Israel has killed 104 Palestinian prisoners in last two decades
MEMO | June 28, 2014
Prisoner support and human rights organisation, Addameer, has said that the Israeli occupation has killed 104 Palestinian prisoners since 1991, when it joined the UN convention against torture.
The organisation said that 54 of them died after being arrested, 27 died because of poor medical treatment and 23 were tortured to death. The last was Arafat Jaradat, who died in February 2013 under torture after a week of his arrest.
Addameer also said that it documented eight extra judicial killings against Palestinians while Israeli occupation forces were combing Palestinian villages and refugee camps in 2013. It also said that five were killed in the on-going campaign, which started on 12 June to find three missing settlers.
In addition, it said that the prisoners are exposed to different kinds of physical and psychological torture, including sexual violence, solitary confinement, ban of sleeping and food for long periods and preventing them meeting with lawyers for 60 days.
Israeli occupation authorities, Addameer said, are violating the fourth Geneva Convention as they are practicing “collective vengeful” punishment against Palestinian civilians under the pretext of searching for the three missing settlers.
Regarding violations of the right for prisoners to go on hunger strike, the organisation said that the Israeli ratification of the force-feeding bill violates international law and international humanitarian law. It also said that Israeli administrative detention is a violation of article 78 of the Geneva Convention.
The organisation said that Israel had ignored the demands to release 130 administrative prisoners, who went on hunger strike for 63 consecutive days. “It has even increased the numbers to 340 as it is carrying out a search mission for the settlers,” the organisation said.
“This is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and mounts to a war crime and war against humanity as it is used widely and systematically,” it said. “It is a kind of torture.”
Language, like land, under assault in Palestine
By Jamal Sweid | Al-Akhbar | June 27, 2014
Haifa – “Land, akin to language, is inherited,” Mahmoud Darwish once said. In the occupied territories, however, language is pillaged, appropriated, violated, and surrounded by barbed wire, just like the land.
Under the policy of increasingly exploiting interconnected events to cover up dangerous plans, the Israeli Ministry of Education recently struck a blow to Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The ministry announced a decision to stop teaching Arabic grammar in preparatory and secondary schools. The alternative was what the ministry called “functional principles in teaching grammar,” which it claimed will allow students to comprehend the functions of grammar, based on understanding a text.
The decision provoked widespread concern and calls for its rejection. However, the ministry stuck to its position and issued a statement explaining its decision. It maintained that it aimed at “bridging the gap between the language and its speakers in the era of technology and outburst of information.”
Palestinians of all segments, including teachers and parents, expressed rejection of the decision to Al-Akhbar as “a disguised attempt to tear away students from their language, and thus their belonging and cause.” They called for the widest protests possible to force the ministry to repeal the decision, which has been approved by the authorities.
The decision comes as students and graduates in occupied Palestine are facing a clear weakness in grammar and conjugation. According to experts, this deficiency is higher than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It requires enhancing the grammar curriculum to help the students, instead of its removal and replacement under the guise of “advancement and the technological gap.” Several experts told Al-Akhbar that the technological gap claimed by Israel will not be solved by cancelling the curriculum, but by its modernization.
“In this situation, we need to look for ways to strengthen student bonds to their language and its rules,” explained Murad Ali, an Arabic teacher from Acre. “Students are already facing difficulties in grammar, although it is taught in the curriculum. What will be the case when it gets cancelled?” In a few years, high school graduates in the 1948 territories will be unable to formulate a proper sentence.
This prediction, however, had been a reality for years, according to other experts. Their evidence is based on the fact that many graduates lack the most basic command of Arabic and commit several errors, which is inappropriate at their educational level.
Ibrahim Shehade, a retired school principal from Acre, said that students welcomed the ministry’s decision. “For them, Arabic grammar is one of the most difficult subjects of the language curriculum. But they do not understand the future risks,” he explained to Al-Akhbar. “Grades in literature and expression subjects are relatively high, compared to grammar. Some students believe that by removing grammar, they will improve their grade average.”
Samer Khoury, from Shafa Amr, agreed, saying “grammar is the graveyard of grades,” explaining that he received a low score in Arabic because of grammar.
Yet, the students are not completely comfortable with the decision. Some believe that it targets their language and bonds. Despite the difficulty of learning grammar and conjugation, they are willing to find alternatives to improve their proficiency, “without touching our language.”
In the Israeli Knesset, Arab politicians and MPs are yet to take up the question because of the weight of other issues. However, Arab Knesset member from the Democratic Front and the Communist Party, Mohammed Baraka, spoke about the decision in the press. After mentioning the questions of land, housing, and health, he said he will be focusing more on the issue of grammar.
The more direct position was taken by Knesset member from the United Arab List, Masoud Ghanayem, who called for a hearing on the issue. He received a reply from the minister of education stating that “the decision does not mean abandoning the teaching of Arabic grammar, but its enhancement.”
“The new curriculum was created by Arab supervisors and academics, in cooperation with the Arabic Language Academy in Haifa,” the minister added. His statement shed light on a sensitive issue. Most teachers who spoke to Al-Akhbar maintained that it was false. But many refused to be named, “out of fear of the supervisors and higher authorities.”
The boldest academic objection was made by Dr. Mohammed Khalil, a well-known Palestinian academic and one of the first people to warn about the decision. “The issue clearly aims to get schools to dispense of Arabic grammar books altogether, imposing a curriculum where grammar is taught at the spur of the moment,” he exclaimed.
Khalil was not surprised about the “unjust decision of the [Israeli] authorities.” However, he was dismayed by “the presence of Arab Palestinians in the committee, which agreed on the new curriculum.” Several teachers who spoke to Al-Akhbar also mentioned the issue.
Ultimately, the decision will not be limited to the schools, in the midst of an Israeli campaign to replace the names of Palestinian landmarks with ones in Hebrew. In opposition, Palestinians are actively campaigning to promote the Arabic names and preserving them.
“But what kind of impact will this have if our sons and daughters are ignorant of the principles of their language and its lifeline?” asked Marwan Barieh, a university student studying the Arabic language. “Undermining a fundamental pillar of any language will lead to its total collapse. This applies to grammar and its relationship with the Arabic language in general.”
Despite the angry reactions to the decision, language is being pillaged just like [Palestinian] land. The process reproduces itself in the same manner: statements and more statements are issued, then comes the implementation of the appropriation and each party reverts to its original position. They might declare a position to outmaneuver the others, but the loss of land and language is unlike any other loss.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Happy Custer Massacre Day!
By James Bovard | CounterPunch | June 26, 2014
On this day in 1876, Gen. George Custer led his 7th Cavalry regiment to their demise in Montana. The Battle of Little Big Horn was one of the biggest defeats suffered by the U.S. Army in the war against the Indians. It is only in recent years that proper attention has been paid to the role of atrocities by Custer and other military leaders in stirring up the wrath of oppressed Indians.
I visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument 45 years ago during a cross-country trip as a 12-year-old boy to a Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. Like most Scouts, I subscribed to the Patriotic Version of American History. After visiting the battlefield, I scribbled (or copied) a note that the Seventh Cavarly’s “heroic defense made the nation yearn for details that no white man lived to tell.” Many years later, I learned that Custer’s men were wiped out in part because the Army Quartermaster refused to permit them to carry repeating rifles – which supposedly wasted ammo. The Indians didn’t have a quartermaster, so they had repeating rifles, and the rest is history.
Custer also played a leading role in the 1864 desolation of the Shenandoah Valley, where I was raised a century later. After failing to decisively vanquish southern armies in the battlefield, Lincoln and his generals decided to win the war by brutalizing civilians. In August 1864, Gen. U.S. Grant ordered the destruction of all the barns, crops, and livestock in the Shenandoah Valley. The etching above shows his troops after torching much of the town of Mt. Jackson, Virginia. The population of Warren County, my home county, fell by 20% during the 1860s. Did anyone who refused to submit to Washington automatically forfeit his right to live? The desolation from the war and the systemic looting in its aftermath (ironically labeled “Reconstruction”) helped keep the South economically prostrate for generations.
During the 1864 campaign, Custer was under the command of Gen. Phil Sheridan. Sheridan later became notorious for slaughtering Indians as a top commander out west. He is best known for telling an Indian chief in 1869: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” He apparently felt the same way about Southerners – or at least “secessionists” and their wives and children.
Sheridan’s campaign to starve Shenandoah Valley residents into submission evoked fierce opposition from the guerillas led by Col. John S. Mosby, the “Grey Ghost of the Confederacy.” Late in the war, when Confederate armies were being trounced or pinned down everywhere, a few hundred Mosby partisans tied up ten thousand Yankees. Mosby suffered none of the Sir Walter Scott-style sentimentality that debilitated many Southern commanders. Instead of glimmering sabers, his men carried a pair of .44 caliber revolvers. There was so much fear of Mosby that the planks on the bridge across the Potomac were removed each night, for fear that he would raid the capital. Reading about him as a boy, I was impressed how a few well-placed attacks could throw the entire government into a panic. (Herman Melville captured the dread that northern troops had of Mosby in his epic poem, A Scout to Aldie.)
Mosby’s men were vastly outnumbered but they fought valiantly to try to stop Sheridan’s torching of the valley. Sheridan responded by labeling Mosby’s men war criminals and announcing that they would be executed if captured. The North stretched the definition of illegal enemy combatant at the same time it redefined its own war crimes out of existence. Six of Mosby’s men were hung in Front Royal, Virginia in September 1864.
In the weeks after the hanging of his men, Mosby’s men captured 700 northern troops. In early November, his troops hanged several captured Yankees in retaliation. A sign was attached to one of the corpses: “These men have been hung in retaliation for an equal number of Colonel Mosby’s men, hung by order of General Custer at Front Royal. Measure for measure.” Recognizing the perils to his own troops, Sheridan ceased executing captured Mosby’s guerillas.
Unfortunately, most of the war crimes of the Civil War have been forgotten in the rush to sanctify a pointless vast loss of lives. Recasting the war as a triumph of good over evil was an easy way to make atrocities vanish. And failing to recognize the true nature of that war lowered Americans’ resistance to politicians commencing new wars that promised to vanquish evil once and for all.
James Bovard, a policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation, is the author of author of Public Policy Hooligan,Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books. More info at www.jimbovard.com; on Twitter @jimbovard
Enough Secret Law: Newly Released DOJ Drone Killing Justification Memo… Points To Another Secret Drone Memo
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | June 25, 2014
We already reported on the finally released DOJ legal drone memo that supposedly “justifies” the extrajudicial killing of Americans via drones. However, as we noted, much of it was actually redacted, leaving many of the details and reasons totally secret. Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who helped get this heavily redacted memo released in the first place has written up an analysis which notes how ridiculous the redactions are and the fact that the memo actually points to another secret memo that reveals more details:
In one instance, the long sought-after drone memo references another legal memo that concluded that al-Awlaki’s American citizenship did not “preclude the contemplated lethal action.” From this reference, we can deduce that the OLC authored a separate drone memo assessing – and dispensing with – the proposition that an American citizen had the right not to be deprived of his life without some form of judicial process. But that earlier memo, treated by the executive branch as binding law, is still secret.
This kind of thing is all too common, but tremendously problematic. For folks actually trying to understand what the law actually is the fact that people have to play this bizarre game of 20 questions, seeking secret laws and interpretations, only to get breadcrumbs pointing to other secret interpretations of the law is just ridiculous. We’ve complained in the past about the dangers of a secret law, but just the fact that the American public needs to play this stupid game, and the DOJ appears to have broken up the secret interpretations of the law into different sections, making it that much harder to track it all down, raises serious questions about what sort of government we have, and how Americans can be expected to respect, let alone obey, the law when we can’t even be told what it is.
Israeli forces invade Madama
International Solidarity Movement | June 25, 2014
Madama, Occupied Palestine – At 12:30 a.m. on June 22, 2014, approximately 50 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Madama.
Madama, which is located 10 km southwest of Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, has approximately 2000 residents. The soldiers raided close to 100 homes and took 80 men to the local elementary school, where they held them for several hours. The men were blindfolded, and their arms were tied behind their backs with handcuffs.
The soldiers released all of the men at 5 a.m.
At 1:00 a.m., the soldiers invaded the house of Nizar Abdullah Sadaq Ziyaada in Madama. They asked Ziyaada about the whereabouts of his money and proceeded to ransack the house. They drilled holes into the walls and threatened to destroy his home. They found a total of roughly 200,000 shekels underneath a cupboard and in various hiding places throughout the house. Finally, the soldiers took all of the money, two laptops, and several mobile phones before leaving.
The reasons for the theft of Ziyaada’s money are unclear.
Ziyaada had worked in Israel until the year 2000 and kept all of his earnings from that time in his house in Madama. It is likely that the Israelis knew about this money, as they asked him about it as soon as they entered his house.
Hany Ziyaada’s house was invaded by 15 Israeli soldiers the same night at 1 a.m. They broke down the door, but Hany asked them to wait a few minutes, so that the women of the house could get dressed. The soldiers swore at him, and he responded in kind. They proceeded to kick him in the back and stomach for several minutes and dragged him to their jeep, where they continued to beat him. They blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to the school, where they held him by the throat, forced his arms back and drove their knees into his back. At 4 a.m. they allowed him to go home.
“Why do they not respect human rights?,” Hany asked an ISM activist. “I’m a policeman, and I know about human rights. Why don’t they?”
Communities Protest That UK’s Equatorial Palm Oil Are Poised to Seize Land in Liberia
Forest Peoples Programme | June 24, 2014
The UK-listed company, Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO), which is threatening to seize land owned by Liberians in defiance of commitments by Liberia’s President, will today receive a visit from affected communities. Members of the Jogbahn Clan, together with representatives from Liberian and international NGOs, will deliver a petition with over 90,000 signatures, reminding EPO that it does not have community consent to expand onto their lands, and that doing so could escalate violence. [1] EPO’s past operations in Liberia have triggered allegations of conflict and human rights abuses. The company has maintained that any expansion is legal. [2]
“EPO’s recent expansion efforts are a brazen example of a company defying international law, government orders and the rights of communities,” said Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor, campaigner at the Sustainable Development Institute. “EPO has no claim to this land, it is owned by the communities who live on it.” [3]
Residents from the Jogbahn Clan in Liberia’s Grand Bassa County say that EPO has begun demarcating blocks of land in preparation for clearing, and have accused its security officers of threatening community members. These actions defy the March commitment by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that EPO could not expand onto the lands of the Joghban Clan without their permission. [4] The right of Liberian communities such as the Joghban Clan to give or withhold consent to projects that could have an impact on their land and resources is also provided under international human rights law, as well as the Principles and Criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) of which EPO is a member. [5] The Joghban people have refused to give such consent.
EPO has a very poor track record in Grand Bassa County. In September of last year, officers from the EPO security team and the Liberian Police reportedly worked together to assault and beat Joghban community members who were peacefully protesting the company’s operations. Those arrested were soon released after it was determined by the government’s Grand Bassa attorney that there was no justification for continued detention. No government investigation report regarding this incident has been made public. [6]
EPO denied any involvement in the violence, saying that it had been “falsely accused”, and does not “condone or encourage such described behaviour,” and “never instructed or directed any of its staff or PSU officers to intimidate Jogbahn community members in September or at any time.” However, EPO admitted to Global Witness that it provided logistical support to the Liberian police who are accused of intimidating villagers on the plantation. The company further stated that it “respect[s] the Liberian community rights and land, and ha[s] followed the law and procedures laid out”, had taken “strict steps” to ensure that it only plants oil palm on its concession land and legally-acquired community land, and is “a responsible company and committed to sustainable oil palm development.” [7]
EPO’s concessions in Liberia total 8,900 km2 of land, which the company believes gives it the legal right to use the land to develop a palm oil concession. The company is listed on the London-based AIM stock market, and is now majority owned by Malaysian palm oil giant Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd (KLK). Major brands including Kellogg’s, Kraft, Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and General Mills have been reported as direct or indirect consumers of KLK palm oil. [8]
“We demand that EPO stops inciting conflict by preparing to clear our land,” commented Jogbahn Elder Joseph Chio Johnson, “EPO must stop threatening our people and accept that our no means no.”
Notes
- Sustainable Development Institute and Friends of the Earth International, Tell Equatorial Palm Oil NO means NO!, Rainforest Rescue, Wir stoppen die Walddiebe!, Friends of the Earth US, Stop an abusive palm oil company from grabbing Liberian land, Milieudefensie, Laat Equatorial Palm Oil weten dat NEE echt NEE betekent!
- Equatorial Palm Oil, Letter to Global Witness, 17 December 2013. EPO’s full response can be found on Global Witness’ website at: www.globalwitness.org.
- Customary land rights are protected under a range of international human rights laws applicable to Liberia, including the African Charter on Human & Peoples’ Rights (1981), the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (1966), the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1965), as well as principles of customary international law expressed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007).
- Sustainable Development Institute, SDI welcomes President Sirleaf’s commitment to protecting Joghban clan’s land from further encroachment by British palm oil company Equatorial Palm Oil, 6 March 2014; Global Witness,NGOs welcome Liberian President’s commitment to stop British palm oil company “taking” community land, 10 March 2014.
- Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a key principle of Liberia’s Community Rights Law with respect to Forest Lands (2009), which provides communities with a right to give or withhold their consent to activities planned on community land or which may impact on that land and the community. Article 7 of the Liberian Constitution provides for the maximum feasible participation by citizens of Liberia, in the management of Liberia’s natural resources. FPIC is also an established legal principle supported by numerous regional and international legal instruments to which Liberia is legally bound, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). The decision of the African Commission on Human & Peoples’ Rights in the case of Endorois Welfare Council v. Kenya (276/2003) e.g. at para 209, including with regard to right to property (Art. 14 ACHPR), as well we the right to development (Art. 22 ACHPR). See also ACHPR Resolution 224 on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Natural Resources Governance, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well as numerous other provisions and jurisprudence elaborated under the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
- Sustainable Development Institute, SDI calls on Equatorial Palm Oil to immediately cease land survey in Grand Bassa District #4, 25 September 2013. Sustainable Development Institute, Global Witness, FoE EWNI, FERN, Save My Future Foundation, UK’s Equatorial Palm Oil accused of human rights abuses in Liberia, 20 December 2013.
- Equatorial Palm Oil, Letter to Global Witness, 17 December 2013. EPO’s full response can be found on Global Witness’ website at: www.globalwitness.org. Meeting between Global Witness and EPO in London on 14 November, 2013. EPO, “Letter to Global Witness,” 17 December 2013.
- Rainforest Action Network, Conflict Palm Oil in Practice: Exposing KLK’s role in rainforest destruction, land grabbing and child labour, 2 April 2014.
Court Rules No Fly List Process Is Unconstitutional and Must Be Reformed
Court Orders Government to Give Plaintiffs in ACLU Lawsuit a Chance to Clear Their Names
ACLU | June 24, 2014
PORTLAND, Ore. – In a landmark ruling, a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional the government’s procedures for people on the No Fly List to challenge their inclusion. The decision came in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit brought on behalf of 13 Americans who found themselves on the list without any notice, reasons, or meaningful way to get off it.
The judge ordered the government to create a new process that remedies these shortcomings, calling the current process “wholly ineffective” and a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. The ruling also granted a key request in the lawsuit, ordering the government to tell the ACLU’s clients why they are on the No Fly List and give them the opportunity to challenge their inclusion on the list before the judge.
“For years, in the name of national security the government has argued for blanket secrecy and judicial deference to its profoundly unfair No Fly List procedures, and those arguments have now been resoundingly rejected by the court,” said ACLU National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi, one of the attorneys who argued the case.
“Our clients will finally get the due process to which they are entitled under the Constitution. This excellent decision also benefits other people wrongly stuck on the No Fly List, with the promise of a way out from a Kafkaesque bureaucracy causing them no end of grief and hardship. We hope this serves as a wake-up call for the government to fix its broken watchlist system, which has swept up so many innocent people.”
According to media reports, there are more than 20,000 people on the No Fly List. Their only recourse is to file a request with the Department of Homeland Security’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (DHS TRIP), after which DHS responds with a letter that does not explain why they were denied boarding. The letter does not confirm or deny whether their names remain on the list, and does not indicate whether they can fly.
The ruling from the U.S. District Court in Oregon found, “[W]ithout proper notice and an opportunity to be heard, an individual could be doomed to indefinite placement on the No-Fly List. … [T]he absence of any meaningful procedures to afford Plaintiffs the opportunity to contest their placement on the No-Fly List violates Plaintiffs’ rights to procedural due process.”
One of the plaintiffs in the case is Sheikh Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, who is the imam of Portland’s largest Mosque.
“Finally I will be able to challenge whatever incorrect information the government has been using to stigmatize me and keep me from flying,” Imam Kariye said. “I have been prevented by the government from traveling to visit my family members and fulfill religious obligations for years, and it has had a devastating impact on all of us. After all this time, I look forward to a fair process that allows me to clear my name in court.”
The national ACLU, along with its affiliates in Oregon, Southern California, Northern California, and New Mexico, filed the lawsuit in June 2010 on behalf of 13 U.S. citizens, including four military veterans. In July 2012, the 9th Circuit Appeals Court reversed the district court’s dismissal of the case on jurisdictional grounds, allowing the district court to consider the case on its merits. In August 2013, the court found that constitutional rights are at stake when the government places Americans on the list.
Today’s ruling is at:
aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/no_fly_list_ruling__-_latif_v._holder_-_6-24-14.pdf
More information on the case and plaintiffs is at:
aclu.org/national-security/latif-et-al-v-holder-et-al-aclu-challenges-government-no-fly-list
A recent ACLU report on the problems with the government’s overall watchlist system is at:
aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/watchlist_briefing_paper_v3.pdf
FOIA Request On Effectiveness Of License Plate Readers Greeted With A Blank Stare By Virginia Police Department
By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | June 23, 2014
Law enforcement agencies are generally pretty happy with their automatic license plate readers. It allows them to harvest millions of plate/location records without having to exit their vehicles, much less slow them down. It also allows them to spring from their cruisers with guns out and force non-car thieves into submissive positions while they perform the sort of due diligence that should have been completed long before the cops/guns exited their respective holders.
What they don’t seem to like is anyone asking questions about the massive databases they’re compiling or whether they’ve bothered to institute any minimization/privacy policies. When questioned, they usually talk about what a great tool it is for crime-fighting, even if said tool contains millions of useless photos entirely unrelated to criminal activity. Some even claim that every single photo in the database is integral to ongoing investigations and therefore cannot be subjected to minimization procedures, much less the pesky FOIA requests of surveilled citizens.
And sometimes, these agencies are so sure they like the tech that they can’t even be bothered to determine whether it’s actually doing anything to assist in the business of law enforcement. Stephen Gutowski at the Capitol City Project recently asked the Fairfax County, VA police about the effectiveness of its license plate photo database and got this ‘FILE NOT FOUND’ statement in response.
This letter is in response to your FOIA request in which you requested the number of ALPR records Fairfax County currently has on file. This number is constantly fluctuating, but as of 05/20/2014 at 1003 hours there were 2,731,429 reads in the system.
You further requested any available metric the county uses to determine the system’s effectiveness. It was found that the Fairfax County Police Department does not possess any such responsive materials based on the information you requested.
The assumption here is that the system works. The Fairfax County PD occasionally posts arrests linked to ALPR database hits and… well, beyond that, the PD draws a blank. Presumably a handful of arrests justifies a multi-million image-and-location photo database. But this lack of self-assessment shouldn’t be acceptable, not for an agency that has abused its technology in the past.
It came to light late last year that the Fairfax PD trolled political rallies to grab more plate data, racking up nearly 70,000 photos in five days. This abuse prompted a local lawmaker to push legislation aimed at severely limiting, if not completely eradicating, ALPR readers in his district. Not a bad idea, as far it goes.
Virginia law enforcement agencies aren’t going to be happy with this move and they’ll be able to mobilize a pretty powerful opposition. But these are the same entities that tried to bury info on plate readers back in 2009, simply because they felt the public might try to get the system shut down if they knew what was going on. But the lack of controls or any gauge of the system’s effectiveness shouldn’t be allowed to escape unnoticed, because the failure to monitor error rates and hits can result in catastrophic consequences for citizens whose plates trigger false hits — something this system does at twice the rate of recoveries.
The license plate readers demonstrated a high error rate. Four ALPR vehicles used in Fairfax County over the course of five nights in February 2009 scanned 69,281 vehicles. The camera database produced twelve bogus hits and recovered four stolen vehicles, for a recovery rate of 0.6 percent and an error rate of 1.7 percent.
The technology can be used responsibly, but law enforcement agencies with tough minimization policies are almost nonexistent. And as we’ve seen twice in the last month alone, officers relying on faulty data aren’t making an effort to verify database hits before attempting to effect arrests. Someone’s going to be hurt or killed because of bad data, and hardly anyone in law enforcement seems to be concerned. If they did, strict policies on verification and disposal of non-hit data would be the rule, rather than the exception.
Battlefield USA: American police ‘excessively militarized’ – ACLU study
RT | June 24, 2014
Inheriting both the weapons and the mindset of the US military, police are becoming militarized and ‘hyper aggressive’ in their approach to maintaining security on the streets of America. A new study calls on police not to treat people as ‘wartime enemies’.
The tragic story of Jose Guerena, 26, who served as a Marine in the Iraq War, only to be killed by ‘friendly fire’ at his home in Tucson, Arizona, is becoming a disturbingly familiar one across the country.
On the morning of May 5, 2011, Guerena’s wife alerted him when she heard strange sounds and the silhouette of a man standing outside their home. Guerena got his wife and child into a closet, grabbed his rifle, and went to investigate. This proved to be a deadly mistake. A SWAT team opened fire on Guerena, who died on his kitchen floor with multiple wounds and without medical attention.
As it later emerged, the SWAT unit raided a number of residences in the neighborhood, turning up nothing more than a small bag of marijuana. No drugs were found in the Guerenas’ home.
Created in the late 1960s as “quasi-militaristic” units designed to handle emergency situations such as riots, hostage scenarios, and active shooter situations, the number of SWAT squads have since surged, and are “used with greater frequency and, increasingly, for purposes for which they were not originally intended—overwhelmingly to serve search warrants in drug investigations,” according to an ACLU report, entitled ‘War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.’
The report examines 818 SWAT operations from July 2010 to last October, which were conducted by more than 20 law enforcement agencies in 11 states.
Today, paramilitary squads are better equipped to fight terrorists in foreign lands [occupations] than serve and protect US civilians at home, and are becoming a dark chapter to America’s newfound capacity for “needless violence” and treating its citizens like “wartime enemies,” it said.
The 98-page document details the militarization of state and local law enforcement agencies, courtesy of expensive federal programs, which are dispensing “weapons and tactics of war, with almost no public discussion or oversight.” Although explicitly aimed at fighting drugs, the strategy is backfiring, sowing fear and discord among citizens, many of whom are starting to fear police as much as criminals.
As the United States winds down its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, local police forces are getting the used ‘hand-me-downs’ from the US military. This makes some American communities resemble the latest occupied zones with police dressed in combat fatigues and driving MRAPs and carrying AR-15s down Main Street.
“Using these federal funds, state and local law enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs… But these arsenals are by no means free of cost for communities. Instead, the use of hyper aggressive tools and tactics results in tragedy for civilians and police officers, escalates the risk of needless violence, destroys property, and undermines individual liberties,” according to the report.
One bit of curious hardware being distributed to local police forces from the government’s military closet is the MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle, which gives troops protection from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Using media sources, ACLU put the number of towns that now possess the armored carriers at around 500. Among the lucky recipients, Dallas, Texas, has one, as does Salinas, California and even the Utah Highway Patrol.
The report noted that even the Ohio State University Police own one of the MRAPs in order to give a sense of “presence” on big football game days.
The results of the report revealed a worrying trend: “If the federal government gives the police a huge cache of military-style weaponry, they are highly likely to use it, even if they do not really need to.”
Case in point: Gwinnett County, Georgia, which received at least 57 semi-automatic rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s. One-third of the county’s SWAT deployments dealt with drug investigations; in half of them, the SWAT team broke down the door to get inside, “and there was no record in any of the reports that weapons were found.”
Other examples were provided in Concord, Keene, and Manchester, quaint New Hampshire towns in close proximity to each other, yet each took advantage of DHS grants to buy the military-grade armored BearCat (the amount of grants received by these agencies ranged from $215,000 to $286,000). Justifications for the need to acquire such vehicles pointed to weapons of mass destruction and the threat of terrorism.
The Keene police department, for example, cites in its application (which trumps Ohio State University’s need for armored vehicles to provide “presence” at big football games), the annual pumpkin festival as a potential terrorism target that requires the assistance of an APC.
Military-style mentality invades police
Another leftover from America’s military adventures abroad is the peculiar military mindset that allows US personnel to survive in hostile lands. Equally unsettling as spotting armored vehicles winding through the tree-lined streets of otherwise quiet American neighborhoods is the spectacle of local police officers receiving military-style combat training.
The US Department of Justice described the boot-camp conditions being used to train new police recruits.
According to a Bureau of Justice Report, “the majority of police recruits receive their training in academies with a stress-based military orientation. This begs the question: is this military model—designed to prepare young recruits for combat—the appropriate mechanism for teaching our police trainees how to garner community trust and partner with citizens to solve crime and public order problems?”
As a result, a so-called “warrior” mentality inside local police forces is “pervasive and extends well beyond hostage situations and school shootings, seeping into officers’ everyday interactions with their communities,” the report said.
The report describes a PowerPoint presentation that was delivered to Cary, North Carolina, SWAT team members entitled “Warrior Mindset/Chemical Munitions” for all Emergency Response Team personnel.
The National Tactical Officers Association (according to its website, the NTOA “strives to provide our members with the tools they need to protect an increasingly dangerous society”) urges trainees to “Steel Your Battlemind” and defines “battlemind” as “a warrior’s inner strength to face fear and adversity during combat with courage. It is the will to persevere and win. It is resilience.”
The question, however, is whether such an approach to policing is conducive to creating peace on the streets of America? An escalation of police operations going awry are growing cause for concern among civil rights groups.
In early June, for example, a toddler was severely burned and left unable to breathe on his own when a Georgia SWAT team tossed a flashbang grenade in his crib during a drug raid – over a single meth sale of $50. Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, a 19-month-old, was asleep in his portable crib in the same room as his parents and three older sisters, when police opened the door to the converted garage and threw the stun grenade in.
In the ACLU’s study, SWAT units forced entry into a person’s home using a battering ram or other breaching device in 65 percent of drug searches.
As the report emphasizes, the training documents do not suggest that SWAT teams “should constrain their soldier-like tactics to terrorism situations.” Moreover, the majority of SWAT raids examined for the report “took place in the context of serving search warrants at people’s homes—not in response to school shootings or bombings.”
The survey discovered that 62 percent of SWAT missions were for drug searches. Some 79 percent involved raids on private homes, and a similar proportion were carried out with warrants authorizing searches. However, just 7 percent of the incidents fell into those categories for which SWAT was originally designed to handle, such as hostage situations or shootings.
It is this type of military mindset, compounded with excessive firepower, which is turning many American communities into veritable tinderboxes, which only requires the slightest provocation to spiral into senseless violence and death.
The survey, which provided a small picture of the overall trend, reported seven cases where civilians died in connection with the deployment of SWAT units, two of which appeared to be suicides. Another 46 individuals were injured, often as the result of physical force by officers.
Background: ‘It’s a war zone in the US’ – Interview with Indiana sheriff
Update: ACLU sues Mass. SWAT agency for refusing to release records
So That’s Why They Kept the Drone Kill Memo Secret
By David Swanson | War is a Crime | June 23,2014
Now that the U.S. government has released parts of its We-Can-Kill-People-With-Drones memo, it’s hard to miss why it was kept secret until now.
Liberal professors and human rights groups and the United Nations were claiming an inability to know whether drone murders were legal or not because they hadn’t seen the memo that the White House said legalized them. Some may continue to claim that the redactions in the memo make judgment impossible.
I expect most, however, will now be willing to drop the pretense that ANY memo could possibly legalize murder.
Oh, and yall can stop telling me not to use the impolite term “murder” to describe the, you know, murders — since “murder” is precisely the term used by the no-longer secret memo.
The memo considers a section of the U.S. code dealing with the murder of a U.S. citizen by another U.S. citizen abroad, drawing on another section that defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.”
David Barron, the memo’s author, needed a loophole to make murder-by-missile a lawful killing rather than an unlawful killing, so he pulls out the “public authority justification” under which the government gets to use force to enforce a law. It’s a novel twist, though, for the government to get to use force to violate the law, claiming the violation is legal on the Nixonian basis that it is the government doing it.
Alternatively, Barron suggests, a government gets to use force if doing so is part of a war. This, of course, ignores the U.N. Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact and the illegality of wars, as well as the novelty of claiming that a war exists everywhere on earth forever and ever. (None of Barron’s arguments justify governmental murder on U.S. soil any less than off U.S. soil.)
In essence, Barron seems to argue, the people who wrote the laws were thinking about private citizens and terrorists, not the government (which, somehow, cannot be a terrorist), and therefore it’s OK for the government to violate the laws.
Then there’s the problem of Congressional authorization of war, or lack thereof, which Barron gets around by pretending that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was as broad as the White House pretends rather than worded to allow targeting only those responsible for the 911 attacks.
Then there are the facts of the matter in the case of Anwar al Awlaki, who was targeted for murder prior in time to the actions that President Obama has claimed justified that targeting.
Then there are the facts in the other cases of U.S. killings of U.S. citizens, which aren’t even redacted, as they’re never considered.
Then there are the vastly more numerous killings of non-U.S. citizens, which the memo does not even attempt to excuse.
In the end, the memo admits that calling something a war isn’t good enough; the targeted victim has to have been an imminent threat to the United States. But who gets to decide whether he or she was that? Why, whoever does the killing of course. And what happens if nobody ever even makes an unsupported assertion to that effect? Nothing, of course.
This is not the rule of law. This is savage brute force in minimal disguise. I don’t want to see any more of these memos. I want to see the video footage of the drone murders on a television. I want to see law professors and revolving-door State Department / human rights group hacks argue that dead children fall under the public authority justification.
Five Takeaways from the Newly Released Drone Memo
By Brett Max Kaufman – ACLU – 06/23/2014
This morning, a federal appeals court released a government memorandum, dated July 16, 2010, authorizing both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen, in Yemen.
The publication of the Office of Legal Counsel memo comes, as the court noted, after a lengthy delay. The ACLU (along with the New York Times) has been fighting for this memo since we first asked for it in a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in October 2011.
Today’s release by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is an important victory for transparency. But while the memo advances the public record in significant ways, it still does not answer many key questions about the government’s claimed authority to kill U.S. citizens outside of active battlefields. Here are several important takeaways from today’s release.
- Rather than more fully explain the government’s theory of “imminence,” the newly released memo fails to address it at all.
The previously disclosed “White Paper” on the targeted killing of U.S. citizens explained the government’s view that “the condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” But rather than give further explanation and clarity to that extraordinary and novel reading of “imminence,” the newly released memo — at least as presently redacted — fails to address that requirement in any detail whatsoever.
The memo, signed by David Barron, then–acting chief of the OLC (and now a newly confirmed First Circuit judge), tells us that “[h]igh-level government officials” determined that al-Aulaqi constituted an “imminent” threat to the United States. But the memo does not explain how the government interprets that requirement, nor does the memo explain the evidentiary standard the officials must meet in order to satisfy it.
- Likewise, the memo does not address the circumstances that would make “capture infeasible,” and killing therefore permissible:
Again, the White Paper summarized the government’s theory about the infeasibility of capture, but the newly released memo adds nothing of substance to that analysis. Importantly, though, the new memo does seem to indicate that its authorization for the targeted killing of al-Aulaqi was intended to be indefinite in duration, requiring only that the CIA and DOD continue to evaluate (without returning to the OLC) “whether changed circumstances” would make capture more feasible.
- “Under the facts represented to us . . .” & why judicial review matters
Throughout the memo, Barron conditions important legal conclusions on “the facts represented to” the OLC by other departments of the executive branch. The memo’s discussion of these facts is redacted, making it impossible for the public to evaluate whether the killing of al-Aulaqi meets even the government’s professed legal standard. Beyond that absence, however, the memo’s repeated conditioning of its conclusions on the version of facts presented by the executive branch makes clear why the government’s rejection of any judicial review in this context — either before or after the fact — is so fundamentally dangerous.
- The CIA — officially — has an operational role in the targeted killing program. From the court opinion released with the memo:
(See the opinion in full, with previously redacted passages highlighted, here.)
Until today, the government had argued that the CIA’s operational involvement in the targeted killing program was an official secret. In this case and in another ACLU FOIA case seeking documents about the program, the official unveiling of this fact should open the door to further disclosures about the CIA’s role in the program and about factual information, like numbers of civilian casualties caused by the program, that the government continues to maintain cannot be disclosed to the public.
- There are additional OLC memos addressing the lawfulness and constitutionality of the targeted killing of U.S. citizens — and the government will likely have to release portions of those as well.
Together, today’s release and the Second Circuit’s opinion make clear that the public is only just starting to understand the legal and factual basis for the government’s targeted killing program, as a great deal of information crucial to the public debate remains secret. While we will continue to press for additional disclosures in court, the government need not and should not wait for yet another court order before it discloses additional information to which the public is entitled. In the meantime, stay tuned for further analysis from the ACLU about the meaning of today’s release as well as what comes next.
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Only 19.7% of Americans agree with US State Dept on Israeli settlements
… Most American adults of voting age don’t appear willing to reject the applicability of international law to Israel’s ongoing colonization of occupied territories in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights. … Full article
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Aletho News- Egypt collaborates with Israel to build ‘Green Rafah’ project over erased Palestinian city
- Rising fuel prices and shortages have helped drive ongoing protests and rioting in France
- Tokyo protests demand Takaichi’s resignation over support for ‘Israel’
- Jennifer Kavanagh: Why the U.S. Should Pull Back From the First Island Chain
- Yemen denounces international community’s silence on Saudi aggression, siege
- UAE and Saudi Arabia move toward renewed coordination against Sanaa
- How Iran’s two-week retaliatory strikes exposed cracks in US military architecture in Persian Gulf
- The mother of all propaganda: Why the hype over US MOAB strike against Iran is nothing but theater
- Iran says it possesses technology behind US 14-ton GBU bunker-buster
- Trump asks Iran not to retaliate after he strikes Pickaxe Mountain – w/ Prof. Marandi
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli Strike Burns Gaza Mother Alive in Front of Toddler, ‘Without Generating Any Headlines’
- ‘The Israel Experience with Mike Huckabee’: The Ambassador’s Family Sells Trips to Israel
- As Gazans carry out mass burial, food insecurity is getting worse – Daily Update
- Israeli rabbi permits occupiers to steal Palestinian olive harvest in West Bank
- Netanyahu’s spin on latest settler attack is laughable – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers debunk Israel’s talking points
- In West Bank, Israeli settlers are totally out of control – Daily Update
- 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.
- Israel has detained thousands of Palestinian children since Oct 7th – over half spent time in solitary, many uncharged
- No Tricks Zone
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