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Solitary Confinement Under Attack

By Marjorie Cohn | teleSUR | September 15, 2015

Confirming Frederick Douglass’s adage, “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” prisoners held in solitary confinement for many years in California have won an unprecedented victory. After three hunger strikes, in which tens of thousands of California inmates participated, and a federal class action lawsuit filed on behalf of prisoners by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a landmark settlement was reached. It effectively consigns indefinite solitary confinement in California to the dustbins of shameful history.

More than 500 prisoners had been held in isolation in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay prison for over 10 years, and 78 of them had been there for more than 20 years. They spend 22½ to 24 hours every day in a cramped, concrete, windowless cell, and are denied telephone calls, physical contact with visitors, and vocational, recreational, and educational programs.

Now California prisoners will no longer be sent to the SHU solely based on allegations of gang affiliation, but rather based on infraction of specific serious rules violations. Prisoners will only be put in solitary confinement if they commit a serious offense such as assault or murder in prison, and only after a due process hearing.

And they will be put into solitary for a definite term – no more indeterminate solitary confinement. An estimated 95 percent of California prisoners in solitary confinement based solely on gang affiliation (about 2,000 people) will be released into the general prison population.

The settlement also limits the amount of time a prisoner can spend in the SHU, and provides a two-year step-down program for transfer from SHU to general population. It is estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 prisoners will be released from SHU within one year of this settlement.

“California’s agreement to abandon indeterminate SHU confinement based on gang affiliation demonstrates the power of unity and collective action,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This victory was achieved by efforts of people in prison, their families and loved ones, lawyers, and outside supporters.”

The plaintiffs in Ashker v. Governor of California argued that California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and denies the prisoners the right to due process.

The federal district court judge found that prolonged solitary confinement had deprived the plaintiffs of “normal human contact, environmental and sensory stimulation, mental and physical and health, physical exercise, sleep, nutrition, and meaningful activity” which could constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Although no U.S. court has yet ruled that solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment, Justice Anthony Kennedy indicated in a concurring opinion in June that he would likely entertain such an argument in the future. Commenting on the case of a man who had been isolated for 25 years in California, Kennedy told the U.S. Congress in March that solitary confinement “literally drives men mad.”

Indeed, after visiting Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in 1842, Charles Dickens noted, “The system here, is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it … to be cruel and wrong … I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” Dickens felt that isolation of prisoners was a thing that “no man had the right to inflict upon his fellow creature.”

Juan Mendez, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, concluded that solitary confinement for more than 15 days constitutes torture. He wrote that prolonged solitary confinement violates the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The United States has ratified both of these treaties, making them part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Ireland refused to extradite a man to the United States to face terrorism-related charges earlier this year. The High Court of Ireland worried that he might be held in indefinite isolation in a Colorado “supermax” prison, which would violate the Irish Constitution.

Between 80,000 and 100,000 people are held in some type of isolation in U.S. prisons on any given day, generally in supermax prisons, in 44 states and the federal system. Yet there is no evidence that solitary confinement makes prisons safer, the Government Accountability Office determined in 2013.

Solitary confinement exacerbates mental illness. In Madrid v. Gomez, a U.S. federal court judge wrote that for those with diagnosed mental illness, “placing them in [solitary confinement] is the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.”

Professor Craig Haney described the deprivation of basic human needs of social interaction and environmental stimulation as a “painfully long form of social death.”

The European Court of Human Rights has determined that “complete sensory isolation coupled with complete social isolation can no doubt destroy the personality,” in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Likewise, the Inter American Court of Human Rights has stated that prolonged solitary confinement may violate the American Convention on Human Rights.

Suicide rates in California, New York, and Texas are significantly higher among those held in solitary confinement than in the general prison population. And juveniles are 19 times more likely to take their own lives in isolation than in the general population. Connecticut, Maine, Oklahoma, New York, and West Virginia have banned or put restrictions on solitary confinement of juveniles.

President Barack Obama has asked his Attorney General to “start a review of the overuse of solitary confinement across American prisons.” Obama said, “The social science shows that an environment like that is often more likely to make inmates more alienated, more hostile, potentially more violent.”

The purpose of the penal system is social rehabilitation, according to the ICCPR. In contravention of that mandate, the California legislature has specified that the purpose of sentencing is punishment. Solitary confinement implicitly denies any chance of social rehabilitation. The ICCPR requires that prison guards respect the inherent dignity of every inmate. Prolonged solitary confinement, like other forms of torture, destroys a person’s dignity.

Mendez proposed a worldwide ban on nearly all uses of solitary confinement, which has increased throughout the globe, especially in the context of the “war on terror” and “threats to national security.” He particularly criticized the routine use of isolation in U.S. supermax prisons.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy quoted Dostoyevsky: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” So one must wonder why the United States refuses to ratify the U.N. Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, which requires international inspection of prisons.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is editor and contributor to “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.” See www.marjoriecohn.com.

September 17, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Attorney General refuses to say whether UK has ‘blanket’ drone policy

Reprieve – September 15, 2015

The British Attorney General has today refused to say whether the Government has a ‘blanket’ or ‘case-by-case’ policy on carrying out targeted killings in countries with whom the UK is not at war.

Jeremy Wright was answering questions from MPs on the Justice Select Committee, who questioned him over the UK’s adoption of a US-style drone programme, as recently announced by the Prime Minister.

However, Mr Wright refused to give further details on the nature of the legal advice he had provided to his Government. Asked by Richard Arkless MP, “is the advice that you’ve delivered to the Government in relation to these drone strikes, will that be conducted on a case by case basis or are you giving them blanket authority to do this again if the circumstances arise?” he responded, “that’s another nice try… but I can’t I’m afraid go into the detail of the advice that I gave.”

The Attorney General also said there was a need to rethink what “imminence” means in relation to self-defence.

Commenting, Kat Craig, legal director at human rights charity Reprieve said: “It is alarming that the Attorney General does not feel the need to tell MPs or the public even the most broad details about the UK’s kill policy. All we currently know, is that the Prime Minister thinks he can authorise the killing of anyone, anywhere, without any parliamentary or judicial oversight. The UK appears to be going down the US route of a counter-productive, secret drone war which does more harm than good. When even US generals are warning that the drone programme causes more problems than it solves, it beggars belief that the British Government is adopting the model in full. We need a real debate, and for that we need the Government to come clean about this policy.”

September 15, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Fears that Saudi Arabia is set to ‘crucify’ juvenile prisoner

Reprieve – September 15, 2015

Saudi Arabia has dismissed the final appeal of a prisoner sentenced to death as a child, leading to fears his execution could take place in a matter of days.

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested when he was 17 and initially held at a juvenile offenders facility. There is evidence that he was tortured and forced to sign a document amounting to a confession, which then formed the basis of the case against him.

Last week, his family found out that his final appeal had been heard in secret, without Ali’s knowledge, and dismissed. This means that there are now no remaining legal hurdles before he faces his sentence of ‘death by crucifixion,’ originally handed down on 27 May 2014.

Ali was arrested on 14 February 2012 in the wake of anti-Government protests, and has been accused by the authorities of participation in an illegal demonstration and firearms offences – no evidence has been produced for the latter charge, which he and his family strongly deny. The opaque nature of the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) through which Ali was convicted makes it hard to determine the detail of the charges against him.

The Government appears to have rested its case against him in large part on his relation to Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent religious leader in the Kingdom and human rights activist.

The Saudi Government has been widely criticised for its heavy-handed response against protesters and human rights activists since Arab Spring demonstrations began – including a death sentence for Sheikh Nimr. Ali is one of a number of people – thought to possibly include other juveniles – who has been sentenced to death following involvement in those protests. In January 2015, prominent Saudi blogger Raif Al-Badawi received the first of 1,000 lashes as part of his sentence for his statements critical of the Saudi regime in 2012.

The Saudi Government has carried out executions at a high rate since the coming to power of King Salman in January 2015, surpassing 100 for the year so far.

Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at legal charity Reprieve said: “No one should have to go through the ordeal Ali has suffered – torture, forced ‘confession,’ and an unfair, secret trial process, resulting in a sentence of death by ‘crucifixion.’ But worse still, Ali was a vulnerable child when he was arrested and this ordeal began. His execution – based apparently on the authorities’ dislike for his uncle, and his involvement in anti-government protests – would violate international law and the most basic standards of decency. It must be stopped.”

September 15, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

What Christians Don’t Know About Israel

By Grace Halsell – INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? American Presidents as well as most members of Congress support Israel — and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere — among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel — and Zionism — often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.

I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window- type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad “unChosen” enemies.

In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I had learned in Sunday School.

And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. “Not write about politics?” scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a waterpipe in the Old Walled City. “We eat politics, morning, noon and night!”

As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.

My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was “free” to print news impartially.

‘It shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel.’

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify “news” depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn’t it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn’t know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I’d make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn’t known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were “lost” at WETA.

The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. “Terrific,” he said of my material.

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan’s. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, “He’s been fired.” She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. “I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes,” he told me. “They were not pleased. They asked me, “You are not going to publish this book, are you?” I asked, “Were there mistakes?” “Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel.”

Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian homes, wanton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.

The Same Question

Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, “How come I didn’t know this?” Or someone might ask, “But I haven’t read about that in my newspaper.” To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post — and most of our nation’s print media – are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel — and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem — all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.

In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the plight of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the “mother” of The New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich, Conn., home.

She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, “You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew.” I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered — from her point of view — the “wrong” underdog.

As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed the galleys back with a saddened look: “My dear, have you forgotten the Holocaust?” She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of Palestinians.

I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most “liberal” U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one — the Palestinians.

How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as “terrorists.”

Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions — including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ — stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.

Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”

Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, “are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become “the Bible.” And the Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity.

In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.

The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does — even wanton murder — as orchestrated by God.

Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.

While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots America — the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn’t know about Israel. They were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.

“They asked us,” said one delegate, “Why did you use a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn’t you use an Israeli agency?” The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment. Obviously, said one delegate, “The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don’t want Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel.”

About the Author

Grace Halsell (1923-2000) was a distinguished American journalist, war correspondent, author and columnist. She was the author of 13 books, including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics.

September 14, 2015 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Dozens of Egyptian dissidents died in prison in August’

Press TV – September 13, 2015

Dozens of dissidents have died across prisons in Egypt in the month of August alone, according to a non-governmental organization.

The Arab African Center for Freedoms and Human Rights documented deaths of 42 detainees.

According to the Cairo-based NGO, the captives mainly died due to medical negligence on the part of Egyptian authorities.

Human rights activists in the Egyptian capital have repeatedly said that many of those who die behind bars are in very critical condition due to torture upon arrest by Egyptian authorities.

Nearly 300 political prisoners have died in Egyptian detention facilities since 2013, according to activists.

The current military-backed government has harshly cracked down on dissent since the downfall of former President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in July 2013.

Large numbers of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been jailed since the rise of former military commander and current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.

September 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Benign State Violence vs. Barbaric Terrorism

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | September 12, 2015

Seven months ago, UK Prime Minister David Cameron lamented the “sickening murder” of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kaseasbeh by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President Barack Obama also decried the “viciousness and barbarity” of the act. In his home country, al-Kaseasbeh was remembered as a “hero” and a “martyr” by government officials. Obama even declared his murder demonstrated ISIS’s “bankrupt” ideology. The killing was seen by the Western coalition and allied Arab monarchies fighting ISIS as a symbol of the evilness of their enemies, and by contrast the righteousness of their own cause.

The act that precipitated such a strong outpouring was the purported execution of the 26-year-old al-Kaseasbeh. He was burned alive inside a cage after several months in captivity. As part of ISIS’s propaganda campaign, they posted the video on Youtube. The authenticity of the video has since been questioned, but there is no doubt that regardless of the method used, he was indeed killed.

Al-Kaseasbeh was not an innocent civilian. In fact, he was a pilot in the Royal Jordanian Air Force who was bombing territory controlled by ISIS in an F-16 fighter jet. That is to say, he was an active combatant in military hostilities. His combatant status would be equivalent to an ISIS pilot (if they had an Air Force) apprehended after bombing New York City or London. Though it was reported in the British newspaper The Telegraph that al-Kaseasbeh was “kidnapped,” a military combatant engaged in armed conflict on the battlefield cannot be kidnapped. He was captured.

According to the Geneva Conventions, Prisoners of War enjoy protected status that guarantees their humane treatment and eventual release at the end of hostilities. “POWs cannot be prosecuted for taking a direct part in hostilities. Their detention is not a form of punishment, but only aims to prevent further participation in the conflict. They must be released and repatriated without delay after the end of hostilities,” writes the International Committee of the Red Cross.

ISIS would have no legal grounds to kill al-Kaseasbeh, but it was cynical and sanctimonious for the Western coalition to react with such outrage when he was killed. Those same countries have embraced and celebrated summary assassinations and executions on a scale far more massive than anything ISIS could ever be capable of.

Several weeks ago, Cameron ordered the assassination of two British citizens in Syria alleged to be ISIS militants.

“The strike against British citizen Reyaad Khan, the ‘target of the strike,’ was committed without approval from Parliament. British citizen Ruhul Amin, who was killed in the strike, was deemed an ‘associate’ worthy of death,” writes Kevin Gosztola in Shadowproof.

The British government has not declared war on Syria and has not released any legal justification for its actions. Naturally, any legal documentation they did produce would be merely psuedo-legal cover that would never withstand real judicial scrutiny.

Cameron’s actions in ordering the murder of his own citizens follows the well-treaded path of Obama, whose large-scale drone program in as many as seven countries (none of which the US Congress has declared war on) have killed more than 2,500 people in six years. The President has quipped that he is “really good at killing people.”

By any measure, the drone assassination program has been wildly reckless and ineffective. One study determined that missile strikes from unmanned drones, launched by remote-control jockeys in air-controlled trailers in the American desert, kill 28 unknown people for every intended target. In Pakistan, a study revealed that only 4% of those killed have been identified as members of al Qaeda.

Among the victims have been 12 people on their way to a wedding in Yemen, and a 13-year-old boy who said that he lived in constant fear of “death machines” that had already killed his father and brother before taking his own life.

“A lot of the kids in this area wake up from sleeping because of nightmares from then and some now have mental problems. They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep,” the now-deceased boy, Mohammed Tuaiman, told The Guardian.

Before Cameron did so, Obama also targeted citizens of his own country for assassination without trial. The most well known case is of Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a drone strike in 2011. The government claimed he was operationally active in al-Qaeda, but this was never tested in court.

“It is likely the real reason Anwar al-Awlaki was killed is that he was seen as a radicalizer whose ideological activities were capable of driving Western Muslims to terrorist violence,” writes Arun Kundnani in The Muslims Are Coming!.

In other words, the Obama administration decided his speech was not protected by the 1st amendment to the US Constitution, and rather than being obligated to test this theory in court they unilaterally claimed the right to assassinate him, the way King John of England would have been able to order the execution of one of his subjects before signing the Magna Carta 800 years ago.

Three weeks later, al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. An Obama adviser justified the strike by saying he should have “had a more responsible father.”

Writing on his blog, former British security services officer Craig Murray claims that in light of the decision 20 years ago by the European Court of Human Rights that targeted assassinations when an attack was no imminent were illegal, the British government cannot claim its drone strike in Syria “is anything other than murder.”

“For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?” Murray writes.

So what makes ISIS’s killing supposedly morally outrageous compared to the US and British drone strikes?

Was ISIS’s killing less morally justified? Al-Kaseasbeh was a combatant who had been dropping bombs on the people who eventually killed him. That much is beyond dispute. The US and UK kill people through drone strikes merely for being suspected militants who might one day seek to attack those countries.

Were ISIS’s methods less humane? Certainly burning a human being alive is sadistic and cruel. But is it any less so to incinerate a human being by a Hellfire missile? Former drone operator Brandon Bryant told NBC News that he saw his victim “running forward, he’s missing his right leg… And I watch this guy bleed out and, I mean, the blood is hot.” Is a drone strike less cruel because the operator is thousands of miles away from the bloodshed and watching on a screen rather than in person?

Were ISIS’s actions terrorism while the US/UK actions were not? As the late Mohammed Tuaiman attested, he and his neighbors were terrified by the omnipresence of the “death machines” that could at any second of the day blow him to pieces without warning or the possibility of escape. Were the people in ISIS controlled territory as terrorized as Tuaiman by the burning of the Jordanian pilot, who was specifically targeted because he had been caught after bombing the same people who now held him captive? Surely they were not more terrorized, though perhaps they might have been equally so.

It would by hypocritical to justify one form of extrajudicial killing while demonizing another. Yet that is exactly what happens when one form of violence is undertaken by a state and another is not. The New York Times is indicative of broader public opinion when it decries the “fanatical vision” of ISIS that has “shocked and terrified the peoples of Iraq and Syria,” while accepting Obama’s rationalizations of deaths via drone strikes as collateral damage, maintaining only that he should “provide a fuller accounting” to enable an “informed debate.”

The apologies for state violence enable the shredding of the rule of law as a method of accountability for those in power, while other states take advantage of technical advances to proliferate their own sci-fi violence against their own citizens and others.

“Pakistan is the latest member of a growing technological club of nations: those who have successfully weaponized drones,” writes Spencer Ackerman in The Guardian. “In addition to the US, UK and Israel, a recent New America Foundation report highlighted credible accounts that Iran, South Africa, France, China and Somalia possess armed drones, as do the terrorist groups [sic] Hamas and Hezbollah. Russia says it is working on its own model.”

One day in the not too distant future, the skies across the world may be full of drones from every country dispensing justice from Miami to Mumbai via Hellfire Missiles, relegating the rule of law and its method of trial by jury to the ash heap of history. And it will not be because of terrorist groups like ISIS that governments and the media are so forceful to condemn, but because of governments themselves and their lapdogs in the media who refuse to apply the same standards in judging violence to states that have their own Air Forces.

September 13, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Government refuses to say whether UK pilots have bombed Pakistan targets

Reprieve | September 13, 2015

The UK Government has refused to confirm whether UK pilots have been involved in flying covert US drone strikes over Pakistan, withholding the information requested by legal charity Reprieve on grounds of ‘international relations.’

Reprieve had made Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Ministry of Defence asking two questions: whether the UK had flown drone missions over Pakistan; and whether British pilots ‘embedded’ in US units had done so.  While the UK Government confirmed that it had not itself conducted such strikes in response to the first question, it said it would ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) whether British embedded pilots had done so.

This position is at odds with recent comments made by the UK Defence Secretary to the effect that the Government would answer questions about the activities of embedded personnel when asked.  In the wake of revelations that British pilots had flown strikes in Syrian territory while embedded with the US Air Force, Michael Fallon said that “if we are asked to give details [on embeds] we of course do so.”

The new evidence of potential UK involvement in the US’ drone programme in Pakistan comes in the week of David Cameron’s announcement of a new UK ‘targeted killing’ policy which closely mirrors that carried out by the American Government.  The US programme – which has been running for over a decade – has seen hundreds of strikes taken and hundreds of civilians killed.  The latter is due in large part to faulty intelligence, which has seen strikes miss their intended target with the effect that individual alleged militants have often been reported ‘killed’ on multiple occasions.

The US programme – which is justified on the same basis as that of the UK, and carried out using the same technology – has also come in for heavy criticism from senior American defence and intelligence figures, who argue it has proved counter-productive.  General Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, has described it as a “failed strategy,” while  General Stanley McChrystal has warned it creates “ resentment” towards “American arrogance.”

The UK Government has consistently refused in the past to comment on drone strikes in Pakistan, saying that they are a matter for “the states involved.”  For British personnel to have been involved in the strikes would go far beyond the picture of the drones programme that the Government has so far presented to the British public and Parliament.

Commenting, Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer at Reprieve, said: “This refusal suggests that we may be embroiled in the CIA’s secret wars in far greater ways than was thought. Given the CIA’s drone programme in Pakistan has killed hundreds of civilians while operating without public accountability, that is cause for serious concern. What more don’t we know?”

“Numerous senior military and intelligence figures have warned that secret drone programmes of this kind can actually make the situation worse, not better. Before heading down this path, we need a real debate, and real answers from the PM.  We need to think very carefully about whether giving our government carte blanche to kill people anywhere in the world, without oversight, is really a good idea.”

September 13, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Clashes erupt in Silwan after Israeli settler attacks 8-year-old boy

Ma’an – September 12, 2015

JERUSALEM – An Israeli settler attacked an 8-year-old Palestinian boy late on Friday in the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan — a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem — leading to clashes in the area, a local monitoring group told Ma’an.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, located in Silwan, said 8-year-old Zaid Abu Qweidir was attacked by a group of Israeli settlers in the neighborhood.

An Israeli police spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked for comment.

According to the center, a young Palestinian man witnessed the attack and moved to intervene, which quickly escalated into clashes between the two sides.

More than 20 Israeli settlers arrived on the scene, many of whom used pepper spray against Palestinians as young as five-years-old, the information center reported.

Witnesses said the Israeli attackers came out from a building which settlers had recently occupied.

After the attack, security guards of the settlement outpost, as well as Israeli forces, arrived to protect the settlers, witnesses said.

The forces fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades at Palestinians in the area.

The Wadi Hilweh center said at least 15 Palestinians were moderately to severely injured by pepper spray, including 60-year-old Abdullah Abu Nab and 14-year-old Mahdi al-Rajabi. Both were taken to al-Maqasid hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.

Zaid Abu Qweidir, 8, Adam al-Rajabi, 9, Rahaf Abu Qweidir, 5, Udayy al-Rajabi, 12, Hamza al-Rajabi, 12, Yazan al-Rajabi, 14, Walid al-Shaer, 16, were lightly injured and received treatment at the scene. A pregnant woman, Asmaa al-Rajabi, 29, and 75-year-old Abu Adnan Gheith were also lightly injured.

Furthermore, a tear gas canister was shot into a home housing five children aged 7-months to 13-years-old, the information center said.

Silwan is one of many Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem that is seeing an influx of Israeli settlers.

According to a statement released by the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department in August, illegal Israeli settlers have taken over 39 homes in Silwan, creating settlement enclaves in which approximately 400 Israeli settlers live.

September 12, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers take over home of PA police chief in Nablus

Ma’an – September 11, 2015

QALQILIYA – Israeli military forces on Friday raided the house of Palestinian Authority police chief in Nablus, Abd al-Latif al-Qaddumi, and turned his home into a military outpost after evicting his wife and children.

PA police spokesperson Luay Irzeiqat told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the home in Kafr Qaddum village and locked al-Qaddumi’s family in one room before declaring the property a military outpost.

Shortly afterward, Israeli forces expelled the family from the home and took it over.

Al-Qaddumi was not present at the time of the incident, with no further details about why Israeli forces seized the property.

On Sunday, Israeli forces held al-Qaddumi for more than an hour near the entrance of Hijja village west of Nablus, security sources told Ma’an.

They said that Israeli troops stopped the police chief on his way to Nablus police station and held him for more than an hour before releasing the police officer.

September 12, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israelis Linked to Settler Terrorism were from U.S. Families

By Steve Straehley and Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 9, 2015

A horrific act of terrorism in the West Bank this summer is suspected to have been perpetrated by Israeli extremists with American roots.

In the village of Duma on July 31, the home of a Palestinian family was firebombed, killing an 18-month-old child, Ali Dawabsheh, who was burned to death, according to media reports. The child’s father, Sa’ed and four-year-old brother Ahmed suffered serious burns, but survived. Ali’s mother, Riham, died Sunday of her burns. Their home was sprayed with graffiti reading “revenge” in Hebrew and featured a Star of David.

“All available evidence suggests that the blaze was a deliberate act of settler terrorism,” Sara Yael Hirschhorn wrote at The New York Times. “More disturbingly, several of the alleged instigators, currently being detained indefinitely, are not native-born Israelis — they have American roots.”

Although not so far charged with the fire that killed the Dawabshehs, four youths believed to be connected to settler terrorism have been incarcerated by Israeli officials. They are Meir Ettinger, 24, grandson of Meir Kahane, a radical American rabbi who served in Israel’s parliament; Mordechai Meyer, 18, the son of American immigrants; American Ephraim Khantsis; and Eviatar Slonim, the child of Australian Jews.

The fire is thought to be a so-called “price tag” attack. Radical Israeli settlers commit such crimes as a response to their government’s efforts to dismantle illegal West Bank Jewish settlements.

To Learn More:

Israeli Terrorists, Born in the U.S.A. (by Sara Yael Hirschhorn, New York Times )

How the Killing of an 18-Month-Old Boy in the West Bank Exposed the Israeli Authorities Failure to Stem Tide of Jewish Extremists (by Ben Lynfield, The Independent )

Israelis Killed more Palestinians Last Year than in any Year since 1967 (by David Wallechinsky and Steve Straehley, AllGov )

U.S. Only Country of 47 to Vote against Investigating Possible Human Rights Violations during Israeli Occupation of Gaza (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )

September 9, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Shooting Children Becomes Israeli Policy

Netanyahu’s response to kids throwing rocks

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 8, 2015

I have become weary of the dancing around by politicians and denial by Jewish organizations over what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. That anyone can with a straight face deny that there is anything wrong with a nearly fifty year occupation and strangling of the Palestinians because they have been demonized as “terrorists” or possibly only because they are not Jews is abhorrent. A new United Nations report states that Gaza will be completely uninhabitable in five years. Palestinians get imprisoned by Israel and gassed or shot if they look sideways at their occupiers. Fanatical settlers tear up olive trees that have fed the locals for hundreds of years, steal their land, vandalize and burn their houses churches and mosques, even kill them and are only rarely pursued or punished. Israel is the ugly face of a fascist state and calling it apartheid is to minimize its criminality as it does not even necessarily seek to set up a parallel state for the Arabs it controls. A number of leading Israeli politicians and journalists seek to remove them completely.

All of that said, as a committed anti-interventionist, I have to believe both that what goes on between Israel and the Palestinians should pretty much be none of our business but for the fact that a powerful domestic lobby has forced us to be involved. Jews and Arabs probably would have resolved their differences by now if Washington had not coddled corrupt Palestinian leaders while simultaneously empowering Israel to make a lot of bad choices. To be sure our government should feel free to speak up whenever foreign governments behave badly, but the tendency to impose sanctions, which don’t work, intervene directly, or even invade to deal with regimes that do not conform to our standards has brought nothing but grief, most particularly over the past fifteen years. One might even reasonably argue that it is Washington’s lame brained interventions have themselves destabilized the Middle East and caused the terrorism and refugee problems emanating from that region to metastasize.

Which is not to say that Israeli politicians have not become adept at shooting themselves in their own feet before the court of world opinion, which is becoming increasingly engaged in what is going on. Just when one thinks that Benjamin Netanyahu cannot possibly morph into something more horrible he astounds the observer by doing just that.

Netanyahu’s most recent foray grew out of a late August incident on the West Bank. A series of photographs plus video footage from a protest in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh appeared in the media. They showed a masked IDF soldier trying to arrest a young boy accused of throwing stones, followed by scenes of his mother and teenage sister trying to rescue him. The pictures and video reveal a crying and struggling 11 year old Mohammed Tamimi, with his broken arm in a cast, being held in a headlock and sat upon by the soldier, armed with an assault rifle. The boy’s mother then intervened, pulling on the mask while Mohammed’s 15 year old sister joined in to bite the soldier’s wrist, compelling him to free the boy. The soldier released him, backed off and then threw a grenade at the family.

Predictably, Israel’s apologists complained that the Palestinians had attacked the soldier who was only defending himself and they quickly flooded the social media with claims that it was all a set-up, which they even dubbed “Pallywood.” And inevitably Benjamin Netanyahu joined in the debate, blaming the Arabs for what transpired, calling them “terrorists.” He stated that he would recommend that Israeli soldiers be authorized to fire live rounds to protect themselves in similar situations where children are throwing rocks. Netanyahu was reportedly responding to demands from settlers for more aggressive action against Palestinians, completely ignoring the reality that the Arabs have been defending themselves from settler harassment and worse and the soldiers represent an occupying army. Some in the Israeli media and government also advised that as the soldier had been “humiliated” by the Palestinian women he should have shot them, but Bibi did not go quite that far. At least not yet.

In the United States the hasbara jumped on both stories, notably in comments sections on Yahoo and on other sites using constant repetition of the same arguments, often to include repeated misspellings and poor syntax suggesting that their “information” came from a common source in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The names the hasbara commenters use to post are characteristically American sounding, similar to the Anglo names used by employees of the obnoxious call centers in India and the Philippines when they interrupt you at dinner time. In the hasbara comments rocks thrown by the Palestinian children were repeatedly and improbably described as “football sized.” In other pushback, a Reuters account of the Netanyahu hard line, possibly acting under pressure from Jewish groups, changed the key word in its headline from “shoot” young Palestinians to “target” them.

But in this case, Benjamin Netanyahu’s horse has already left the stable. His new orders to shoot Palestinian children have been de facto operational for some time with punishments rarer than hens’ teeth for those Israeli Defense Forces commandoes who pull their triggers on six year olds. That kind of killing has been almost routine, exhibited dramatically during last July’s execution of four young boys playing soccer on a beach in Gaza. The boys were killed by Israeli rockets in full sight of a number of international and media observers. The Israeli government subsequently conducted an “extensive investigation” that nevertheless did not interview many eye witnesses, to include a Guardian journalist. Not surprisingly it absolved itself from blame for the deaths.

And beyond that singular bit of barbarity, numerous other Palestinian children have also been abducted, imprisoned and murdered by the Israeli Army and border police. International monitors reckon that 2,061 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel since September 2000 versus 133 Israeli children murdered in the same time frame by Palestinians. The body count is deplorable on either side but at some point Netanyahu has to come to recognize that the constant barrage of videos, photos and eyewitness testimony recording the mindless brutality of the occupation of the West Bank will influence public opinion to such an extent that Israel will become everyone’s pariah state.

Recently more than 100,000 Britons signed a petititon demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested for war crimes on an upcoming visit to the UK while Israel’s resistance to the Iranian nuclear deal, when subjected to a United Nations vote, resulted in Tel Aviv lining up against the entire rest of the world including the United States. Pictures of children being manhandled by two hundred pound soldiers create a lasting impression, one that inevitably influences how people react when the subject of Israel comes up. Netanyahu may think that he can maintain course forever with the uncritical backing of the United States but forever is a long time and even in the U.S. things can change.

September 8, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Reham Dawabshe’s funeral

International Solidarity Movement |September 8, 2015

Duma, Occupied Palestine – Yesterday, Monday 7th September, at approximately 1pm, thousands of people where waiting for martyr, Reham Dawabshe, to arrive to Duma to attend her funeral.

After struggling for five weeks from severe burns all over her body, Reham Dawabshe died in the hospital. Reham’s home was attacked by illegal Israeli settlers on July 31st, by smashing the windows in the middle of the night, throwing in flammable liquids and molotov bombs and setting the whole house on fire. Her 18-month-old baby, Ali, died in the flames trapped in the house and her husband, Saed, died one week later in the hospital.

AhmadinhospitalUntil this day, only 4-year-old, Ahmad, has survived but is still struggling from severe wounds in the hospital.

Thousands of people mourned the mother’s death in Duma, including hundreds of teachers and dozens of students from the Jurish School for Girls, where Reham worked as a math teacher. Many government representatives were present, including the Governor of Nablus, Akram al-Rujoub, and the Minister of Education, Sabri Seidam.

Soon after the funeral procession was finished, clashes broke out in the entrance of the village of Duma, where Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters and sound grenades towards Palestinian youth.

To this day, the perpetrators of the arson attack that killed Ali, Reham and Saed Dawabshe have not been arrested. Israeli authorities only arrested a few random settlers right after the event occurred in order to show in the news media that they were working to make justice, but soon after most of these suspects were released.

It is important to note that the great majority of attacks perpetuated by illegal Israeli settlers towards Palestinian villagers are always ignored by the Israeli authorities, whereas Palestinians are harassed, imprisoned and beaten by Israeli soldiers on a daily basis for no reason.

Photos

September 8, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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