist on keeping him behind bars, even after he has completed his prison term.
Abdallah originally should have been released from prison after 18 months (Photo: Marwan Tahtah)
By Othman Tazghart | Al Akhbar | January 18, 2012
Paris – French authorities are insisting on keeping an ex-fighter in the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) in prison, despite the fact that 28 years have passed since he was first detained. This is a major breach of French legal procedures and the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that prisoners serving a life sentence must be released after serving a maximum of 18 years.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who began his struggle as a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), before joining the LARF, was arrested in Lyon on October 1984. At the time, the LARF was accused of a number of high profile commando operations, the most prominent of which were the assassination of the American military attache in Paris, Charles Robert Ray (18 January 1982) and the Israeli diplomat, Ya’acov Bar-Simantov (3 April 1982).
Initially, French authorities could not find enough evidence to charge Abdallah in connection with those cases. Apart from some leaflets showing he belonged to the LARF and a fake Algerian passport in his possession, the authorities were hard pressed to make a case against him. Therefore, when he came before the court for the first time in July 1986, he was indicted on only one charge, the use of a fake travel document.
In his memoirs, titled The Elysee Years, and published in 1988, Jacques Attali, the advisor to President Francois Mitterand, wrote on 6 March 1985: “We have no proof against Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. Therefore, the only thing we can charge him with is possession of a fake passport.”
Abdallah originally should have been released from prison after 18 months. But his case soon took a very different turn, leading to his conviction and life imprisonment.
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who was a member of Abdallah’s defense team (then headed by the notorious lawyer Jacques Verges), recalls the details of the “judicial conspiracy” against the Lebanese revolutionary, saying: “Abdallah was suddenly recalled to the court on 28 February 1987. We were surprised that he was facing different charges and new evidence which was not included in his file during the first trial. The prosecution claimed that weapons had been found in secret hideaways and flats belonging to Abdallah. This was taken as proof of his participation in the commando operations carried out by the LARF in France in 1982.”
Coutant-Peyre adds: “The court did not hesitate in sentencing our client to life imprisonment, despite the protests of the defense team that the evidence against him was not included in the original trial and was fabricated later to convict him retroactively. This was a major breach of legal procedure.” It was clear that Abdallah had become the victim of an intelligence conspiracy.
However, the details of the conspiracy plotted by the French DST (internal intelligence) were not revealed until the 10th anniversary of Abdallah’s conviction. In his memoirs, titled The Fight Against Espionage: Memoirs of the Director of DST, the former director of French intelligence, Yves Bonnet, also revealed some of the threads of the conspiracy.
“We were able to gather enough information against Abdallah after the head of the anti-terrorist network, Jean Francois Clair, succeeded in recruiting an informant who was very close to the LARF,” Bonnet wrote. He only referred to the informant at the time as “Jean Paul M.” and indicated that he was a lawyer.
In July 2001, when Abdallah had already been in prison for 17 years, the lawyer Jean Paul Mazurier, a member of Abdallah’s defense team, threw a bombshell that shook the French judiciary system. In a long interview with Liberation, he confessed to being the informant alluded to by Yves Bonnet. The lawyer revealed in detail how French intelligence had recruited him to spy on his client (which in itself is enough evidence to repeal Abdallah’s sentence).
Mazurier added that the DST told him to make his client think that he shared his belief in revolutionary ideas and the struggle for the Palestinian cause. Abdallah began to trust him and brought him to meet his friends in the LARF in Lebanon. This made it easier for French intelligence to penetrate their group and gather evidence to convict Abdallah.
As a result of the scandal ignited by the confessions of the lawyer-informant, everyone expected Abdallah’s defense team to raise a challenge to the court to overturn the conviction against its client. French law prohibits the use of lawyers, doctors, or journalists to spy on the accused and to gather evidence against them.
However, the defense team did no such thing. They decided to wait until 2002 to present a request to release Abdallah because his sentence had expired. Despite repeated rejections of these requests over a ten year period, the defense team has refrained from putting in a request to overturn the conviction on the basis of the espionage incident. Everyone Al-Akhbar spoke to on the defense team refused to discuss the reasons behind this. One of them said: “That question should be put to Abdallah’s comrades in the LARF.”
As for the former director of DST, Yves Bonnet, he admits now that what happened was “an illegal intelligence conspiracy.”
“We really did behave like criminals in this case,” he said, adding, “I have to add my voice today to those who are calling for Abdallah’s release. It is time to put an end to the gross injustice we committed against him.”
NYPD to use body scanners in New York
Press TV – January 19, 2012
Adding a new weapon to their war on freedom, the head of the New York Police Department is working with the Pentagon to develop body scanners to be used throughout the city.
In a speech on Tuesday morning, New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced that the new gun-scan technology would be ‘capable of detecting concealed firearms’, Russia Today reported.
The high-tech radiation detector will operate as a mapping tool that can measure the energy emitted from a person’s body up to 16 feet and can pinpoint anything blocking it, like a gun.
According to Kelly, the scanners would be used in ‘reasonably suspicious circumstances’. However, the American Civil Liberties Union has already questioned the New York Police Department (NYPD) over what they say is an unnecessary precaution that raises more issues than it solves.
The detector will allow NYPD to run illegal searches on anyone walking the streets of the city and any suspicious detection can prompt the officers to search people for anything under their clothes.
“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” Donna Lieberman the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NUCLU) was reported as saying.
In the first quarter of 2011, more than 161,000 innocent New Yorkers were reportedly stopped and interrogated on the streets of the city leading to the assumption that NYPD are already going beyond the law by searching anyone they choose.
According to MIT’s Technology Review, the new devices could also be biologically harmful as the waves used by the scanners could ‘unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.’
Web blackout ends: SOPA bleeding, but not dead
RT | 19 January, 2012
The Internet strike opposing the US anti-piracy bills SOPA/PIPA has ended. The webquake spearheaded by giants like Wikipedia, Reddid and Google led to key sponsors withdrawing their support for the acts. However, they are not dead, activists warn.
Massive opposition to the controversial legislation resulted in Congressmen and Senators swinging against the bills. Up to 18 Senators, of which seven were former co-sponsors, voiced their opposition to PIPA on Wednesday. On the SOPA side, at least two sponsors have dropped out, while Oregon’s Earl Blumenauer blacked out his website in support of the protest.
The protest was timed to coincide with a scheduled hearing in the House of Representatives on SOPA. However amid the online outrage, it was postponed, and the bill will now not be moved to the floor until legislators have reached a consensus.
The conflict, however, is far from being resolved. “SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows,” Wikipedia warns. PIPA is scheduled be put to a vote in the Senate on January 24, while SOPA sponsors plan to push the bill forward in February.
SOPA co-sponsor Lamar Smith dismissed the protest, saying Internet giants are using false allegations to stir up panic in the online community.
“When the opposition is based upon misinformation, I have confidence in the facts and confidence that the facts will ultimately prevail,” Smith said.
Wikipedia reports that 162 million people saw its blackout message and 8 million used its search tool to find their legislative representatives.
“You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet,” the website said in a statement, calling the protest extraordinary.
Google’s “Stop piracy, not liberty” petition scored 4.5 million supporters as of 4:30 pm ET, said Google spokesperson Christine Chen.
All in all at least 75,000 websites participated in the blackout, according to Fight for the Future foundation.
The protest action swept across the world wide web, with SOPA/PIPA-related topics trending throughout Wednesday on Twitter. Those were ranging from the dead-serious “SOPAstrike” to the humorous “factswithoutwikipedia” to the satirical “save porn.”
Three Arab Students Exiled from Jerusalem for Seven Days
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | January 19, 2012
The Arabs48 news website reported on Wednesday that three Arab students, studying at the Engineering Academy in occupied Jerusalem, have received police warrants exiling them from the city for seven days after they called for a boycott of a speech by Israeli President, Shimon Peres.
The students, Khalil Gharra from Jit, Rafat Shaban from Majd Al Koroum, and a third student who remained unidentified due to the ongoing investigation, were forced out of Jerusalem.
They were sent to court on Wednesday and the judge decided to release them under exile until January 25, and sentenced them to house arrest under the condition that they do not communicate with other students.
The issue in question started after the college invited Peres to give a lecture; some of the Arab students then wrote on their Facebook pages that they will not attend the lecture, and expressed their rejection to the college’s decision to urge students to attend.
Representing the students, Attorney Alaa’ Mahajna told the Arabs48 news website that some Israeli media outlets exaggerated in their reporting on the issue, and added that all student groups have the right to express their opinions by calling for the boycott of any program or official.
He also said that there are talks and discussions of boycott in Israel itself, and that prosecuting the students is a direct violation to their freedom of expression. It is worth mentioning that all Arab students boycotted the lecture by President Peres.
Israel has been recently debating and passing laws that criminalize calls for the boycott of Israeli settlement products and Israel officials, due to Israel’s illegal occupation in Palestine.
Pro-Israel University of California president denies Jewish students face “hostility” as Zionist complaints allege
By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | January 17, 2012
University of California (UC) President Mark Yudof, an avowed supporter of Israel, has denied claims that Jewish students on several UC campuses face a climate of hostility that amounts to a violation of their civil rights, due to Palestine solidarity activism.
Zionist students and groups have lodged federal civil rights complaints at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz under Title VI of 1964 Civil Rights Act. Such complaints, as The Electronic Intifada has consistently reported, are part of a nationally-orchestrated strategy by pro-Israel groups to use the civil rights law to suppress Palestinian solidarity activism on college campuses.
The Forward reports today:
And at the University of California, where there are two outstanding Title VI complaints at U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Santa Cruz, Yudof said that while he felt “good” about the extension of Title VI, it would be difficult to prove that the students and faculty in question faced a pervasive, hostile atmosphere. “These cases have to be carefully crafted with a fact pattern that is compelling. I don’t think in either of these cases these fact patterns exist,” he said. “I think it is about people engaged in abhorrent speech on our campuses. But I am skeptical at the end of the day that with those two instances we will be found to be in violation of Title VI.”
Yudof’s comments bolster a 12 January article by Noah Stern in J-Weekly, a San Francisco Bay Area Jewish community publication that states, “Even in the midst of high-profile Israel-related political activity, and contrary to popular belief, Jewish students at U.C. Berkeley do not feel threatened, under attack or marginalized.”
Censorship strategy by pro-Israel groups suffering setbacks
Yudof’s comments undermining the civil rights complaints, come just days after a similar complaint at Barnard College was thrown out by the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, the body charged with investigating.
And last month a judge in California threw out a separate lawsuit by students accusing UC Berkeley administrators of allowing an “anti-Semitic climate” to develop on campus, because the accusers had failed to support their claims.
Jewish college presidents and growing BDS movement
Yudof’s comments came in an extraordinary article in The Forward highlighting the dilemmas supposedly faced by Jewish presidents of US colleges:
As the debate about Israel rages on college campuses across America, there is one figure for whom the conversation takes on strikingly personal dimensions: the Jewish college president. About 20 Jewish men and women hold the highest positions at universities across the country, including campuses that have become hotbeds of political activism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For these individuals, the role of president entails a constant balancing act between encouraging free speech on campus and honoring their personal, often supportive, views of Israel.
The suggestion that presidents face a dilemma simply because they are Jewish might be regarded – by some – as an anti-Semitic suggestion that they have a “dual loyalty.”
But the article highlights the enormous power that college presidents have to suppress or derail boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns on campuses and is a must-read:
For many college presidents, the movement to boycott, divest from and implement sanctions against Israel – commonly known as BDS – represented a red line: Presidents who were previously disinclined to speak out against anti-Israel activity on campus in the name of preserving open dialogue found themselves publicly opposing the movement.
Surrendering judgment to the US government
Yudof himself for example did all he could to halt efforts by students at his own universities:
In 2010, when U.C. Berkeley and U.C. San Diego students introduced bills in their student governments calling for divestment from General Electric Co. and United Technologies – two companies that manufacture Israeli military gear – Yudof felt compelled to take a decisive step. That May, he issued a statement saying that the Board of Regents would not consider BDS, since it was the board’s policy to take up divestment only if America’s government said that the regime in question was committing genocide. But for Yudof, there was a secondary reason.
“I thought there was a double standard with Israel,” he said. “It was unimaginable. Other countries were given a pass, and they were going to enforce this boycott against a tiny country in the Middle East. In my judgment, but for it being the Jewish state, it would not be on their list for a boycott.”
It’s remarkable how established power so often works against progressive change and campaigns for universal rights and that Yudof would surrender any power of independent judgement and investigation – supposedly the role of a university – to government officials.
But it’s all the more remarkable that the Palestine solidarity movement – led by students – marches on despite all the forces determined to stop it.
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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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