It has taken just three days for 200 Brazilian academics to sign a letter in support for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, in protest against Israel’s ongoing policies of occupation and discrimination. Professor and former UN rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro and physician and pharmacologist B. Boris Vargaftig are among the signatories.
In a statement released today the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI) “salute” their solidarity: “Through these campaigns Brazilians continue to demonstrate that solidarity with the oppressed is the most politically and morally sound contribution to the struggle to end oppression.”
According to PACBI Brazilian movements, individuals and unions have long been committed to isolating Israeli academic institutions as part of the struggle against the Israeli settler colonial and apartheid regime.
January 21, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Brazil, Human rights, Israel, Latin America, Palestine, Zionism |
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The reconstructed roadblock, in the village of Kafr Qaddum. Photo credit: ISM
Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – On the 16th of January, Israeli forces shot a young protester with live ammunition while the villagers of Kafr Qaddum were protesting the theft of their land. The Israeli military also rebuilt a roadblock, restricting the movement of the villagers even further.
Kafr Qaddum neighbours the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumin that was established in 1976. The illegal settlement now occupies five hilltops next to Kafr Qaddum, and houses more than 3000 illegal Israeli settlers.
More than half of the village’s land is located in Area C, which makes it a part of the approximately 60% of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control. This means that many villagers need to get a special permission from the Israeli authorities to access their own land. Getting this permission is almost impossible, and a lot of villagers that do receive a permission complain that Israel only allows them to enter their land for a few days per year, thus not giving them enough time to cultivate their land.
In 2003 the Israeli military closed the entrance of the village by constructing a permanent roadblock. The residents are now forced to drive a 13km long detour in order to reach the main road into the village. In 2010, after waiting five years for a court decision, an Israeli court ruled that the closure of the road is illegal, but also stated, inaccurately, that the road is too dangerous to travel, and the Israeli army has used that as an excuse to keep the road closed ever since.
In addition to the permanent roadblock placed next to the entrance of the Kedumim settlement, Israeli forces have periodically put an extra dirt mound as a roadblock on the same road approximately 1 kilometer before the permament roadblock. One Palestinian family-home is closed of and isolated from the rest of the village by this dirt mound, and both cars and ambulances are prevented from driving to this particular home. This roadblock also limits the residents’ access to their farmlands even further. To reach their land in this part of the village, they now have to go by foot, and are forced to carry their harvest and all the tools that are necessary for the work by hand.
Every Friday and Saturday the residents of Kafr Quddum protest the road-closure and the theft of their lands. During last weeks Friday demonstration, Israeli soldiers together with an Israeli military bulldozer entered the village. One Israeli sniper hid on the bulldozer and shot a young protester in his leg as soon as the Israeli military entered the village. When protesters drew back to seek cover the bulldozer and the Israeli Forces started rebuilding the roadblock, that was removed only a few weeks ago.
Since July 2014, the Israeli Occupation Forces have been using live ammunition more frequently. To this day, more than 70 protesters have been injured with live ammunition. Protesters have also sustained serious injuries after being hit by ‘less-lethal ammunition’. One protester is blind on one eye after being hit by a rubber coated metal bullet, and protesters have sustained serious brain damage after being hit by this kind of bullet or tear gas canisters in their head.
During the Saturday protest on the 9th of January, a 60-year old villager was hit in his leg with live ammunition when he was walking back home from a visit at his neighbours house. An Israeli sniper hid behind a parked car, and international observers state that live ammunition was frequently used during the non-violent protest, even though the demonstrators posed no threat to the soldiers at all.
January 20, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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United Nations human rights experts have expressed concern about new counter-terrorism measures adopted in France against the backdrop of the deadly 2015 Paris attacks, calling on the French government to protect fundamental freedoms in its anti-terror battle.
In a statement released on Tuesday, a group of four UN rights specialists said the current state of emergency in France and surveillance laws impose “excessive and disproportionate restrictions” on the basic rights of people.
The statement said the main concerns center on “the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the … laws, related to the nature and scope of restrictions to the legitimate exercise of right to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association and the right to privacy.”
On November 13, 2015, assailants struck at least six different venues in and around Paris. The terrorist attacks left 130 people dead and over 350 others wounded. France introduced the state of emergency following the horrendous assaults, which were claimed by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.
The exceptional measures adopted under the state of emergency empower the French police to keep people in their homes without trial, searching houses without judicial approval and blocking suspicious websites. The new measures also include a ban on public demonstrations and allow authorities to dissolve groups inciting any acts that seriously affect public order in France.
The UN rights specialists also called on the French government not to extend the state of emergency beyond February 2016 and ensure protection against any abuse of power while combating terror.
Yasser Louati, a spokesman for the Collective against Islamophobia in France, an anti-racist group, said last month that the state of emergency has unfairly targeted Muslims in France.
January 19, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | France, Human rights, United Nations |
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The only way to solve a refugee problem is to stop generating refugees. Since arriving in Germany 3 ½ months ago, I’ve made this point over and over. Most Germans, though, are only focused on the issue of accepting or rejecting refugees, not on the root cause of it, which is America and Israel’s deliberate destabilization of much of the Middle East and parts of North Africa. Wrecking one Muslim country after another, this evil alliance is also sowing chaos in Europe. To save themselves, Europeans must decouple from these two rogue states.
Germany, though, merely does what it’s told by Uncle Sam, and the German left is too busy attacking “fascists”—that is, everyone they disagree with—to even notice that it is the United States that’s thrown their country into turmoil, but then again, being internationalist, most of these leftists don’t even recognize the concept of nationhood. They’re aiming for an uprising of a mythical international brotherhood.
There are thousands of tribes and hundreds of nations, with even people speaking the same language and sharing the same cultural heritage often disagreeing very violently with each other. Nations exist so nominally like-minded people can set up their society the way they see fit. Even an Austrian does not want to live a German, much less an Afghan. When people defend borders, then, they’re fighting for their way of life, and though men everywhere have done this throughout history, progressives think this imperative can somehow be outgrown by everyone on this earth, all but the evil 1%.
“No man is illegal,” chant progressives, and of course this is true, as well as meaningless. A man’s crossing into another nation’s territory without permission is equivalent to breaking into someone’s home. Desperate enough, millions are doing just that, but even those who aren’t will barge in if the doors are flung wide open, with welcome signs and streamers. A radical progressive might say, “I don’t believe in private property either,” but try to reach for his wallet and see if he’s not a hypocrite.
I just got back from three days in Poland, and though $3 plates of pierogi and $1 pints of beer appeal to me mightily, does that mean I can just move there tomorrow? Invaded by Germany and Russia not that long ago, Poles know the pains of having one’s borders violated. Most people around the world do.
Though you’ve no doubt read many commentaries on the sexual crimes on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, I offer you further insights from a German friend in Frankfurt:
“The incidents have had a considerable impact on the German psyche. What happened in Cologne (and several other cities like Hamburg or Bielefeld) on New Year’s Eve had a new character to them.
For the first time, rather huge groups of foreigners were sexually harassing young women and girls. Cologne alone has over 650 incidents—that is much more than usual. Also, the nature of these acts was new, in that women were treated as meat or toys. Not that this could not happen with German men, but—at least to my humble knowledge—this behavior has never been shown by large groups of German men. You could say that there is a normal cultural barrier and Germans would not step over it.
If, on the other hand, you see women as toys or infidel women as sluts, the behavior makes sense.
Yes, it is a big issue, but I suppose it will fade from focus soon. It will stay in the collective mind, however. As I write this, questions like ‘how to buy a gun illegally’ are flourishing on the German net as do the sale of pepper sprays and self-defense courses.
So the reaction of the German public is mostly disgust and anger, though the media and a large minority try to show these incidents as aberrations which should not be attached to the refugees. This, in turn, makes other Germans angry.
A funny side note: The official media and people who usually complain about women’s rights here have a rather hard time avoiding racism by denouncing these crimes. Therefore, really absurd explanations have been floated, as in Cologne was nothing special or that some of the harassed women must have been racists who used these incidents to make false accusations against immigrants.
The head of the police in Cologne had to resign, but the Minister of the Interior for the Federal Region Nordrhein-Westfalen stays—and he is the one who is really responsible.
So the political reactions are twofold—verbally, everybody condemns these acts, while practically nothing is done to stop the influx of refugees coming here.
It has to be added that, as usually in such cases, the Cologne incidents have been used as an excuse by state officials to call for stricter laws and for more surveillance (as if we didn’t have both already).
The official line could be still summed up as something like this: Immigration is good and necessary and criticism on migrants or refugees is a sign of hate and of being a Nazi. This is still the official mantra in the media. The media didn’t report on Cologne for three days, but then they had to bring it up because it was causing such a storm in the alternative media. Nothing much will change—though I am sure, the state will increase its control mechanisms on the population.
A rather intelligent conspiracy theory muses about the possibility that these acts were ‘staged’ (which I do not share as an explanation) and that they will be used together with similar incidents to one day declare a state of emergency and deprive us of our civil rights, so that in the face of financial armageddon (the big financial crisis looming in the background), the state may rob us of all our savings and our rights with as little resistance as possible (because we need to be protected from nasty migrants and terrorists).
Though I find this theory rather interesting, I don’t think these acts were staged. We do live in an age of ‘scripted reality,’ however, so I believe that—just like in France, where they had introduced a state of emergency after the Paris terrorist attacks, and it is still in place—our government already has the plans on what to do to achieve the goal of creating a police state in Germany, where we can be constantly surveilled 24/7 and have our rights taken away without us fighting against it.
Also, the alternative and official media have been awash since the start of the refugee crisis with reports about refugees who misbehaved in the public (squatting or urinating in gardens of Germans, sexually assaulting women in public swimming pools, starting fights in discotheques, rapes, etc.).
These incidents are somewhat expected because the majority of these refugees are young men without wives or women, and they come from backgrounds where the position of women in society is rather different than in ours.
So some of these young men will misbehave, and since they are not punished—for to send them back to their countries would be racist and, in some cases the country is not known, because quite a few refugees threw away their passports before entering Germany—they are encouraged to continue what they do.
I have personal knowledge from a policeman in Gießen (a town in the middle of Hesse), where there is a huge camp for refugees. He told me of frequent rapes in this camp among the refugees, even of children, but they are not prosecuted by the police (on order from above), because it might create fear in the local population. There were reports about these incidents from a German Women’s Protection Group (Landesfrauenrat Hessen) in August last year—they even wrote an official letter to the Hessian parliament to complain about prostitution and organized rapes in the camp—and guess what happened?
The letter (and the issue) just disappeared—because it might have fuelled anti-refugee sentiments and helped Nazis! THIS is the official German policy—it is ideologically driven and full of cowardice. While on a visit in Gießen, I spoke to some female students living in a student hostel near the camp. They told me that they don’t go out alone anymore, because they were always treated in a way which scared them by some of the refugees.
So Cologne was bound to happen sooner or later, and it will be the first of a long list of unpleasant and nasty and fear- and hate-inducing incidents.
I also expect the rift between migrants and Germans, already big, will increase in size, sadly enough.
It is sad, because it is divide and rule at its best. We are allowed to hate each other so that we may not unite against the real enemy—those who created the situation we are in.
I certainly don’t like my country being flooded with foreigners, but they are just tools in an inhuman and vicious plan, and I hope that more people will come to realize this in time.
So all in all, the signs for the near future are rather bleak. I would think that we will soon see further incidents like those in Cologne and then suddenly a backlash in parts of the German population, followed by (one day, after a terrorist attack) a declaration of a state of emergency—and from this it will only get worse.
The good thing—it will take us some years to get to the bottom.
And as we all know, the only way from the bottom is up.”
Yes, it’s getting grimmer by the second, but those who think Germany is spinning out of control underestimate the shrewdness of Angela Merkel. After all, one isn’t named TIME person of the year for being a dummy. Yes, there was another riot last week in Leipzig, with the right doing most of the vandalism this time. Bars and a kebab shop were trashed. Germans seem ready to kill each other, and the street violence promises to spread to other cities.
Her highness, however, has a solution. By diktat, Merkel has just instituted a draft, not of military-age males, but German females from 18 to 22. Those chosen through a weekly, nationally televised lottery will serve just six months as comfort women for war refugees and economic migrants. This will prevent all incidents of public groping or rape. Social harmony will be restored.
Merkel, “Just as the refugees have been maltreated by fate, us Germans will have a taste of that ourselves, though to a much lesser degree. The nation will forever be grateful to each comfort woman for her smallish sacrifice.”
Upon news of this, the German left celebrate by burning down every currywurst stand across Deutschland. Birthed during the American occupation, that yucky mess deserves its turbulent exit. Thanks to the always tactful mainstream media, the right’s response is unknown. TV news anchors calmly predict that a billion newcomers will arrive next year to be comforted. The left further exude by hurling Molotov cocktails at everyone in a uniform, including garbagemen and fast food wage slaves. Class traitors who have enriched multinational corporations, they deserve to be fried.
Forward!
January 19, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Germany, Human rights, United States |
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Attorneys for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan have filed a lawsuit against a major opposition leader for stating that Erdogan is a dictator, presidential sources and the opposition party told Reuters. The president is reportedly seeking $32,000 in damages.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu made the controversial comment on Saturday, just one day after Erdogan urged prosecutors to investigate academics who signed a declaration criticizing military action in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. Twenty-seven of the signatories were briefly detained.
“Academics who express their opinions have been detained one by one on instructions given by a so-called dictator,” he said during a speech to his party’s 35th General Congress in Ankara, referring to those who have signed petitions opposing the military crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and urging an end to curfews.
“You may not agree with the content of the declaration. We also have issues with it, we also have our disagreements. But why limit freedom of speech?” Kilicdaroglu added.
Erdogan’s lawyers are seeking 100,000 lira (US$32,000) in damages, according to Turkish media.
A petition presented to the public prosecutor’s office also asked for a civil lawsuit to be launched against the CHP, Turkey’s Anadolu agency reported. The biggest opposition party in Turkey, with 134 seats in the 550-member Turkish parliament, the CHP, has been led by Kilicdaroglu since May 2010.
In addition to the lawsuit, an attorney from the Ankara prosecutor’s office has also launched an investigation into Kilicdaroglu’s comments on charges of “openly insulting the president,” local media reported.
In Turkey, insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail. Although Kilicdaroglu has immunity from prosecution because he is a lawmaker, parliament could vote by a simple majority to remove that protection.
It’s not the first time that Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu have clashed. In June 2015, Erdogan filed a 100,000 lira ($32,000) lawsuit against the CHP leader for “mental anguish” following a public spat over claims that there were golden toilet seats installed in the presidential palace.
January 18, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Erdogan, Human rights, Turkiye |
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Medics standing in front of the ambulance with a broken windshield
Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine – This Friday, on the 15th of January, hundreds of Palestinians gathered on the main street of Bethlehem to protest against the recent killing of Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, who was killed by Israeli forces in nearby Beit Jala last Wednesday. Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition at the protesters.
On Wednesday afternoon, 21-year-old Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, origanally from Aida refugee camp, was killed during protests against the Israeli military invasion of the western part of Bethlehem, Beit Jala. Palestine News Network reported that 4 Israeli army jeeps entered Beit Jala and set up a flying checkpoint and started raiding homes and shops on the busy Al-Sahl street in Beit Jala. Srour Ahmad Abu Srour was hit in his chest by a live bullet, and later succumbed at Beit Jala public hospital. The director of the Red Crescent ambulance and emergency crew in Bethlehem, Mohamed Awad, said that many young men were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets or by suffocation due to the large amount of tear gas fired during the protest.
Every day since the killing of Srour Ahmad Abu Srour, Palestinians from Bethlehem have marched the streets in protests of Israel’s ongoing violence. On this Friday demonstration Israeli forces entered the streets of Bethlehem and fired hundreds of tear gas canisters towards the protesters. Protesters, passersby and residents of the neighborhood were severely affected by the amount of tear gas that was fired. One passerby was taken away from the scene in an ambulance due to the excessive inhalation of tear gas.
Two injuries by rubber-coated metal bullets were reported, one of which was a journalist. One protester was shot in his lower leg with live ammunition, and was taken to hospital.
According to medics, 5 people were injured with rubber-coated metal bullets and 5 people with live ammunition during protests in Bethlehem with its surrounding villages. One medic was injured when a rubber-coated metal bullet was fired at the windshield of his Ambulance during protests in near by Em Rokbaa.
January 18, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Former members of a U.S.-trained death squad in El Salvador may finally face justice after massacring 6 priests and two women 26 years ago.
In El Salvador, the beginning of a new year brings with it the opportunity to heal old wounds.
In the first weeks of January, nearly 20 retired military officers accused of human rights violations during the country’s civil war have been called to answer for their crimes. While the great bulk of the charges being leveled against the former soldiers relate to a single massacre carried out in San Salvador, at least one of the former commanders is known to have directed multiple atrocities during the 12-year conflict. In all, some 75,000 were killed during the war, while thousands more were disappeared in a rampage of human rights atrocities largely perpetrated by the U.S.-backed, right-wing government’s forces.
The importance of these developments cannot be underscored enough.
In addition to the closure that may be offered to victims of civil war-era human rights abuses and their families, the apprehension and trial of accused war criminals in El Salvador signals the end of impunity enjoyed by members of the old guard—some of whom were responsible for brutal campaigns of violence, like the massacre of six priests and two others at a university in San Salvador.
On Nov. 16, 1989, a small band of soldiers stormed the campus grounds of the Central American University (UCA). Members of El Salvador’s elite Atlacatl Brigade—a death squad armed and trained by the United States—murdered a group of Jesuit priests, a campus housekeeper, and the woman’s teenage daughter. Among the dead was Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the university, prominent proponent of liberation theology, and a critic of the conservative ruling regime governing El Salvador during the war. The other five priests were Spanish nationals.
The military initially tried pinning the blame on FMLN rebels. The Actlacatl Brigade used weapons that had been captured from guerilla fighters and, after murdering those inside the compound, staged a phony assault on the campus to make it appear as if rebels had carried out the slaughter. In order to ensure that no one would question who was responsible for the UCA massacre, the troops placed a cardboard sign near their victims which read: “The FMLN has executed the spies who informed on them. Victory or death. FMLN.”
Despite the fact that few believed the military’s deception, justice in this case—as it was for countless other victims of human rights violations during the civil war—has proved elusive. In 1991, a group of the officers involved were put on trial. Two soldiers were found guilty, and sentenced to prison. Shortly after, however, all of the accused were relieved of responsibility for the killings. An amnesty law approved by the legislative assembly following the 1992 peace accords offered the shelter of impunity to everyone implicated in war crimes over the previous decade.
Until now.
On Jan. 5, a Spanish court asked that arrest warrants be issued for the 17 retired military men connected to the slaughter at the university. The following day the Salvadoran government signaled its willingness to cooperate. Salvadoran Human Rights Ombudsman David Morales, speaking at a press conference, told reporters that “there is an obligation to prosecute these acts and, in the absence of domestic justice, there is an obligation to collaborate with the legal process that the Spanish National Court is leading in this case.”
Spanish authorities have tried to have the officers arrested in the past, but to no avail. In 2011, Spain pushed for their apprehension but was rebuffed by the Salvadoran high court. The court found that the warrants issued by Interpol for the 17 soldiers mandated that Salvadoran authorities locate the men in question, not apprehend them, and that the officers were protected under the old amnesty law governing civil war crimes. This changed last year in a welcome reversal by the court, which has opened the door to their arrest and extradition.
The impending arrests aren’t the only sign that the limits of impunity for past crimes may have been reached in El Salvador. A week after the 17 military officers were identified for arrest, a former minister of defense, Jose Guillermo Garcia Merino, was deported from the United States—where he had been residing since the late 1980s—to El Salvador for war crimes committed on his watch. Among other incidents, Garcia has been tied to the murder of four American nuns, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, as well as the Rio Sumpul and El Mozote massacres.
In expert testimony included in the case of Garcia-Merino, Terry Lynn Karl, professor of political science at Stanford University, argued that El Salvador’s armed forces “engaged in a widespread pattern and practice of massacres, torture, and arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and other gross violations of human rights” under Garcia’s command. “General Garcia presided over the worst period of repression in modern Salvadoran history,” Karl wrote. “At least 75 percent of reported violence in El Salvador occurred during General Garcia’s tenure as Defense Minister.”
These developments mirror a similar push for justice underway in the region more broadly. Most prominently, a series of actions have been taken against military officers in Guatemala accused of human rights violations in that country’s civil war. While the trial of former strongman Efrain Rios Montt has been subject to a lengthening series of delays, prosecutions of other alleged war criminals appear to be advancing successfully. And on the same day that El Salvador agreed to take action against those involved in the UCA massacre, Guatemala arrested 18 of its own retired soldiers for war crimes.
Even as Guatemala appears poised to make steady advances to ensure transitional justice, El Salvador faces many obstacles in following suit. Foreign courts were responsible for kickstarting these latest proceedings against Salvadoran war criminals while, to date, domestic courts themselves have not taken up the mantle of pursuing cases related to crimes committed during the war. Indeed, while government officials have promised to extradite the seventeen officers to Spain, none have yet been brought into custody. Nor is it clear what legal fate awaits Garcia following his deportation from the United States.
And there are still serious concerns about the selective nature of accountability in the country. The constitutional court’s recent ruling on “terror,” for example, came back into focus recently when Chief Inspector Joaquin Hernandez demanded that El Diario de Hoy be investigated for instigating “fear and terror” in its coverage of the gangs. Repugnant as El Diario’s politics may be, claims that the paper is abetting terror raise alarming questions about press freedom in El Salvador, and could set an ugly precedent in the government’s war against the gangs, and political opposition.
Nevertheless, the fact that government officials appear ready to play their part in the apprehension and prosecution of those charged with war crimes suggests an important shift has taken place in El Salvador. The ruling establishment has historically been wary of broaching issues of transitional justice leftover from the war. To his credit, former president Mauricio Funes took courageous steps by acknowledging the state’s role in wartime atrocities, but nothing came of it. Over the past several weeks, however, official reluctance to redress past wrongs seems to be dissipating.
Whatever the cause—domestic or international pressure, successful internal maneuvering by brave judges and lawyers within the country’s judicial system, or something else—an opportunity to begin striking down the impunity haunting El Salvador for decades has presented itself. Will the government shy away due to the very real political risks involved in dredging up the past? Hopefully not. Will it honestly reckon with the country’s recent history, and those responsible for its bloodiest episodes, to ensure that justice for those victimized by a ruthless war is no longer denied, even after all these years?
Better late than never.
January 18, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | El Salvador, Human rights, Latin America, Oscar Romero, Spain |
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The probe involves 12 former state officials in total, including opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina, over alleged economic crimes.
The Bolivian National Assembly approved Saturday the decision to probe former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada over “prejudicial contracts to the State, anti-economic behavior and unfulfillment of duty,” the Congress presidency said in a report sent to AFP.
Sanchez de Lozada, who is a fugitive from Bolivia’s justice system is currently living in the United States since he was accused in 2006 for violation of human rights. He was governing Bolivia during the privatization of various state-run companies, particularly the railway firm ENFE in 1995.
Sanchez Lozada is accused of having under-sold the state shares for an amount of US$13 million, while its value was estimated to reach US$29 million.
Lawmakers approved a report issued by the legislative commission of justice, which was issued after a year investigation into the capitalization and privatizations of public companies carried out between 1990-2001.
The General Attorney’s Office will now be in charge of the judicial proceedings before the country’s Supreme Court.
Sanchez de Lozada fled to the United States in 2003, after riots and clashes with security forces resulted in the death of 60 people, known as the “Black October massacre” ending de facto his presidential term.
The United States granted him asylum, while the Bolivian government is still demanding the U.S. extradite him.
January 18, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics | Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, Human rights, Latin America, United States |
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New York, NY – In the wake of growing controversy surrounding police violence, more police departments are equipping their officers with body cameras. However, while police-worn body cameras can bring extra evidence into cases on both sides, they are far from a fix for police brutality. The main obstacle with these cameras is the fact that the footage is still entirely controlled by police departments.
The officer in the field has an opportunity to turn the camera on and off at their discretion. The cops in the office then have a second opportunity to edit the footage or redact parts that might make the officer look bad or incriminate them. Additionally, police departments are often guilty of withholding body camera footage from victim’s families and news organizations.
In one recent case, the NYPD charged a TV news network $36,000 for body camera footage, stating that it would cost them that much to prepare the footage for the network. The network is now suing the police department, stating that the high price undermines the transparency that body cameras have been promised to bring. Charging obnoxious prices for the release of body camera footage is just another trick that the police use to keep their activities from going public.
According to the lawsuit, filed by Time Warner Cable News NY1:
“[NYPD] denied NY1’s request for unedited footage without specifying what material it plans to redact, how much material will be excluded from disclosure, or how the redaction will be performed. Instead, Respondents suggested that they may provide NY1 with edited footage, but only on the condition that NY1 remit $36,000.00, the alleged cost to the NYPD of performing its unidentified redactions.”
The lawsuit also stated that the NYPD’s policy was “counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL (Freedom of Information Law), as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.”
The police department claims that their fee is “reasonable” considering the time and effort required to edit the footage.
In a response to NY1, the NYPD sent a letter explaining their costs.
The letter stated that:
“The RAO’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the BWC footage was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the BWC footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the BWC footage, for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the costs of compensating a police officer is $120 per hour. Multiplying $120 by 304 hours equals $34,480 which closely approximates the amount estimated by the RAO. This approximate cost does not include the time required to locate and collate the recordings, for which no charge is made, as that time is a part of the search for responsive records, and not a part of the time required for copying. In sum, the copying cost, as estimated by the RAO, is reasonable and commensurate with the breadth of the FOIL request.”
Even if their claims are true, which they most likely are not, having the police handle body camera footage “in house” is obviously not the best option for transparency or cost, considering the inflated budgets that police officers enjoy.
Many advocates for police accountability suggest that body camera footage should be open source, and in the hands of the people and not the police. This could likely be handled by teams of volunteers and donors who could keep the project running without a large budget.
When there is a project that has enough support, it will usually receive sufficient donations from individuals, businesses and charity organizations to keep the program operating. We saw this in the U.S. a few years back, when the government pulled the plug on funding for the SETI space program. This was a program that many people still wanted despite the government’s decision to cut funding. In fact, they wanted it around so badly that over 2,400 different donations were received in a single week, easily surpassing their goal of $200,000.
If put in the hands of the public, police body camera footage could work in the same way, but this option has been unanimously rejected by police departments across the country.
January 18, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, NYPD, United States |
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A Portuguese court of appeals has ordered the extradition of a former CIA officer who was convicted in absentia for her alleged role in the rendition of a suspected terrorist.
Sabrina De Sousa could face four years in jail.
The dual American and Portuguese citizen traveled to Lisbon in April with her husband. When she attempted to fly to the Indian state of Goa to visit her ailing mother in October, she set off a travel-alert indicating she was wanted in Italy. Authorities then arrested her and seized the dual citizen’s American and Portuguese passports.
De Sousa was charged in 2005 for her alleged role in the kidnapping of suspected terrorist and Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. More than 20 other Americans including CIA officials were also convicted in the operation.
After Omar’s release, the cleric said he had been snatched off the streets of Milan after leaving his apartment on Feb. 17, 2003. He said he was thrown into a van, and flown to Egypt where he underwent torture including beatings and electrocution.
Judge Sergio Silocchi reads the sentence of the appeal trial on a CIA-led kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, at the Milan’s court, Italy, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010.
At the time, De Sousa was registered in Italy as a State Department official at the U.S. Consulate in Milan. However, she was actually a CIA officer.
She maintains that she was chaperoning her son’s ski trip the day Omar was taken. She also says the operation was approved and carried out by higher-ranking CIA officials, who had the backing of Italy’s intelligence community.
She admits she was a translator for the team that led the capture and coordinated with Italian authorities.
Following her charges, De Sousa sued the CIA and the Justice Department for not invoking diplomatic immunity on her behalf. Later in 2009, 23 Americans also were convicted by Italian courts in absentia. None has served prison terms.
During an interview Friday with the Washington Post, De Sousa said she plans to appeal the ruling to Portugal’s Supreme Court.
“I am really shocked,” De Sousa told the Post. “From what I understood, extradition was off the table because it was a trial in absentia. I was not served or told of the charges against me and had zero opportunity to defend myself adequately because the U.S. did not acknowledge the rendition took place and the evidence was classified. Italy also covered all pertinent evidence with ‘state secrets.’”
January 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Human rights, Portugal, Sabrina De Sousa, United States |
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It took decades of protests and petitioning the government, but after being continuously ignored, African American activists took over a federal wildlife refuge.
While sites are drawn up in the debate over who is right or wrong in the Bundy militia stand off in Oregon today, it is worth noting that this group of activists did the same thing, decades ago, in a protest against what they considered an unjust land grab by the U.S. government.
The armed protesters today occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns was not the first of its kind, but it has had a very different response from law enforcement when compared to the very similar standoff 39 years ago in Harris Neck, Georgia.
The Harris Neck protesters were mostly displaced descendants of West African slaves. The FBI described them as “squatters” – even though they stated from the outset that their intentions were very much political in nature.
The group was called the People Organized for Equal Rights. They set up camp much like the Occupy Wall Street movement later would.
The encampment was on a patch of land stolen by the federal government south of Savannah, back on April 30, 1979.
The group of prominent civil rights leaders, and other activists brought concrete blocks and bags of mortar to build new homes, but they were unarmed.
The Oregonian summarizes that “following the Civil War, a white plantation owner deeded the land on the Georgia coast to a former slave. In the decades that followed, the descendants of slaves moved to Harris Neck to build houses, factories and boats. They fished, hunted for oysters and grazed cattle.”
In time, “Harris Neck evolved into a thriving community. Its members were recognized as a culturally unique group of African Americans called Gullah.”
Finally, in 1942, the U.S. military told Harris Neck residents that they had only three weeks to vacate the land. They cited eminent domain laws, and ordered residents to leave their property so they “could construct an airbase for training pilots and conducting anti-submarine flights.”
African American residents were given an insulting $26.90 per acre. Caucasian residents were given $37.31 for the same amount of land.
“Residents were paid only for the unimproved value of their land, receiving nothing more for houses, barns, or crops in the field, all of which were bulldozed or burned,” The New American reported in 2010.
After World War II, the government held onto the land – never giving it back. They eventually turned it into the 2,762-acre Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge.
Federal law enforcement eventually got a court order to remove the Harris Neck protesters. They ignored their historical claims to the land, and after only a day of protests, they threatened to violently remove everyone if they did not leave of their own accord.
Edgar Timmons, Jr., Hercules Anderson, Christopher McIntosh and the Rev. Ted Clark stayed and faced the threat head on.
According to the Oregonian, on May 2, 1979, U.S. deputy marshals “forcibly removed” the men. “‘Their bodies taut and motionless,’ the men were dragged out of their tent, handcuffed and hoisted into a waiting van.”
The men were all sentenced to jail, and two years later, in 1981, “a fire destroyed county records with details on the original home sites.”
What do you think accounts for the difference between how both groups were treated when they took over federal wildlife sanctuaries? Is it racism? Or was the fact that the 1979 activists were unarmed the deciding factor law enforcement standing down?
January 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | FBI, Harris Neck, Human rights, United States |
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