Appeal

My brother in Islam who may Allah guard and protect. I praise Allah for there is no god but Him. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon Muhammad, who was sent as a mercy to all of humanity, upon his family, companions and on all those who hold fast to the Shariah until the Day of Judgement. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you when you travel with a proper intention and a noble purpose, and when you return with a sound endeavor and to a dedicated cause. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you as you serve Islam with the finest fruits of science and the best of knowledge,My name is ibrahim abdul bello from the northern part of Nigeria.We need the help of our brothers and sisters around the world over 4,000 of our men have been killed,our homes burnt,our cattles killed,our farmland, everything destroyed through military force by the Governmaent. Our wives and children are homeless and dying of hunger for no just cause.Below is link to more details:

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/search/northern+crises


Please we need Aid

ibrahim abdul bello

Supporting Democracy & Human Rights in Egypt

Supporting Democracy & Human Rights in Egypt - Peaceful Demonstration in Front of the White HouseTuesday, Aug. 18, 200911 am to 4 pm
On the occasion of Egyptian President Mubarak's visit to the White House, please come out Tuesday and express your support for freedom, human rights, and democracy in Egypt.
Supporting Democracy & Human Rights for All in Egypt Demonstration in Front of The White House (Between Madison Avenue and 15th Street) Tuesday, Aug 18, 11 AM - 4 PM Come Join 6 Egyptian Organizations: The Alliance of Egyptian Americans, Voices for a Democratic Egypt, Houkouk Alnas, International Quranic Center, Coptic Assembly of America, and Ibn Khaldun Center For Development Studies For more information, visit: www.unitedforegypt.com Or call: (202)276-4940 To RSVP, please click here.

Irish interviewing Guantanamo men

The Irish government is talking to the US authorities about resettling two Guantanamo Bay Uzbek detainees.
There have been reports that officials will travel to the detention centre this week to interview the men.
The government had said it was willing to take some detainees, who cannot return home.
Amnesty International in Ireland has been running a campaign for Uzbek national Oybek Jamoldinivich Jabbarov to be allowed to come to Ireland.
He has been cleared for release, but cannot return to Uzbekistan for fear of torture and persecution.
It is understood that one of the men to be interviewed this week is Mr Jabbarov.
His lawyer, Michael Mone, told a US congressional committee hearing last year that Mr Jabbarov was living with his elderly mother and pregnant wife as refugees in northern Afghanistan when he was captured in 2001 and later transferred to the detention centre on Cuba.
The Uzbek had not been involved in fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance and was most likely handed over for a bounty, he said.
In June, Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin said they had told US authorities Ireland would accept two detainees to help close the detention facility, and two Uzbek nationals had been identified by the US.
"There is ongoing contact between the Irish authorities and the US authorities in relation to detainees from Guantanamo," a spokesman for the Department of Justice said.
Commissions
If admitted the men will probably be given leave to remain status.
Amnesty International said that Mr Jabbarov's wife and child were in a refugee camp in Pakistan and that he would be able to apply for them to join him.
US President Barak Obama has said Guantanamo Bay prison will close by 22 January 2010.
However, there are still a number of problems - what to do with the remaining detainees being the biggest.
Fewer than 20 out of about 245 inmates have been transferred from the detention centre in the six months since Mr Obama signed an order to close it within a year, the Associated Press news agency has reported.
More than 50 inmates have been cleared for transfer overseas. Mr Obama has said others will be tried by modified military commissions or in US courts.
But some cannot be returned to their home countries because of concern they will be tortured - and finding countries prepared to take them has proved difficult.
There is also the question of those who cannot be prosecuted under existing legal structures, yet who are deemed too dangerous for release.
The Guantanamo Bay detention centre was set up in January 2002 to hold suspects deemed to be "enemy combatants".

condemned the killing in Chechnya

Rights groups on Thursday condemned the killing in Chechnya of prominent human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who has long documented abuses by government-backed militias there.
The killing has drawn attention to a worrying trend in which critics of Kremlin-installed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov have been harassed or murdered. Human rights groups have blamed Mr. Kadyrov and his followers for abusing innocent civilians in their counterinsurgency campaign against Islamic militants. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed "outrage" and called for an inquiry, reports the BBC.
Ms. Estemirova was abducted Wednesday as she left her home in Grozny, Chechyna's capital, the BBC report adds. Her body was later found with gunshot wounds in neighboring Ingushetia. (Click here for a map of the region.)
Ms Estemirova ... had been gathering evidence - for the Russian human rights organization, Memorial - of a campaign of house-burnings by government-backed militiamen.
She was known to be a fierce political opponent of Chechnya's government.
Reuters reported that suspicion for the killing has quickly fallen on the Chechen president. Kadyrov was put in place by Vladimir Putin and has ruled restive Chechnya with an iron grip.
Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov pointed the blame at ... Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin loyalist.
"I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia.... Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy."
The Guardian's Tom Parfit wrote a personal recollection of Estemirova, noting she was the latest of several critics of Kremlin policies in Chechnya who have been brutally silenced.
Kadyrov, a ... former rebel who came over to Russia's side and took power in 2007, is notorious for controlling thousands of armed devotees known as the "kadyrovtsy", who are now supposedly absorbed into official force structures. He brooks no dissent in his republic, and the kadyrovtsy have repeatedly been accused of torture, kidnappings and extra-judicial killings.
One person who wrote about their excesses was the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya (who was assassinated in 2006). Another who investigated abuses was the human rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov (shot twice in the back of the head in central Moscow in January).
A third detractor, who told reporters that Kadyrov personally tortured him, was a former member of the president's bodyguard, Umar Israilov (shot dead in Vienna in January). A fourth, and Kadyrov's most vocal critic inside Chechnya, was Estemirova.
Human Rights Watch said that the murders of government opponents in Chechnya is a troubling trend, according to Reuters
"It seems to be open season on anyone trying to highlight the appalling human rights abuses in Chechnya... Ensuring her murder does not go unpunished would help to break the vicious cycle of abuse and impunity in Chechnya," said HRW's director Kenneth Roth.
In a report released last month, Human Rights Watch documented a pattern of house-burnings carried out by Chechen law enforcement against the families of alleged terrorists
"Russia has said its 'counterterrorism operation' in Chechnya is over, but human rights violations there certainly aren't," said Tanya Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Russia office. "Burning down peoples' homes for the alleged sins of their families is a criminal tactic, and there is no reason why the government can't put a stop to it and hold the perpetrators accountable."

Uighurs rioting

ArayaHuman Rights Organization

منظمة الراية لحقوق الانسان

Arayahro@yahoo.ie

Uighurs rioting
Will China stop the nonsense and rhetoric saying: the crowds were stirred up by U.S.-exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer and her overseas followers.
Will they pay attention to human rights in china and give the Uighurs their rights without delay.
It is shameful of the Chinese administration when such hate crimes happen. Will they make sure the victims receive proper help and protection?
Chinese officials should never have stopped people praying like they did on Friday. This is similar to the policy of the old communist China which can only escalate ethnic tension.
Araya human rights organization urges China:
To give the Uighurs their rights
To protect the Uighurs .
To compensate all the victims of this outrage.

Administration

Hate Murder in German court

ArayaHuman Rights Organization

منظمة الراية لحقوق الانسان

Arayahro@yahoo.ie

Hate Murder in German court
A German man stabbed an Egyptian woman in a German court. When her husband attempted to rescue her, the security guard shot him in the leg. The woman was stabbed 18 times.
This tragedy happened in front of court personnel. Although racist attacks usually happen in the dark, away from police and courts, but in this incident the event happened in broad daylight in front of the legal team.
Our concern as a human rights organization: How come a person enters the courts with a weapon such as a knife? Don’t the courts have scanning machines? And if so was it working or not? And did the security officer allowed the knife to go through? Will justice take place? Will the government of Germany introduce a system by which it will phase out hate crimes between native and ethnic minorities in Germany, be it Muslims or others?
We request the government of Germany to furnish all facts, and to have a fair public trial, and proper compensation for the victim's family, and to make sure that such hate attacks do not happen again.
Dr Marwa Al-Sherbini, the victim, had the right to the same security as any person living on German soil. It is important that the legal rights of ethnic minorities and vulnerable groups are well respected in Germany.
Administration

PUBLIC DEBATE OBAMA’S AFGHAN WAR

PUBLIC DEBATE OBAMA’S AFGHAN WAR: Should foreign troops withdraw?Date: Wed 15 July 2009 7pmVenue: Davenport Hotel, Merrion Square, DublinSpeakers: * Robert Faucher (Chargé d'Affaires, US Embassy), * Jonathan Neale (US Author), * Sahar Saba (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan).Chairman: Deaglán de Bréadún.Background Information * Why has Obama declared Afghanistan "the good war?" * Why are so many Western troops, including Irish military, involved in this war? * Why is the anti-war movement calling for all troops to be withdrawn?Afghanistan is descending into a hell-hole of chaos, corruption, crime and death. Estimates of civilian deaths caused by the 2001 invasion vary from 6,300 to 23,600. In May this year, U.S. planes dropped 2,000-pound bombs on three mud-brick villages in Western Afghanistan, killing up to 140 people. Over 1100 coalition soldiers have also been killed.The effects of the occupation have swelled support for the Taliban. The war is escalating and has spilled over into neighbouring Pakistan where attacks by US drone planes and the US backed Pakistani army assault on villages in the Swat Valley has left hundreds dead. and, Trócaire says that up to two million people have been displaced.Western forces are rowing ever further in behind the invasion. U.S. troop reinforcements, some 30,000 soldiers are beginning to arrive in southern Afghanistan. added to the 32,000 already there. The White House also wants to give Pakistan nearly $1.5 billion a year development aid and $400 million in fresh military assistance.Europe is deeply involved. ISAF troops (International Security Assistance Force) working under an expanded NATO command number 61,000 from 42 different countries, including at least ten officers from Ireland. Since October 2006 This is truly a war waged by western powers against a small poor country that has the misfortune to have a prized strategic position.Yet the west’s war is not popular with Afghanis. Opinion polls show Afghan confidence in the U.S. and the Afghan government plummeting, with now only 32% - down from 68% in 2005 - supporting the US performance. Yet this is the war that Obama wants to make his own. The stakes are very high but what is the war all about? Representatives from both the US Embassy (confirmed) and the Irish Dept. of Foreign Affairs have been invited to debate American and Afghani anti war activists. Come along and find out about this horrific situation.======================================================================To set-up a standing order with the Irish-Anti War Movement please go to the following link http://www.irishantiwar.org/files/standing-order-form.doc fill in the form and post to the Irish Anti-War Movement P.O. Box 9260 Dublin 1.To unsubscribe from this mailing list send a message to http://ie.mc271.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=info@irishantiwar.org with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.If you have subscribed using the button on the web site you can unsubscirbe this way as well.To contact the webmaster send an email to http://ie.mc271.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=webmaster@irishantiwar.org or ring +353 0 878289243Irish Anti-War MovementTel (fixed) 353 (0) 1 8727912, Tel (mobile) 353 (0) 87 6329511 Postal Address Irish Anti-War MovementPO Box 9260Dublin 1

Real criminals do scape justice

McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Robert McNamara, who died yesterday, July 6, served as Kennedy’s , then as Johnson’s defense secretary. He contributed more than most to the slaughter of 3.4 million Vietnamese (his own estimate). He went on to run the World Bank, where he presided over the impoverishment, eviction from their lands and death of many millions more round the world.
Just as George Kennan, one of the architects of the Cold War, helped bolt together the ramshackle scaffolding of bogus claims that provided the rationalization for Harry Truman’s great “arms scare” in 1948, launching the postwar arms race, McNamara tugged his forelock and said “Aye, aye, Sir” when Kennedy, campaigning against Nxon in the late 1950s attacked the Eisenhower/Nixon administration for having allowed a “missile gap” to develop that had now delivered America naked and helpless into the grip of the Soviet Union.
This was the biggest lie in the history of threat inflation and remains so to this day. At the moment when Kennedy, McNamara at his elbow, was flaying the Eisenhower administration for the infamous “gap”, the U.S. government from its spy planes that the Soviet Union had precisely one missile silo with an untested missile in it. The Russians knew that the US knew this, because they were fully primed about about the U-2 spy-plane overflights, most dramatically when U-2 pilot Gary Powers crashed near Sverdlovsk and told all to his captors
So when President Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara, took power in 1961, became privy to all intelligence from the spy flights, and announced that the U.S. was going to build 1000 ICBMs the Russians concluded that the US planned to wipe out the Soviet Union and immediately began a missile-building program of their own. So McNamara played a crucial, enabling role in the arms race in nuclear missiles. Before the “missile gap” it has been a “bomber race”.
It was entirely appropriate and logical that he began his services to the military working in Japan as a civilian analyst for Curt LeMay, the psychopathic Air Force general who ordered the raid that produced the Tokyo firestorm and who went on to become head of the Strategic Air Command and who boasted to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis that his missiles and B-52s were ready, willing and able to reduce the Soviet Union to a “smoldering, irradiated ruin in three hours”, a deed he was eager to accomplish.
LeMay was expert in guiding bright young systems analysts like McNamara into giving him the ex post facto intellectual rationales for enterprises on which he had long since set his mind. McNamara was an early member of the “defense intellectuals”, including Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter and Herman Kahn, who developed the whole argot of “controlled escalation”, “nuclear exchanges” and “mutual assured destruction” that kept the nuclear weapons plants, aerospace factories and nuclear labs at Los Alamos and Livermore and Oak Ridge humming along, decade after decade. McNamara liked to claim later, as he did to Errol Morris, that it was he who advised LeMay to send in his planes at lower altitude, the better to incinerate Japanese cities, but the historical record does not give him this dignity. He was a small player in LeMay’s murderous game.
He faded comfortably away. The last time we saw him vividly was in 2004 as the star of Morris's wildly over-praised, documentary The Fog of War, talking comfortably about the millions of people he's helped to kill.
Time and again, McNamara got away with it in that film, cowering in the shadow of baroque monsters like LeMay or LBJ, choking up about his choice of Kennedy's gravesite in Arlington, sniffling at the memory of Johnson giving him the Medal of Freedom, spouting nonsense about how Kennedy would have pulled out of Vietnam, muffling himself in the ever- useful camouflage of the "fog of war."
Now, the "fog of war" is a tag usually attributed to von Clausewitz, though the great German philosopher and theorist of war never actually used the phrase. Eugenia Kiesling argued a couple of years ago in Military Review that the idea of fog--unreliable information--wasn't a central preoccupation of Clausewitz. "Eliminating fog", Kiesling wrote, "gives us a clearer and more useful understanding of Clausewitz's friction. It restores uncertainty and the intangible stresses of military command to their rightful centrality in 'On War'. It allows us to replace the simplistic message that war intelligence is important with the reminder that Clausewitz constantly emphasizes moral forces in war."
As presented by McNamara, through Morris, "the fog of war" usefully deflects attention from clear and unpleasant facts entirely unobscured by fog. Roberta Wohlstetter was a pioneer in this fogging technique back in the 1950s with her heavily subsidized Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, which deployed the idea of distracting "noise" as the phenomenon that prevented US commanders, ultimately Roosevelt, from comprehending the information that the Japanese were about to launch a surprise attack. Wohlstetterian "noise" thus obscured the fact that FDR wanted a Japanese provocation, knew the attack was coming, though not probably not its scale and destructiveness.
When McNamara looked back down memory lane there were no real shadows, just the sunlight of moral self-satisfaction: "I don't fault Truman for dropping the bomb"; "I never saw Kennedy more shocked" (after the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem); "never would I have authorized an illegal action" (after the Tonkin Gulf fakery); "I'm very proud of my accomplishments and I'm very sorry I made errors" (his life). Slabs of instructive history, like “the missile gap”, were entirely missing from Morris's film. In his later years he offered homilies about the menace of nuclear Armageddon, just like Kennan. It was cost-free for both men to say to say such things, grazing peacefully on the tranquil mountain pastures of their senior years. Why did they not encourage weapons designers in Los Alamos to mutiny, to resign? Or say that the atom spies in Los Alamos in the 1940s were right to try to level nuclear terror to some sort of balance? Why did they not extol the Berrigans and their comrades who served or are serving decades in prison for physically attacking nuclear missiles, beating the decks of the Sea Wolf nuclear submarine with their hammers.
It’s true that when he was head of the Ford Division of the Ford Motor Company in the mid- 1950s, McNamara did push for safety options--seat belts and padded instrument panels. Ford dealer brochures for the '56 models featured photos of how Ford and GM models fared in actual crashes, to GM's disadvantage. But as Ralph Nader describes it, in December, 1955, a top GM executive called Ford's vice president for sales and said Ford's safety campaign had to stop. These Ford executives, many of them formerly from GM, had a saying, Chevy could drop its price $25 to bankrupt Chrysler, $50 to bankrupt Ford. Ford ran up the white flag. The safety sales campaign stopped. McNamara took a long vacation in Florida, his career in Detroit in the balance, and came back a team player. Safety went through the windscreen and lay in a coma for years.
McNamara had very dirty hands, however hard he and admirers like Morris scrubbed them. Why did Defense Secretary McNamara overrule all expert review and procurement recommendations and insist that General Dynamics rather than Boeing make the disastrous F-111, at that time one of the largest procurement contracts in the Pentagon's history? Could it be that Henry Crown of Chicago was calling in some chits for his role in fixing the 1960 JFK vote in Cook County, Illinois? Crown, of Chicago Sand and Gravel, had $300 million of the mob's money in GD debentures, and after the disaster of the Convair, GD needed the F-111 to avoid going belly- up, taking the mob's $300 million with it. McNamara misled Congressional investigators about this for years afterward.
To interviewers McNamara paid great stress on JFK's "shock", just a few weeks before he himself was killed, at the assassination of South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother. He also promoted the view that Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam. He oversaw the fakery of the Gulf of Tonkin "attack" that prompted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, whereby Congress gave LBJ legal authority to prosecute and escalate the war in Vietnam. He was a career "front man" for the Kennedys, called even to Chappaquiddick to help Ted Kennedy figure out what to say about it.
The Six Day War? Just before this '67 war the Israelis were ready to attack and knew they were going to win but couldn't get a clear go- ahead from the Johnson Administration. As the BBC documentary The 50 Years War narrates, Meir Amit, head of Israel's Mossad, flew to Washington. The crucial OK came from McNamara, thus launching Israel's long-planned, aggressive war on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, which led to present disasters. It was McNamara, after Israel's deliberate attack on the US ship Liberty during that war (with thirty-four US sailors dead and 174 wounded), who supervised the cover- up.
McNamara had a 13-year stint running the World Bank, whither he was dispatched by LBJ, Medal of Freedom in hand. McNamara liked to brandish his Bank years as his moral redemption and all too often his claim is accepted by those who have no knowledge of the actual, ghastly record. In fact the McNamara of the World Bank evolved naturally, organically, from the McNamara of Vietnam. The one was prolegomenon to the other, the McNamara-sponsored horrors in Vietnam perhaps on a narrower and more vivid scale, but ultimately lesser in dimension and consequence. No worthwhile portrayal of McNamara could possibly avoid McNamara's performance at the World Bank because there, within the overall constraints of the capitalist system he served, he was his own man. There was no LeMay, no LBJ issuing orders. And as his own man, McNamara amplified the ghastly blunders, corruptions and lethal cruelties of American power as inflicted upon Vietnam to a planetary scale. The best terse account of the McNamara years is in Bruce Rich's excellent history of the Bank, Mortgaging the Earth, published in 1994.
When McNamara took over the Bank, "development" loans (which were already outstripped by repayments) stood at $953 million and when he left, at $12.4 billion, which, discounting inflation, amounted to slightly more than a 6- fold increase. Just as he multiplied the troops in Vietnam, he ballooned the Bank's staff from 1,574 to 5,201. The Bank's shadow lengthened steadily over the Third World. Forests, in the Amazon, in Cameroon, in Malaysia, in Thailand, fell under the axe of "modernization". Peasants were forced from their lands. Dictators like Pinochet and Ceausescu were nourished with loans.
From Vietnam to the planet: The language of American idealism and high purpose was just the same. McNamara blared his mission of high purpose in 1973 in Nairobi, initiating the World Bank's crusade on poverty. "The powerful have a moral obligation to assist the poor and the weak." The result was disaster, draped, as in Vietnam with obsessive secrecy, empty claims of success and mostly successful efforts to extinguish internal dissent. And as with Vietnam, McNamara's obsession with statistics, produced a situation, (according to S. Shaheed Husain, then the Bank's vice president in charge of Operations) where, "without knowing it, McNamara manufactured data. If there was a gap in the numbers, he would ask staff to fill it, and others made it up for him."
At McNamara's direction the Bank would prepare five year "master country lending plans", set forth in "country programming papers. "In some cases, Rich writes, "even ministers of a nation's cabinet could not obtain access to these documents, which in smaller, poor countries, were viewed as international decrees on their economic fate."
These same "decrees" were drawn up by technocrats (in Vietnam they were the "advisers") often on the basis of a few short weeks in the target country. Corruption seethed. Most aid vanished into the hands of local elites who very often used the money to steal the resources--pasture, forest, water, of the very poor whom the Bank was professedly seeking to help. In Vietnam, Agent Orange and napalm.
Across the third world, the Bank underwrote "Green Revolution" technologies that the poorest peasants couldn't afford and that drenched land in pesticides and fertilizer. Vast infrastructural projects such as dams and kindred irrigation projects once again drove the poor from their lands, from in Brazil to India. It was the malign parable of "modernization" written across the face of the third world, with one catatrophe after another catastrophes prompted by the destruction of traditional subsistence rural economies.
The appropriation of smaller farms and common areas, Rich aptly comments, "resembled in some respects the enclosure of open lands in Britain prior to the Industrial Revolution--only this time on a global scale, intensified by Green Revolution agricultural technology." As an agent of methodical planetary destruction, McNamara should be ranked in the top tier of earth-wreckers of all time.
"Management", McNamara declared in 1967 "is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused through society." The managerial ideal for McNamara was managerial dictatorship. World Bank loans surged to Pinochet's Chile after Allende's overthrow, to Uruguay, to Argentina, to Brazil after the military coup, to the Philippines, to Suharto after the '65 coup in Indonesia.
And to the Romania of Ceausescu. McNamara poured money--$2.36 billion between 1974 and 1982--into the tyrant's hands. In 1980 Romania was the Bank's eighth biggest borrower. As McNamara crowed delightedly about his "faith in the financial morality of socialist countries" Ceausescu razed whole villages, turned hundreds of square miles of prime farm land into open- pit mines, polluted the air with coal and lignite, turned Rumania into one vast prison, applauded by the Bank in an amazing 1979 economic study as being a fine advertisement for the "Importance of Centralized Economic Control". Another section of that same 1979 report, titled "Development of Human Resources", featured these chilling words: "To improve the standards of living of the population as a beneficiary of the development process, the government has pursued policies to make better use of the population as a factor of production... An essential feature of the overall manpower policy has been ... to stimulate an increase in birth rates." Ceausescu forbade abortions, and cut off disrtribution of contraceptives. Result: ten of thousand of abandoned children, dumped in orphanages, another sacrificial hecatomb in McNamara's lethal hubris.
In his later years, McNamara never offered any reflection on the social system that produced and promoted him, a perfectly nice, well- spoken war criminal. As his inflation of his role in the foe- bombing of Japan showed, he could go so far as to falsely though complacently indict himself, while still shirking bigger, more terrifying and certainly more useful reflections on the system that blessed him and mercilessly killed millions upon millions under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon.
Like Speer, he got away with it, never having to hang his head or drop through a trap door with a rope around his neck, as he richly deserved.

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counter Punch

Scrap all nuclear weaponsby

Khor Eng Lee(July 5, 2009):

In 1986 US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev claimed they had come very close to an agreement on total nuclear disarmament. And nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War. President Barack Obama has initiated another bold attempt to rid the world of nuclear weapons, calling them “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.” As these weapons of mass destruction pose the greatest threat to human survival, all nations must pitch in to globalise Obama’s campaign and to put it through – to make this world nuclear-free.
IT WAS US president Franklin Roosevelt (1933-45), who had made the fateful political decision and given his “OK” on Jan 19, 1942 to the nuclear scientists and engineers to go ahead with research and development to build the first atomic bombs.And his successor, Harry Truman (1945-1953), authorised the use of the two A-bombs to destroy the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 1945 – the first and hitherto the only time that such weapons of mass destruction were ever used in a war between nations.When Obama renewed the long drawn out campaign for nuclear abolition which he announced before a huge crowd outside the Prague Castle gates in the Czech capital on April 5, he stressed that the US has a moral responsibility to take the lead as the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon. There is every chance Obama might bring up the matter of renewing the START treaty, which calls for cuts in nuclear weapons, when he meets Russian president Dmitry Medvedev today.Four years after WWII, the Soviet explosion of a fission bomb (Joe One) in September 1949 was to trigger a nuclear arms race between the US under Truman and the Soviet Union under Stalin (general secretary 1922-53).Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61), the US military expanded its nuclear arsenal 20-fold (a stockpile of more then 24,000 nuclear weapons by the end of 1961). When he campaigned for Nixon in late October 1960, he told Americans that the US military had become “the most powerful on Earth ...”Eisenhower once said that every gun made is a theft from those who hunger. (The US will spend US$741 billion [RM2.6 trillion] on its military this year, nominally twice the American GNP of US$350 billion in 1960, accounting for nearly half of the global military expenditure, while as many as one billion people go hungry every day.)On nuclear disarmament, he said: “The alternative is so terrible that any risks there might be in advancing disarmament are as nothing.” But the words of this old and wise warrior went unheeded. Partly because, as they say, he didn’t walk the talk.By the time of the Cuban missile crisis on October 1962, the US had such a tremendous military nuclear superiority that Nikita Khrushchev (general secretary 1953-64) had vainly tried to erode American dominance by planting his SS-4 and SS-5 rockets on Cuban soil about 150km away from the shores of Florida. Each SS-4 carried a 3-megaton warhead. Only 30 years later did the US come to know that the Soviets had 162 warheads in Cuba.When President John F. Kennedy announced the crisis on Oct 22, 1962, he warned of full nuclear retaliation, called upon Chairman Khrushchev to remove all offensive weapons in Cuba, and urged a peaceful solution to the confrontation.Nuclear historian Richard Rhodes has noted that the US Strategic Air Command had put on board bombers nearly three thousand strategic nuclear weapons packing a gross 7,000 megatons (more than two tons a head for the world population of 3 billion in 1962). The SAC had also tried to provoke a Soviet alert by flying bombers towards Soviet targets, which would justify a devastating US first-strike.As Rhodes has put it, the first and only direct nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers was also very nearly the last. The two nuclear Goliaths had come close to the Apocalypse.Compelled to remove his missiles from Cuba, Khrushchev’s humiliation led to an unprecedented Soviet nuclear buildup which multiplied the number of its nuclear weapons by ten times within the next couple of decades. The Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the US by 1978 and shortly afterwards the USSR overtook and outnuked the US numerically.When Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time at Geneva in 1985 at the height of the Cold War, both leaders accused each other for “the mad arms race which had led the world to the brink of catastrophe” (to quote Gorbachev’s own words to describe a view fully shared by Reagan). In their joint communique, they declared that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Both also pledged not to seek military superiority (in word, but not in deed).Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs: “We prepared a policy statement containing a step-by-step programme for moving towards a nuclear-free world ...”Reagan wrote: “No one could ‘win’ a nuclear war (what the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr had told Roosevelt and Churchill in 1944). Yet as long as nuclear weapons were in existence, there would always be risks they would be used, and once the first nuclear weapon was unleashed, who knew where it would end?“My dream, then became a world free of nuclear weapons ...”On their second meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev said they had come very close to an agreement on dismantling and destroying their vast nuclear arsenals. They had discussed a 10-year plan (1986-96) to free the world from the threat of a nuclear Armageddon. But their dispute over Reagan’s pet project for a defence system against nuclear missiles (referred to as the SDI, Strategic Defence Initiative) torpedoed their plan for total nuclear disarmament.Donald Regan, chief of staff, sat next to Reagan in the limousine taking them back to the US Embassy. Regan has written in his memoir that Reagan said to him: “Don, we came so close. It’s just a shame.”“He placed his thumb and forefinger less than a half inch apart and added, ‘We were that close to an agreement.’ ”Gorbachev wrote: “Success was a mere step away, but SDI proved an insurmountable stumbling block ...”The SDI proved to be insurmountable to both leaders because while one of them was obsessed with it, the other was possessed by a fear of it.Moreover, they didn’t have their top priority right. SDI or nuclear disarmament?Both Reagan and Gorbachev were “just one step away” from going down in history as mankind’s greatest peacemakers.As with the original decision to go nuclear (made by Roosevelt and Stalin in the 1940s), the momentous decision to dismantle and destroy all nuclear weapons must be made by the supreme political masters of the day.The first US president to campaign publicly for complete nuclear disarmament, Obama has given a highly resonant “yes” to the elimination of all the nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals. And now it’s time for Medvedev to give a matching “aye” as well. And then, all the other nations – their leaders and their people must also give their full support to this campaign for global survival and well-being to make this world nuclear free.
The second of a four-part series on total nuclear disarmament by retired journalist Khor Eng Lee will appear tomorrow.

UN rights mission hears of Gaza children's suffering

2009-06-29 19:15
GAZA CITY (AFP) - A UN human rights mission on Monday listened to testimony about the suffering of children in the Gaza Strip as it continued its probe into alleged Israeli war crimes in the enclave.
Around 20 percent of children in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on by witnessing violent acts, child psychologist Dr Iyad Sarraj told the panel.
"The amount of killing and blood that they have seen or that their relatives have suffered from... it's a huge amount, and this leads to negative psychological feelings, to radicalism and a cycle of violence," he said.
More than half of Gaza's population of 1.5 million is under 18 years of age.
The public hearings are part of the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the 22-day Israeli offensive launched in late December that killed about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
The Red Cross meanwhile said in a new report that six months after the devastating offensive that Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory are "unable to rebuild their lives and are sliding ever deeper into despair."
Israeli and Egyptian sanctions imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized power in June 2007 have crippled reconstruction efforts and caused widespread misery, according to the study by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
"The poorest residents in particular have exhausted their coping mechanisms and often have to sell off their belongings to be able to buy enough to eat," said Antoine Grand, head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza.
"Worst affected are the children, who make up more than half of Gaza's population," he added.
The UN mission in Gaza is headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who previously served as chief prosecutor for international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
On Sunday, the mission heard a wheelchair-bound man describe how an Israeli shell slammed into his home, killing 11 of his relatives and cutting off his legs. Another man described a strike on a mosque that killed 17 people.
The group was expected to look into several allegations of human rights violations that emerged in the aftermath of the assault, which Israel said was aimed at stemming Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled enclave.
Israeli authorities have so far refused to allow the investigators into the country and have accused the mission of bias against the Jewish state.
"The mandate is so one-sided, no fair, thinking person could see it as objective," government spokesman Mark Regev said on Sunday.
"The UN Human Rights Council has over the last months and years totally discredited itself as a serious vehicle for advancing human rights."
The 47-member council voted by a large majority in January to probe accusations of "grave" human rights violations by Israel, but the team was later given a broader mandate to deal with "all violations" during the war.
Israel has insisted it made every effort to spare civilians, including dropping thousands of fliers warning residents to flee ahead of strikes.
It has also said that Palestinian fighters and rocket launchers operated in crowded residential areas, a charge also lodged by rights groups against the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza.
The group plans to hold similar hearings in Geneva in which they will interview witnesses and experts on alleged violations in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and to issue a final report by September 12.
The international community has pledged billions of dollars in aid to rebuild the territory, but reconstruction efforts remain paralysed by the closures, which prevent the import of virtually all building materials.

(By SAKHER ABU EL OUN)

Israel's settlements are on shaky ground

International law mandates that they must be removed and that the Palestinians should be compensated for their losses.
By Sarah Leah Whitson June 28, 2009
The debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often framed in terms of whether they should be "frozen" or allowed to grow "naturally." But that is akin to asking whether a thief should be allowed merely to keep his ill-gotten gains or steal some more. It misses the most fundamental point: Under international law, all settlements on occupied territory are unlawful. And there is only one remedy: Israel should dismantle them, relocate the settlers within its recognized 1967 borders and compensate Palestinians for the losses the settlements have caused.Removing the settlements is mandated by the laws of the Geneva Convention, which state that military occupations are to be a temporary state of affairs and prohibit occupying powers from moving their populations into conquered territory. The intent is to foreclose an occupying power from later citing its population as "facts on the ground" to claim the territory, something Israel has done in East Jerusalem and appears to want to do with much of the West Bank.


The legal principles were reaffirmed in 2004 by the International Court of Justice, which cited a U.N. Security Council statement that the settlements were "a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention." The International Committee of the Red Cross and an overwhelming number of institutions concerned with the enforcement of international humanitarian law have concurred in that view.

The economic and social cost of Israeli settlements to the Palestinian population, stemming in part from Israel's need to protect them, are enormous. The 634 (at last count) roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints erected to control the movement of lawful residents of the territory make travel an ordeal. Sometimes even getting to work, school or the home of a relative is impossible for Palestinians. Every day, they must wait in line for hours to show their IDs, and some days they are randomly rerouted, told to go home or, worse, detained for questioning.Similarly, the fact that Israel is building 87% of its projected 450-mile "security barrier" on Palestinian territory has less to do with protecting Israel from suicide bombers -- which could have been accomplished by erecting a wall on the Green Line -- than it does with putting 10% of West Bank territory, including most settlers, on the Israeli side. And while Israeli troops protect the settlers from armed Palestinian groups, there is little protection for Palestinians from the settlers' marauding militias and gangs, which have terrorized the local population, destroying their crops, uprooting their trees and throwing stones at their houses and schools.

Too little attention is given to the pervasive system of government-sponsored discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel has constructed roads exclusively for settlers and established vastly unequal access to water, fuel, education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure and virtually every other social service. Israeli authorities readily grant settlers building permits that they deny to Palestinians, whose "illegal" homes they often demolish at short notice. The glaring discrepancy in Israel's treatment of two populations living on the same land has taken a significant moral toll on Israel, as well as a political one, with wide coverage of humiliation and abuse at the hands of its security forces.

The common refrain of Israeli and even American politicians who recognize that the settlements must go is that it would be politically difficult to dismantle them, in part because it would stir the ire of the settlers and their supporters, an important voting bloc in Israel. Instead, politicians argue that settlements must be a part of future negotiations and a possible land swap.But this only serves as further incentive to expand settlements and makes a political resolution even more difficult. It also condones in the interim Israel's continuing human rights abuses in the name of settler security, leaving respect for Palestinians' rights a second-tier consideration that must await the conclusion of peace talks that have already gone on for decades.Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, but not in a way that violates the rights of Palestinians. The lawful, rights-respecting way to protect the security of settlers is to move them back to Israel. That should be the starting point of any discussion on settlements.

Sarah Leah Whitson is Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Iranian people are challenging for their rights in Iran

Dear Friends
Iranian people are challenging for their rights in Iran, in solidarity with them there will be a gathering together on Thursday 25th June at 6pm in front of GPO post office, O’Connell Street, in Dublin city center.
Your support will help a lot, please pass on email and tell your friends.
Members of the Iranian Community in Ireland

Zimbabwe diamond fields to assess alleged human rights violations

Kimberley Process to send team to Zimbabwe diamond fields
By Brigitte Weidlich – 2 days ago
WINDHOEK (AFP) — The Kimberley Process against "blood diamonds" said Friday it will send a team to Zimbabwe's troubled Marange diamond fields to assess alleged human rights violations.
"We had frank and open discussions about Zimbabwe and this compliance with the Kimberley Process, Zimbabwe is still high on our agenda," Bernard Esau, who currently chairs the scheme, told reporters in the Namibian capital.
The announcement came as Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Zimbabwe's armed forces, under the control of veteran President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF, of torture and forced labour to control the eastern Marange diamond fields.
"We have no proof of alleged human rights violations at the Marange diamond fields, but we took note of a report by the international organisation Human Rights Watch," Esau said after a three-day meeting of the Kimberley Process (KP), the global scheme to prevent diamonds from financing armed conflicts.
The team that leaves on Monday will meet government ministers, central bank officials, top police officers and travel to Marange and the nearby town of Mutare.
A new 62-page Human Rights Watch report out Friday said more than 200 people were killed by Zimbabwe's army in a takeover of the Marange fields last year, and that forced labour, torture and beatings by the military had continued.
The rights body said it believes the illegal diamond trade is a likely revenue source for senior officials of the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
Andrew Brownell of Green Advocates Liberia countered that the human rights violations were real, saying the group had appealed to KP member governments to take action to address compliance.
"Zimbabwe is linked to human rights violations with regard to the diamond sector and this is all well documented in public reports," he told reporters.
Brownell will be part of the KP review team travelling to Zimbabwe which will be headed by Liberia's deputy minister for development and include civil society representatives.
On Wednesday during the conference, Zimbabwe's deputy mining minister Murisi Zwizwai denied any killings by security forces in Marange. Zimbabwe's mining ministry on Friday said it stood by Zwizwai's statement, despite the fresh allegations.
The three-day Kimberley Process meeting also discussed options for further action to end smuggling of conflict gems in Ivory Coast, where gem production in Ivory Coast is increasing despite a UN ban on their export.
"The satellite images provided by the UN group show that rough diamond production is going on and increasing, and this was indicated by ground observations of the KP working group of diamond experts," Esau said.
"We further discussed options for additional Kimberley Process action and constructive engagement to end the smuggling of conflict diamonds out of Cote d'Ivoire," Esau said, referring to the country by its French name.
The UN Security Council last October extended a ban on Ivorian diamond exports as part of targetted sanctions meant to prod the west African nation towards holding free and fair elections.
A UN team in April found that Ivory Coast was still producing rough diamonds despite the ban, findings supported by a team of KP experts who also visited the country, Esau told reporters.
He said the Kimberley Process supported the creation of a regional task force to bring Ivory Coast into compliance with the ban.
Ivory Coast is scheduled to hold a presidential election on November 29.
The election is intended to end a crisis that has gripped the west African state since September 2002, when the rebel New Forces (NF) attempted a coup against President Laurent Gbagbo and then occupied the northern half of the country.

“The Yes Men Fix The World.”

The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and Cinereach presented the 2009 Cinereach Award to Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Paolo Santolini for their film “Back Home Tomorrow.” The film weaves together the stories of two children affected by war during their stays in the hands of Italian aid organization Emergency.
“‘Back Home Tomorrow’ exemplifies the meaningful and artistic filmmaking that Cinereach is committed to supporting,” said Cinereach Creative Director Michael Raisler, in a statement. “We’re proud to join with Human Rights Watch in acknowledging the achievements of these and other filmmakers who use the power of film to promote dialogue and facilitate cross-cultural understanding.”
Last year’s Cinereach Award went to “The Betrayal (Nerakhoon),” directed by Ellen Kuras and Co-Directed by Thavisouk Phrasavath. The film went on to win Best Documentary at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.
The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival closes Thursday with a screening of “The Yes Men Fix The World.”

by Peter Knegt (June 22, 2009)

The Amnesty International Annual Report for 2009 Continues to

The Amnesty International Annual Report for 2009 Continues to Highlight Human Rights Violations in TurkeyThe Amnesty International Annual Report for 2009 Continues to Highlight Human Rights Violations in TurkeyJune 23, 2009The Amnesty International in its Annual Report for 2009 reaffirmed that Turkey still holds a poor record on human rights. According to the report, human rights suffer due to the current state of political tension and instability which is further heightened by weak legal enforcement and existent military clashes.The polarization of legal battles and the armed clashes between interior politically affiliated groups and the Turkish armed forces, cast serious threats to the citizens� right to freedom of association. Within this context of political conflict, citizens face hostility, assaults and attacks on their property perpetrated by unknown actors or groups. The core of the problem, as asserted by the report, lies in the problematic definition of �secularism� as the political apparatus of Turkey does not lie on common grounds with regards to the �secular principles� that define the Turkish state nowadays.Freedom of expression is another aspect of life that is severely suppressed in Turkey. Amnesty International reports that there has been a significant number of human rights defenders, writers, journalists and other individuals who have been unjustly prosecuted under unfair laws and been subject to biased decisions. Despite the fact that the Turkish Constitution has been amended, the problem still persists as the revisions have been disproportionate and it is other laws and articles limiting freedom of expression that are instead put into practice.Civil life is severely restricted through restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly too. The report finds that while some demonstrations were banned without justification, others were dispersed with excessive force resulting in deaths and serious injuries. Demonstrators were arrested and ill-treated often before peaceful methods were attempted. Torture and ill-treatment were increased, while dissenting views were met with prosecution and intimidation. This reiterates that Turkey remains a state that makes excessive use of force limiting civil society and enforcing discriminatory practices against certain minorities and civil groups.The questionable integrity of the legislative apparatus is further enforced by the persistent abuse of anti-terrorism legislation. Convictions under anti-terrorism laws have often been based on insubstantial or unreliable evidence, while barriers have remained high in prosecuting officials for human rights abuses. In such a state of affairs, the Greek and other Christian minorities have been severely suppressed and have not been able to find legitimate outlets for expressing their concerns and advancing their interests. According to the report, this state of oppression has spurred aggression within Turkey and makes it a state of precarious social conditions.The report also highlights that Turkey has yet failed to show progress with regards to providing a civil alternative to the existent compulsory military service. Objectors and their supporters have not only been prosecuted under law, but have been in numerous cases repeatedly beaten in military custody. This state of affairs displays that Turkey retains a militant and aggressive face as a state.Another significant matter is the lack of respect towards refugees and asylum- seekers who are increasingly forced to leave the country. The report asserts that on occasions members of such groups were said to have been beaten and threatened with rape unless they deported the country. There have even been claims that some died in the process.A final issue presented by the report, is the inadequate implementation of laws aimed at preventing violence against women and girls. Limited progress has been made on this matter as relevant projects have been insufficiently funded by the Turkish state and a relevant framework action has not been executed.Numerous reports have presented the precariousness of the domestic situation. Turkey has also been recorded to have ratified three major international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). However significant restrictions, including state policies and actions, effectively deny non-Muslim communities the right to own and maintain property, train religious clergy, and offer religious education.Turkey has systematically targeted the Greek Orthodox Christian community through a series of policies, resulting in killings, destruction of private and commercial properties, violation of religious sites and expropriation of income-generating properties of both private citizens and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Furthermore, Turkey allows only Turkish citizens to be candidates for the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch and for hierarchs in the Church�s Holy Synod. In this state of affairs, the survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Turkey is at risk. This serves as a prime example of orchestrated state action on behalf of Turkey to suppress civil society.Turkey has made serious commitments to improve its human rights record amid its negotiations for a potential candidacy to the European Union. However the situation seems to have exacerbated. According to the most recent findings of the European Commission�s (EC) Progress Report on Turkey issued in late 2008, the Turkish government has failed “to put forward a consistent and comprehensive programme of political reforms.” This further indicates that Turkey has failed to fulfill its commitments under a number of significant bilateral and multilateral arrangements within the context of civil, political and religious rights.The report of Amnesty International illustrates the critical situation of the human rights violations and expresses the concerns of the international community for the domestic situation in Turkey. The report calls upon Turkey to:* allow for �unfiltered� freedom of expression by amending the Constitution so as to put an end to the unjust prosecution of writers, journalists and human rights defenders;* allow for the freedom of peaceful assembly without making use of force;* take measures to limit the excessive involvement of the military in political affairs;* allow for a civil alternative to the existent compulsory military service;* endorse policies that establish better conditions for the refugees;* implement laws and fund relevant programs that prevent violence against women and girls.The American Hellenic Institute has unremittingly stressed the need for Turkey to comply with international human rights accords, the rule of law and democratic principles. Within the framework of the latest negotiations between Turkey and the EU for a potential candidacy, we call upon the U.S. government and its officials to exert pressure on Turkey to conform to democratic norms with regards to the following:* the human rights abuses;* the excessive involvement of the military in political affairs;* the restrictions imposed on minority rights;* the limitations on political and cultural rights under the Turkish Constitution;* the removal of its illegal armed occupation forces and illegal settlers from Cyprus; and* to halt its threats and aggressive actions against Greece in the Aegean Sea.As presented by the above report as well as numerous other accounts on the domestic situation in Turkey, there are legitimate concerns about its current ability to live up to the human rights standards expected among European nations.

Amnesty International: Zimbabwe Human Rights Problems Persist

Amnesty International: Zimbabwe Human Rights Problems Persist
By Peta Thornycroft Harare18 June 2009
Irene Khan (file photo)Amnesty International's secretary-general Irene Khan says Zimbabwe is suffering persistent and serious human rights violations despite the formation of a unity government four months ago, but she also urged donor countries not to withhold aid. Khan said their was a culture of impunity in Zimbabwe which continued uninterrupted for the last 40 years.Amnesty's Irene Kahn says that despite the fact that the unity government had introduced a new political dynamic, many Zimbabweans still lived in fear."Although the level of political violence is significantly less than last year, the human rights situation in Zimbabwe remains precarious and the social economic conditions are desperate," she said.During Khan's fact-finding mission she met human rights activists, victims of human rights violations and senior government ministers from both ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change. At a press conference in Harare, Kahn said the inclusive government had failed to prosecute perpetrators of political violence, and senior Cabinet ministers from both ZANU-PF and MDC told her correcting the culture of impunity was not a priority for the new administration."Human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers, continue to be intimidated, harassed, threatened detained and charged often for malicious prosecutions," she said. "Prosecutions are being pursued against 15 political activists and human rights defenders who were abducted last year while at the same time their allegations and complaints of torture during their disappearances are yet to be investigated."But these continued abuses, Khan said, should not deter countries from withholding aid badly needed to rescue Zimbabwe's devastated economy.She said the unity government should not only seek economic resources and an end to sanctions, but should ensure the security services were reformed and that new legislation to protect human rights, freedom of the media and assembly were priorities."Elements in the police and army and other security officials have been key perpetrators of human rights violations political violence. Yet we got no clear indication from the government as to whether, how and when such reform will happen," she said.This was the first time Amnesty International had sent its secretary-general to Zimbabwe, although Khan says both the former ZANU-PF and the new inclusive government have allowed the organization access.Khan called on President Robert Mugabe, as head of state, commander of the armed forces, and leader of Zimbabwe for three decades to ensure that human rights were respected.This year alone, she said more than 2000 farm worker families had been forced out of their homes and conditions in prisons remained "deplorable."

White People Searched by Police to ‘Balance’ Race Statistics

June 18, 2009 by



White British people are being stopped and searched by police under terror laws for no other reason than to provide ‘racial balance’ to their statistics.
This shocking news - evidence of yet more politically correct anti-white madness gripping our nation - was revealed by terror law watchdog Lord Carlile.
The police are “targeting people they have no real reason to suspect to avoid being accused of prejudice,” said Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer and QC.
“Their self-evidently unmerited searches are a waste of money, a breach of civil liberties and almost certainly unlawful,” he said.
“It is totally wrong for any person to be stopped in order to produce a racial balance in the statistics. There is ample anecdotal evidence that this is happening,” he continued in his annual report on anti-terror laws released yesterday.
Lord Carlile said the arbitrary stopping and searching of white people just to fill in the boxes was a clear misuse of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (which allows the police to stop and search anyone in a specific area. Before Section 44, the police could only stop and search individuals if they had ‘reasonable grounds’ and certain criteria were met).
He wrote of cases “where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop.”
Lord Carlile later told the BBC, “If, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it’s a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women.”
Officers used the powers to search 125,000 people in 2007/8, up from 42,000 the year before. Only one percent of searches led to an arrest, leading to claims it is being overused.
Black people were eight times more likely and Asians were twice as likely to be stopped and searched as whites.
Muslim and black groups have often complained that they are searched more often, but Lord Carlile said the “ethnic imbalance” was a “proportional consequence” of the fact that the main terror threat was from Islamic extremists.
Last year, the number of whites searched under anti-terror laws went up 185 percent from 25,962 to 73,967, making up two thirds of the total.
* A comment on a daily newspaper’s website sums up the situation: “Next UK idiots will require police to arrest some extra white people without reason to make the prison statistics look OK. Where will this idiotism lead you?”

Libya: Deep concern about the death in custody

Ms. Navanethem Pillay
High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Re: Libya: Deep concern about the death in custody of human rights defender Fathi ElJahmi
Dear Ms. High Commissioner,
The Libyan League for Human Rights, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights
Defenders1, and the EuroMediterranean
Human Rights Network (EMHRN) wish to express their deep
concern about the death in custody of human rights defender Fathi ElJahmi.
In Lybia, human rights, including the right to life, continue to be violated by various means, even by
the murder of prisoners of conscience and opinion arbitrarily arrested, detained or condemned. Libya
is among the few countries which have ratified most of the international human rights instruments, but
one of the States least respectful of the letter and spirit of what they have ratified.
On 21 May 2009, Mr. Fathi ElJahmi,
Libya’s most prominent advocate of democracy and human
rights, lost his life under suspicious conditions, after the Libyan Government, in a rush and surprising
move, evacuated him to Amman, Jordan for emergency “medical care”, while he was in an allegedly
semiconscious
or comatose state and
breathing on a ventilator . It appears that Libyan security
agents accompanied Mr. ElJahmi
to Amman, Jordan. According to the information received, they
finally supervised the repatriation of his corpse and his precipitated burial in Benghazi, Libya, without
even performing an autopsy.
Our organisations fear that Mr. Fathi ElJahmi’s
evacuation was decided, wholly or partly, to avoid
any accusation or embarrassment that a death in custody might cause to the Libyan Government.
Indeed, a score of human rights organisations had repeatedly and for months requested the Libyan
Government to allow Mr. ElJahmi
to be transferred to a properly equipped medical centre but in vain.
The Libyan Government persisted, since the incarceration of Mr. ElJahmi
in October 2002, in its
refusal to treat humanely all humanitarian requests and kept Mr. ElJahmi
under inhuman detention
conditions. Mr. ElJahmi
was denied proper medical care as prescribed by independent physicians.
According to the Government’s top security officer Colonel Tohamy Khaled, Mr. ElJahmi
was in
good health condition, but he was mentally disturbed.
1 The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders is a joint programme of the International
Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).
“Physicians for Human rights” (PHR) visited Mr. ElJahmi
twice in detention, in 2005 and in March
2008, and conducted independent medical examination of the prisoner. In 2008, PHR wrote:
“independent medical judgment has not governed the care of Mr. ElJahmi.
Not only was he
inappropriately confined in a hospital for many months he
was also placed in a psychiatric facility
without cause, and the Libyan Government never provided any evidence to support such an
intervention”. The PHR report confirmed that “Mr. ElJahmi
suffered from diabetes, hypertension, and
heart disease. At the time of PHR’s visit in March 2008, Mr. ElJahmi
remained detained in the Tripoli
Medical Center, where security officers controlled access to visitors. Mr. ElJahmi’s
hospitalisation
under guard stemmed from a May 2006 court decision, which determined him mentally unfit for trial
and ordered him detained at a psychiatric hospital. During the year spent by Mr. ElJahmi
at the
psychiatric hospital, his health significantly declined, forcing his transfer to the Tripoli Medical Center
in July 2007. Mr. ElJahmi
told PHR that during his detention in the psychiatric hospital, authorities
denied him access to needed medications and a doctor, as well as family visits”2. Human Rights
Watch, which participated in Mr. ElJahmi’s
interview, added that: “Two days before this examination
[14 March 2008], the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, which is headed by
Saif alIslam
alGaddafi,
son of Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar alGaddafi,
had reported that Fathi
ElJahmi
had been released and “was now in the care of his family”. In fact he remained in State
custody at the Tripoli Medical Centre. Security officers continued to supervise him and were present
outside his room. In addition his family are kept under close surveillance and his passport has not been
returned”3.
Mr. Fathi ElJahmi
will be remembered as the first Libyan who publicly and peacefully challenged,
inside Libya, the Government known for its absolute disrespect of human rights and fundamental
freedoms, to make real reforms based on free choice through democracy and respect of human rights,
including the organisation of free and fair election, the legalisation of a free press, and the end of
detention based on political motives. Mr. El Jahmi was first arrested on 19 October 2002 and briefly
released on 12 March 2004. Two weeks later, Libyan security forces rearrested
ElJahmi
after he
spoke with the USfunded
AlHurra
television of his determination to pursue his work for democracy
in Libya and declared publicly his opposition to the way Libyan public affairs were conducted. He
languished in prison and in prison hospitals until his death on 21 May 2009 while his family members
faced ever greater harassment, including the loss of their home.
Madame Commissioner,
We fear that the precipitated transfer of Mr. ElJahmi,
under guard and in a allegedly semiconscious
,
to a medical centre in Amman could be motivated by a will to cover up a potential death in custody,
resulting from either lack of proper medical care or outright neglect. We fear that the Government
attempted through the precipitated “release” of Mr. ElJahmi
to avoid being accused of failing to fulfill
its duty to protect the life of those in its care, especially that the death in custody of Mr. ElJahmi
came
after the death in custody, in Busleem Prison, of Mr. Ali Mohamed AlFakhri
known as Mr. Ibn AlSheikh
AlLibi
who was held and tortured in secret US and Egyptian detention centers from late 2001
to at least 2005 before the CIA handed him over to Libya in 2007 or 2008. Mr. Ibn Alsheikh
was
found dead in his cell in Busleem prison in Tripoli on 9 May 2009.
Every unnatural death in custody constitutes a human rights concern and Libya should be held to
account for it pursuant to its obligations under the human rights instruments ratified by it. Therefore,
the Libyan authorities should conduct an independent investigation into all deaths occurred in custody
in Libya.
2 See Medical Evaluation of Fathi alJahmi
Conducted by Scott A. Allen, MD, Advisor to Physicians for
Human Rights, March 13 and 14, 2008, Tripoli Medical Center, Tripoli, Libya, available at:
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/sitesearch/
search.jsp?query=aljahmi.
3 See Human Rights Watch, Lybia: Release Gravely ill Political Prisoner, January 29, 2008, available at:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/01/29/libyareleasegravelyillpoliticalprisoner.
In view of the human rights situation that prevails in Libya, the undersigned organisations fear that the
necessary conditions for an independent investigation cannot be met. Therefore, they call upon you, in
your capacity as High Commissioner for Human Rights, to encourage any measure that could be
adopted by the UN human rights independent mechanisms in order to ensure that (a) an immediate,
effective, thorough and impartial investigation into the abovementioned
facts is conducted, (b) the
result of which must be made public, in order to identify all those responsible, bring them before a
competent , independent and impartial tribunal and apply to them the penal, civil and/or administrative
sanctions provided by the law. We all believe that, as stated by PHR, “the Libyan Government has
always asserted that it was providing the best possible care to Mr. Fathi AlJahmi.
Therefore, they
should have nothing to hide and should allow a full investigation”.
We hope that the UN human rights independent mechanisms will use the present submission within
the framework of their mandate and we request your urgent intervention on this situation. We remain
available for any additional information.
Yours sincerely,
The Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR)
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture
(OMCT)
The EuroMediterranean
Human Rights Network (EMHRN)
CC:
Mr.
Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Mr.
Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment
Mr.
Frank William La Rue, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to
freedom of opinion and expression
Ms
Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

ACLU condemns U.S. crackdown on Muslim charities

Harsh measures meant to combat terrorist financing violate the charities' rights, a report says, and deter Muslims from giving.
By Duke Helfand June 17, 2009
The federal government's crackdown on suspected terrorism financing since the Sept. 11 attacks has violated the rights of American Muslim charities and deterred Muslims from charitable giving, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report Tuesday. An expansion of laws and policies since 2001 has given the U.S. Treasury Department in particular virtually unchecked authority to designate charities as terrorist organizations and freeze assets without adequate safeguards to protect against mistakes or abuse, the study concluded.

Muslims not sure President Obama's speech means real change
It said that such sweeping powers, combined with the FBI interviewing Muslim donors and putting mosques under surveillance, has created a climate of fear among Muslims. Donors have been reluctant to fulfill their religious obligation to give zakat, or charity, one of the "five pillars" of Islam, for fear of being arrested, deported, denied citizenship or prosecuted retroactively for donations made in good faith."Giving charity is a central part of being Muslim, so it weighs heavily on them that they cannot practice a key tenet of their faith," said ACLU researcher Jennifer Turner, who based her findings on interviews with 120 Muslim community leaders, donors and former government officials. In a statement, the Treasury Department, which is responsible for oversight of charitable activity, said it attempts to help the charitable community protect against terrorist abuses.
"We're hopeful this ongoing communication will ensure all charitable groups, regardless of religious affiliation, have the ability to provide assistance where it's needed most, without empowering terrorist organizations," the agency said.In his speech in Cairo this month, President Obama addressed the oversight of Muslim charities, saying the "rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That's why I'm committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat."Civil libertarians and Muslim advocates say the Obama administration has yet to take steps to address the problems. The ACLU said that federal policies have led to the closure of nine Muslim charities in Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon and other states. The leaders of one former charity, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, were convicted in November of funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The U.S. has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, making contributions to it illegal. Two founding members of Holy Land, once the nation's largest Muslim charity, were each sentenced last month to 65 years in prison.Still, Muslim advocates and the ACLU said the government has seized the assets of other charities without charging them with a crime. Such an approach has driven charitable giving underground and undermined U.S. diplomatic efforts in Muslim countries, they said. "This is an issue that not only goes to religious giving, but we see this as critical to our continued integration and participation in American public life," said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy and education organization based in San Francisco."To be engaged in public life, we need to feel comfortable supporting our community institutions," she said.duke.helfand@latimes.com

New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record

The UN Human Rights Council called America's human rights record "deplorable," and in need of major changes. It deserves credit for revealing what US authorities try hard to suppress and ignore.
-->On May 26, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development - Report of the Special Rapporteur (Philip Alston) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions."
Alston was damning in his criticism regarding "three areas in which significant improvement is necessary if the US Government is to match its actions to its stated commitment to human rights and the rule of law:"
Its imposition of the death penalty under which innocent people are executed. Alston was shocked about "glaring criminal justice system flaws," citing Texas and Alabama as examples, but many other states are as derelict. He criticized politicized judges and recommended that Congress "should enact legislation permitting federal court habeas review of state and federal death penalty cases on their merits."
He condemned the 2006 Military Commissions Act and its provisions that violate international human rights and humanitarian law with regard to due process and fairness.
America needs "greater transparency into law enforcement, military, and intelligence operations that result in unlawful deaths." Domestically, it provides inadequate information about deaths of immigrants and other detainees, but the worst failures are in international military and intelligence operations.
The government fails to "provide greater accountability for potentially unlawful deaths in its international operations." It ignores civilian casualties, both their number and conditions under which they occur, and fails to provide ordinary people, including US citizens, with basic information regarding investigations and prosecutions when laws were violated. It fails to assure safeguards are in place to prevent so-called collateral damage - that is, civilians wrongfully (and at times willfully) targeted and killed.
Overall, "there have been chronic and deplorable accountability failures with respect to policies, practices and conduct that (cause) alleged unlawful killings - including possible war crimes - in the United States' international operations." Effective investigations have been lacking and guilty parties, throughout the chain of command, haven't been punished. Even worse, private contractors and civilian intelligence personnel have been granted "a zone of impunity" because of failures to hold them accountable. Alston recommends a national "commission of inquiry" and a special prosecutor to conduct thorough investigations "independent of the pressure on the political branches of Government."
More on this below.
In June 2008, Alston spent two week in America meeting with federal and state officials, judges and civil society groups, as well as victims and witnesses in five US cities. As a signatory to international human rights laws, including the four Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Convention against Torture, the US is bound by their provisions and required to hold its civilians and military personnel accountable when they violate them.
Domestic Issues
The federal government, 35 states, and US military impose death penalties, often executing innocent people for failing to assure proper due process and fairness. Alston addressed the federal death penalty and its application in Texas and Alabama, the former for its largest number of US executions, the latter for having the nation's highest per capita rate of them.
Yet since 1973, 130 death row inmates nationwide were exonerated, and their numbers keep growing. Since 1977, 13 in Illinois were also declared innocent and freed, a state where governor George Ryan took unprecedented steps:
on January 31, 2000, he declared a moratorium on further executions after acknowledging a deeply flawed system under which innocent men and women are executed;
then in January 2003, he commuted the sentences of all 156 death row prisoners - an action only matched by the Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia (June 29, 1972) when it struck down capital punishment at the state and federal levels, calling existing statutes unconstitutional, "arbitrary and capricious," and commuted the sentences of all 629 inmates on death row - until it reinstated it in Gregg v. Georgia on July 2, 1976.
Ever since, well over 1100 executions took place and three times that number await them on death row. Far too often they're innocent victims of injustice, people of color, poor, and unable to effectively deal with a hostile prosecutorial system, at least because:
inadequate laws and/or practices don't protect them "governing the preservation of evidence (including DNA) or because of the passage of time;"
after convictions, some state laws disallow use of DNA evidence; to countermand this, a federal law should mandate it as standard procedure;
in some cases, biological evidence isn't relevant; and
in others, "evidentiary or procedural issues preclude a just or reliable basis for imposing the death penalty."
The result is a deeply flawed criminal justice system affecting victims, their families, and communities when real criminals remain at large. Yet government officials are often indifferent to the problem, at both state and federal levels. Alston recommends changes:
action to address the lack of judicial independence and inadequate right to counsel;
a top-to-bottom criminal justice system analysis and overhaul followed by reforms, especially for racial disparities in capital cases; and
federal court reviews of all injustice claims when capital punishment is at issue.
Unfortunately, Alston doesn't challenge the death penalty but believes federal and state laws should only impose it for the "most serious crimes." However, who's to decide and on what basis.
He also says foreign nationals denied the right to consular notification were unfairly treated and should be provided review and reconsideration.
Judicial Independence
Texas, Alabama, and other states "have partisan elections for judges." However, "as research and practice show," this system "jeopardizes the right of capital defendants to a fair trial and appeal." Also, there's a direct correlation between public support for the death penalty and decisions made to impose it. "There is no such correlation in non-elective states." State officials told Alston that getting re-elected depends on supporting the death penalty and imposing it from the bench - even at times by overriding jury decisions for life in prison.
Right to Counsel
The right is fundamental but not applied if counsel quality is poor, as so often is the case when court-appointed or low-income defendants can't afford better representation. State funding to provide it is inadequate, and one Texas official told Alston that defense counsel competency in the state is "abysmal." Major reforms are needed to repair a broken system, in Texas and nationwide.
Racial Disparities
Persons of color in America are most vulnerable to receive death sentences in capital cases - especially if victims are white. Yet federal and state officials are indifferent to the problem or deny one exists. When confronted with evidence from various studies, they claim they were conducted by anti-death penalty advocates and dismiss the results. It's never been a good time to be poor, black, or Latino in America, especially when confronted by a hostile criminal justice system claiming to be impartial.
Systematic Evaluation of the Criminal Justice System
Far too little is done at the state or federal levels to ensure wrongful death penalties aren't imposed. Their frequency demands serious redress - firm measures to halt injustices this grave.
Federal Habeas Corpus Review
Habeas suits can be filed in federal courts to challenge death penalty convictions, but not easily. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) denies them on many grounds, imposes a six-month statute of limitation for filing, and restricts access to federal evidentiary hearings. Other problems also exist that limit defendants' rights even when wrongfully convicted - such as emphasizing "finality" over the right of due process and fairness. Serious reform measures are needed to redress this.
Most Serious Crimes
The definition is vague and applies to an intention to kill resulting in the loss of life as determined by a judge and jury. However, capital punishment may be imposed for crimes like running large illegal drug operations according to the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act. Other crimes as well, including treason, terrorism, rape, kidnapping, and in the military for desertion or mutiny.
Consular Notification
America is party to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). It grants foreign nationals the right to contact their consulates for help, but too often they're prevented from doing it - in Texas, for example, where the state legislature failed to authorize its courts to provide this review. At the federal level as well by Congress not doing it. Alston says VCCR is "a bedrock principle of international law" affecting not just foreign nationals on death row in US states, but "equally to any American who travels to another country." It's up to Congress to fix this.
Deaths in Immigration Detention
In June 2008, the federal government acknowledged at least 74 immigrant detention deaths since 2003. Newspaper reports suggest far higher numbers. They result from various causes, including denying medical care, poor quality or delayed care, and "inappropriate medication." Overall, the treatment of immigrants in detention is deplorable with little attention paid to basic needs along with abusive treatment by authorities.
Killings by Law Enforcement Officials
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) compiles data covering homicides (usually by other inmates but also by guards), suicides, "arrest-related killings," and other judicially related deaths.
Statistics on resulting prosecutions and convictions aren't available, but it's "clear that (their) number....is small...." It means serious offenses are committed against numerous people trapped in the criminal justice system that too often affords little of it to the most vulnerable.
International Operations - The Death Penalty Under the Military Commissions Act
From the time of their arrest and internment, Guantanamo detainees were denied any measure of due process and fairness. Five are charged with capital offenses under the Military Commissions Act (MCA), and others also may face the death penalty under this travesty of a law. Although Obama ordered a stay of Commission proceedings to decide on procedures to follow, he left open the likelihood that prosecutions will proceed under MCA provisions, and if done, they'll violate US obligations under international humanitarian law.
MCA "utterly fail(s) to meet basic due process standards." Several of its most egregious flaws include:
Guantanamo detainees were tortured and subjected to cruel and abusive treatment;
statements coerced through torture will be used as evidence at trials;
whatever America says is classified will be unavailable to defense attorneys;
detainees may be convicted by evidence he has never seen or knows anything about; and
second and third-hand hearsay evidence will be allowed at trial.
"The MCA's provisions constitute a gross infringement on the right to a fair trial and it would violate international law to execute someone under this statute."
Detainee Deaths at Guantanamo
Full knowledge of detainee deaths isn't known, including their number and causes. Alston cites five reported, four called suicides, the other attributed to cancer. Custodial powers are required "to ensure and respect the right to life." As such, they bear responsibility for detainee deaths and are obligated to investigate and publicly report their findings and whatever evidence supports them. So far, DOD has stonewalled all efforts to comply, except to release redacted autopsy and other internal investigation reports.
Lack of Transparency Regarding Civilian Casualties
DOD officials told Alston that it doesn't compile data on Afghan or Iraqi civilian casualties because body counts don't relate to the effectiveness or legality of military operations. Yet doing it is important to judge if America is serious about avoiding them altogether and keeping them to a minimum when they happen. No evidence suggests that's so.
Private Contractors
Credible reports indicate that private security and other contractors engage in indiscriminate and otherwise questionable force against civilians, causing numerous casualties that may number in the thousands. Little of this gets reported and transparency overall is lacking. "The most comprehensive study to date found that few firms ever report shooting incidents, that such incidents are often misreported, and that SIRs (serious incident reports) that are filed are almost uniformly cursory and uninformative." As a result, private contractors get away with murder because no authority holds them accountable.
Civilian Intelligence Agencies
What's true for contractors, applies to the CIA as well with credible reports of at least five custodial deaths from torture or other means. Claimed investigations were conducted. CIA involvement was never confirmed or denied. Its Inspector General told Alston that cases involving possible unlawful killings are classified, and no one so far has been prosecuted nor will they as Obama ruled out the possibility.
Transparency and Accountability for Unlawful Killings and Custodial Deaths
Failure to assure transparency and "effective investigations into, and meaningful prosecution of, wrongful deaths means the (US) Government cannot fulfill its obligation to ensure accountability for violations of the right to life."
Military Justice System Failures
In Afghanistan, Alston witnessed a lack of transparency first hand and the Government's unwillingness to be held accountable for illegal conduct. Most often investigations are quashed or inadequately done. Moreover, they're never against senior officers, and light sentences are administered to the few convicted. America fails in its "legal obligation to effectively punish violations (or observe) the rule of law," as vital in war as in peace.
One study "of almost 100 detainee deaths in US custody between August 2002 and February 2006 found that investigations were fundamentally flawed." They also violated the military's own regulations for investigations, and resulted in "impunity and a lack of transparency into the policies and practices that may have contributed to the deaths."
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr.'s sentencing is typical of others. After being convicted of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty for the death of Iraqi Major General Abedd Hamed Mowhoush, he was confined to base for two months, fined $6000, and reprimanded by letter. Welshofer's "sentence is not an anomaly."
Notable in all cases is that "command responsibility," the recognized basis for criminal liability since WW II, is absent from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and US War Crimes Act. It means commanders go unprosecuted and accountability is undermined.
Civilian Justice System Failures
"For far too long, there has been a zone of de facto impunity for killings by private contractors (PCs) and civilian intelligence agents operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere." It's not for lack of an applicable legal framework. It's because "US prosecutors have failed to use the laws on the books to investigate and prosecute PCs and civilian agents for wrongful deaths," some of which occur from torture, abuse as well as willful homicides.
The DOJ has prosecutorial authority over PCs, civilian government employees, and former military personnel suspected of war crimes under two of its operations:
the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia for detainee abuse cases; and
the Domestic Security Section (DSS) of DOJ's Criminal Division for unlawful shootings committed while protecting convoys.
Both fall way short, and DSS representatives acknowledged the lack of convictions but withheld information on allegations received, investigations undertaken, or their status. "The lamentable bottom line is that DOJ has brought a scant few cases against PCs for civilian casualties, achieved a conviction only in one case involving a CIA contractor, and brought no cases against CIA employees....this vacuum is neither legally nor ethically defensible."
Ensuring Transparency and Accountability
It's only possible through the "will to enforce the rule of law," yet Alston's conclusion is that outcome is highly unlikely. "In short, war crimes prosecutions in particular are 'politically radioactive' " and won't happen. However, there are other steps the government can take to increase transparency and accountability:
create a national "commission of inquiry" to conduct independent investigations of policies and practices causing deaths and other abuses; and
appoint an independent special prosecutor, free from institutional or political pressures to the greatest degree possible.
In both cases, fundamental requirements require independence, impartiality, competence, and the power to obtain all sought information. Adequate funding is also essential and the right to publicly report findings and recommendations.
"The most credible response to the military justice system's investigative failure and sentencing distortions would be the creation of a Director of Military Prosecutions (DMP) position" - much like in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK "to ensure greater separation between the chain of command and the prosecution function."
The DOJ should also establish a special office solely to investigate and prosecute cases involving PCs, civilian government employees, and former military personnel.
Reparations for Civilian Casualties
International law mandates that compensation for human rights violations be paid, and in some instances to families it has been. But it's much too little for the families of too few victims.
The Foreign Claims Act requires payment of legal claims arising from negligent or wrongful deaths caused by military personnel outside of combat. Other programs also exist, including the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) for "condolence payments" and in Afghanistan authorization of "solatia payments."
However, these are ad hoc efforts, and the "lack of systematic compensation for civilian casualties caused by private contractors is acute." As their employer, the government bears ultimate responsibility but shuns it.
Targeted Killings: Lack of Transparency Regarding the Legal Framework and Targeting Choices
Credible evidence shows America engages in targeted killings on the territory of other states, and senior officials admit using drones for this purpose. Yet when queried, answers are evasive, not forthcoming, and disturbing justifications are given that violate the letter and spirit of international law.
Recommendations - For Domestic Issues
enforce due process and fairness in death penalty cases;
reform the system of partisan elected judges;
public defenders should be competent, well funded, and oversight of this function should be independent of the executive and judicial branches;
commissions should be established to review cases of wrongful convictions - discovered through subsequent exonerations;
ways the death penalty is administered and implemented should be evaluated and changed;
racial disparities in death penalty impositions need to be addressed and corrected;
congressional legislation should let federal courts review death penalty cases on their merits;
capital punishment should be used sparingly and only for the most serious crimes of willful killings; (ideally, it should be banned entirely as no civil society worthy of the name has the right to claim an eye for an eye);
foreign nationals should have their executions stayed until proper consular reviews and reconsiderations are conducted;
immigration detention deaths should be promptly reported and investigated; and
Homeland Security should assure proper medical and other essential care is provided, consistent with international standards.
Guantanamo Detainees
The Military Commissions Act violates international laws and shouldn't be used for capital case prosecutions. Ones conducted should assure due process according to international human rights and humanitarian law requirements.
International Operations
civilian casualties should be tracked and publicly disclosed;
the DOD should ensure military justice transparency by establishing a central office of "registry" to track cases from investigation through final disposition and should include upcoming hearings, investigative findings, rulings, pleadings, testimony transcripts, and other pertinent materials;
comprehensive criminal jurisdiction over armed conflict offenses should be ensured and "command responsibility" should be codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and War Crimes Act;
federal legislation should be enacted to provide criminal jurisdiction over private contractors and civilian employees, including the CIA and other intelligence branches;
an independent commission of inquiry and special prosecutor should be established to investigate practices causing deaths and other abuses; also a Director of Military Prosecutions to hold everyone throughout the chain of command responsible for their alleged crimes;
an office to investigate and prosecute private contractors, civilian government employees, and former military personnel should be created within the DOJ;
enhanced reparations programs should be established to provide adequate compensation to families of those wrongfully killed;
targeted killings must stop; reasons for them in lieu of capture should be explained and whether states in which they occur gave consent; specifically, international laws must be scrupulously enforced; and
collaterally killed civilian numbers should be disclosed, by drones or other attacks, and measures should be in place to avoid them or hold them to a minimum.
In summary, Alston called America's human rights record "deplorable," and in need of major changes. In response, the Obama administration charged him with violating his mandate by accusing the US of failing to properly investigate allegations of unlawful US military killings in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Acting deputy at the US mission in Geneva, Larry Richter, said: "We do not believe that military and intelligence operations during armed conflict fall within the special rapporteur's mandate." Much more important is his lack of power to act on the crimes he discovered. Still he deserves credit for revealing what US authorities try hard to suppress and ignore.

by Stephen Lendman Monday, 15 June 2009