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A new stage in the war on dissent

Socialist Worker | October 19, 2010

Michael Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a leading organization in opposing the dismantling of civil liberties under the Bush, and now Obama, administrations.

He spoke with Nicole Colson about the recent raids on the homes and offices of antiwar and socialist activists in Chicago, Minneapolis and North Carolina–and why the Obama administration, despite claims to the contrary, has been disastrous when it comes to promises to protect our civil liberties.

NC:  RECENTLY, ANTIWAR and socialist activists in Chicago, Minneapolis and North Carolina have had their homes and offices raided, and were given grand jury subpoenas. What is your take on these raids? What’s your sense of what the government is after?

THE RAIDS have all the earmarks of a fishing expedition–both the search warrants as well as grand jury subpoenas. They all claimed to be investigating “material support to terrorism,” in particular around both the Middle East and the country of Colombia. It appears to be a fishing expedition because the materials that were authorized to be seized and the subjects about which questions were to be asked were quite broad.

The search warrants were like wholesale seizure warrants. The FBI goes into five or six houses in Minneapolis, two houses in Chicago, some houses in North Carolina and Michigan as well, and seize everything. They take people’s cell phones, they take all the computers out, they take every document out. This broad language in the search warrants purports to allow the FBI to take everything in those offices.

And then the subpoenas, which require people to testify in front of the grand jury, they also are very open ended. Asking for everything people know about certain organizations, phone numbers, associates, friends, etc. So you would think if it was a narrowly tailored prosecution in which they thought there might be real criminal conduct, the focus would be much narrower.

So while it appears from the warrants they might have some suspicion about something (but who even knows if that suspicion is valid), they certainly don’t have very much, because they are going very, very broadly.

It’s something like looking for a needle in a haystack, in which they destroy many lives and chill people’s rights–and there may not even be a needle. And because of that, they are clearly encroaching on the First Amendment rights of people who are doing antiwar organizing and working to change U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East and in South America.

There are many problems, but one of the problems here is that the search warrants and subpoenas are so that broad, they cut directly into all kinds of First Amendment activities. So the people in Minneapolis, who were among the main organizers of some of the Republican National Convention demonstrations in 2008, then become the targets of the FBI or the Joint Terrorism Task Force–and their First Amendment activities, and their right to organize and oppose the government are therefore chilled or even prevented all together.

A broad, wholesale attack like this on the antiwar movement and on activists is bad for the people who were directly attacked, and it also tells all of us that the activities we undertake are subject to government surveillance and much more in this case–the actual seizure of the documents and grand jury subpoenas.

So it’s quite serious. It makes you very suspicious because it’s so broad. It was so coordinated, it was across the country, and they don’t really have that much, if anything.

A second problem is the ostensible reason for the search. The various warrants and subpoenas cite the law concerning material support for terrorism. And of course, that’s the material support statute.

A case arguing the unconstitutionality of that statute was recently argued by the Center for Constitutional Rights in the Supreme Court [Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project]. We lost. The Supreme Court, for the first time since 9/11, said advocacy or speech on behalf of an organization on the attorney general’s terrorist list is covered by the criminal statute–the material support of terrorism statute–if that speech is coordinated with, or you work with or have contact with, people in the alleged terrorist organization.

So once an organization is put on the terrorist list, if I only write an op-ed, and if I gather the information from the designated organization or have any contact with anybody there, even if it’s just asking for information, that might be interpreted as “coordination” with them, or some kind of material support for that organization. And there is no due process given before an organization is put on the list. It’s almost impossible to challenge. Oftentimes, placement on the terrorist list is a political decision.

So first you have the Supreme Court decision in June 2010, and then you have these raids a couple of months afterward. It makes you very suspicious that the current government is pushing the boundaries of the material support statute and reading it very broadly.

Organizations are going to be put in fear of any kind of opposition to U.S. foreign policy if there is a claim by the government that there is contact with organizations that are designated terrorists. Domestic American organizations that oppose U.S. foreign policy may well be chilled in their work.

COULD YOU say a little bit more about the way that the material support provision has been used since 9/11? There have been a number of really high-profile cases–particularly of Islamic charities, for example–where no violence was ever alleged to have occurred as a result of the so-called “material support,” so a lot of us on the left have seen this as a broader attempt to whip up support for the “war on terror.”

ONE OF the main uses of the material support statute, I think is to demonize organizations that the U.S. government doesn’t like. Had they had such a statue during the period of the African National Congress (ANC) opposition to the apartheid government in South Africa, they would have labeled that–and that’s how they thought of it in the U.S., under Reagan and before–as a terrorist organization. Any contacts with the ANC of any Americans opposed to apartheid would have been considered criminal.

There are two aspects to this. One is that the government can label, without any kind of hearing or way to challenge it, a foreign organization as a terrorist organization. The other is that any American contact with that organization or support for that organization is prohibited.

This is true even if that support is, as I said, by writings that are at all coordinated; by giving blankets to their hospital; by, according to the case we lost in Supreme Court, wanting to teach the [Kurdistan Workers Party] or the Tamil Tigers about the Geneva Conventions. Wanting to teach people peaceful means of resolving disputes, or wanting to get them to the negotiating table–when Jimmy Carter negotiates questions in the Middle East and he has contacts with Hamas or Hezbollah–those all are now prohibited.

So this statute is the favorite of prosecutors to go after people, because the smallest kind of contact with a designated terrorist organization can be considered material support. It’s an easy way to intimidate, wipe out and jail opponents of U.S. foreign policy, and an easy way to demonize organizations that many would call liberation organizations in other countries.

The provision has been used often. It is a favorite among prosecutors because you have to prove so little. So the Holy Land Foundation, which was the biggest Muslim charity in the United States, was accused of giving money to Hamas, but so indirectly that it’s hard to believe any of the facts in the case–it was giving it to groups that I think even the UN was giving to in Gaza. But somehow, they were supposed to believe or know that those groups were connected to Hamas, which has been put on the U.S. terrorist list.

The statute is used very broadly to say, “Muslims in this country and all their charities, what they’re doing is supporting terrorism.” When in fact, the vast majority of those charities–I obviously don’t know every one, but from what I know–gave aid to organizations they didn’t think were terrorist for starters, or on the list, and, secondly, they were giving humanitarian aid or doing things like teaching the Geneva Conventions.

I WANTED to go back to this recent Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, that was argued for the Obama administration by former Solicitor General Elena Kagan–who is now, of course, sitting on the Supreme Court. What do you think that case signals about the court’s view of free speech issues and its efforts to broaden this statute?

THEY WERE pushing to broaden out this statute, of course. I was at the argument, and the solicitor general did make very broad arguments–broader than the case required for saying that certain kinds of what she called “material aid” should be criminally punished under the statute, or could be.

So, for example, let’s say an organization was designated as a terrorist organization, and it comes to you and says, “We were improperly designated, we want to try to challenge it.” I couldn’t do that, as a lawyer representing them. Elena Kagan said in the Supreme Court that such representation would be “materially aiding” a terrorist organizations.

So she took a very broad position in the court. The solicitor general does have some ability to say, “I’m not taking a position that’s broader than the case,” but she didn’t do that. The Supreme Court didn’t decide every question on this, but you’d be taking a real chance if you went and represented a designated terrorist organization that was on the list. So it doesn’t bode particularly well that Elena Kagan argued in that case that she was willing to go for a very broad reading of the statute.

The other issue had to do with the plaintiff we represented, the Humanitarian Law Project, which wanted to teach the Geneva Conventions or explain to a designated terrorist group how to use the UN as a peaceful means of achieving their goals. Kagan argued that such teaching was “conduct,” and not “speech”–and therefore wasn’t protected by the First Amendment.

We argued that it was speech, and the court did agree that it was speech. So even on that issue, the government was willing to say that teaching the Geneva Conventions was speech.

But then they said this was one of the rare cases where we’re going to outlaw speech, which is what they did.

I THINK a lot of people felt some real hope that with Barack Obama’s election, civil liberties would be safer, given his promise to close Guantánamo, and to try detainees in civilian courts. But he’s really fallen far short of almost all of these promises, hasn’t he?

I WOULD say it’s a disaster. It’s a continuation of the Bush policies, and in some cases, the deepening of those policies. So Guantánamo is still open. We still have arbitrary detention, or detention without trial, and we have a number of people at Guantánamo who will never go to trial.

In a recent case that came up in federal court, the court barred testimony that might have been the result of torture. The Obama administration tried to use it. But the government still uses military commissions to try people, and those commissions can still use evidence derived from torture.

The Obama administration still uses the “state secrets” defense to get cases dismissed. They just did it again in a case of ours, in which we’re suing Obama to stop the assassination by drone or otherwise of Imam (Anwar) al-Awlaki in Yemen. The government asserted the “state secrets” defense to that case. We don’t know what the court will decide.

But they have been pretty deferential to the Obama administration on the question of state secrets. We have not won a case. So on every issue–Guantánamo, preventive detention, state secrets, use of torture evidence, military commissions–there’s been an identical practice to that of the Bush administration. Some people would argue they’re surrounded with a few more procedural protections, or laws, but it’s the same policy.

And when it’s coming from a Democrat, it should be a particular lesson to people–that on these national security issues, there’s very, very little difference between the two administrations, Democratic or Republican. It’s also particularly bad, because if one had hopes that the Democrats were going to shift on these issues, it just demonstrates how deeply imbedded the erosion of civil liberties has become in the U.S. and the willingness to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of “national security” or “stopping terrorism.”

You would have trouble distinguishing the policies of Bush from Obama. Even on the issue of rendition, when you take a person from one country to another illegally, Obama has continued this. He claimed that he wouldn’t render people to countries where they would be tortured, but we haven’t seen that yet–the first person who was picked up to be rendered had the heck beaten out of them on the plane over here.

So even on rendition, they’re similar. One difference, you could say, is that there isn’t the open and notorious torture of people that there was under Bush–at least not that we know of.

I say that cautiously, because there are still some secret prisons out there–a section of Bagram that no one’s allowed into–so we don’t know everything that’s going on around the issue of torture. And there’s certainly been no accountability for the torture regime of the Bush administration. Many of those same people are still in the current administration.

I WAS reading a recent Rolling Stone interview with Obama, and he said that people need to vote for the Democrats in November if we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties. It just seemed totally disconnected from the reality of what’s happened in the last two years under his administration.

IN EVERY case we’ve gone to court on regarding accountability, the Obama administration has stopped us.

We represent two people who allegedly committed suicide in Guantánamo. We have evidence now that they were murdered, and the Obama administration opposed our suit, and we lost. In another case, we went to court claiming that our Guantánamo lawyers at the Center were wiretapped without warrants. We just lost that case in the Supreme Court. They denied review. Again, the Obama administration opposed us.

The ACLU went to court to try and get at the rendition issue against a subsidiary of Boeing, which was involved in some of the flights. Again, the Obama administration opposed it.

I can name 20 cases where they’ve come into court, and they’ve made sure that there will not be exposure, much less liability, of the torture regime, and violations of fundamental Constitutional rights that occurred under Bush. And many of these violations are still occurring today. You don’t have an outcry about Guantánamo now, yet we have 40 some people there facing indefinite permanent detention without trial.

GIVEN WHAT you’re saying about these recent raids being about demonizing organizations the government doesn’t like, what kind of advice would you give to activists in this kind of climate?

I CERTAINLY think it’s not a time to cut back on actions, that’s for sure. If there is a need for action, it is now–whether it’s on the wars or civil liberties or immigration or otherwise. Otherwise, you’ll be basically conceding this territory to the government. So I don’t think one should pull back on major activity.

I do think one has to assume, in whatever you do, that most of what you do is wiretapped or surveilled, and there’s no doubt that the FBI guidelines are very broad on that. You have to assume that there’s an informant of some sort in a group, and that therefore what you say is going to be heard–whether by the government through surveillance or by someone in the group. And because of the breadth of the statute, you have to be extremely careful about your dealing with organizations on the [foreign terrorist] list.

When I say that, I mean your activities independent of those “terrorist” organizations are okay. So you shouldn’t pull back from that. So, for example, I can write an op-ed article tomorrow supporting the FARC in Colombia, but what I can’t do is have contact with the FARC in terms of saying that I need some help or something like that. Now, where it gets into real journalism is a harder issue.

I think organizations have to be extremely careful dealing with groups on the various terrorist lists that our government keeps. But you can do independent activities. Tomorrow, I can write an article saying “Hezbollah should be the legitimate rulers of Lebanon.” But I can’t contact Hezbollah and say, “Well I’m going to write this article, what do you think about this?” As soon as I do that, I cross a line.

I think organizations have to be extremely careful about contacts, if any, with designated terrorist organizations, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Not the way this government is acting right now and not with these decisions.

IN TERMS of the response to the FBI raids, I know there were several demonstrations in cities in the days following the raids, and when the first grand jury appearance was scheduled, even though all the activists refused to testify, people came out for that as well. Do you think that kind of public pressure is important?

I THINK those have been very helpful. I was really excited to see that there were 27 cities that had demonstrations around the raids and the grand jury appearances. And the fact that everybody decided to take the Fifth Amendment and not testify I think surprised the government. The government didn’t come back immediately and give certain people immunity, or maybe it realized they overreached a bit, and that it was a fishing expedition.

I think the demonstrations made a difference in that. That’s not saying that something more won’t happen, because you know they don’t do these things and then just walk away. But I think demonstrations did help, and protests really limit the scope that the government can act on in these kinds of raids. I think they are absolutely a crucial part of opposition.

I think that if there weren’t those protests, for all I know the government would have enforced those subpoenas right away and dragged those people right in to the grand jury. But now, maybe they’re rethinking it. They may still do it selectively–I don’t have any idea–but I certainly believe that making this into the civil liberties fight that it really is, is crucial.

October 20, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Settlers torch, vandalize Nablus girl’s school

Ma’an – 20/10/2010

NABLUS — A group of Israeli settlers broke into an all girls’ school in the Nablus district village of As-Sawiya on Wednesday, setting fire to its storehouse containing furniture and unused sports equipment, the headmistress said.

Maysoon Sawalha said the school’s cleaning woman arrived to find the lock on the main door broken as well as that of the storehouse, with all its contents torched.

The fire did not spread to the rest of school because the water main is located in the storehouse she said, adding that “otherwise the whole school would have been set on fire.”

Settlers had also written racist slogans on the school’s walls, including “regards from the hill tops.”

“This is not the first attack on the school. Many attacks were carried out previously, the last of which was last year when settlers intercepted one of the classrooms and fired rounds of ammunition and gas canisters,” Sawalha said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said a complaint had been filed with Israel’s Civil Administration and that the body was now directly in touch with Palestinian Authority officials to “keep things quiet” in the area. Israeli police, she added, are investigating the incident.

Sawalha called on international organizations to work on stopping such attacks “that put the life of the girls on risk causing them to suffer psychologically and panic out of such attacks.”

The suspected arson follows a wave of reports from Palestinian farmers that settlers have been setting fire to agricultural land since the beginning of the traditional olive harvest in October.

On 4 October, Israeli settlers were suspected of setting fire to a Bethlehem village mosque, after ransacking it and setting fire to the carpets.

Director of PA Ministry of Religious Endowment in Bethlehem Muhammad Ayish at the time describing the arson as a “campaign against everything Palestinian.”

On Tuesday, an Israeli rights group said that 90 percent of claims filed against settlers in the West Bank for assault to person or property against Palestinians fail to secure a conviction.

October 20, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

When will this conspiracy of silence end?

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban | MEMO | October 17, 2010

The recent and latest – but probably not the last – images of prisoners being abused by Israeli soldiers showed a blindfolded Palestinian woman trying desperately to avoid 21st century brutality in a prison cell with neither bars nor windows. As the seconds ticked by like an eternity it was clear that her body was trying to shrink into itself to avoid the monsters of the modern age, in the land of Jesus Christ, who danced around their victim.

Were the soldiers dancing to celebrate the kidnapping of an Arab girl whose only crime was to struggle for freedom from an illegal occupation? Or were they dancing to celebrate the fact that the international conscience, so vociferous about freedom and human rights in other parts of the world, is so very quiet when it comes to the Palestinians who have been oppressed by Western-backed Israel for more than sixty years?

Ihsan Dababseh’s story is only one of numerous daily stories in the lives of the eleven thousand Palestinian prisoners in the last apartheid regime in the world. Nevertheless, the ‘civilized’ world hardly remembers them, except when seconds of the suffering of one of them is leaked out. These are mere seconds of long years of torture and humiliation, without any protest on the part of the ‘free’ Western media, human rights organizations or the UN Human Rights Council, maybe fearing the fate of American anchor, Rick Sanchez, who was fired by CNN simply for saying that “Jews are not oppressed”.

As a result of Western governments and media collusion with Israeli government terrorism, Israeli soldiers have arrested more than 90 Palestinian children in one month. The youngest, aged 13, was taken out of his family home by court order.

Human rights groups have revealed more than once that Israeli soldiers attack female prisoner cells and force them to take off their clothes, subject them to humiliating inspections and force them to raise their hands from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon.

Do Western politicians, who flatter Israeli war criminals like Benjamin Netanyahu, by calling Israel ‘an oasis of democracy’ know this? Why don’t the Americans spread freedom and human rights in Palestine instead of supporting and funding torture, murder and settlement? Or do they view Palestinians as they viewed red Indians in America and the aborigines in Australia as people without human rights and whose life is not equal to human life?

American and European silence towards these atrocious Israeli crimes, even their absolute support of the racist government in Israel gave Israeli soldiers and settlers a free hand to kill, torture and run over unarmed Palestinian civilians. Their crimes have exceeded manifold those committed by the Apartheid in South Africa. They even exceeded Nazi brutality. This was the testimony of holocaust survivor on boat Irene which tried to break the Gaza blockade. He said, “what I suffered in the holocaust is largely similar to the suffering of Palestinian children today”. This was also expressed by Amira Hass (Haaretz, 7 October 2010). She wrote, “Evidence? Explanations? Common sense? No need. They, after all, are paid a salary by the Israeli taxpayer in order to invent new kinds of punishment and torture. She adds, “today, the sense of shame has disappeared. Society’s backing is assured”.

On my part, I add that the sense of shame has disappeared because the silence of the ‘international community’ is assured, because none of the world leaders is ‘free’ any longer. They have become captive to the Israeli lobby which controls the Congress, the media and the election money. That is why no American or European leader, not even the United Nations, will ever condemn any crime against the Palestinians as long as the perpetrators are Israelis. Even when the victim of such aggression is the Nobel peace prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire. The peace activist arrived in Gaza on board the ship Rachel Corrie (named after the young woman run over by Israeli bulldozers). When she returned to Bein-Gurion Airport days ago, she was detained by Israeli authorities in the same way they detained American thinkers Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein and Spanish artist Ivan Prado, secure in the knowledge that no one will dare criticize the Israeli apartheid regime for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism. Her crime was that several months ago she took part in a demonstration organized by the Bili’in villagers against the racist segregation wall and was twice on board ships to break the Gaza blockade.

The crimes committed with impunity by this racist entity against prisoners and peace, freedom, justice and human rights activists have gone so far largely because of the ‘silence’ of ‘democratic’ countries. It is true that Palestinian prisoners and activists are fighting for the freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people, but they actually embody the conscience of free people all over the world. Should we leave them in Israeli jails, as we left Nelson Mandela in the Apartheid prisons for decades, and wait until their release to turn them into icons of freedom and dignity? Or should we start immediately to work for releasing all prisoners and for enabling them to live in freedom and dignity with their families in their homeland?

October 19, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Australian says Guantanamo was ‘six years of hell’

The Nation | October 17, 2010

Australia’s former long-serving Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks Saturday broke his silence on life inside the US-run prison, saying he endured deprivation and witnessed brutality in “six years of hell”.

Hicks said he was in a “haze of disbelief and fear, pain and confusion” when he arrived in Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in early 2002 and was placed in a cage made of cyclone fencing.

“The first two weeks of Camp X-Ray was a blur of hardships: no sleeping, no talking, no moving, no looking, no information,” he writes in “Guantanamo: My Journey” released today.

The former terrorism suspect once dubbed the “Aussie Taliban”, who has since married and now lives in Sydney, was captured in late 2001 in Afghanistan where he had been accused of fighting alongside Taliban forces.

He spent more than five years in Guantanamo before being sent to home in April 2007 to serve out the remainder of the sentence handed down by the US military commission which had convicted him of providing material support for terrorism. He was released from a South Australian jail in late 2007.

Hicks, now in his mid-30s, is legally unable to profit from his book because Australia does not allow people to benefit from crime.

In three extracts released to the media free of charge, he speaks of how his thirst for travel was sparked by a chance encounter with an Israeli traveller when he worked in Japan training racehorses.

He also says he had intended to help the Kashmiri cause for independence but ended up trapped in Afghanistan as the US led efforts to crush the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

He writes that while an Afghan man had risked his life to find him a safe haven in the northern city of Kunduz, he ended up attempting to take a taxi to the capital Kabul and was captured en route by a Northern Alliance soldier.

“After yelling directly into my ear, he took me by the hand and began to pull me away. I went to resist, but he made a gesture to go for his gun,” Hicks writes. “With dread, I resigned myself to the situation and allowed myself to be led away. This was the beginning of six years of hell.”

October 16, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Afghan detainees claim US abuse

“Despite the government’s insistence that its detention rules meet the minimum requirements under international law, it appears that this facility is either ignoring those rules or interpreting them so loosely that they make detainees susceptible to mistreatment,” – Jonathan Horowitz, human rights expert and author of report.

By Andrew Wander | Al-Jazeera | October 15, 2010

Former US military prisoners in Afghanistan have said that they were abused in a secret prison on Bagram airbase as recently as this year, raising fears that detainee mistreatment has continued despite an overhaul of US detention operations in the country.

The abuse – which includes exposure to extreme temperatures, lack of adequate food and bedding, lack of natural light and interference with religious duties – is alleged to have occurred at a secret “screening” facility on the military base north of Kabul.

The existence of the site, known amongst Afghans as the “Tor Jail”, has never been admitted by US authorities, although it does acknowledge it runs a number of field sites in which prisoners are held immediately after being captured.

Prisoners are kept at the field sites before either being handed to Afghan authorities, released, or transferred  to the main US detention facility at Parwan, on the edge of Bagram airbase.

International standards

The US task force responsible for running detentions in the Afghanistan insists that treatment in all its facilities meets international standards.

But a report released this week by the US-based Open Society Foundation, details the testimony of 18 detainees held at the Tor Prison who say they were mistreated there.

The testimony includes repeated claims that their cells were kept uncomfortably cold so they were unable to sleep, that they were given inedible food, and that bright lights were kept on in windowless cells 24 hours a day.

Such treatment would not only fall short of international standards for the treatment of prisoners, but also would run counter to US military’s own guidelines on the issue, which says prisoners should not be exposed to “excessive or inadequate heat, light, or ventilation”.

The differences between the secretive Tor Prison and the main Bagram site have raised questions about whether the smaller site is being run by a different military agency to other detention sites in the country, which come under the mandate of Joint Task Force 435 (JTF 435).

Jonathan Horowitz, the author of the report, told Al Jazeera that there appeared to be a link between the Tor Prison and US special forces activity in Afghanistan.

“JTF 435 does not run the facility,” he said. “The facility does seem to have tight links with forces operating under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Whether they are the only ones in charge, I don’t know.”

“It’s worth noting that at the Detention Facility in Parwan [the main Bagram prison], there are also interrogators and isolations cells,’ he said.

“One of the big differences between the two sites is transparency. I assume that those in Tor Jail think they benefit from its secretive nature and don’t want to give that up.”

Detention overhaul

The allegations have come to light as the US military oversees a much-publicised effort to improve its record on detainee treatment in Afghanistan. Improved prison facilities have been built, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been given better access to those held in US detention.

Eighteen prisoners who passed through the site were interviewed for the report. Half of them said that they had been taken to the prison in 2009 and 2010, after Barack Obama, the US president, had already ordered an overhaul of detention operations in Afghanistan.

The US military has denied that it runs secret prisons in Afghanistan, and said it does not mistreat the prisoners it holds there, insisting that conditions are compliant with both the Geneva Coventions and the military’s own guidelines.

Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Robbins, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the US department of defence (DoD) “takes all credible allegations of detainee mistreatment very seriously”.

“Furthermore, DoD conducts thorough and regular assessments of all of its detention facilities and operations to maintain oversight, accountability and to ensure humane treatment of detainees,” she said in an email to Al Jazeera.

The US military does run temporary detention and screening facilities in Afghanistan, “which are classified to preserve operational security,” she said. “However, both the ICRC and the respective host nations have knowledge of these facilities … [and] these facilities are consistent with international and US law.”

October 16, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Oxfam: Israeli policies damaging to the Palestinian olive oil industry

Ahmed Zaki Osman – 15/10/2010

Oxfam has reported that Palestinian olive groves are frequently attacked by Israeli settlers, file photo

The Israeli occupation of the West bank and siege of Gaza are seriously harming Palestinian olive oil production which contributes up to US$100 million annually for some of the most underprivileged Palestinian families, the international NGO Oxfam said in a report on Friday.

The report, entitled, “The Road to Olive Farming: Challenges to developing the economy of olive oil in the West Bank,” blames Israel for restricting access to land and olive tree farms.

“Around 40 percent of the West Bank is effectively off-limits to Palestinians, with access highly restricted, due to settlements, outposts, bypass roads, military bases, closed military areas and areas Israel has declared as being nature reserves,” the report said.

For centuries Palestinian olives have been a major commercial crop and are credited with being some of the best in the world.

Olives and olive oil are one of the main sources of income for the Palestinian economy. They represent around half of agricultural land use in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as being a major export, and provide employment and a large source of income for around 100,000 farming families.

According to the report there are approximately 10 million olive trees with the potential to produce up to 34,000 metric tons of olive oil in a good year, but only 5,000 tons in a bad year. The average quantity of oil produced annually between 2001 and 2009 was around 17,000 tons.

Harmful impacts of Israeli policy also include settler violence sanctioned by the government, incidents in which illegal Israeli settlers have uprooted or burned tens of thousands of olive trees during their attacks against Palestinian farmers.

According to the United Nations, in the first six months of 2010 thousands of olive trees and other crops have been damaged by settlers.

Oxfam accused Israel of intentionally restricting access for Palestinian farmers to local and international markets, especially since the beginning of the second intifadha.

“Physical barriers such as checkpoints and road blocks have restricted the free movement of people and goods within the West Bank and obstructed access for Palestinian agricultural produce, including olives and olive oil, to internal, Israeli and international markets,” the report concluded.

As for Gaza, the picture is even gloomier since inhabitants cannot even get olives from the West Bank olives since the blockade started.

October 16, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

The IDF kills 1 Palestinian civilian every 2 days, on average, with impunity

By Philip Weiss on October 15, 2010

Every other day, the IDF kills a Palestinian civilian with impunity in the occupied territories. And the Israelis have treated these killings as “combat action,” reports B’Tselem in a report on Israeli military killings in the occupied territories, 2006-2009, not including the Gaza war.

From 2006 to 2009, the IDF killed 1,510 Palestinians, not including Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead. Of these 1,510 deaths, 617 were of persons who were not taking part in hostilities.

Regarding these 617 fatalities, BʹTselem demanded an MPIU [Military Police Investigation Unit] investigation into the deaths of 288 of them, who were killed in 148 incidents. Ninety‐five of these incidents occurred in the Gaza Strip, accounting for 230 of the deaths. The other 53 incidents took place in the West Bank and resulted in the killing of 58 Palestinians. One hundred and four of the fatalities were minors under age 18, 23 were persons 50 and above, and 52 were women. One hundred of the Palestinians whose deaths B’Tselem demanded to investigate were killed in 2006, 86 in 2007, 93 in 2008, and 9 in 2009.

Stephen Lendman‘s comment:

Most are witnessed by bystanders whose testimonies are crucial to achieve justice. Yet Israel won’t use them, clearly hiding the truth and obstructing justice.

Further, since September 2000, B’Tselem received no response from the Judge Advocate General’s Office for ” the vast majority” of cases warranting investigation, civilians killed in cold blood, responsible soldiers unpunished.

More from the B’Tselem release:

From the beginning of the first intifada, in December 1987, to the outbreak of the second intifada, in September 2000, the Military Police Investigation Unit (MPIU) investigated almost every case in which Palestinians not taking part in hostilities were killed. At the beginning of the second intifada, the Judge Advocate General’s Office announced that it was defining the situation in the Occupied Territories an “armed conflict,” and that investigations would be opened only in exceptional cases, in which there was a suspicion that a criminal offense had been committed..

B’Tselem protests the sweeping classification of the situation in the Occupied Territories as an “armed conflict,” which effectively grants immunity to soldiers and officers, with the result that soldiers who kill Palestinians not taking part in hostilities are almost never held accountable for their misdeeds. By acting in this way, the army fails to meet its obligation to take all feasible measures to reduce injury to civilians, allows soldiers and officers to violate the law, encourages a trigger-happy attitude, and shows gross disregard for human life.

October 15, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Letter from an Israeli (Birmingham) Jail


Israel is probably one of the most thoroughly segregated and intolerant nations
By Dallas Darling | Palestine Chronicle | October 14, 2010

If Martin Luther King would have been a Palestinian, I sometimes wonder how Israeli authorities would have treated him. This came to mind again when it was reported that an Israeli military court sentenced Palestinian nonviolence activist Abdullah Abu Rahmeh to one year in prison. Evidently, the military tribunal found him guilty of “incitement” and for organizing illegal protests. It also fined him $1,400, a stiff penalty for someone who lost over half of his farmland to land seized by Israeli settlement programs.

Similar to Martin Luther King, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh has experienced years of racial oppression and religious intolerance. Like Martin Luther King who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to help achieve equality for blacks, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh is the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Resistance Committee against the Wall and Settlements. Since 2005, the movement has nonviolently challenged Israeli segregation and exclusive religious laws. It has also peacefully resisted Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes and annexation of Palestinian villages and land.

As Israeli security and military forces fire teargas canisters into the marching crowd, some of the protests have turned violent. Israeli rubber bullets have killed several protesters too. Still, Palestinian teens have thrown stones at soldiers while protesting. The Israeli military claimed several Palestinian teens confessed Abdullah Abu Rahmeh told them to throw stones. They have accused him of inciting violence and riots. However, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh has denied such charges and instead, he claims to have pursued nonviolent strategies while encouraging the youth to stop throwing stones.

In 1963 and before the Jobs and Civil Rights March on Washington, Martin Luther King brought the movement for equality and freedom to Birmingham, Alabama. President John Kennedy was embroiled with the effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis and appeared distant from the urgent need to initiate a courageous civil rights law for America. After watching newsreel footage of false arrests, police beatings, attack dogs ripping apart protesters, and the city’s fire department hosing passive marchers with enough force to break their bones, some were finally convinced-including President Kennedy-that segregation had to end.

Like Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, Martin Luther King was jailed for his nonviolent direct action campaign in Birmingham. A group of white Alabama ministers put an ad in the New York Times condemning Martin Luther King of being an “agitator” and wanting only to evoke violence and to start a riot. They tried to convince him to end his campaign and to wait, that the future would be better for black Americans. His response, or the Letter From A Birmingham Jail, was written on scraps of paper and in the margins of a newspaper. Can the contents of the letter be applied to Abdullah Abu Rahmeh and Palestinians and Arabs living under Israeli rule and in Occupied Territories?

Therefore, if Martin Luther King was a Palestinian and had been arrested and jailed, like Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, this is what the Letter From An Israeli Jail would say:

I am in Israel because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their ‘thus says God’ far beyond the boundaries of their home town, I too am compelled to carry the message of freedom beyond my particular home town. Moreover, I am aware of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by and not be concerned about what happens in Israel. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. (1)

Israel is probably one of the most thoroughly segregated and intolerant nations. Its ugly record of police brutality and military incursions are known in every section of the Middle East. Its unjust treatment of Palestinians and Arabs in the courts is a notorious reality, as are the numerous false imprisonments of men, women and children. There have been more unsolved bombings and bulldozing of Palestinian homes and attacks on mosques in Israel than any nation in the Middle East. There have also been unsolved killings and a complete disregard for basic human rights and civil liberties. (2)

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a nation that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I have worked against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. It is the kind of tension that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and unity. (3)

Nations and groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation and religious intolerance. For years now, I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Palestinian with a piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never!” We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied. (4)

But when you have seen vicious mobs kill your mothers and fathers at will and bulldoze your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled security forces kick, brutalize, bomb, use as human shields, and dance around and humiliate your Palestinian and Arab sisters and brothers with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your people smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of despair. (5)

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” There are, in fact, two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation and religious intolerance statutes are unjust because they distort the soul and damage the personality. It gives the segregator and intolerant a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, segregation and intolerance substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Segregation and intolerance are existential expressions of man’s tragic separation and awful estrangement. (6)

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. (7)

But the Jewish and American moderates are more devoted to “order” than to justice: who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which his the presence of justice. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. I had hoped that Jewish and American moderates would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. (8)

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of global opinion before it can be cured. (9)

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what happened to the Palestinians and Arabs. Something within has reminded them of their birthright of freedom; something without has reminded them that they can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, they have been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with their black brothers of Africa, and their brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, they are moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice and religious tolerance. (10)

(Note: Many international human rights organizations have already denounced Israel’s arrest and sentencing of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. During World War Two, Arabs and Palestinians also assisted Jews fleeing Germany and the Third Reich.)

– Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.

Notes:

(1) Young, Ralph F., Dissent In America, The Voices That Shaped A Nation. New York, New York: Parson Longman Publishers, 2006., p. 551.
(2) Ibid., p. 552.
(3) Ibid., p. 553.
(4) Ibid., p. 553, 554.
(5) Ibid., p. 554.
(6) Ibid., p. 555.
(7) Ibid., p. 556.
(8) Ibid., p. 556.
(9) Ibid., p. 556.
(10) Ibid., p. 558.

October 15, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Without Water, There is No Life

By ZIAD ABBAS | CounterPunch | October 15, 2010

Since I started working at Middle East Children’s Alliance, the MAIA Project to bring clean water to the children of Palestine has become closest to my heart. All of our projects are important for people in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, but the MAIA Project is connected to my history and my family. It takes me back to the days when I struggled with my family to bring clean water to our house so we could drink, cook and, sometimes, have a shower. My mother, sisters and I would carry gallons of water in heavy containers on our heads. Providing this essential for our family made my mother physically strong, her arms and shoulders shaped by her efforts, but her health suffered greatly. Much work and time is required to achieve the basic necessity of clean water. I still remember the weight of the water and the great responsibility on our necks and backs everyday.

Israel controls and uses 89% of the water resources in the West Bank, leaving 11% for the 2.5 million Palestinians. The Israeli Occupation continues to limit Palestinian access to clean water as form of collective punishment by controlling the water resources and distribution and by destroying the water that we are able to get. During Israeli military incursions, and especially during curfews, when we could not leave our homes, Israeli soldiers would shoot the water storage tanks on our roofs. Our water would pour down the sides of our buildings unused. During the recent attack on Gaza, Israel targeted the entire water infrastructure including the largest water purification system in Gaza. They also targeted electrical generators that supported water purification and sewage treatment. This kind of collective punishment is also used against Palestinians inside Israel. Palestinian villages “unrecognized” by the Israeli state are not connected to the national water grid that serves all Jewish communities, and the residents suffer from a lack of clean water.

In 1994 and 2001 I visited Black townships in South Africa. When the inhabitants in the townships explained their daily lives, they focused on the scarcity and difficulty in obtaining clean water. Water, they said, was only for the white people of South Africa. I immediately understood and thought that we could substitute Palestinian refugee camps for the South African townships. It is the same system of oppression. During apartheid access to public spaces, especially public beaches, was restricted according to race. The beautifully maintained beaches were accessible only for the white people. This is the same situation found in Palestine now. Israel severely restricts our access to the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and Lake Tiberias. Palestinians are forced to apply for permits from the Israelis to access these sites, even for a simple visit. Even when limited access is allowed, such as in Gaza, the coastline is often flooded with untreated sewage as a result of damage done by Israeli bombardments.

As I was writing this article, I spoke with Dr. Mona El-Farra, MECA’s Project Director in Gaza. We were discussing the current water situation and she was saying that the tap water in her apartment was unusable. She said “Ziad, the water here is polluted and undrinkable, more than that it is unusable for cleaning. Some people have started to lose their hair from showering with this water. The new business in Gaza is selling clean water from tanks around the city. Of course it is expensive and since few people are employed they cannot buy the water. People here are constantly sick from the lack of clean water.” She added that as a doctor she is seeing an increase in kidney disease, dysentery and other serious medical conditions related to polluted water. If people are lucky enough to survive the Israeli air strikes and sniper fire they go on to face the threat of dirty, dangerous water.

Images from Gaza show water tanks driven around the cities, people waiting in lines for water, and children carrying empty water containers searching for water to fill them. Children in Gaza are missing their childhood. They are defined as children by their age but they live as survivors, not as children. They are taking responsibility to protect themselves and their families. When I was a child in a refugee camp in the West Bank, our struggle to obtain basic necessities to survive was the same. Thirty-five years later, Palestinian children are still forced to grow up too soon.

The Middle East Children’s Alliance is working to support the rights of children, particularly the right of Palestinian children to survive and flourish. In the last two years, MECA’s Maia Project has succeeded in building 22 water purification systems in primary schools and kindergartens giving nearly 25,000 children access to clean water. As a result, thousands of mothers will feel less frightened that their children might be harmed by polluted water. Dr. El-Farra has witnessed the precious moments of accomplishment and pride when a new unit is installed.

MECA’s Maia Project seeks to expand to all the schools in Gaza so more children can realize their right to clean water. In South Africa apartheid has ended, but water injustice is still something the inhabitants of the Black townships and other marginalized communities struggle against on a daily basis. In Palestine, we are still struggling against the Israeli apartheid system that deprives us of our basic human rights, including the right to one of the most important things in life: Water.

Ziad Abbas works for the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

October 15, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli bulldozers raze 40 Araqib homes for the sixth time

Palestine Information Center – 13/10/2010
Israeli forces at Araqib – Photo Credit /Mathew Graber

NEGEV — The Israeli municipality teams tore down 40 Palestinian homes in the Araqib village in the Negev desert, occupied since 1948, on Wednesday under heavy police protection.

Locals said that the inhabitants appealed for support in face of their ordeal, describing the repeated demolition of their village homes as a reflection of “deep-rooted hatred”.

Israeli police and special forces blocked journalists from entering the village and forced them to park their cars two kilometers away.

Awad Abu Freih, a spokesman for the committee in defense of Araqib, said that the demolition teams “want to establish special plantations for Jews at the expense of the villagers”.

The Israeli municipality teams left the village after leveling it to the ground as a huge bulldozer on its way out destroyed a large placard carrying the name of the village.

October 13, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli Knesset member: Stone throwers should be put to death

Palestine Information Center – 13/10/2010

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Far right Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari called for the death penalty to be placed against “everyone who throws stones or endangers the lives of settlers.”

The two Arab members of Knesset Talab Al Sane and Ahmed Al Tibi described Ben-Ari as an “extremist fascist”. The former responded by accusing them of “using children to kill”.

This came during an urgent meeting that was convened to deliberate the incident of the settler chief in east Jerusalem David Bari who ran over and seriously injured two boys after they allegedly threw stones at his vehicle.

“This is not the first time Arab citizens in Silwan have used children in dangerous circumstances, and send them to confront Jewish citizens who are passing by,” said MK Danny Damon

Ben-Ari previously said that 500 Palestinians should be killed against every one Jew, and not six to one as is the case today, claiming that this is the only way to stop “Palestinian terrorism”.

Israel’s Internal Security minister Yitzhak Aharonovich has instructed the Jerusalem police force to launch a wide-ranging arrest campaign in the eastern areas of the city in an effort to reduce the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jewish settlers in the regions.

Aharonovich said while touring the Jerusalem districts of Issawiya and Silwan Tuesday morning: “Dozens of stone throwers will be arrested if necessary in order to restore calm and order.”

The statement was made in the wake of dozens of youngsters who confronted the provocative tour by throwing stones at the cars of right-wingers from the Israeli Knesset.

October 13, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Canada: Harper government’s policies lead to loss of UN Security Council seat

October 12, 2010 – Canadian Arab Federation

“The Harper government must take full responsibility for Canada losing the race for a UN Security Council seat. This is as a result of the misguided positions taken by the Harper government domestically and within such key international bodies as the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council that undermine human rights, environmental rights and global principles,” said Khaled Mouammar, CAF National President.

Since coming to power in 2006, the Harper government’s actions have set back or weakened crucial international human rights initiatives such as global protection of the rights of Indigenous peoples, protection of the human rights of the Palestinian people under occupation, protection against torture, the rights of women, the rights of children, and the rights of gays and lesbians.

Domestically, the Harper government has systematically undermined democratic institutions and practices, and has eroded the protection of free speech by cutting or threatening to cut funding to organizations that disagree with government policies as in the case of the Canadian Arab Federation, KAIROS, MATCH International, Alternatives, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, the National Association of Women and the Law, and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

A glaring example is the government’s refusal to repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada , after the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that found Canada is responsible for continuing violations of Omar Khadr’s human rights, a stand that has shamed Canada on the world stage.

“By denying the Harper government a seat on the UN Security Council the international community has signalled its displeasure with the government’s performance on the world stage. Canadians lament Canada’s loss of influence in the world and deserve a government that does not tarnish Canada ’s reputation internationally and that does not seriously threaten the quality and health of democratic life in Canada,” said Khaled Mouammar, CAF National President.

Aletho News adds:

The Council of Canadians states that it hopes that this vote will be a wake-up call for all Canadians that after almost five years in power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has diminished Canada’s international standing to the point that what is normally a rubber-stamp for Canada to take our regular rotation on the Security Council has become a national embarrassment.

October 12, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

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