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Israeli forces punish Kafr Qaddum by damaging the water supply system

International Solidarity Movement | August 16, 2015

Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine – On Saturday the 15th of August 2015, the villagers from Kafr Qaddum once again demonstrated against the blockage of the road leading to Nablus as well as the nearby Kedumin settlement. In solidarity with the local people there were a few international activists and journalists covering the demonstration.

The non-violent protest was immediately suppressed by the Israeli occupation forces shooting dozens of teargas canisters and live ammunition. Instead of the frequently used bad-smelling skunk water, the army drove a bulldozer into the village. This bulldozer destroyed the only water pipe in the village, leaving the people Kafr Qaddum without any connection to water until the pipe is repaired. Especially during the hot summer months, water is a scarce and essential good.

The damaged water pipe

Murad Shtaiwi, one of the leaders of Kafr Qaddum Popular Committee, understands the damage to the water pipe as a way to collectively punish the village for its ongoing resistance. The costs of a new pipe have to be paid for by the municipality. As Murad explains, damaging the water pipe is a deliberate attempt by the Israeli army to suppress the support among the villagers to continue to protests and thus block future demonstrations.

August 17, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rights group: 2,799 deaths by Egyptian authority in two years

MEMO | August 15, 2015

Some 2,799 Egyptians have been killed since the Egyptian authorities forcefully dispersed mass rallies in Cairo on August 14, 2013. The rallies were held as protest against the military coup which ousted the first every freely elected Egyptian president, an Egyptian rights group said on Friday.

Anadolu News Agency reported that the Egyptian Coordination of Rights and Freedoms stated that since June 30, 2013 until today, the Egyptian authorities’ varied methods of killing resulted in a large number of deaths.

According to the National Egyptian Council for Human Rights, on August 14, 2013, the Egyptian army and police dispersed the demonstrations against the military coup, killing 632 Egyptians. Meanwhile, national and international rights groups said the number of deaths was over 1,000.

Following the violent dispersal of the rallies, the Egyptian authorities adopted systematic killing, including torturing prisoners to death, liquidations and assassinations.

In June of this year, the Egyptian security forces assassinated nine unarmed Muslim Brotherhood leaders, claiming they were planning to make chaos in the country. The Muslim Brotherhood denied the accusations and stressed that the individuals were a team following up the families of Egyptians killed or wounded by the army and the police.

According to the report, which was divided into three stages, the first stage covered the period from June 30, 2013 until August 13, 2013, where 316 Egyptians were killed. The second stage covered August 14, 2013 until August 16, where 2007 Egyptians were killed. The third stage details the events from August 17, 2013 until August 12, 2015, where 476 Egyptians were killed.

Since the military coup against Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian authorities have been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of “inciting violence and terror” in the country.

In December 2013, an Egyptian court designated the group as a “terrorist organisation” and ordered all of its leaders and members to be arrested and their property confiscated.

Hundreds of its leaders and members have been sentenced to death or life in prison since the announcement of that ruling.

August 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Send ‘Em All Away! US Publication Blasts US-funded Russian NGOs

By Daniele Pozzati – Sputnik – 15.08.2015

News website Salon has taken on “the ongoing nonsense concerning foreign-funded NGOs operating in Russia” in a long article published online last week.

They are into coups. They use buzzwords like human rights and civil society as fig leaves to carry “unpublicized policy functions that Washington has decided to outsource.” Their “biggest prize”? In the words of Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), it was Ukraine. Any surprise, then, that Moscow asked NED to hit the road?

“Washington (…) never tires of criticizing Moscow, Putin in particular, for its (or his) treatment of foreign-funded NGOs,” writes Salon’s author Patrick L. Smith. “Since 2012, they have been required to register as foreign agents—exactly as the US requires.”

So are the two countries divided by a similar law on NGOs?

“The ‘foreign agents’ bit is put down as a Stalin-era cover to suppress well-meaning people trying to do honorable things,” points out Smith.

Except that the very definition of ‘foreign agents’ dates back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s times. The USA has had a similar law on the books since 1938.

Following the American example

In 2012, the Russian Duma passed a law demanding that NGOs financed from abroad register as foreign agents. More recently, another law targeting “undesirable” NGOs has been signed by President Vladimir Putin.

A taste of recent headlines proves the point made by Salon :

“Harassed and shunned, the Russians labeled foreign agents by Kremlin” ran in the Guardian on May 18, days before the Duma approved the new law. “Russia’s crackdown on civil society shows the regime’s weakness” printed the Washington Post on July 28. It added: “The [foreign agents] designation, from the Stalin era, implies espionage.”

Beyond the rhetoric, the figures are impressive. As of May 2015, there were 67 foreign-funded NGOs designated as foreign agents in Russia. According to an estimate by President Putin himself during an interview with German journalist and WDR Editor-in-Chief Jörg Schönenborn, these foreign-funded NGOs have a combined budget of roughly one billion dollars.

And it is exactly the activities of such a wide network of foreign organizations, and the provenance of their money, that Russian lawmakers have set out to monitor.

As Alexander Tarnavsky, co-author of the law on undesirable organizations, told Russia Direct on May 28, “foreign organizations – both commercial ones and non-commercial – could be recognized as undesirable for their activity on the territory of Russia.”

The West is against both designating foreign-funded NGOs in Russia as ‘foreign agents’ and the very idea of an NGO’s activities being seen as ‘undesirable’ by the state.

Yet could Russia maybe have a reason to be so suspicious? Salon’s article provides ample evidence of why Russian fears are justified. And it suggests that Russia should take a further step versus NGOs: send them all away.

So far only “12 NGOs and NGO-funders have been placed on a kind of watchlist last month,” points out Salon, yet in Western media parlance, as a recent report by the New York Times exemplifies, the ‘watchlist’ became ‘blacklist’ in a matter of a few paragraphs.

NGOs in their own words

The latest entry to this Watchlist is MacArthur which, Smith explains, “set up shop in Moscow during the Yeltsin years, when hyper-hubristic Americans thought they were going to remake all of Russia in their own image.”

“Others on it [the Watchlist] are George Soros’ Open Society Institute (which “… aims to shape public policy to promote democratic governance,” its website explains), Freedom House (a notoriously Russophobic Cold War subversion machine), and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which began humbly enough doing community work in Flint, Michigan, but is now up to its knees in “civic activism” and “civil society development” in Russia and the former Soviet satellites.

“A project Mott funded in June studies ‘citizen protests, demonstrations, and discontent’ in these nations,” Smith writes. “Just trying to do the right thing, per usual.”

These projects do ring a few bells, from Georgia to Ukraine to Macedonia.

Another familiar NGO is Freedom House, with its annual index of press freedom, so often uncritically quoted by Western media to bash Russian media.

This is Freedom House in its own words, as quoted by the Financial Times :

“Far more often than is generally understood the change agent is broad-based, non-violent civic resistance—which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed defenders.”

Smith translates this into plain English: “We’re into coups.” The most recent one in particular: “Freedom House started sending AID funds to Ukrainian ‘civil society’ NGOs, which did years of advance work prior to last year’s coup, as early as 2004.”

The $5 billion Victoria Nuland boasted to have invested in the Ukrainian opposition come to mind.

The case for sending ’em all away

Smith suggests three reasons why foreign (read: American) NGOs should go home:

“One. These groups were as drunk on ideological righteousness during the 1990s as Yeltsin was on vodka. Two. To assume Russians need American help in achieving social justice, a free press and an orderly democratic process is simply the height of silliness. America is in crisis precisely because it has none of the above. Three. NGOland has long, long been too polluted with mal-intended missions for any foreign power reasonably to tolerate such agencies on their soil.”

Another case could be made to rebrand NGOs for what they really are: FGO, or foreign governments’ organizations. And that still would be kind towards them.

August 16, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media | , , | Leave a comment

When the NSA tells journalists things, those things are not necessarily true

PrivacySOS | August 15, 2015

If you find yourself reading a story about US war or spying that contains a variation on the phrase “according to US officials” in the top paragraph, you are likely biting into a whopper of state propaganda and lies. Today’s NYT reporting on Snowden documents provides just the latest example.

Back in February 2014, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal published big time stories under the bylines of two of those newspapers’ most respected ‘national security’ and surveillance journalists. The Post story started like this:

The National Security Agency is collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans’ call records because of an inability to keep pace with the explosion in cellphone use, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Here’s the first paragraph of the Wall Street Journal story, reporting the same official claims:

The National Security Agency’s collection of phone data, at the center of the controversy over U.S. surveillance operations, gathers information from about 20% or less of all U.S. calls—much less than previously thought, according to people familiar with the NSA program.

AP’s Phillip Bump ran a story based on the Post’s version. Troublingly, his first paragraph dispensed entirely with the origin of the information. In Bump’s retelling, the information appears to have come from God—or at least is as good as The Word.

The NSA’s vaunted cell phone metadata collection program, often defended on the grounds that its comprehensive sweep of information allows the government to uncover unseen connections, only collected about 30 percent of all such information as of last summer.

The problem with these stories? Actual NSA documents (read: not NSA employee claims to journalists) show they are false.

The New York Times reports on documents disclosed by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden:

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans’ phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records.

I must quibble a bit with the New York Times excellent reporting here, only to suggest that what’s “striking” about the discrepancy between what journalists reported and the truth isn’t the fact that the NSA would lie to journalists. What’s striking is that journalists continue to print official, often anonymous, claims about government surveillance programs without a shred of evidence that those claims are true.

In February 2014, the NSA must have decided—perhaps in consultation with other parts of the US security state establishment—to lie to a few key journalists in order to propagate the myth that the all powerful intelligence agency couldn’t figure out how to obtain cell phone call records. At the time, not everyone believed it (myself included). But two powerful US newspapers were credulous, and printed the NSA’s claims as if they were fact—in the apparent absence of any documentation or other confirmation.

Everyone, including media consumers, needs to remember a very simple thing about intelligence agencies: they are professionals in deceit and manipulation. A good spy must be able to lie and connive in order to achieve their goals.

You wouldn’t expect a car mechanic to be a good oral surgeon. You also shouldn’t expect spies to tell the truth. Remember that the next time you read a newspaper article based off of undocumented, unproven “official” claims.

August 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Tribes struggle with toxic spill as EPA is accused of deliberate disaster

RT | August 15, 2015

As Native American tribes are struggling to cope with a toxic spill caused by an Environmental Protection Agency contractor that turned a river in Colorado orange, a letter from a retired geologist has emerged, that warned of the risk a week beforehand.

A contractor for the EPA released some three million gallons of toxic mining sludge on August 5 while attempting to clean up an abandoned mine near Silverton, Colorado. The waste flowed into Cement Creek, and has since contaminated the Animas River, San Juan River, and the Colorado River in Utah.

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe in southern Colorado has declared a state of local emergency. Their 1,059-square-mile reservation was the first to be hit by the spill, a 100-mile-long stream of mining waste containing lead, copper, and arsenic. Classifying the spill as a disaster enables the release of aid and recovery funds.

“The cost and magnitude of responding to and recovery from the impact of the water contamination from the Gold King Mine Animas River Spill, caused by the EPA on August 5, 2015 is far in excess of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s available resources,” the tribe said in its declaration, quoted by Indian Country Today.

Further downstream, the Navajo Nation is fighting the EPA over the agency’s damage claims form. The tribe’s attorney general says Standard Form 95 contains “offending language,” waiving all claims to future compensation.

“Once the claim is made it will only be for the claims suffered to date and precludes future claims,” Navajo Nation president Russel Begaye said, ordering all tribal agencies to stop advising residents to use the form.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy visited Durango, Colorado earlier this week, but declined to travel to the disaster site, according to the Denver Post. Agency officials said the mine was “too far” to visit, involving a 55-mile trip, partly over unpaved roads.

“As you know, it is a significant distance away, but I did visit the river. I took a look at it myself to get a sense of the river,” McCarthy said. “And I think the good news is it seems to be restoring itself, but we have continued work to do and EPA is here.”

Originally estimated at 1 million gallons (3.785 million liters), the spill was later confirmed to have involved at least three times that amount of toxic waste. Among the metals detected in the sludge were arsenic, cadmium, copper, beryllium, iron, lead, mercury, and zinc. The recorded lead levels alone were 12,000 times higher than normal.

Five water supply systems have been affected by the spill. While the river system mostly serves farming communities, the disaster also poses a risk to the drinking water of 17,000 people living in Durango, Colorado and 45,000 residents of Farmington, New Mexico.

While the agency has maintained that the release of toxic sludge from the Gold King mine was an accident, one retired geologist speculated the EPA might have been setting the area up for a disaster in order to get more federal funding.

“Based on my 47 years of experience as a professional geologist, it appears to me that the EPA is setting your town and the area up for a possible Superfund blitzkrieg,” Dave Taylor of Farmington wrote in a letter to the editors of the Silverton Standard, published July 30. The paper confirmed the letter’s authenticity in a blog post on August 12.

The EPA’s grand experiment to plug the Red & Bonita mine might seem to work at first, Taylor wrote, but he predicted the water would find a way out and “exfiltrate uncontrollably through connected abandoned shafts, drifts, raises, fractures, and possibly from talus on the hillsides.”

Taylor further anticipated that all of the water flow would return to Cement Creek within anywhere from a week to 120 days and could even increase the contamination.
“Reading between the lines, I believe that has been EPA’s plan all along. The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting a foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant,” he wrote.

The EPA has been lobbying to designate the area as a recipient of federal Superfund financing, but met opposition from local residents, Breitbart confirmed. The Wall Street Journal identified the contractor hired to plug the Red and Bonita mines as Environmental Restoration, LLC of Fenton, Missouri, a recipient of over $380 million in EPA contracts over the past decade.

Colorado governor John Hickenlooper visited Durango on Wednesday and took a sip of water from the Animas River in a publicity stunt. An iodine tablet which he used to purify the water would have killed any bacteria and parasites, but had no effect on the heavy metal pollutants. Residents were advised not to follow the governor’s lead, though, as the water was considered unsafe for drinking even before the spill, the Durango Herald reported.

PHOTOS: Toxic spill turns river in Colorado yellow

August 15, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian photographer’s visa problem exposes British government’s double standards

MEMO | August 15, 2015

Palestinian Hamdi Abu Rahma is a gifted photographer whose work in Gaza has been highly acclaimed around the world. He is also now at the centre of a political storm after he was told that he could not travel to Britain in order to take part in the renowned Edinburgh International Festival. Scottish politicians and supporters have accused the British government of trying to damage the reputation of the festival by its “overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” to refuse Abu Rahma a visa.

The row has erupted as Prime Minister David Cameron prepares to roll out the red carpet for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The timing is particularly sensitive, as an online petition calling for Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London next month has already attracted more than half of the 100,000 needed to trigger a parliamentary debate.

Now that the decision to reject the young Palestinian’s visa application has been challenged by members of the Scottish Government, as well as festival organisers and pro-Palestinian activists, there are hopes that the UK Visa and Immigration agency will think again.

Already widely travelled to show his work at exhibitions around the globe, this is the first time that Abu Rahma has had a visa application rejected without warning. Some observers are particularly surprised since the focus of his photography is about the power of non-violent resistance in Palestine, which he has captured through his camera lens.

“The UK government refused to give me a visa today and the reason for refusal was that I didn’t show any bank statements or documentation to demonstrate my ability to support myself during my visit,” he said in a prepared statement. “Despite sending complete evidence of the sponsorship provided to fund my trip and all contact details of my sponsors, proving that all my travel and accommodation costs have been met, they still refused my application.”

Abu Rahma pointed out that he has travelled extensively in order to tell the Palestinian story through his photographs but Britain is the first country that has refused him entry. “We all know the real reason for this refusal,” he said. “Britain knows very well what my trip is about. I am not going there to claim asylum or beg in the streets. I am going there to educate the British people and pose some questions.” Such questions as: “Have you ever asked Israel why they kill and murder innocent men, women and children in Palestine? Do you know why Israel occupies Palestinian land illegally and destroys our homes, and why it allows colonial settlers to move into our homes illegally against international law?”

Expressing his “deep disappointment” at being unable to travel to Britain on this occasion, the young photographer thanked his friends across the country for their support and for being willing to host him in their homes.

Phil Chetwynd, one of the festival organisers who invited Abu Rahma said: “The Network of Photographers for Palestine raised the money through crowdfunding to finance Hamdi’s visit earlier this year.” All of his travel and subsistence expenses are covered by this, he explained. “I pledged to provide accommodation throughout the visit. Last month I tried to contact the visa office in Amman to back-up Hamdi’s application, but the process is so obscure that they didn’t seem to have a mechanism to add information to that already submitted by the applicant. It seems that the FCO has tendered out the whole process to another organisation.”

Despite the visa ban organisers have said that they will still exhibit Hamdi’s photographs and will ask a performer from another show to read out the speech that he has prepared. As news spread of the visa ban, an additional exhibition of his work may now also be shown at “Welcome to the Fringe: Palestine day at Out Of The Blue (OOTB)”. Other events organised for Hamdi to speak in Inverness, Dundee and Glasgow may still go ahead via a live link-up to his home in Gaza.

According to Sofiah MacLeod, the chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the visa rejection came as “no surprise”. She pointed out that the Cameron government is preparing to welcome the “war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu to London in September. “As the petition calling on Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes nears 55,000 signatories, the government’s visa denial to Abu Rahma will only strengthen our resolve to oppose its complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing project against the Palestinians.” MacLeod is adamant that Palestinian voices, including Abu Rahma’s, will be heard at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in “unprecedented” numbers. “We already know that the Israeli government has received our message loud and clear that it is not welcome during the festival, or at any other time.”

Scottish Parliamentarian Joan McAlpine of the SNP raised the issue with Sarah Rapson, the Director General of UK Visas and Immigration within hours of hearing about Abu Rahma’s visa being rejected. In a letter seen by MEMO, she told Rapson: “While I understand that immigration is a reserved matter, culture is not. I am the co-convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Culture. I certainly feel that this decision is damaging to culture and the world’s greatest art festival in Edinburgh.”

McAlpine called for a rethink on what appeared to be “an overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” adding: “I am particularly concerned that the decision means festival goers will miss the opportunity to hear this artist discuss his award-winning work, which of course has implications for freedom of expression.”

This is not the first time that Palestinian artistes have encountered difficulties at the hands of the UK Border Agency. Ali Abukhattab and Samah Al-Sheikh, a married couple also based in Gaza, were due to appear at the Institute for Contemporary Art in June 2013 as part of the Shubbak festival. They were to read from their own works and discuss how Palestinian writers in Gaza have responded to the ongoing Israeli siege and internal political situation.

Al-Sheikh, a short story writer and novelist, and Abukhattab, a poet and critic, are both established writers whose works have appeared in collections and anthologies. Both are also active in promoting the arts in Gaza, but that was not enough for the British government. In an increasingly familiar scenario for artists and writers seeking to visit this country, their visa applications were also rejected.

In April 2012, a tour by Palestinian Oud player Ahmad Al-Khatib and other musicians was delayed because of visa issues raised by the UK Border Agency. Discrimination by immigration officials has also hampered other Arab artists visiting the UK, including Iraqi poet Sabreen Kadhim, and even those only in transit through Britain’s airports, such as Syrian painter Tammam Azzam.

In an age when racial and religious discrimination is increasingly — and thankfully — more unacceptable, the fact that Arab artistes can still face what looks like systematic institutionalised discrimination is a huge concern. Instead of welcoming an alleged war criminal to London, perhaps David Cameron could look into this situation and start to treat all would-be visitors to Britain with fairness and justice.

August 15, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Drunken Ukrainian Troops Shoot Donbass Beachgoers… Just for Fun

Sputnik – 15.08.2015

The residents of Novgorodskoe in Donbass planned on spending a warm August day on the beach, but unfortunately fell target to Ukrainian troops, who were shooting locals for pleasure, local wire agency Novosti Donbassa reported.

“Troops attacked the security guard of the pond and broke his ribs. They were shooting the people from the opposite side of the pond with submachine guns! Beachgoers with children were running in all directions!” information agency Regnum quoted local residents as writing about the accident on the social networks.

The military command has detained three shooters, Regnum reported. They all appeared to be drunk while shooting and the main reason for opening fire was allegedly for their own pleasure.

No injuries or casualties were reported.

The authorities of Dzerzhinsk, the nearest city to Novgorodskoe settlement, along with local military command have held an urgent meeting over shooting incident. The members of the OSCE monitoring group also attended the meeting, Novosti Donbassa reported.

According to social media reports, the local residents are concerned over possible reopening of military operations in the area on the upcoming weekend. Officials recommended the citizens from Dzerzhinsk outskirts to leave their homes for the next couple of days.

This is not the first incident in Donbass, involving the Ukrainian troops. On the August, 9, a soldier, driving a truck struck and killed the boy from the village of Georgiyevka in the former Donetsk Region.

August 15, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

US refuses to free ‘near death’ Gitmo hunger striker weighing 33 kg

RT | August 15, 2015

A prisoner of US military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay may soon starve to death, as after more than eight years of force-feeding his body is said to be unable to take the nutrients he is pumped with. The DoD opposed the ailing man’s release.

Tariq Ba Odah, a Saudi resident of Yemeni descent, was captured in Pakistan and held in Guantanamo facility since 2002. In 2009 he was cleared for release by the Obama administration, but remains in US custody. In 2007 he went on a hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention without charges. After more than eight years without taking food voluntarily, he weighs less than 34 kilograms and may soon die, his lawyer says.

“Common sense dictates that Mr. Ba Odah is starving because his body is failing to properly absorb and process the liquid calories and nutrients he is being force fed. No other conclusion is viable unless one presumes the government intends to maintain him at just 56 percent of his ideal body weight while he is on hunger strike,” Omar Farah, his lawyer provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), wrote in a legal memorandum.

The CCR sought to secure Ba Odah’s transfer on humanitarian grounds through a US federal court. But the habeas corpus petition has been opposed by the Department of Justice, which late on Friday submitted a filing opposing it. The filing was kept under seal, which is “rare and unnecessary,” as CCR’s Wells Dixon told the Guardian newspaper

Ba Odah’s lawyer Farah said the rights group was “deeply disappointed by this secret filing.”

“It is a transparent attempt to hide the fact that the Obama administration’s interagency process for closing Guantánamo is an incoherent mess, and it is plainly intended to conceal the inconsistency between the administration’s stated intention to close Guantánamo and the steps taken to transfer cleared men. The administration simply wants to avoid public criticism and accountability,” he said.

An anonymous US official confirmed the assessment to the British newspaper, saying the government wants to avoid embarrassment rather than protect classified information by sealing the motion. The source added that hardliners in the Pentagon, who consider hunger striking a form of warfare, would not allow Ba Odah’s struggle for release to be unchallenged. Otherwise it would encourage other hunger strikers and make the DoD appear suffering a substantive defeat, the reasoning goes.

The US mishandles the hunger strike issue at Guantanamo bay, a problem that is far from being unique to that facility, RT was told by Scott Allen, professor of medicine at the University of California, who was part of a task force that examined force feeding procedures that are carried out at detention centers.

“The key mistake that the Department of Defense has made in its approach to hunger strikes is that it thinks of them too often collectively,” he said. “If they are concerned about the life of this individual, which is what they had stated the goal was all along, they need to focus on his case and his case alone and develop a plan that would preserve his life and his dignity.”

President Barack Obama made shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison a campaign issue during his first campaign, but failed to deliver on the promise. The latest move by his administration is to speed up transfer of roughly half of the prison’s 116 inmate population to other countries and have the rest relocated into high security prisons on US soil.

The plan was criticized by rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it fails to address the wider issue with keeping people detained for decades without charges in a denial of core western values.

August 15, 2015 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

No Thanks, Obama and McCain. Continuing Indefinite Detention Isn’t Closing Guantánamo.

By Chris Anders | ACLU | August 12, 2015

A bad idea doesn’t somehow become a good idea just because five years have gone by.  But the Obama White House and Sen. John McCain seem ready to recycle a proposal that was overwhelmingly rejected in 2010.

President Obama has renewed his commitment to closing Guantánamo before he leaves office, and McCain (R-Ariz.) said he might be able to support closure. However, there has always been a right way and a wrong way to close Guantánamo. The restrictions the Senate has passed, along with the latest proposal floated by the White House to move some detainees to the United States for indefinite detention without charge or trial, is the wrong way.

Guantánamo has never been just about the prison. Instead, Guantánamo has been about our government violating the rule of law and ducking American values. From torture and abuse during the Bush administration to indefinite detention and defective military commissions extending through the Bush and Obama administrations, Guantánamo has been a place where our government behaves like a human rights pariah instead of a human rights beacon.

The solution can never be to simply pack up both the detainees and bad policies at Guantánamo and ship them to some new prison here in the United States. No. The only meaningful solution is to close Guantánamo by ending indefinite detention without charge or trial, transferring the detainees who have been cleared for transfer,  and trying detainees for whom there is evidence of wrongdoing in our federal criminal courts in the U.S., which regularly try terrorism suspects, including high-profile ones.

But instead of doing the hard work of closing Guantánamo the right way, the Obama White House is reportedly dusting off the same plan that Congress overwhelmingly rejected in 2010. The “plan” would involve transferring overseas all cleared detainees (an excellent idea, but one that actually needs to be completed now, not when this “plan” goes into effect), but then setting up prisons in the U.S. to continue the indefinite detention of men who have been imprisoned for more than a decade without ever being charged with any crime. Other detainees would be put on trial — but some of them would be tried before the same unfair military commissions used at Guantánamo. The result would be moving Guantanamo, not closing it.

McCain has a hand in it too. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he sponsored the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow indefinite detention and military commissions to be brought to the U.S. as part of closing Guantánamo — but only if both houses of Congress approve the president’s plan. Of course, anything requiring both houses of Congress to approve almost anything from the president is a political non-starter. But this provision is still being sold as a step towards closing Guantánamo.

A particularly bizarre bit of news about the White House plan this week came in a Washington Post report that said that the White House was considering setting up a nearly empty prison in Thomson, Illinois, as a site for indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees. This exact same plan, with the exact same prison in Illinois, was rejected by a House vote of 353-69 in 2010. Then Attorney General Eric Holder later swore that the Thomson prison would never be used for that purpose.

The ACLU said back in 2009 that shipping indefinite detention north was the wrong way to close Guantánamo, and it still is the wrong way to close Guantánamo. Bad ideas don’t get better by just sitting on the shelf. It’s time to close Guantánamo the right way, by charging in federal court any detainee who can be charged and ending indefinite detention for everyone else. If a prosecutor can’t put together a case against someone who has been sitting in prison for as long as 13 years, there is no reason that person should continue to sit in prison, whether in Guantánamo or someplace else.

Let’s close it the right way.

August 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli settlers torch Bedouin tent near Ramallah

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(MaanImages/Zakariyya al-Sidda)
Ma’an – August 13, 2015

RAMALLAH – Israeli settlers torched a Bedouin tent in the area of Ein Samiya near Kafr Malik village in northern Ramallah Thursday morning, local sources told Ma’an.

A group of Israeli settlers raided the village of Ein Samiya and threw flammable material on a Bedouin tent before the residents noticed and attacked the settlers, forcing them to flee the area.

An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed the attack but could give no further details.

The fire caused substantial damages to the tent but locals were able to put the fire out without any injuries, locals said.

Israeli settlers also sprayed “price tag” near the scene and signed slogans calling for the killing of Palestinians and expelling them out of their lands.

Graffiti sprayed in red paint also read “administrative revenge” alongside a crudely drawn Star of David.

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The graffiti seemed to refer to the internment without charge — known as administrative detention — of three alleged Jewish extremists in the wake of a July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father Saad.

Locals said Israeli forces and police arrived to the area, investigated the incident, and dusted for fingerprints at the scene.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces had closed the Ein Samiya area road and prevented Palestinians from using it.

Recent weeks have seen a rise in Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

An 18-month-old Palestinian, Ali Dawabsha, was burned alive when alleged Israeli extremists firebombed their home at the end of last month in the village of Duma near Nablus.

The toddler’s father, Saad Dawabsha, succumbed to his wounds a week later, after suffering third degree burns on 80 percent of his body.

On Saturday morning, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home with firebombs and rocks in an area east of Tayba in the Ramallah district. The bombs landed outside of the house, causing no damage, locals told Ma’an.

Israeli settlers have carried out at least 120 attacks on Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the start of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

August 13, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US warns Swiss companies about Iran sanctions

Press TV – August 13, 2015

The United States has cautioned Swiss companies against dealing with Iran until the implementation of the nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday that US sanctions against Iran will remain in place until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verifies the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

His remarks came after the Swiss government announced that it’s going to lift sanctions against Iran on Thursday.

The Swiss government said it wants the decision to be seen as a sign of support for the Iran nuclear agreement reached in Vienna last month.

“This agreement opens up new political and economic prospects with Iran, including bilateral relations,” the government said in a statement.

The decision underscores Switzerland’s “support for the ongoing process to implement the nuclear agreement, and its confidence in the constructive intentions of the negotiating parties,” it said.

The sanctions had been suspended since January 2014 following an interim nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries – the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany.

Other European countries are awaiting the final approval of the conclusion of nuclear talks by Tehran and the P5+1.

The illegal sanctions on Iran were imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

August 13, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

At it Again: Law Enforcement Officials’ Anti-Encryption New York Times Op-Ed

By Jamie Williams | EFF | August 12, 2015

Yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. and law enforcement officials from Paris, London, and Madrid published an anti-encryption op-ed in the New York Times—an op-ed that amounts to nothing more than a blatant attempt to use fear mongering to further their anti-privacy, anti-security, and anti-constitutional agenda. They want a backdoor. We want security, privacy, and respect for the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that we be “secure” in our papers. After all, the Founding Fathers were big users of encryption.

The government’s use of horror stories to convince us that we should unlock our doors and give it free reign to pry inside our lives is nothing new. FBI Director James Comey is notorious for his examples of how cell-phone encryption will lead law enforcement to a “very dark place.” Yesterday’s op-ed adopts Comey’s signature tactic, focusing on the fatal shooting of a man in Illinois in June of this year and suggesting—without any evidence—that but for encryption built into both of the victim’s two phones (both found at the crime scene), police would have been able to track down the shooter. Never mind that of the two devices mentioned in the article, one of them (the Samsung Galaxy S6) isn’t actually encrypted by default.

The op-ed goes on to cite numerous other “examples,” again divorced from any actual facts, of cases in which encryption supposedly “block[ed] justice”—including 74 occasions over a nine-month period in which the Manhattan district attorney’s office encountered locked iPhones. Vance has touted this statistic before. But a spokesperson for his office told Wired last month that the office handles approximately 100,000 cases in the course of a year, meaning that officials encountered encryption in less than 0.1% of cases. And Vance has never been able to explain how even one of these 74 encrypted iPhones stood in the way of a successful prosecution.

The op-ed faults Apple and Google for attempting to offer their customers strong, user-friendly encryption. An iPhone with iOS8 automatically encrypts text messages, photos, contacts, call history, and other sensitive data though the use of a passcode. But contrary to the suggestion of the op-ed’s authors, Google has already backed off its promise to offer its users encryption by default, and Google would have been able to unlock the specific model of Samsung phone at issue.

But what’s more important than the op-ed’s shortage of facts is how out of touch it is with not only the fundamental importance of encryption and how encryption works, but also the U.S. Constitution.

The op-ed calls for an “appropriate balance between the marginal benefits of full-disk encryption and the need for local law enforcement to solve and prosecute crimes.” This single sentence demonstrates the numerous ways in which the authors are untethered from reality.

First, the benefits of encryption are in no way “marginal”—unless you view ensuring the privacy and security of innocent individuals across the globe as trivial goals. The authors here reveal their failure to appreciate the need for encryption to protect against not only security breaches, but also criminals (the folks they are supposed to be protecting us from) and of course pervasive and unconstitutional government surveillance.

Second, when the authors say they want an “appropriate balance,” what they are really asking for is a backdoor—or golden key—to allow government officials to decrypt any encrypted messages. As The Intercept explained in an article outlining the many things wrong with the op-ed, Vance and his counterparts in Paris, London, and Madrid are “demand[ing]—in the name of the ‘safety of our communities’—a magical, mathematically impossible scenario in which communications are safeguarded from everyone except law enforcement.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: It is technologically impossible to give the government an encryption backdoor without weakening everyone’s security. Computer scientists and cybersecurity experts agree, and have been telling the government as much for nearly two decades. And earlier this year, one Congressman with a technical background called encryption backdoors “technologically stupid.” Everyone who understands how encryption works agrees.

Third, law enforcement isn’t currently and won’t in the future “go dark” as a result of encryption. The government voiced the same concerns over encryption stifling criminal investigations during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s—i.e., Crypto Wars, Part I—which saw efforts by the government to prevent the development and distribution of strong consumer encryption technologies. (Protecting your ability to use strong encryption was one of EFF’s very first victories.) Such concerns have proven to be unfounded in the past. Just a few weeks ago, former NSA director Mike McConnell, former Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff, and former deputy defense secretary William Lynn—in a Washington Post op-ed in support of ubiquitous encryption—remarked that despite losing Part I of the Crypto Wars,

[T]he sky did not fall, and we did not go dark and deaf. Law enforcement and intelligence officials simply had to face a new future. As witnesses to that new future, we can attest that our security agencies were able to protect national security interests to an even greater extent in the ’90s and into the new century.

The same is true today. And as the former national security officials recognize, “the greater public good is a secure communications infrastructure protected by ubiquitous encryption at the device, server and enterprise level without building in means for government monitoring.”

At its core, yesterday’s op-ed demonstrates a fundamentally different vision for the future than the one we have here at EFF. Our vision is for a world where the privacy of communications are protected and where we can use the best tools possible to protect it. The vision of Vance, Comey, and others in the anti-encryption camp is for a world where no one is secure and where everyone is vulnerable. Their vision is not consistent with reality. And we hope the public is not swayed by their fear tactics.

August 13, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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