America's deadly leftovers?

Female bomb clearance teams created in Laos

Published on Sep 2, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : During the Vietnam War, the US dropped millions of cluster bombs on Laos.Forty years on, an estimated 80 million remain buried and unexploded - posing a risk to anyone who goes near them.

Now, 50 women have joined teams of the Mine Action Group, MAG, to clear as many as they can.The decision to have three of its 14 teams led entirely by women is also a financial one, as the work helps elevate the women's position in society.

Code Pink Challenges John Brennan on US Drone Warfare

Published on May 1, 2012 by TheUncannyNSP : Code Pink Activist Medea Benjamin speaks out against civilian causalties and human rights violations before John Brennan,Obama's chief counter terrorism advisor.

U.S. Justice Department Has Failed to Hold CIA Accountable for Torture in Detention

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, strimel@aiusa.org, 212-633-4150, @strimel

(New York) – Amnesty International USA Executive Director Suzanne Nossel made the following comments today in response to the Justice Department’s announcement that it closed the investigation into the CIA’s torture and abuse of detainees, without bringing charges.

“The continued failure to hold accountable all of those responsible for well documented cases of torture and other abuses is now a stain on two administrations -- and itself a crime. Those responsible must be punished. The failure to do so is a striking blow against justice and human rights. The Attorney General noted that the decision to close the investigation ‘was not intended to, and does not resolve, broader questions regarding the propriety of the examined conduct.’

But when will those ‘broader questions’ be addressed? And when will the U.S. government meet its international human rights obligations to ensure accountability for torture and other crimes under international law? There must be a full and impartial investigation, prosecutions where warranted, and remedy and redress for victims. Failure to ensure accountability for torture and other crimes is itself a violation of international law."

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.

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Rachel Corrie (pic) Among First in Long Line of Foreign Rights Activists Murdered, Maimed by IDF

Source: Richard Silverstein

 The list belowwas compiled by the Institute for Middle East Understanding and lists foreign peace activists brutally maimed or murdered by the IDF over the past nine years.  It’s a list of ignominy.  It should also be noted that hundreds of Palestinian activists have been similarly maimed or murdered in the same period under similar circumstances at anti-Occupation protest rallies throughout the West Bank:

May 15, 2011 – 22-year-old Palestinian-American student Munib Masri is shot in the back with live ammunition by Israeli soldiers along the Lebanon border while he participates in a march to mark the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of Israel. The bullet destroys Masri’s left kidney and spleen and broke apart in his spine. He remains in a wheelchair.

May 1, 2011 – 60-year-old American citizen Sandra Quintano suffers two broken wrists and a laceration to her head after being assaulted by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Izbet al-Tabib during a peaceful demonstration against the construction of Israel’s wall, which will cut off villagers’ access to their land.

June 2010 - At a demonstration at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank in 2010, 21-year-old American artist and student Emily Henochowicz is hit in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli border police. The force of the impact fractures her jaw and orbital bone and causes the loss of her left eye.

May 2010 – American citizen Furkan Dogan is shot and killed by Israeli commandos who forcibly commandeer the boat he’s traveling on in international waters as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Dogan is shot multiple times in his leg, foot, back, and twice to the head. A United Nations investigation concludes that he and five of the other victims have been shot “execution-style” at close range, finding that Furkan had been shot in the face after “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time.”

March 2009 – Oakland native and nonviolent International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Tristan Anderson is shot in the face with a high-velocity tear-gas canister by Israeli forces while participating in a demonstration against a section of the wall Israel is building on land belonging to the town of Ni’lin in the occupied West Bank. Anderson suffers multiple fractures to his skull, a severe injury to the frontal lobe of his brain, and a collapsed eye socket, causing him to lose sight in his right eye. He spends more than a year in a Tel Aviv hospital recovering before returning to the US, where he continues to suffer the effects of his injury and is confined to a wheelchair.

May 2003 – British cameraman James Miller is shot and killed by Israeli troops while filming in Gaza. According to witnesses, there is no other shooting or violent activity in the area at the time Miller is killed. 

April 11, 2003 – A week after American ISM member Brian Avery is shot in the face and seriously wounded by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, British ISM member Tom Hurndall is shot in the head by Israeli soldiers in Gaza while he attempts to help a group of Palestinian children to safety after Israeli soldiers began shooting in the vicinity. After nearly a year in a coma, Hurndall dies in January 2004. Following pressure from the British government and Hurndall’s family, the Israeli army laid charges of manslaughter against a soldier who confessed to the shooting. However critics says the soldier, who is a Bedouin Arab, is a scapegoat for a series of violent attacks on foreign activists by Israeli soldiers. 

April 5, 2003 – American citizen and ISM volunteer Brian Avery is shot in the face by Israeli soldiers in the city of Jenin in the West Bank. Lucky to survive, Avery undergoes a series of facial reconstruction surgeries and suffers severe facial scarring. After initially refusing to investigate the incident, the Israeli government subsequently agrees to an out of court settlement paying Avery $175,000. 

March 16, 2003 – 23-year-old Washington State native and ISM volunteerRachel Corrie is run over and killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes in the town of Rafah in Gaza.

The Occupation is unsustainable.  It must end.  These individuals and all who protest it, especially under the brutal watch of the Israeli security forces, are heroes. The IDF (and Border Police) are murderers.  They kill civilians.  Unarmed civilians.  Who protest for justice and human rights.  This is not a defensive army as its name implies, but an army that defends theft and dispossession.  Shame.

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France opens Arafat murder investigation

Published on Aug 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : The death of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is now the subject of a murder investigation.

It follows an Al Jazeera documentary which revealed high levels of Polonium-210 on his clothing, the same radioactive element that killed former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko. Arafat died in a military hospital near Paris in 2004, aged 75.

French prosecutors opened the investigation after a complaint lodged by Arafat's widow Suha.

STD experiment victims to appeal lawsuit

Published on Aug 19, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : Guatemalan victims of medical experiments conducted by American researchers have said they will appeal against a recent decision to dismiss their lawsuit. More than 1,300 people were infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s without their knowledge.

Families of Iran's murdered nuclear scientists sue Israel, US and Britain

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, one of five Iranian nuclear scientists murdered since 2010, with his son Alireza. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The families of murdered Iranian nuclear scientists have filed a lawsuit against Israel, the US and the UK, accusing them of involvement in assassination.

Rahim Ahmadi Roshan, whose son, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility,was killed in a bomb attack in January, told a press conference in Tehran that the families had asked Iran's judiciary to pursue their complaint through international bodies and bring those behind the killings to justice.

"We've filed an indictment against the Zionist regime and the arrogant powers," Roshan said. The judiciary "is to pursue this case with the relevant international bodies", he added.

Iran's state television broadcast purported confessions this month by 14 suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010. The channel showed pictures from a military barracks which it said was a training camp outside Tel Aviv in Israel where the suspects took courses, including on how to place magnetic bombs on cars – the method used in the killing of the scientists.

The suspects also acknowledged in the purported confessions that they received training in Israel.

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US move with impunity in Somalia?

Los Angeles Times: US behind Somalia fighting

Published on Aug 3, 2012 by PressTVGlobalNews : The Los Angeles Times in a report published earlier this week said that the US administration is the driving force behind the fighting in Somalia.

Targetkillings Lawsuit: US Boy Killed By U.S. Drone

Published on Jul 18, 2012 by acluvideos : The ACLU and CCR have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's targeted killing of three U.S. citizens in drone strikes far from any armed conflict zone.

In Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta (Al-Awlaki v. Panetta) the groups charge that the U.S. government's killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi in Yemen last year violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law.

The killings were part of a broader program of "targeted killing" by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts.

German intelligence: al-Qaeda all over Syria

German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question. 

In response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified "by reason of national interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence. 

Meanwhile, at least three major German newspapers - Die Welt, the FAZ, and the mass-market tabloid Bild - have published reports attributing responsibility for the massacre to anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most probable scenario. 

Writing in Bild, longtime German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels of "deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of the government". He described this "massacre-marketing strategy" as being "among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict". Todenhofer had recently been to Damascus, where he interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for Germany's ARD public television. 

Violence against Muslims in Myanmar

Published on Jul 27, 2012 by presstvmobile : Indonesians call for end...

Destroying Afghanistan's gene pool ?

water and food chain with depleted uranium

The United States' use of radioactive munitions (Depleted uranium is radioactive and extremely destructive to humans - with a half-life of 4.5 billion years) in Afghanistan has destroyed the people's health and mutilated the genetic future of the country, Press TV reports.

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi under fire for silence on Rohingya massacre

Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who tried to cross the Naf river into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, are kept under watch by Bangladeshi security officials after disembarking from an intercepted boat in Teknaf on June 18, 2012.

Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has come under fire for her silence on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims.

The Noble Peace laureate has refused to speak out against abuses committed by Myanmar’s military on Rohingyas, described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted people in the world. 

Ironically, just days after she received a peace prize, Suu Kyi told reporters she did not know if Rohingyas were Burmese.

Activists, who used to support the world famous symbol of human rights through her years of imprisonment and isolation, now accuse her of ignoring the most pressing human rights issue in her country today. 

“It’s disappointing, she is in a difficult position, but people have been disappointed she hasn’t been more outspoken,” said Anna Roberts, executive director of the Burma Campaign UK. 

“She passed up opportunities to say good things on this,” said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. 

“This was all blowing up when she was travelling in Europe and she didn’t confront it,” he added, referring to her recent foreign tour to London, Dublin, Paris and Oslo. 

Suu Kyi is under fire as she also refused to criticize President Thein Sein, a former military general, for endorsing policies of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim minority.

Thin Sein said the 800,000 Rohingya population should be put in camps and sent across the border to Bangladesh. 

Some analysts say her inaction is politically motivated. 

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy looks ahead to elections in 2015. They say Suu Kyi fears that expressing support for the Muslim minority could jeopardize her campaign. 

The government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas, who it claims are not natives and classifies as illegal migrants, although the Rohingya are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century. 

The UN says decades of discrimination have left the Rohingyas stateless, with Myanmar implementing restrictions on their movement and withholding land rights, education and public services. 

Reports say 650 Rohingya Muslims were killed as of June 28 alone during clashes in the western region of Rakhine. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 80,000 more have been displaced. 

original report | Fri 27 Jul 2012

US assassination drones kill 12 in northwestern Pakistan

A US Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile (file photo)

At least 12 people have been killed in a US assassination drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border. In the attack, which occurred on Monday, US drones fired several missiles at a private compound in the Shawal area in the North Waziristan tribal region, Reuters reported. 

 The targeted compound is in Dray Nashtar village, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan. Local residents said that the airstrike sparked a huge fire in the building. Most of the bodies have been recovered from the rubble. Some local media reports said five drones were still hovering over the area, creating panic among the people in the tribal region, and hampering the rescue work.

 Despite Pakistani government’s repeated calls on Washington to end the drone attacks, the US government continues its strikes on the tribal regions of the country. Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the non-UN-sanctioned attacks. Some 200 people have died in drone attacks in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions since the beginning of this year. 

 The killing of Pakistani civilians, including women and children, in the US drone strikes has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington, prompting Pakistani officials to send warnings to the US administration over the assaults. On January 31, US President Barack Obama confirmed that the United States uses the unmanned drones in Pakistan and other countries. 

 In reply to questions about the use of the assassination drones by his administration in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube, the US president said, “a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA” -- Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The aerial attacks were initiated by former US President George W. Bush but have been escalated under Obama.

Original : July 23, 2012 

Human rights disaster unfolding in Libya

By Derek Ford | JULY 21, 2012

Armed militias, previously employed by the NTC to fight against Gaddafi’s supporters, continue to roam the country, looting villages and engaging in abductions, killings and torture.

Nine months after the U.S./NATO-led overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi government in Libya, the country remains entrenched in violence and disorder; human rights abuses are rampant.

In fact, according to Nasser al-Hawary of the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.” (Inter Press Service, July 14) This statement is telling, especially given that its source is a political opponent of the former government.

The National Transition Council, the pro-imperialist governing body in Libya, has been unable to establish any authority over the country. Armed militias, previously employed by the NTC to fight against Gaddafi’s supporters, continue to roam the country, looting villages and engaging in abductions, killings and torture.

Full Report :