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Beyond the praise for Paul Kagame

By Andrew Oxford | Pulse Media | January 29, 2010

Rwandan Tutsi leader turned President Paul Kagame is a popular man in the West. And why not? In his ten years in office he has lead his war-ravaged nation through a period of unprecedented economic growth which has turned Rwanda into a playground for foreign investors. At the same time, he emphasizes self-reliance and efficient government while supporting populist spending programs that could make Rwanda the only African nation to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (not that he is a fan of the UN, which he frequently criticizes for its response to the 1994 civil war). His administration in Kigali has admittedly wracked up a deficit that would ordinarily draw frowns from World Bank bureaucrats but in the case of Rwanda, the organization that usually demands drastic budget cuts is underwriting a litany of government programs. It helps that some of Kagame’s greatest admirers are Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz (1). American evangelist Rick Warren (2) considers him something of an inspiration and even Bill Gates has invested in what has been called Africa’s success story. Yes, Western liberals, reactionary evangelicals, and capitalist carpetbaggers alike tout Paul Kagame as the herald of a new, self-reliant African prosperity.

Of course, nothing in Rwanda is ever so clear cut. Kagame’s regime has benefited from more than its fair share of political repression. This prompted his challenger in the 2003 election, Faustin Twagiramungu, to denounce the poll citing harassment and restrictions that inhibited any effective campaign efforts (3). An earlier opponent, Pasteur Bizimungu (who Kagame replaced as Prime Minister) attempted to form a party at the beginning of the last decade which was promptly banned. What’s more, the formation of new groups is often hampered by Kigali authorities. Reporters Without Borders has also expressed concern at the restrictions on the press which have included the shuttering of critical newspapers and new fees for launching media outlets (4). Even The Economist took exception with his heavy-handed domestic policies and accused the new hero of Clinton and Blair as being more repressive than Robert Mugabe (5).

Most alarming is the integral roll that Kigali has played in the Second Congolese War (6) which has claimed upward of three million lives. The Rwandan government has been lending significant support to rebels within the Congo, especially in the mineral-rich north. There, the objective is widely considered to be securing the valuable resources of the region which have been trafficked through Rwanda during the conflict. While some press attention has been given to the horrendous plight of women in the area and the massive and mounting casualty figures, little connection seems to be drawn between Kagame and his complicit fans in Europe and North America.

Kagame, however, maintains innocence. While never outright denying his support for murderous combatants in the Congo or his imposition of restrictive policies on journalists, he counters that his critics are merely stoking ethnic divisions. That, of course, is a serious charge in Rwanda. It is also a strange one coming from a man who boasts that he has put the past behind him. Not far enough, as it would turn out, to trust the democratic process with criticisms or challenges. Nor far enough to shut down the parasitic black-market trafficking of minerals and resources — reminiscent of the  lecherous European occupations of other centuries — that have enriched some foreign and local entrepreneurs while leaving little more than funeral bills for the Congolese (7).

There are bigger issues at play in Rwanda and the DRC than this one man but what is remarkable about Paul Kagame is the support he has received from both conservatives and liberals in the West. It is no surprise that foreign investors have so embraced a man who is willing to put aside the rule of law or the mandate of the ballot. What is surprising is how quiet the left has been in challenging the blatantly backward praise Kagame has so vocally received while stoking one of the most tragic and violent conflicts of the present day and rolling out plans to sell his nation to the highest bidders. It is time to connect the dots in Africa.

NOTES
(1) “Rwanda Rising: A New Model of Economic Development.” Fast Company, Wednesday, March 18, 2009. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/134/special-report-rwanda-rising.html
(2) This comes on the heels of reports that Rick Warren and his reactionary cohorts where involved with neighboring Uganda’s efforts to execute homosexuals. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/rick-warren-silent-enabler-of-hatred.html
(3) This BBC report is from the end of the election when Twagiramungu called on Kagame to “accept freedom of speech and association and also to accept democracy.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3104092.stm
(4) Reporters Without Borders profile of Paul Kagame (http://www.rsf.org/en-predateur13640-Paul_Kagame_.html) and also a brief report on the issue of fees for free press (http://www.rsf.org/Government-to-demand-exorbitant.html).
(5) “A Flawed Hero”, The Economist, August 21, 2008
(6) The New York Review of Books printed an extensive article on the matter by Howard W. French in their September 24, 2009 issue (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23054). The UN has also issued annual reports on the Second Congo War every year which allude to the influence Kagame has played in the conflict.
(7) “Looted Wealth Fuels Congo Conflict”, Financial Times, November 30, 2009. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8ae76ab0-dde6-11de-b8e2-00144feabdc0.html

Image: UN Photo/Mark Castro

January 29, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | Leave a comment

Secret detention may amount to crime against humanity: UN experts

January 28, 2010

GENEVA (AFP) – UN human rights experts warned in a report on Wednesday that “widespread and systematic” secret detention of terror suspects was continuing and could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.

The report listed 66 countries that have allegedly been involved in secret detentions — from Ethiopia to Romania, from Kosovo to Pakistan — and called on governments to investigate and prosecute those who ordered such detentions.

In their first in-depth global study on secret detentions, the UN experts said that virtually no judicial steps had been attempted against the practice despite the “widespread” manner in which suspects were held in a legal limbo.

“Secret detention continues to be used in the name of countering terrorism around the world” in spite of international human rights norms, said the study, which is due to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in March.

“If resorted to in a widespread and systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity,” the authors cautioned.

The “global war on terror,” which was launched by President George W. Bush’s administration after the September 11 attacks, had “reinvigorated” the use of secret detentions in an organised manner, they said.

The campaign saw the creation of “a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention of persons suspected of terrorism, involving not only US authorities, but also other states in almost all regions of the world.”

The study was compiled by two independent UN experts on counter-terrorism and torture, as well as UN panels overseeing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.

Campaign group Amnesty International said in a statement that governments must be held to account.

“States must act swiftly to implement the recommendations in this important study, to confront and end secret detention and the human rights violations it entails and enables,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty’s director of international law, citing torture and unlawful executions.

The UN study welcomed commitments by US President Barack Obama to dismantle and investigate secret detentions.

But the experts also called for clarification of outstanding issues such as short term CIA holding facilities and those operated by the military Joint Special Operation Command.

Human rights campaigners say other countries took advantage of secret detentions to crack down on their own political opponents or restive ethnic groups.

Extraordinary rendition involved abducting suspects without legal proceedings, and flying them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons.

Drawing on its own interviews with former detainees, witnesses, officials and its own analysis of flight records, as well as published material, the UN study named dozens of secret detainees — including some alleged to have died in custody.

Thailand denied that it had hosted a secret detention facility for the United States in a response to the experts, but the study maintained that it was “credible that a CIA black site” existed there.

The study also welcomed a Lithuanian parliamentary inquiry into similar allegations, which had concluded that there was no evidence to back them up.

However, it stressed that the findings “in no way constitute the final word on Lithuania’s role in the programme.”

The UN study also cited evidence of secret US-run facilities in Romania, Poland, and Kosovo as well as several in Afghanistan and Iraq, including “Dark Prison” and “Salt Pit.”

Accounts by detainees added weight to claims that Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Djibouti were proxy centres where “detainees have been held on the CIA’s behalf,” the report added.

January 28, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

How to Get Out of Being Held Indefinitely Without Charge

By Spencer Ackerman –  1/22/10

So the Obama administration’s Guantanamo task force has decided that about 50 people ought to be held indefinitely without charge. What’s the remedy for that? Basically, there’s habeas corpus, the procedure by which a detainee requests that a court determine the validity of the government’s claim to hold him (in this case) because of his status as a belligerent in the conflict with al-Qaeda. Notice that’s not the same thing as asking a court to decide whether the government in the first place has the power to detain someone indefinitely without charge. According to lawyers for Guantanamo detainees and prominent civil liberties advocates, any lawyer who asks a court to decide that broader question will immediately be told, “Your client has the right to a habeas hearing. File a habeas petition and then come talk.” So here’s what the procedure is for the 50 or so detainees in this indefinite-detention-without-charge category.

First a detainee has to win a habeas case. (Check their track record here.) Easy, right? If the government decides not to contest the decision, then the detainee — who, recall, the Obama administration is saying is too dangerous to responsibly release — walks. (More on that in a second.) We haven’t been faced with this situation yet. But if the administration appeals, then the detainee has to win. And on up to the Supreme Court, if the government really wants to contest the issue. Joseph Margulies, a professor of law at Northwestern University who’s focused extensively on Guantanamo, estimates that this process could take at least 18 months to exhaust itself at the earliest. Possibly years. (And even then, it wouldn’t be certain that the Supreme Court would use a habeas appeal as an opportunity to decide the first-order question: whether the Obama administration has the constitutional power to hold a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban in indefinite detention without charge.)

The real inflection point will come “when the government loses” a habeas case, said Margulies. “Are they going to let [a detainee] go?” If the administration concedes the loss, then there’s no crisis. But if it decides it can’t let someone go, and runs out of appeals, then the administration’s most likely option is to get a preventive detention bill from Congress, a civil liberties Rubicon. The Obama administration briefly considered that option this summer and balked. But if the administration loses a habeas case; seeks to detain someone indefinitely even so; and doesn’t have explicit preventive detention powers from Congress, then it most likely is just simply breaking the law.

“I heard about this listening to an NPR story this morning,” said Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, describing his big-picture reaction to the Guantanamo task force’s conclusions. “The intro to that story described them as ‘the terror suspects at Guantanamo.’” Willett pointed out that his clients have been cleared by Defense Department tribunals and exonerated by the courts. They are not terrorists, and no one believes they’re terrorists. “This proves the power of the press — those two words ‘terror suspects.’ How do I fight that?”

From there, Willett continued, it’s natural to start wondering if those “terror suspects” really are too dangerous to release. “I keep saying, give me a name. Who’s too dangerous? Give me a reason. Then start asking what other regimes had people they considered ‘too dangerous to release.’ You’re going to find yourself on a list of countries you’re not too proud to be on.”

Source

January 28, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Obama detention policy “un-American”

JAG Officer: Indefinite Detention ‘Defies Common Sense’

By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (IPS) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to detain 47 of the just-under 200 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo without trial indefinitely is drawing scorn from legal experts and human rights advocates, who charge that the government simply does not have enough evidence to convict the detainees it says cannot be tried but are “too dangerous to release.”

David Frakt is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps Reserve, associate professor and director of the Criminal Law Practice Center at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California.

He is a former lead counsel for the Office of Military Commissions Defence, who successfully represented Mohammed Jawad before the military commissions and won his release in habeas corpus litigation in 2009.

Frakt told IPS, “The administration’s suggestion that they can’t try 47 detainees, not because they don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but because a criminal trial would necessarily involve disclosure of classified information, defies common sense.”

He gave three reasons.

“First, both under the Military Commissions Act of 2009 and under the Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA), in use in federal courts, there are elaborate mechanisms in place to protect classified information,” Frakt said.

“Second, given that the remaining detainees at Guantanamo have been held, on average, for over seven years, the likelihood that there is an ongoing need to protect classified sources and methods in such cases is remote.”

“Finally, it is hard to believe that there would be any greater risk of revealing important classified information than in the 9/11 trial, yet the administration is pressing forward with this and several other cases against high-value detainees who were kept in secret CIA ghost prisons and subjected to still classified methods of interrogation,” he noted.

He said that “The administration has acknowledged the right of all detainees to petition for habeas corpus in federal court. Why does the administration seem to believe classified information could be adequately protected in federal habeas litigation, but not in a criminal trial? It seems far more likely that there is simply inadequate admissible non-coerced evidence of criminality,” Frakt said.

Other legal scholars have weighed in with similar views. For example, Brian J. Foley, visiting associate professor at the Boston University School of Law, told IPS, “Many of the executive’s claims about danger and terrorism have been shown to be incorrect over the years.”

“Last week’s incident where an plane bound from New York to Kentucky was diverted for an emergency landing in Philadelphia because passengers freaked out when they saw a Jewish teenager engaging in an Orthodox prayer ritual, and the recent hours-long shutdown of Kennedy airport because a man from earthquake-ravaged Haiti mistakenly opened an emergency door in a terminal, show that our officials are over-reacting and cowardly,” he said.

“The executive’s claim that these people are ‘too difficult to prosecute’ really means that the executive knows that the only evidence it has is weak or was obtained by coercion and is therefore very likely false,” Foley said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), always a major player in the Guantanamo detention issue, called the Obama policy “un-American.”

Jonathan Hafetz, a senior ACLU lawyer, told IPS, “By committing to hold suspected criminals indefinitely without charge, the Obama has embraced one of the most lawless and un-American policies of the Bush administration, one that turns the most fundamental principles of the Constitution on their head.”

“The notion that the government can simply hold those it believes “dangerous”, without putting them on trial, will ultimately serve neither our liberty nor our security,” he said.

And Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defence Committee, asked, “How is this any better than Guantanamo itself and the spur such approaches give to al Qaeda?”

He told IPS, “No legal system worthy of the name can possibly imprison people indefinitely on the shameful argument that they are, in the absence of evidence and a fair trial, ‘too dangerous to release’.”

He called the move a “significant calcification of the lawless Bush approach of holding (often tortured) detainees indefinitely – effectively, perhaps for life – until the conclusion of some endless ‘war on terror’,” but said it is “actually undermining vital cooperation from European and Muslim allies, support for the rule of law itself and our country’s national standing and historical legacy.”

In a statement, Amnesty International USA, said, “There’s been talk about people who can’t be tried but who are too dangerous to release. This is absurd. People must either be charged with a crime and given a fair trial, or be released. End of story. That’s the way it works. Either there’s evidence against you or there isn’t.”

And Virginia Sloan, president of the widely respected Constitution Project, said, “Even if the Obama administration continues to work to close Guantánamo, by pursuing a policy of indefinite detention without charge, the damaging policies that embody the prison will continue, as will the negative effects to American values, the rule of law, and our nation’s reputation abroad.” She urged opposition to the use of military commissions… Full article

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Google’s Deep CIA Connections

By Eric Sommer | The People’s Voice | January 26, 2010

The western media is currently full of articles on Google’s ‘threat to quit China’ over internet censorship issues, and the company’s ‘suspicion’ that the Chinese government was behind attempts to ‘break-in’ to several Google email accounts used by ‘Chinese dissidents’.

However, the media has almost completely failed to report that Google’s surface concern over ‘human rights’ in China is belied by its deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet:

Google is, in fact, a key participant in U.S. military and CIA intelligence operations involving torture; subversion of foreign governments; illegal wars of aggression; and military occupations of countries which have never attacked the U.S. and which have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

To begin with, as reported in the Washington Post and elsewhere, Google is the supplier of the customized core search technology for ‘Intellipedia, a highly-secured online system where 37,000 U.S. spies and related personnel share information and collaborate on their devious errands.’

Agencies such as the so-called ‘National Security Agency’ have also purchased servers using Google-supplied search technology which processes information gathered by U.S. spies operating all over the planet.

In addition, Google is linked to the U.S. spy and military systems through its Google Earth software venture. The technology behind this software was originally developed by Keyhole Inc., a company funded by Q-Tel http://www.iqt.org/ , a venture capital firm which is in turn openly funded and operated on behalf of the CIA.

Google acquired Keyhole Inc. in 2004. The same base technology is currently employed by U.S. military and intelligence systems in their quest, in their own words, for “full-spectrum dominance” of the planet.

Moreover, Googles’ connection with the CIA and its venture capital firm extends to sharing at least one key member of personnel. In 2004, the Director of Technology Assessment at In-Q-Tel, Rob Painter, moved from his old job directly serving the CIA to become ‘Senior Federal Manager’ at Google.

As Robert Steele, a former CIA case officer has put it: Google is “in bed with” the CIA.

Google’s Friends spy on millions of Internet Users

Given Google’s supposed concern with ‘break-in’s to several of its email accounts, it’s worth noting that Wired magazine recently reported that Google’s friends at In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, are now investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm specialized in ‘monitoring social media’.

The ‘Visible’ technology can automatically examine more than a million discussions and posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, and so forth each day. The technology also ‘scores’ each online item, assigning it a positive, negative or mixed or neutral status, based on parameters and terms set by the technology operators. The information, thus boiled down, can then be more effectively scanned and read by human operators.

The CIA venture capitalists at In-Q-Tel say they will use the technology to monitor social media operating in other countries and give U.S. spies “early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” according to spokesperson Donald Tighe. There is every possibility that the technology can also be used by the U.S. intellligence operatives to spy on domestic social movements and individuals inside the U.S.

Finally, there is a curious absence from the statements emanating from Google – and from U.S. media reports – of any substantive evidence linking the Chinese government with the alledged break-in attempts to several Google email accounts. Words like ‘sophisticated’ and ‘suspicion’ have appeared in the media to suggest that the Chinese government is responsible for the break-ins. That may be so. But it is striking that the media has seemingly asked no questions as to what the evidence behind the ‘suspicions’ might be
It should be noted that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have a long history of rogue operations intended to discredit governments or social movements with whom they happen to disagree.

To see how far this can go, one need only recall the sordid history of disinformation, lies, and deceit used to frighten people into supporting the Iraq war.

Whether the attacks on Google email originated from the Chinese government, from the U.S. intelligence operatives, or from elsewhere, one thing is clear: A company that supplies the CIA with key intelligence technology; supplies mapping software which can be used for barbarous wars of aggression and drone attacks which kill huge numbers of innocent civilians; and which in general is deeply intertwined with the CIA and the U.S. military machines, which spy on millions, the company cannot be motivated by real concern for the human rights and lives of the people in China.

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Source

January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

My family’s ongoing Nakba story

Mohammad Alsaafin writing from Doha, Qatar, Live from Palestine, 26 January 2010

Israel restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians through the imposition of an ID system. (Anne Paq/ActiveStills.org)

One of the most traumatic effects wrought upon Palestinian society by the 1948 Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine, is the physical separation it forced upon Palestinians, between those in the diaspora and the refugees, between those living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and those who became citizens of Israel. Yet this process is ongoing to this very day, and targets even individual families, like mine. This is our story.

My dad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962, the son of refugees, and left to the United Kingdom along with his wife and first son (myself) in 1990 to pursue his PhD at the University of Bradford. By 2004, I had a brother and two sisters, and our entire family moved back to Palestine, this time to the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. My father was working as a foreign journalist licensed by the Israeli Government Press Office and we were living in our country on yearly renewable Israeli work visas.

In 2005, I was turned back by Israeli border agents at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge as I attempted to cross into Jordan to visit my aunt. The agents told me that since I was born in the Gaza Strip in 1988 I had been issued a Gaza ID by the Israeli occupation authority and was therefore not allowed to legally reside in the West Bank. Additionally, I was informed that from then on, Israel would not recognize my British passport. I was able to return to Ramallah that day, but for the next four years I risked daily arrest by Israeli troops on the way to Birzeit University, where I was studying, and for a year after that while I was working in Ramallah. This summer, I left the West Bank to find work abroad, and was told by the Israelis that I would not be allowed to return home.

Despite this reprehensible situation, the rest of the family was thankfully spared such hardship. My dad continued working relatively unhindered as he moved across what is now Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and my mother and siblings enjoyed freedom of movement across the West Bank and inside Israel. This all changed very suddenly last August when, on a routine trip to Gaza where my dad had several assignments and where he wanted to visit his ailing father, he was detained by Israeli security at the Erez checkpoint, and was harassed, stripped of his press credentials and told — as I was four years earlier — that his British passport was worthless in Israel. He was also informed that he too had an Israeli-issued Gaza ID and thus would be treated as a Gazan, deprived of the most basic freedom of choice and movement and barred from ever returning to his wife and children in Ramallah. He was sent into Gaza, where he appealed to Israeli rights organizations, and as a British citizen to the British consulate and to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, for the right to leave Gaza and see his wife and children, if only for a day. The Israeli organizations were unable to help, the consulate was unable to circumvent a wall of Israeli bureaucracy, and Tony Blair chose to ignore our letter calling for assistance. In order to save his job, my dad had to give up hope of being allowed back into the West Bank, and left Gaza through Egypt in December.

At the time that my dad was stripped of his press credentials and work visa, my mother and siblings back in Ramallah were forced to accept their own Israeli-issued ID cards. Incredibly, my mother was given a Gaza ID despite being born abroad, raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her original West Bank ID! She now lives in constant fear of arrest and deportation by Israeli troops; if she were to leave the West Bank she would also be banned from returning to our family and home in Ramallah.

Meanwhile my brother and sister, who were both born in the UK and are now university students, have bizarrely been issued with West Bank ID cards, even though their parents and older brother were given Gaza IDs.

As a result of all of this, our family has been torn apart. My father is finally out of Gaza, but he is unable to see his children unless they travel abroad to meet him. My mother is in the West Bank, afraid to even leave Ramallah and risk being detained and deported at an Israeli army checkpoint. She is unable to leave the West Bank while my father and I are unable to enter. We don’t know how long it will be before we can see each other again — the Israeli authorities have said that they will not change my mother’s ID.

Israel has treated my family like criminals for being Palestinians. We have been punished, displaced and deprived from each other’s company. Our extended family was torn from its land in 1948 and expelled to refugee camps. In the 1990s, Israel’s policy of closure solidified our separation, particularly from my father’s side in Gaza. Now Israel’s racist and draconian demographic policies have separated my parents, my siblings and myself, just like they separate Jerusalemites who wish to marry other Palestinians from the West Bank, or Palestinian citizens of Israel who are legally barred from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

This is one of the many faces of the ongoing Nakba today, and I urge more individuals and families who have suffered like this to speak out. The world must realize the true nature of Israeli apartheid, and the cruel separation of families is one more reason why Israel must be boycotted.

Mohammad Alsaafin is from the Palestinian village of Fallujah, ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1949. He was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and lived in the UK and US, before moving back to Palestine to study at Birzeit University.

Source

January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Obama Mulls Legality of ‘Taking Out’ US-Born Cleric

Can Obama ‘Take Out’ a Citizen Not Charged With Any Crimes?

By Jason Ditz | January 25, 2010

According to US intelligence officials, the Obama Administration has “missed” several opportunities to assassinate US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki because lawyers are still unclear on the legality of killing him.

At issue is that Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric, is not charged with any crimes under US law and is only speculatively linked by the Obama Administration to terrorism through secret “intelligence reports.”

As a native-born citizen of the United States, assassinating him on the basis of secret evidence which is so shaky that officials haven’t felt comfortable issuing charges against him is a legal grey area, to say the least.

But despite this legal concern, officials had no problem in backing Yemeni air strikes which attempted to assassinate Awlaki just last month. US officials said Awlaki was ‘probably’ killed in those strikes, though it later turned out he wasn’t even present at the site of the attack.

Source

January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Israeli forces detain three journalists across the West Bank

23/01/2010 20:18

Nablus – Ma’an – Israeli forces detained three journalists in separate incidents across the West Bank, as they compiled news reports near settlements on Saturday.

Al-Quds TV representatives said that a journalist and a cameraman were detained near the illegal settlement of Ariel, south of Nablus.

Correspondent for Al-Quds TV Mus’ab Al-Khatib, 25, and Ahmad Al-Kilani, 23, who works for Pal Media, were arrested whilst preparing a news report about a university near the settlement that was recognized recently by Israeli authorities.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers detained a Pal Media journalist on Saturday reporting on a demonstration organized by farmers from the At-Tuwani village to protest the recent destruction of an olive grove near the Israeli settlement outpost of Havot Ma’on, the Christian Peacemaking Team said in a statement.

” While Palestinian farmers, accompanied by internationals, were planting olive trees, fifteen settlers approached the area, some carrying slingshots,” the statement read.

“Israeli soldiers and police also entered the area. The soldiers informed the Palestinians that the area was a closed military zone, showing them a map that encompassed a large area south of Havat Ma’on outpost. Police arrested the journalist, saying he had violated the closed military zone order.”

January 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones

By Paul Lewis | The Guardian | 23 January 2010

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

They reveal the partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the 2012 Olympics. They also indicate that police claims that the technology will be used for maritime surveillance fall well short of their intended use – which could span a range of police activity – and that officers have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies. A prototype drone equipped with high-powered cameras and sensors is set to take to the skies for test flights later this year.

The Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates UK airspace, has been told by BAE and Kent police that civilian UAVs would “greatly extend” the government’s surveillance capacity and “revolutionise policing”. The CAA is currently reluctant to license UAVs in normal airspace because of the risk of collisions with other aircraft, but adequate “sense and avoid” systems for drones are only a few years away.

Five other police forces have signed up to the scheme, which is considered a pilot preceding the countrywide adoption of the technology for “surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering”. The partnership’s stated mission is to introduce drones “into the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies” across the UK.

Concerned about the slow pace of progress of licensing issues, Kent police’s assistant chief constable, Allyn Thomas, wrote to the CAA last March arguing that military drones would be useful “in the policing of major events, whether they be protests or the ­Olympics”. He said interest in their use in the UK had “developed after the terrorist attack in Mumbai”.

Stressing that he was not seeking to interfere with the regulatory process, Thomas pointed out that there was “rather more urgency in the work since Mumbai and we have a clear deadline of the 2012 Olympics”.

BAE drones are programmed to take off and land on their own, stay airborne for up to 15 hours and reach heights of 20,000ft, making them invisible from the ground.

Far more sophisticated than the remote-controlled rotor-blade robots that hover 50-metres above the ground – which police already use – BAE UAVs are programmed to undertake specific operations. They can, for example, deviate from a routine flightpath after encountering suspicious ­activity on the ground, or undertake numerous reconnaissance tasks simultaneously.

The surveillance data is fed back to control rooms via monitoring equipment such as high-definition cameras, radar devices and infrared sensors.

Previously, Kent police has said the drone scheme was intended for use over the English Channel to monitor shipping and detect immigrants crossing from France. However, the documents suggest the maritime focus was, at least in part, a public relations strategy designed to minimise civil liberty concerns.

“There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a ‘good news’ story to the public rather than more ‘big brother’,” a minute from the one of the earliest meetings, in July 2007, states.

Behind closed doors, the scope for UAVs has expanded significantly. Working with various policing organisations as well as the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Maritime and Fisheries Agency, HM Revenue and Customs and the UK Border Agency, BAE and Kent police have drawn up wider lists of potential uses.

One document lists “[detecting] theft from cash machines, preventing theft of tractors and monitoring antisocial driving” as future tasks for police drones, while another states the aircraft could be used for road and railway monitoring, search and rescue, event security and covert urban surveillance.

Under a section entitled “Other routine tasks (Local Councils) – surveillance”, another document states the drones could be used to combat “fly-posting, fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles, abnormal loads, waste management”.

Senior officers have conceded there will be “large capital costs” involved in buying the drones, but argue this will be shared by various government agencies. They also say unmanned aircraft are no more intrusive than CCTV cameras and far cheaper to run than helicopters.

Partnership officials have said the UAVs could raise revenue from private companies. At one strategy meeting it was proposed the aircraft could undertake commercial work during spare time to offset some of the running costs.

There are two models of BAE drone under consideration, neither of which has been licensed to fly in non-segregated airspace by the CAA. The Herti (High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion) is a five-metre long aircraft that the Ministry of Defence deployed in Afghanistan for tests in 2007 and 2009.

CAA officials are sceptical that any Herti-type drone manufacturer can develop the technology to make them airworthy for the UK before 2015 at the earliest. However the South Coast Partnership has set its sights on another BAE prototype drone, the GA22 airship, developed by Lindstrand Technologies which would be subject to different regulations. BAE and Kent police believe the 22-metre long airship could be certified for civilian use by 2012.

Military drones have been used extensively by the US to assist reconnaissance and airstrikes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But their use in war zones has been blamed for high civilian death tolls.

January 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention

Andy Worthington | 23.1.10

Guantanamo

With a stunning lack of sensitivity, Barack Obama’s Guantánamo Task Force chose the anniversary of the President’s failed promise to close the prison to announce its conclusions regarding the eventual fate of the 196 prisoners who are still held, stating, with no trace of irony, that “nearly 50” of the men “should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war,” as the Washington Post explained.

The administration’s invocation of the laws of war actually refers to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which authorized the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001” (or those who harbored them), as interpreted by the Supreme Court in June 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, in which it was asserted that “Congress has clearly and unmistakably authorized detention” of individuals covered by the AUMF.

This may technically be legal in the United States, but it is at odds with everyone else’s understanding of the laws of war. As every other civilized country understand them, the laws of war involve holding combatants for the duration of hostilities according to the Geneva Conventions, which, under Common Article 3, prohibit the “humiliating and degrading treatment” and coercive interrogations to which the men in Guantánamo were subjected, after President Bush declared in February 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Moreover, these men were never screened to ascertain whether they were actually combatants in the first place. Under Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention (relative to the treatment of prisoners of war), if there is any doubt about whether those detained fit the description of Article 4 (broadly speaking, regular armed forces), they should be treated as Article 4 prisoners until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal. Held close to the time and place of capture, these were convened in every US war from Vietnam onwards, and in the first Gulf War, for example, 1,196 tribunals were held, and 886 men were subsequently released.

However, competent tribunals were not held in Afghanistan (and are still not held to this day, under President Obama), and irregular soldiers (such as those fighting for the Taliban, or military forces related to al-Qaeda who were supporting the Taliban) slipped through the cracks of the protections assured to everyone detained in wartime, whether combatant or civilian, and were labeled as “unlawful enemy combatants,” who, according to the Bush administration, could be deprived of all rights.

This was nonsense, as the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed in 1958 in a commentary on the Fourth Convention (relative to the treatment of civilians) that “Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or … a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention.” Moreover, “There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.”

This interpretation was reinforced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in a judgment in 1998, but in the “War on Terror,” the result of the Bush administration’s cynical maneuvering was Guantánamo, a prison in which men who had never been adequately screened were presumed to be guilty, even though, in most cases, the authorities knew nothing about them. This was largely because 86 percent of them had not been seized “on the battlefield,” as senior officials claimed, but had been sold to the US military by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments, averaging $5,000 a head, were being paid for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects.

As a result, the Obama administration’s justification for holding 50 men indefinitely without charge or trial reinforces the Bush administration’s false claim that there is a category of wartime prisoner who can be held indefinitely (as opposed to being held as a prisoner of war until the end of hostilities). What makes this conclusion even more unnerving is that the justification for holding these men indefinitely is evidence that, by President Obama’s own admission, is “tainted” by the use of torture.

In a major national security speech in May, when he first signaled that he was reviving the Bush administration’s justification for holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, President Obama referred to prisoners who “cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.” … Full article

January 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Israeli College Student Removed From Bus For Speaking Her Language

January 23, 2010 | by Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies

Israeli Ynet News reported that an Israeli-Arab student, studying at Ariel College, was humiliated and forced out of an Israeli bus after she “was heard” speaking Arabic on her cell phone.

She said that she was forced out of the bus for daring to speak her language while on board.

Hanin Musleh also said that she was subjected to a full body search, the Ynet added.

She is from Wadi Ara area and is studying at the college to obtain a degree in engineering.

Musleh was removed from the bus by two armed guards who boarded the vehicle near a roadblock just out of Ariel settlement, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

The guards forced her out of the bus after questioning her for speaking in Arabic.

She said that she takes the same bus every day to go to her college, and that she was removed out of the bus to be left on some isolated road.

She added that she told the guards that she is Israeli, with Israeli ID and citizenship, just like them, and that they should not be humiliating and degrading her like this.

Musleh even stated that she does not wear a veil or any traditional dress, and that she does not even look Arab.

“The only reason they removed me from the bus is because I spoke Arabic”, she added.

The Ynet stated that the Ariel municipality said that the guards work for a security agency that “operates in accordance to the guidelines of the Israeli military.

The Ariel College said that it regrets this incident, and that Arab students constitute 4% of the entire student body at the college.

The college added that several Arab students live in dorms and are involved with the community of Ariel settlement.

The college said that this is the first time such an incident happens, and that Arab students started enrolling 15 years ago.

But Musleh stated that several other Arab students were also humiliated at checkpoints leading to Ariel, and that they will be considering legal action.

January 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case

Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

San Francisco – 01/21/10 – A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails.

“We’re deeply disappointed in the judge’s ruling,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America’s system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that.”

In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a “particularized injury” but instead a “generalized grievance” because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit that’s currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

For the judge’s full order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/jeweldismissal12110.pdf

For more on warrantless wiretapping and NSA spying:
http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

Contacts:

Kevin Bankston
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org

Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
cindy@eff.org

Related Issues: NSA Spying

Related Cases: Jewel v. NSA

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January 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

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