Human Rights – Page 4 – Infinite Unknown

UN tells France to stop forced mass expulsion of Roma

August 29, 2010August 29, 2010 by Infinite

Roma people after being resettled from a camp near Lille, in northern France

France has come under increasing pressure to stop its mass expulsions of Roma when a United Nations human rights panel added its voice to the chorus of condemnation.

In recent weeks, French officials have dismantled more than 100 illegal camps and sent hundreds of Roma back to their homes in eastern Europe.

A report released yesterday by a UN anti-racism panel urged France to avoid its “collective repatriations” and expressed concern that members of the Roma community weren’t receiving full voting, education and housing rights in France.

Secretly Forced RFID Brain Implants: Explosive Court Case

August 22, 2010August 21, 2010 by Infinite

Commentary by author Deborah Dupré (Submitted on 2010/08/22 at 12:41am):

This article is copyrighted. Remove it immediately or leave only title linked to original. You have committed a federal offence.

Like always I had provided the link, date and author from the original article, which is in my view clearly to the advantage of the author.

‘Fair use’ would allow me to quote a few lines, but complying with the wishes of the author Deborah Dupré I have removed the entire article.

I personally think that this knowledge has to go out immediately to the entire world, because if we cannot stop RFID implants & microchips, then we as humanity will be controlled zombies and are finished.

This would be the end of Gods in human form and human evolution.

I will certainly not link to the article, but you will find it at the Examiner.

Original title: “Secretly forced brain implants: Explosive court case”

I personally would not put my personal copyright laws over the well-being of humanity, but this is personal choice and I totally respect that.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
– Voltaire

Judge Napolitano on Freedom Watch: ‘The Government is the Servant and Not the Master’

August 12, 2010 by Infinite

Added: 11. August 2010

Richard C. Cook: 2010 – Humanity’s Choice as Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner

August 6, 2010 by Infinite

Richard C. Cook (born October 20, 1946) is a former U.S. federal government analyst, who was instrumental in exposing White House cover-ups regarding the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986. As a witness to the incident and a participant in the subsequent investigations, Cook provided key document to The New York Times and testified before the Rogers Commission. In 1990, he received the Cavallo Foundation Award for Moral Courage in Business and Government for his testimony. In 2007, his memoirs of the tragedy were published in a book entitled, Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. (Wikipedia)

The world is indeed changing, in ways different from what the imperialists have planned. They may try to wreck the world to prevent these changes, but it won’t work. As Steiner and other prophetic thinkers made clear, at-one-ment is here and now. Nothing else in fact has ever really existed.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and esotericist and founder of one of the key modern spiritual movements in the West. He is best known for his books and lectures before and after World War I, when he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its present-day headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. After World War I, Steiner and his work were criticized viciously by right-wing nationalists in Germany, which caused him to give up his residence in Berlin. Among the critics was Adolf Hitler, who attacked him in print as a traitor to Germany for his efforts to promote peace.

The work of prophetic thinkers like Rudolf Steiner makes clear that the history of humanity proceeds through the evolution of consciousness, where changes take place in the psyche of people well in advance of their outward manifestations. Thus an understanding of what is happening before our eyes is never simple, nor can it be taken at face value. Discernment requires a level of knowledge that can only be achieved through study and insight.

But only an approach that penetrates deeply into human nature allows us to see the real inner causes of events. Such causes can be positive or negative, constructive or destructive. It is the genius and dilemma of man that we can choose which influences we serve. As Steiner prophesied almost a century ago, we appear today to be at a pivotal point where how we make such choices can determine the fate of the world.

EU gives US access to its citizens’ private financial data

July 9, 2010July 9, 2010 by Infinite

Related information:

– EUROPOL: New EU Gestapo Spies on Britons … and and all other EU citizens
(Daily Express):

MILLIONS of Britons face being snooped on by a new European intelligence agency which has been handed frightening powers to pry into our lives.

Europol can access personal information on anyone – including their political opinions and sexual preferences – if it suspects, rightly or wrongly, that they may be involved in any “preparatory act” which could lead to criminal activity.

US anti-terrorism investigators have won the right to scrutinise the private bank details of British and other EU citizens after a crucial vote in the European parliament yesterday.

The vote in favour of giving CIA agents access to a giant financial database follows a deal struck between US and EU negotiators.

Under the new arrangements, the EU police agency Europol will assess whether specific data requests are necessary for the fight against terrorism before the data is sent to the US, and the EU Commission will appoint its own officials to monitor the US investigators’ actions. There is also a requirement that bulk data can never be sent to third countries. The measures were passed by 484 MEPs in favour and 109 against.

Last night the White House welcomed its victory. In a statement, the Obama administration said: “Putting the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme on this co-operative course is another example of how we can work with our European partners to prevent terrorism and simultaneously respect the rule of law. This co-operation strengthens our transatlantic ties and makes all our people safer.”

Exposed: The Truth About Israel’s Land Grab In The West Bank

July 8, 2010July 8, 2010 by Infinite

“Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel” … like Hitler’s ‘divine right’ to claim land for his supreme Aryan race.

Israel calls this self-defense:

(Click on image to enlarge.)

I guess Hitler would have called this self-defense too!

Report reveals more than 42 percent of territory is controlled by settlers

A Jewish settler hangs the Israeli flag over a vacated building in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur (AFP)

Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.

Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.

“The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” the report concluded.

Chinese farmer declares war on property developers with homemade wheelbarrow cannon

June 11, 2010June 11, 2010 by Infinite

A Chinese farmer is fighting off property developers who want his land, firing rockets from a homemade cannon made out of a wheelbarrow and pipes, state media said on Tuesday.

The rockets, which can travel over 100 yards, exploded with a deafening bang (AFP)

Yang Youde, who lives on the outskirts of the bustling city of Wuhan, in central Hubei province, said he had fended off two eviction attempts with his improvised weapon, which uses ammunition made from locally sold fireworks.

“I shot only over their heads to frighten them,” he told the China Daily of his attacks on demolition workers sent to move him off his land. “I didn’t want to cause any injuries.”

The rockets, which can travel over 100 yards, exploded with a deafening bang, the official paper added. It did not say if anyone had been injured.

His approach is more aggressive than most, but Mr Yang’s problem is a common one.

Anger over property confiscation is one of the leading causes of unrest in China, with many people forced to give up homes and land to make way for anything from roads to luxury villas.

Mr Yang said the local government had offered him 130,000 yuan (£13,000) for his fields, on which they want to erect “department buildings”. He said the land is worth five times that amount.

Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill; The US and Europe totally ignore it

June 2, 2010June 2, 2010 by Infinite

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades

A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. (Reuters)

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. “We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,” said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. “This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months.”

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

Amnesty International condemns ‘weak’ EU over human rights

May 27, 2010 by Infinite

Amnesty International has accused the EU being “weak” and failing to protect human rights, citing the bloc’s tolerance of the CIA’s rendition flights and secret detention programme.

The group said several European countries had repeatedly violated rulings by the European Court of Human Rights against the return of terror suspects to countries where they are at risk of torture.

The human rights group’s annual global report, released on Thursday, also noted “clear accountability gaps” in the EU’s foreign policy.

It cited the bloc’s “weak and incoherent” response to a UN report which found that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009, and to similar allegations against government forces in Sri Lanka.

Amnesty also criticised the UN for its failure to intervene during the fighting in Sri Lanka. Thousands were killed during the war, and the UN at the time described the conflict as a “bloodbath”.

Amnesty also accused the EU and the US of using their influence with the UN Security Council to “shield” Israel from accountability in Gaza.

Deepwater Horizon survivors were kept in seclusion after rig explosion, coerced into signing legal waivers

June 6, 2010May 27, 2010 by Infinite

According to two surviving crew members of the Deepwater Horizon, oil workers from the rig were held in seclusion on the open water for up to two days after the April 20 explosion, while attorneys attempted to convince them to sign legal documents stating that they were unharmed by the incident.

The men claim that they were forbidden from having any contact with concerned loved ones during that time, and were told they would not be able to go home until they signed the documents they were presented with.Stephen Davis, a seven-year veteran of drilling-rig work from San Antonio, told The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg today that he was held on a boat for 36 to 40 hours after diving into the Gulf from the burning rig and swimming to safety.

Once on a crew boat, Davis said, he and the others were denied access to satellite phones or radio to get in touch with their families, many of whom were frantic to find out whether or not they were OK.

Davis’ attorney told Goldenberg that while on the boat, his client and the others were told to sign the statements presented to them by attorneys for Transocean – the firm that owned the Deepwater Horizon – or they wouldn’t be allowed to go home. After being awake for 50 harrowing hours, Davis caved and signed the papers. He said most of the others did as well.

Davis’ story seems to be backed up by a similar account given to NPR by another Deepwater Horizon crewmember earlier in the month. Christopher Choy, a roustabout on the rig, said that the lawyers gathered the survivors in the galley of a boat and said, “‘You need to sign these. Nobody’s getting off here until we get one from everybody.’ … At the bottom, it said something about, like, you know, this can be used as evidence in court and all that. I told them, ‘I’m not signing it.’ “

Choy said that once he was finally allowed to get off the boat, he was shuttled to a hotel, where he met up with his wife. At the hotel, representatives from Transocean confronted him again and badgered him to sign the statement. Exhausted, traumatized and desperate to go home, Choy said that he finally relented and signed.

The Intelligence² Debate – Stephen Fry: ‘The Catholic Church is Not a Force For Good in the World’

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010 by Infinite

Highly recommended video!

Added: 16.01.10

Related information – “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them!”:

– Archbishop of Vienna accuses one of Pope Benedict XVI’s closest aides of sex abuse cover-up (Times)

– Pope Benedict XVI accepts resignation of his close friend Bishop Walter Mixa in sex probe (Reuters)

– Belgium: Top Catholic Bishop Resigns Over Child Sexual Abuse (Times)

– Database of Catholic Priests Publicly Accused of Sexual Abuse in the US (BishopAccountability.org)

– Illinois man is suing the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI for covering up sexual abuse (CNN)

– Catholic priest, 84, receiving oral sex from a choirboy in front of a local church altar caught on video (AFP)

– Priest Says He Was Bullied Into Taking Fall For Pope Benedict XVI In Abuse Scandal (The Local)

– Catholic Church is ‘like the Mafia’ (The Telegraph)

– Cardinal Praised Bishop’s Silence Over Paedophile Priest (BBC NEWS)

– Catholic Priest Accused of Child Porn Possession (AP)

– Belgian Bishops Failed To Punish Over 300 Paedophilia Complaints (AFP)

– Connecticut Catholic Bishops Fight Sex Abuse Bill (CNN)

– Richard Dawkins plans to arrest Pope Benedict XVI during his state visit to Britain ‘for crimes against humanity’ (Times)

– Catholic Priest Raped Teenage Boy At Gunpoint (My San Antonio)

– Norway Catholic Church Computer Server Crashed By Flood Of Pedophile Priests Abuse Claims (AFP)

– Pope John Paul II Blocked Inquiry of Paedophile Cardinal Friend Who Abused 2,000 boys (Times)

– Ireland Archbishop Stunned by Archbishop of Canterbury’s Criticism of Catholic Church (Times)

– Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher: Abuse critique like anti-Semitism (AP)

– ABC Nightline: What the Pope Knew About Father Maciel (ABC NEWS)

– Pope Benedict Appointed Bishop Accused of Ritually Beating Orphaned Children (The Raw Story)

– 40% of Americans view Pope Benedict XVI favorably (Gallup)

– 1963 letter indicates former pope knew of abuse (AP)

– Germany’s Catholic Church sexual abuse hotline received 1,000 calls the first day (Digital Journal)

– Austrian Catholic Church Abuse Hot Lines Log 566 Reports This Year (Austrian Independent)

– Australian Bishop says ‘vast amount’ of sexual abuse cases yet to emerge (Sydney Morning Herald)

– Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse FOR YEARS (New York Times)

– Christopher Hitchens Slams Vatican, Pope Over Sex Abuse Scandal (Huffington Post)

– The Pope Is Not Above the Law (Slate)

– Sex Abuse Victims to Sue Vatican (Times)

– Pope Benedict Signals Won’t Be Intimidated By Abuse Critics, Uses Popemobile For First Time On A Palm Sunday (New York Times/AFP)

– Vatican knew of abuse in Ontario: Victim (Toronto Star)

– Pope failed to defrock an American priest who molested hundreds of deaf boys, despite receiving letters from American bishops pleading with him to act (Times)

– A church sex scandal where the truth is crucified (Toronto Star)

– Sinead O’Connor: ‘There Should Be A Full Criminal Investigation Of The Pope’ (LA Times)

– Catholic Church quietly expelling and punishing children, homeless (Irish Central)

– Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests (Flashback):

Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests, according to formerly sealed testimony turned over to Milwaukee County’s district attorney on Thursday.

– Swiss Catholic Church Investigating 10 Abuse Cases (Reuters)

– Irish Catholic Church Paid Child Sex Abuse Victim To Keep Quiet (Guardian)

– Catholic Church Child Abuse: Nuns Now Also Accused (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

– Church: Pope Had Role in Moving Molesting Priest (Bloomberg)

– Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry (Times)

– Pope will struggle to survive abuse scandal (Irish Independent)

– Benedict’s involvement ’shows extent of cover-ups’ (Irish Independent)

– Sinead O’Connor: I’d help Jesus to burn down the Vatican (Irish Independent)

– RIGHTS-GERMANY: ‘Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests’ (IPS)

– Child abuse claims sweep Catholic Church in Europe (AP)

Russia: Government Critics Can Be Arrested Without a Warrant Under New Law; FSB to obtain ‘Unlimited Power’

April 27, 2010 by Infinite

Jane Burgermeister reports:

– Government critics can be arrested with impunity under new Russian law:

A law allowing Russia’s secret service agents to arrest people without a warrant is soon to be put before the Russian Duma by Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, „Kommersant“ reported Monday.

The law will allow agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) to imprison government critics with impunity and obtain “unlimited power,” writer Eduard Limonov told the news agency Interfax.

Putin is facing growing social unrest fuelled by the corruption of the Globalist-controlled Moscow government.

Also, Putin has recently come under criticism from a group of Russian journalists and civil rights campaigners for his potential role in the Polish plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and the Polish elite two weeks ago in western Russia. The head of the investigation, Putin has been conspicuous so far for failing to produce any results.

Ria Novosti reports on the new draft law:

New bill may give Russia’s FSB power to persecute dissidents – paper

A new bill submitted to the Russian parliament that allows “preventive measures” against individuals committing extremist actions has fuelled fears among opposition parties of a revival of Soviet-era practices, a Russian business daily said on Monday.

Existing legislation allows the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to impose preventive measures, such as official warnings and fines, on organizations whose activities could be considered extremist, but does not allow these measures to be applied to individuals.

The government said in an explanatory note the new law is needed to “consolidate the establishment of special prevention measures.”

Kommersant daily said opposition parties fear the new initiative could precede a major campaign against political dissidents.

“This is a Soviet-era practice that was used against dissidents and those who distributed ideologically harmful literature and engaged in similarly harmful conversations,” Kommersant quoted Fair Russia party Chairman Gennady Gudkov as saying.

He said officers of the Soviet security service, the KGB, used “warnings” when “there was insufficient evidence for criminal persecution”.

The pro-government United Russia party has more than two thirds of the seats in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, enough to pass any bill.

“How can we not be scared?” Kommersant daily quoted member of the Communist faction, Viktor Ilyukhin as saying. “The new bill regards ‘stoking social hatred’ as an extremist action, so a warning can be given to anyone who criticizes the authorities.”

2010 FIFA World Cup: Slum clearance, South Africa-style

April 26, 2010 by Infinite

Red Ants beat residents of Alexandra Township with crowbars

WAVING iron bars and pickaxes, the Red Ants, a rented mob of thugs in bright red overalls and crimson helmets, used the half-light of dawn for cover as they marched into the slum. Stamping out the first cooking fires of the day with heavy boots, they spread out in a long line. Then they attacked.

Bleary immigrant women dropped plastic water containers and ran in panic towards their corrugated iron homes. “Grab the children,” they screamed.

By sunrise their shacks on the outskirts of Johannesburg had been razed. They were forced to watch as their few possessions were burnt.

The Red Ants, described as state-sponsored mercenaries by their critics, have become a growing force in the past few months as South African cities have begun a campaign of “beautification” before the World Cup begins in June. This means clearing away unsightly immigrant squatter camps.

This month, more than 100 Zimbabweans were beaten and evicted by Red Ants from a derelict building on the main road to Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, one of the football tournament’s main venues.

It followed a series of Red Ant evictions ordered by the provincial department of public transport along main roads within a mile of the stadium, which will host five matches. Hundreds more Zimbabweans were forcibly evicted from properties in central Johannesburg.

UK government is told stance on torture has no legal basis

March 26, 2010 by Infinite

MPs and peers brand government’s definition of complicity in torture as ‘worrying’ and call for urgent independent inquiry

Former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, whose alleged abuse in captivity sparked an inquiry into UK government complicty in torture. (Reuters)

The government’s definition of what constitutes complicity in torture has no basis in law, parliament’s joint committee on human rights warns today in a hard-hitting attack on its attitude towards the abuse of terror suspects.

Its narrow definition of complicity is “significant and worrying” and in light of evidence, notably in the Binyam Mohammed hearings, the case for an urgent independent inquiry into claims of involvement in torture is irresistible, the committee says in a report.

It says ministers gave evasive replies when it asked them what would amount to complicity under international law. But in evidence to the committee and in public statements both the home and foreign secretaries, and the head of MI5, came “very close to saying that, at least in the wake of 9/11, the lesser of two evils was the receipt and use of intelligence which was known, or should have been known, to carry a risk that it might have been obtained under torture, in order to protect the UK public from possible terrorist attack”.

The report adds: “This is no defence to the charge of complicity in torture.” The government changed the question from “does or should the official receiving the information know that it has or is likely to have been obtained by torture?” to “does the official receiving the information know or believe that receipt of the information would encourage the intelligence services of other states to commit torture?”

Under international law complicity does not require active encouragement, the committee says. The formula used by the government “appears to us to be carefully designed to enable it to say that, although it knew or should have known some intelligence it received was or might have been obtained through torture, this did not amount to complicity because it did not know or believe such receipt would encourage … torture by other states”.

Lady Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, appeared to go further in a speech this month: “Nothing, even saving lives, justifies torture.”

What constitutes complicity in torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is a key issue behind Gordon Brown’s refusal to publish new guidance given to MI5, MI6, and military intelligence officers, operating abroad.

Brown has also declined to publish criticism of the guidance by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), whose members are handpicked by the prime minister.

Paul Craig Roberts: It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State

February 10, 2010 by Infinite

Must-read.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza

January 26, 2010 by Infinite

– Former Israeli Minister: ‘It’s a Trick, We Always Use It.’ (calling people ‘anti-Semitic’)

Added: 16. Januar 2009

Israel calls this self-defense:

(Click on image to enlarge.)

More:

– Palestinian children are stoned while walking to school (Christian Peacemaker Teams)

– Israel admits organ harvesting from Palestinians, and others, without consent (Guardian)

– UN assembly votes for probes of Gaza war crimes charges (Reuters)

– U.N. rights envoy: Israeli war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law in Gaza (Reuters)

– U.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion (Australien Herald)

– Paul Craig Roberts: Israel and the Goldstone Report – War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law (CounterPunch)

– Israel’s war crimes in Gaza (Independent)

– Amnesty International: Gaza white phosphorus shells were US made (Times)

– Did Israeli soldiers kill unarmed civilians? (Toronto Star):
‘The most moral army in the world’ killed civilians without cause

– Israeli soldiers report abuses in Gaza (Los Angeles Times)

– Tony Benn to BBC: If you won’t broadcast the Gaza appeal then I will myself (BBC)

– Israel admits troops may have used phosphorus shells in Gaza (Guardian)

– Outcry over Israel’s reported use of phosphorus in Gaza (IHT)

– Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in Gaza (Telegraph)

– Gaza: ‘I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls’ (Independent)

– Israel ‘admits’ using white phosphorus munitions (Times)

– Gaza building apparently hit by phosphorus: UN (Vancouver Sun)

– Israeli use of white phosphorus ‘undeniable’: Amnesty International (The Age)

– Israel used phosphorus in heavily populated areas, doctors charge (Kansas City Star)

– Israeli army investigates use of white phosphorous in Gaza (Guardian)

– Israel shelled UK war graves in Gaza (Telegraph)

– Israel ‘will resume bombing’ of Gaza if Hamas reopens tunnels (Telegraph)

– Gideon Levy / Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel (Ha’aretz)

President Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges

January 24, 2010 by Infinite

(updated below)

Change we can believe in!

One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration’s indefinite imprisoning of “War on Terror” detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a “legal black hole.” Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees — not the interrogation practices there — in order to brand the camp a “dungeon,” a “gulag,” a “tropical purgatory,” and a “black-hole embarrassment.” As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as “a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security,” as well as “a legal black hole that dishonors our principles.” Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:

The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.

Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush’s refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush’s abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.

But all year along, Barack Obama — even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo — has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush’s due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May “civil liberties” speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President’s power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already “implicitly” authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda — thereby, as The New York Times put it, “adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”

Today, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

Police State: Student Suspended And Assaulted For Handing Out ANTI-VACCINE Flyers

September 28, 2010December 20, 2009 by Infinite

Land of the FREE!

MUST-SEE!!!

The flyers consisted of simple medical studies that disprove vaccine safety claims by the cdc. On December 16th Breckenridge High School was holding a free vaccination clinic for all willing students, I signed up on the 14th and intended to enter the science room to hand out educational fliers.

When I began handing them out I was physically pushed around by my principal, this didn’t stop me from handing out many more fliers to the waiting students, some of which changed their mind and began to leave the line. After being threatened with arrest and removal from school property, I went back to class.

When I was dismissed at 1:30 I ran back to the clinic. After being physical blocked by a public health official I slid under her arm and began peacefully offering nurses more information.

This is when my science teacher Scott Wermerskirchen Assaulted me by pushing, bumping, grabbing, and aggressively ‘bearhugging’ me in an attempt to get my video camera. The whole altercation was captured on multiple security cameras and seen by over 20 witnesses. The school is refusing to release any video footage, and has not taken action against this teacher. However, the punishment for handing out fliers was a 2 day out of school suspension which was issued to me. This is ludicrous unjust and downright fascist.

America’s Secret ICE Detention Castles: Jailed Without Justice

December 20, 2009 by Infinite

“If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.”

Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.

Also present was Amnesty International’s Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report “Jailed Without Justice” and said in an interview, “It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn’t believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren’t anything wrong.”

ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians–OSHA inspectors, insurance agents, religious workers–in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. Jacqueline Stevens has reported a web-exclusive companion piece on ICE agents’ ruse operations.

Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants–nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

Fascism in America: By Political Definition The US Is Now Fascist, Not A Constitutional Republic

December 16, 2009 by Infinite

Must-read! Watch also the short video.

CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy Outside Vilnius, Lithuania

November 20, 2009 by Infinite

Related information:

– CIA Director Reveals Spec Ops Report: US Needs Hit Squads, ‘Manhunting Agency’

– Italy convicts 23 CIA agents in rendition trial

– Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

– US Spy Agencies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Twitter and Even Amazon Book Reviews

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Outside Lithuania the CIA used a former barn to interrogate al Qaeda members.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.

“The activities in that prison were illegal,” said human rights researcher John Sifton. “They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions.”

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the “black site” in 2004.

Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania’s efforts to join NATO.

“The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period,” said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. “They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters.”

Afghanistan: New 67-Million-Dollar US Prison At Bagram

November 17, 2009 by Infinite

“All detainees in Afghanistan are entitled to minimum protections, including the right to legal counsel, and to be able to challenge the legal and factual basis for the detention before an independent and impartial tribunal,” three leading rights groups said in a statement.

“The U.S. reforms still fall short of providing detainees with those rights,” Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch said in the statement.
Source: Reuters

Change you can believe in!

A U.S. Public Affairs officer stood in the recreation yard in the newly constructed “Detention Facility in Parwan” during a media tour in Bagram, Afghanistan, Nov. 15, 2009. (Wall Street Journal)

BAGRAM AIR FIELD — The new US prison for captured insurgents lies in the middle of a former Soviet minefield, on the northeastern side of the main American military base in Afghanistan.

Cleared of a deadly menace which still lurks elsewhere along Bagram’s perimeter, the complex of cinderblock, containers, Quonset huts and high barbed-wire fences will hold 675 inmates by the year end.

This number can be increased to 1,140 inmates.

The 67-million-dollar facility will be run by around 700 military personnel working for the Joint Task Force 435, created by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates “to take responsibility for all US detainee operations in Afghanistan”.

U.S. helicopter took off from the Bagram Air Base. (Wall Street Journal)

Officially known as Detention Facility in Parwan, after the surrounding province, the prison will replace that now run by only 200 guards in the centre of Bagram, a rapidly growing garrison city of 24,000.

Most inmates will be held in communal cells with a capacity of 20 detainees with, on average, 40 square feet (3.7 square metres) of individual space. On arrival, each will be issued a green blanket, a prayer mat, a white prayer cap and a copy of the Koran.

Detainees may, however, be segregated into individual cells for disciplinary reasons, but for never more than 30 days at a stretch.

UK: Big Brother Government to ‘spy’ on every phone call, email and web search

November 11, 2009 by Infinite

Time to wake up!

Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.

Despite widespread opposition to the increasing amount of surveillance in Britain, 653 public bodies will be given access to the information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a single government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

However the Government announced yesterday it was pressing ahead with privately held “Big Brother” databases that opposition leaders said amounted to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.

It is doing so despite its own consultation showing that it has little public support.

The Home Office admitted that only one third of respondents to its six-month consultation on the issue supported its proposals, with 50 per cent fearing that the scheme lacked sufficient safeguards to protect the highly personal data from abuse.

Israel: Government proposes work camps for illegal migrants

November 9, 2009 by Infinite

Work camps! Looks like the Israeli government has learned from history.

The government is considering establishing work camps in the south of the country, where illegal migrant workers will receive shelter, food and medical care, Army Radio reported Wednesday. In exchange, illegal migrants would perform manual labor outside the camps, but would not earn a salary.

They would stay at the camp until their asylum claims are decided, which could take months or years.

The proposal, part of the effort to address the problems posed by illegal migrants, would place asylum seekers at jobs in communities in the Negev and Arava. Their salaries would go to the state, in order to fund the camps.

Italy convicts 23 CIA agents in rendition trial

November 5, 2009 by Infinite

There is no change:

– ACLU hits Obama administration hard over torture controversies:

“The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration’s shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer representing the five men, in a press release. “The CIA’s rendition and torture program is not a ’state secret;’ it’s an international scandal.

If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability.”

Here is what consequences this could have for every human being on earth. They can do this to everyone in their way:

– Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

MILAN/ROME (Reuters) – An Italian judge sentenced 23 Americans to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric, in a symbolic condemnation of the CIA “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.

The Americans were all tried in absentia because the United States refused to extradite them.

The U.S. State Department expressed its disappointment with the verdict, the first of its kind, but campaigners who have long complained that the renditions policy violated basic human rights said the ruling set an important precedent.

“This decision sends a clear message to all governments that even in the fight against terrorism you can’t forsake the basic rights of our democracies,” said prosecutor Armando Spataro.