Torture Isn’t a ‘Political Decision’ — It’s a War Crime
By Dror Ladin | ACLU | February 16, 2016
According to the psychologists who teamed up with the CIA to design, implement, and oversee the agency’s post-9/11 torture program, torture is just politics. That’s what James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, CIA contractors who profited enormously from torture, told a federal court last month.
Facing a lawsuit by three of their victims, the psychologists argued that courts can’t even hear claims of U.S. government torture — because judges can’t condemn torture “without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, U.S. policy on the war against al-Qa’ida.” In other words, Mitchell and Jessen argue torture is a political decision that the executive branch gets to make without any judicial oversight.
Mitchell and Jessen are trying to avoid answering for what they did. Last week the ACLU responded on behalf of our clients, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman. All three were kidnapped by the CIA and tortured and experimented upon according to Mitchell and Jessen’s protocols. Mr. Rahman died as a result of his torture, while Mr. Salim and Mr. Ben Soud were eventually released. None was ever charged with a crime by the United States.
As we explain in our brief, torture is unequivocally illegal under both U.S. and international law. Every branch of our government has recognized that the courts have an essential responsibility in enforcing the prohibition on torture. Over two decades ago, Congress expanded the judiciary’s existing ability to provide remedies to victims because “universal condemnation of human rights abuses ‘provide[s] scant comfort’ to the numerous victims of gross violations if they are without a forum to remedy the wrong.” The State Department has repeatedly claimed to international human rights bodies that our courts remain open to victims of torture.
Mitchell and Jessen argue that they should be immune from accountability to their victims — even though they personally made millions of dollars from CIA torture. They say that because the federal government has unique immunity from lawsuits, federal contractors should also be immune. But contractors don’t share the government’s immunity because they face a completely different set of incentives and restrictions than government employees. This case illustrates the dangers posed by contractors who seek profit at any cost.
The CIA itself belatedly acknowledged Mitchell and Jessen’s conflict of interest in the torture program that the contractors created and oversaw. But before that happened, the corporation they formed was paid $81 million by the CIA — or in other words, the American taxpayer. Our brief explains that, contrary to Mitchell and Jessen’s claims, they don’t get to torture with impunity.
Torture isn’t politics; it’s a crime condemned around the world. It’s essential that we hold accountable those responsible for torturing in our name. A critical step in that process is letting victims have their day in court.
Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman should get the chance to seek justice from the psychologists who tortured and experimented on them. Anything less would be unconscionable. Our country can’t turn the page on torture and put this shameful practice behind us until wrongdoers provide apologies and redress to the victims and survivors.
Combating BDS Act of 2016
Congress Moves against BDS
By Lawrence Davidson | To The Point Analyses | February 17, 2014
It was bound to happen – an attempt by the U.S. Congress to sanction the attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement already taking place in some states and municipalities. The strategy is to legitimize an increasingly standard approach to undermining the boycott of Israel, an approach wherein the investment of any state funds, including pension funds, in any business or organization that boycotts the Zionist state is forbidden.
Bipartisan pairs of senators – Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) – and Congressional Representatives – Robert Dold (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) – introduced into both houses the “Combating BDS Act of 2016” (S.2531 and H.R.4514). We can be sure that all four of them are doing this at the coordinated behest of Zionist special interests to which they are financially tied. In other words, acting in their official capacity, their behavior on things that touch on Israel-Palestine is a payback for money and other forms of assistance offered by the Zionists to facilitate the politicians’ elections and reelections. Sadly, this is the way the U.S. campaign system works. Unless you are very wealthy, you are constantly scrounging for money. Under such circumstances one’s pathway to success is made easier if you don’t know the difference between ethics and your elbow.
Our four sponsors of the “Combating BDS Act” would, of course, deny any such tainted motives. Rather, they would insist that theirs is an effort to weigh in against anti-Semitism and defend the integrity the “only democracy in the Middle East.” If they really believe this is so, the kindest thing that can be said for these legislators is that they are profoundly ignorant about Israel and its true character. It is also possible that they know the truth about their patron, but really don’t care. It is all about the money.
Intimations of the Real Israel
For instance, are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, recently voted down a bill to include the principle of equality among citizens in the wording of the country’s “Basic Law” on Human Dignity and Liberty? Basic Laws stand in for a constitution in Israel. The bill was introduced by one of the few Arab-Israeli MKs (members of the Knesset) , Jamal Zahalka, who noted that “All constitutions in modern countries begin with stressing the principle of equality amongst their citizens.” That did not matter to a majority of the Knesset who, following inherently discriminatory Zionist ideals, do not believe in equality between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Yet to Israel’s supporters in Washington the Zionist state remains a “democracy” much like the United States. Such an unquestioning assumption, so wide of the mark, displays a level of closed-mindedness that ought to require intensive remedial critical-thinking training before allowing someone to stand for office.
Are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the Knesset “Ethics Committee” has suspended three Arab-Israeli MKs, including Mr. Zahalka, from participating in legislative sessions because they met with families whose members had been killed while violently resisting Israeli occupation? The aim of the meeting was to assist the families in recovering from Israeli authorities the bodies of their slain relatives. The Israelis refuse to recognize the truism that the violence of the oppressed will eventually reach the level of the violence of the oppressor. Instead, any violent blowback occurring in response to their own violence is conveniently characterized as “terrorism.”
In order for the action of the Arab MKs to make sense to most Israeli Jews and their Zionist supporters abroad, there has to be recognition of the historically established fact that the occupation of Palestinian land is real. This the Zionists will not do, and apparently, part of their deal with the U.S. politicians in Congress is that they too must echo that same denial.
Are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the respected human rights organization Amnesty International has recently released a report accusing Israeli forces of using “intentional lethal force” against Palestinians in situations where such force was “completely unjustified”? Amnesty spokesman Philip Luther asserted that the Israelis had “ripped up the rulebook” by “flouting international standards” when it came to the use of force. For the politicians in Washington who have made their pact with the Zionists, such behavior, if noted at all, is rationalized as self-defense on the part of the Israelis. However, suppression of resistance to illegal occupation cannot not be judged self-defense either legally or logically. Who in Congress is aware of the Fourth Geneva Convention?
There are many other practices and policies of the State of Israel that must be ignored (including Israel’s support of al-Qaeda in Syria) if Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas are to carry on with clear consciences. But this might be based on a false assumption that these politicians have a conscience to which they pay attention. After all, our system of politics, which all but demands submission to special interests, may well select for amoral personalities.
Ignoring the Question of Constitutionality
The apparent indifference of Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas goes beyond Israel’s flouting of international law. It carries over to these politicians’ own disregard for the U.S. Constitution, which each gentleman has sworn to uphold.
Ever since the early 1980s the Supreme Court has regarded domestically initiated boycotts as a legitimate form of political speech. There is little excuse for our four defenders of Israel not to know this. And what are we to say of them if they do in fact know? Only that they, like their patrons, are willing to “rip up the rulebook.” They are willing to act as if what is unconstitutional is, after all, acceptable when it protects the interests of a foreign rogue state on whose payroll they happen to be. Just how long can they get away with this? Is the answer really just as long as the Zionist money keeps coming?
Congressmen and senators tied to Zionist special interests will eventually have to rethink these alliances. Their connection with a state that has no compunction about violating international law has led them to become accomplices in the undermining of U.S. law. Thus, the actions of politicians such Kirk, Manchin, Dold and Vargas act as a barometer indicating the degree to which under-regulated special interests have corrupted the U.S. government. Those involved are walking a path that can lead only to on-going ethical decline and policy failures.
West Springfield police had to give up their grenade launchers
PrivacySOS | February 16, 2016
Back in the summer of 2014, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report about the militarization of the police. Based off of publicly available materials and documents obtained from government agencies through the public records process, the report found that Massachusetts police departments had acquired some highly unusual military equipment. The West Springfield police department, for example, got two grenade launchers from the US military. Fewer than 30,000 people live in West Springfield.
That same year, the national ACLU released its own report about police militarization. And just a few months later, the world watched in horror as protesters on the streets of Ferguson were confronted with tanks and sniper rifles.
The public debate around the militarization of the police led the Obama administration to issue new rules governing which kinds of weapons could be transferred from the Department of Defense to state and local cops. No longer would law enforcement agencies be allowed to receive, gratís, things like grenade launchers or tracked armored vehicles.
The new rules didn’t go far enough, but they trimmed the most ridiculous excesses of the 1033 program, which allows state and local police to acquire old military equipment for the cost of shipping it. Thanks to Obama’s changes, police departments in Massachusetts have had to give back some of their toys. The West Springfield police department no longer has two grenade launchers. Additionally, the Norfolk police and state Department of Corrections both gave back tracked vehicles, and the Clinton cops returned 27 bayonets.
Police in Norfolk don’t seem too concerned about having to give their armored vehicle back to the feds. The department is part of a regional SWAT effort called MetroLEC, which has an armored personnel carrier called a BearCat. That’s just one example of how, while the new regulations about military transfers to police are a step in the right direction, they alone won’t fundamentally change the culture of militarization at police departments nationwide.
That’s because police can obtain militarized police equipment through other programs, including federal grants from the DOJ and DHS. And it’s also because equipment is just one part of the police militarization problem. The other is policy.
As records obtained by the ACLU show, police militarization is largely driven by the war on drugs. While it’s great that the West Springfield police don’t have grenade launchers anymore, this victory won’t put a dent in the routine police practice of sending militarized police into people’s homes in the middle of the night to look for drugs. Obama’s equipment rules don’t address night-raids or no-knock warrants, or the use of SWAT teams to serve them.
So while President Obama’s recommendations and the ensuing equipment transfers are a step in the right direction, if we want our police to act like public servants instead of war fighters, we’ve got a lot more work to do. Of primary importance in that work is moving from rhetoric to action on the war on drugs, and ending it once and for all. After all, if we don’t want our police to act like soldiers, we should stop treating the bulk of their work like a war.
PA seizes Israeli truck loaded with chemical waste
MEMO – February 16, 2016
The Environmental Quality Authority yesterday seized an Israeli truck full of chemical remains heading to illegally unload in occupied Palestinian territories, Quds Press reported.
The truck, which left the Israeli settlement of Karnei Shomron, was seized between the Palestinian villages of Kafr Thulth and Azzun near the West Bank city of Qalqilya.
The truck was to be offloaded near a residential compound in Qalqilya, a statement by the Environmental Quality Authority revealed.
The load included remains of several chemical industries, including paint.
The authority said it handed the truck and driver over to the District Coordination Offices.
A senior official in the authority said a complaint regarding this Israeli violation would be filed to the Secretariat of the Basel Convention, which is in charge of the transport of dangerous goods.
He also said that the Palestinian contractors, who were involved in this issue, would be prosecuted.
Environment expert George Karzam told Quds Press: “The Israeli occupation recently closed a number of its dumps and facilities related to treating solid and chemical waste in the lands occupied in 1948 [Israel] moving them to new sites in the West Bank, mainly in the Jordan Valley.”
This was because of the poisonous substances which were being discarded as well as the odors coming from the dumps, Karzam explained.
Israel has also been putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to open new waste sites for illegal settlements in the West Bank, he added.
Israeli forces uproot 100 olive trees in Wadi Qana
Ma’an – February 16, 2016
SALFIT – Israeli forces uprooted 100 olive trees in the Wadi Qana area west of the village of Deir Istiya in Salfit district on Tuesday amid ongoing efforts to push Palestinians out of the area, locals said.
Farmers from Deir Istiya told Ma’an the forces arrived in Wadi Qana and uprooted the trees without prior notice.
Soldiers then forced locals from the area in order to allow Israeli settlers to arrive there, the farmers said.
Ibrahim al-Hamad, director of the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture’s Salfit branch, told Ma’an that soldiers removed the seven-year-old trees on the grounds that the area is a nature reserve, with planting prohibited in the area.
Al-Hamad added that Israeli soldiers also removed a water tank belonging to Palestinian locals.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) was not immediately available for comment.
Wadi Qana, a valley that has historically served agricultural and recreational purposes for local Palestinians who own land in the area, was declared a nature reserve by Israel’s Civil Administration in 1983.
Israel has used this designation for years to justify uprooting Palestinian crops and forcing Palestinians from the area, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Several Jewish-only Israeli settlements and outposts have been illegally established along the ridges of the valley since the 1970s.
Waste water dumped from the settlements has gradually polluted the river, forcing out Palestinians who have lived in and visited the valley for generations.
Palestinian owners of land in Wadi Qana and the village of Dir Istiya have meanwhile been prevented from building or planting in the area, the majority of which is in Area C, under the full civil and military control of Israel.
The NY Times Maps Jerusalem: Distilling the Worst of Israeli Propaganda
By Barbara Erickson – TimesWarp – February 15, 2016
In a new multimedia production The New York Times is now offering us “The Roots of the Recent Violence Between Israelis and Palestinians,” a series of 13 images accompanied by brief notes. The title promises much, and the teaser adds that this new offering presents us with “the geography of the issues surrounding the ongoing violence.”
Here, it seems, the newspaper has an opportunity to provide the context so often missing from Times stories about Palestine and Israel. With such an introduction readers might hope to learn about the historical beginnings of the conflict and to perceive the effects of occupation on the face of the land.
It was not to be. In fact, this slick presentation distills the worst of the Times reporting on the issue. The text never once mentions the occupation; it provides no historical context of any kind, and it blindly follows the preferred narrative of Israeli propagandists.
The visuals never leave Jerusalem, and the text sticks to events there. The presentation opens with an image of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by the comment that the violence “was set off in part over a dispute over Al Aqsa Mosque compound.” Nothing more is said about this complex issue.
The images then move on to highlight Jewish “neighborhoods” in Palestinian East Jerusalem and Jewish homes dotting the Palestinian neighborhoods, and we learn that the “neighborhoods” are “considered illegal settlements by most of the world.” This is the Times’ usual formulation, which distorts the fact that the entire international community—outside of Israel—deems the settlements illegal.
There is no mention of the impact these settlements have on Palestinians’ lives. We get nothing but maps and terse comments about who lives where, but the Times does finally provide a motive for the recent attacks: It comes from “frustration” over the lack of basic city services.
We are set up for this trivial claim in the fourth visual, which shows us Shuafat Refugee Camp in East Jerusalem surrounded by a yellow line. “Israel built a barrier in response to Palestinian attacks from the West Bank in the early 2000s,” the text notes. “While effective at stopping suicide bombers, it cut off several East Jerusalem neighborhoods from the rest of the city, leaving them without basic services.”
In the following image the narrative continues, “Palestinians say these frustrations are at the root of the recent attacks. Israelis officials accuse Palestinian leaders of inciting violence.”
There we have it. Not a word about loss of land, the confiscation of resources, military incursions and all the many miseries associated with military occupation. So much for the “roots” of the conflict.
Although the Times attempts a show of balance, by referring to both sides, the text is heavily weighted toward the Israeli point of view. It twice mentions Israeli actions as “responses” to violence and never suggests that Palestinians are responding to oppression.
It repeats the Israeli claim that Palestinians who died in the recent uprising were all involved in attacks or “clashes” with troops, omitting the reports of human rights groups and others who charge Israel with “street executions” of Palestinians who pose no possible threat to security forces or civilians.
In addition, the Times gives a distorted account of the Separation Barrier. It fails to say that the 2004 International Court of Justice decision held that the wall is illegal and that its route (85 percent of it inside the West Bank) threatens “de facto annexation.” The newspaper also repeats the Israeli claim that the wall “effectively stopped suicide bombers.”
As an Israeli journalist recently observed in 972 Magazine, the recent assaults have demolished this facile claim. The latest attackers could have come with bombs instead of knives; the wall did not keep them out. The bombings ended when militants abandoned the tactic.
If the Times truly intended to illustrate the “geography of the issues surrounding the ongoing violence,” it could have shown some dramatic effects of the occupation on the landscape, such as:
- The route of the Separation Barrier, snaking well inside the boundary between the West Bank and Israel
- The rows of dead parsley and spinach fields in Gaza, where Israel has deliberately sprayed herbicides on hundreds of acres
- The contrast between lush West Bank settlements, with their lawns and swimming pools, and parched Palestinian villages nearby
- The shrinking cantons of the West Bank, where Israel is illegally confiscating more and more Palestinian territory
- The dead strip of land inside Gaza, where Israel has imposed a firing zone and has frequently entered to bulldoze crops and soil
Images such as these might provide a real sense of the “roots” of the recent violence. Instead, the Times has chosen to encapsulate Israeli propaganda in this latest presentation, perpetuating its ingrained bias in a package of misleading notes and slick visual effects.
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Israeli Soldiers Push Man from Wheelchair following Shooting
IMEMC News & Agencies – February 15, 2016
A video released by a Palestinian, immediately after Israeli forces shot and critically injured a 14-year-old girl, shows Israeli forces assaulting bystanders.
In the video, an Israeli soldier pushes a disabled man in a wheelchair backwards, flipping the man and his wheelchair over. Two more Palestinians rush to the disabled man’s aide, while Israeli forces charge forward at other bystanders, setting off a stun grenade.
The video shows Israeli forces attacking and threatening Palestinians who were attempting to get near Yasmin al-Zarou, who was shot near an Israeli checkpoint in Hebron city, according to Ma’an.
UK to outlaw boycotts of Israeli settlement goods
MEMO | February 15, 2016
Public bodies in Britain are to be prevented from boycotting “unethical” goods, such as those from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, under a plan expected to be announced later Monday, local media reported.
Publicly funded institutions such as local municipalities and universities will face “stiff penalties” if they bar products from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco or West Bank settlements, The Independent newspaper reported, citing ministers.
The proposals – due to be announced by Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock – are being put forward on the grounds that bans on products are harming community relations and fuelling anti-Semitism.
“The new guidance on procurement combined with changes we are making to how pension pots can be invested will help prevent damaging and counter-productive local foreign policies undermining our national security,” Hancock told The Independent.
Some public bodies around the U.K. have refused to buy goods from Israeli settlements in recent years and they would have to reverse those decisions under the plans.
In Leicester, a city in the East Midlands, elected officials agreed in 2014 that the municipality would not buy settlement produce. That year the devolved government in Scotland issued a notice discouraging trade and investment with settlements by Scottish councils.
The government’s plan was criticized as an attack on local democracy.
Amnesty International’s Economic Relations Program Director Peter Frankental said the proposal could encourage human rights abuses.
“All public bodies should assess the social and environment impacts of any company with whom they choose to enter into business relationships,” he told The Independent. “Where’s the incentive for companies to ensure there are no human rights violations such as slavery in their supply chains, when public bodies cannot hold them to account by refusing to award them contracts?”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — lands occupied by Israel in 1967 — are considered illegal by the international community and a major impediment to peace with Palestinians.
ISM calls for internationals to volunteer in Palestine
International Solidarity Movement | 15th February, 2016
Occupied Palestine – Today, Palestinians are facing an enormous amount of pressure in their lives due to the growing violence of Israeli forces. They face restrictions of movement, daily harassment, intimidation and attacks at hands of Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers. ISM is a Palestinian-led movement; our actions are initiated on the invitation of Palestinians, following their lead and wishes. We, as internationals, are needed to monitor human rights violations and show our support for the popular struggle.
Since the beginning of October, Israeli occupation forces increased their abuse of power by carrying out a series of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, in a manner that is completely unjustified and, in most cases, constituting crimes of war. Israeli politicians have fueled the motivation to kill Palestinians by making open statements encouraging Israeli citizens to become executioners. In addition, Israeli forces are applying measures of collective punishment towards the families of Palestinians who are killed in this unlawful manner. Over 170 Palestinians have been killed since October, many of them children. On February 14th alone Israeli forces shot dead 5 Palestinians, including 3 children, and critically wounded a 14-year-old girl in al-Khalil.
Israeli forces conducting intimidating military patrol as schoolgirls walk down the street in the Old City of al-Khalil
With more volunteers, ISM could more effectively fulfill our commitments to the Palestinian communities we work with, such as walking with schoolchildren and monitoring checkpoints. A larger team also opens up the possibilities of working in more locations and regions where international presence can be useful.
Our presence in Palestine is crucial, because we witness and document what we see and can show the world what is happening on the ground. We do our best to prevent Palestinians from being harassed, and more importantly, we show them we are there in solidarity with them.
In Al-Khalil (Hebron), we need volunteers to walk children to school and monitor checkpoints where students and teachers cross on their way to and from school. Palestinian parents of kindergarten children living in H2 (the area completely controlled by the Israeli military with constant presence of soldiers and settlers) fear to send their children to school without internationals to accompany them. Children in the neighborhoods in H2 routinely face harassment and intimidation from Israeli forces and settlers, and Israeli forces deploy tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets regularly against schoolchildren at some of the checkpoints ISM monitors.
One of our volunteers walks a group of children to school in al-Khalil
Young schoolboy looks on as Israeli forces body search his teacher just outside their school in al-Khalil
In occupied East Jerusalem, many Palestinian families face the constant threat of having their homes demolished by Israeli forces. As a way of showing support and sharing their story, we go to these families to document their situation and report it in the media. In the old city of Jerusalem, some Palestinian families also face eviction, like in the case of grandma Nora; all part of a plan to replace Palestinians in the old city by Israeli settlers. Part of our job is to make sure that these cases don’t stay unknown to the world by reporting them on our website and sharing it on social media.
In Ramallah and its surroundings, we monitor the Friday popular marches. Palestinian popular committees all over the West Bank organize regular demonstrations where ISM is called to participate. We work alongside popular resistance to the occupation, providing international presence and documentation at protests and actions facing attack by Israeli military forces. Sometimes, Palestinians ask us to accompany them to the military court. We attend hearings of their family members or friends in an attempt to show them that they are not alone.
Demonstrators gathered at night around the fire in the ongoing protest tent opposing the closed military zone in al-Khalil
9-year-old girl being rushed from the scene after Israeli forces shot her with live ammunition in the arm during their attack on the weekly Friday demonstration in Kafr Qaddum
In Tulkarm and its surroundings, thousands of Palestinians cross the checkpoints everyday to go to work in Israel. The conditions of the crossing are tiring and humiliating for the workers, who arrive several hours before the opening of the gates and have to stand in line in order to be on time for work. Since October, the university of Tulkarm has also been witnessing many violent attacks on campus from the Israeli forces, in which several students were injured with teargas and live ammunition. The ISM team monitors and reports on these Human Rights violations.
A large part of ISM’s work has always involved documenting the violence and impacts of the occupation and the Palestinian struggle against it, working to produce and share media to an international audience to build awareness and global opposition to Israel’s unjust, illegal occupation.
ISM volunteers work amplifying Palestinian voices of resistance while in Palestine and especially after returning to our home countries around the world.
5 children who were forced out of their home in Jerusalem after it was demolished; the ISM team met with their family to learn and share their story
When you come to Palestine, try to bring a camera and your laptop if you have one, as both are extremely useful for media work. To plan your trip to the West Bank, please read our traveling information. We ask our volunteers to commit for a minimum of two weeks after completing our two day training, but keep in mind that we always prefer to have volunteers stay for longer periods of time.
Please note that we cannot sponsor people or otherwise facilitate anyone’s entry into Gaza; the information contained here and in our travel and training pages applies to our work in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
When you decide to come to Palestine to join ISM, or if you have any further questions not covered in our page on joining us in Palestine, please contact palreports@gmail.com or call the phone number for the training coordinator once you have entered Palestine at 059 530 7448
In solidarity,
ISM Team
British schoolboy questioned for wearing ‘Free Palestine’ badge
MEMO | February 15, 2016
A schoolboy has been questioned by anti-terrorism police because he wore a “Free Palestine” badge to school, The Independent newspaper reported.
Rahmaan Mohammadi’s teachers at Challney High School for Boys in Luton referred him to police under Prevent – the controversial government anti-radicalisation programme.
The pupil was also wearing pro-Palestine badges and wristbands. He had previously requested permission to fundraise for children affected by the Israeli occupation.
Mohammadi said he had previously been warned by police not to talk about Palestine in school, and claimed that staff members approached his 14-year-old brother and pressured him to tell him to “stop being radical”.
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John Mearsheimer Talking Iran with Iran
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New Book
The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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- Inside Bill C-22, Canada’s Patriot Act.
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- Israeli Spy Pollard stole the files, today’s it’s delivered through official channels
- Why Iran Didn’t Walk Away
- If Americans Knew
- NPR investigation finds evidence of widespread fraud at mall kiosks tied to Israeli skincare brand
- Tucker Carlson exposes Israeli Lies about the Oct 7th attack, Charlie Kirk, and the U.S.
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- Israeli Analysis: Is Netanyahu Planning an ‘October Surprise’ Attack Before Israel’s Election?
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- Gaza’s child amputees are growing faster than their prosthetics allow
- Israel keeps Palestinians struggling just to survive–Daily Update
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- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
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- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
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