'Burma Muslims'

Palestine in same boat
 Published on Jul 21, 2012 by presstvmobile :

Israel continues illegal settlement expansion.

Published on Jul 16, 2012 by presstvmobile:

17th Anniversary - Srebrenica massacre

Published on Jul 11, 2012 by aston79suara : More victims found using DNA

ICC jails DRC warlord over child soldiers

Published on Jul 10, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga has been sentenced to 14 years in prison by the ICC. He was convicted for recruiting and using child soldiers in his rebel army in 2002 and 2003. It is the first sentence handed down by the ICC in the Hague since it was established 10 years ago.

Mossad murdered at least four Iranian nuclear experts: Journalists

The cover of the book “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars” by CBS national correspondent Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman.

A new book has identified the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, as the culprit in the assassination of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a campaign to sabotage Iran's nuclear energy program.

In their book, entitled Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars, CBS national correspondent Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman said that Israeli spies have killed at least four Iranian nuclear scientists. 

The Mossad agents are well-trained in shooting and placing “exquisitely shaped sticky bombs" and consider it their hallmark, the Associated Press quoted Raviv as saying on Friday.The book also says the assassinations were part of a campaign aimed at preventing Iran from developing its nuclear energy program.

"They don't farm out a mission that is that sensitive," so sensitive that Israel's prime minister has to sign off on it personally, Raviv said. 

"They might use dissidents for assistance or logistics but not the hit itself. The methodology and training and use of motorcycles is all out of the Mossad playbook. They wouldn't trust anybody else to do it." 

Iran had already announced that Iranian scientists Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, Daryoush Rezaeinejad, Professor Majid Shahriari, and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi were all assassinated by Israeli agents. 

Ahmadi Roshan and his driver (Reza Qashqaei) were assassinated in January 2012 after a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to their car in Tehran. 

On July 23, 2011, gunmen killed Rezaeinejad outside his house in Tehran. Rezaeinejad and his wife were on their way to their child's kindergarten when they were approached by two men on a motorbike. The gunmen called him by name and shot Rezaeinejad, 35, in the neck when he turned around. 

On November 29, 2010, terrorists attached bombs to the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi and detonated the explosives. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife only sustained minor injuries. 

Professor Ali-Mohammadi, a lecturer at Tehran University, was killed by a booby-trapped motorbike in the Iranian capital in January 2010. The bombing took place near the professor's home in the Qeytariyeh neighborhood of northern Tehran.  

Israel panel backs legalizing West Bank outposts.

JERUSALEM -- A government-appointed committee is recommending that Israel legalize dozens of unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts.

Committee member Alan Baker says the panel believes Israel has the right to settle the West Bank because the territory is not occupied.

The international community does not accept that view and says settlements hinder peacemaking.

Baker said Monday the outposts were not authorized because government officials froze approvals under international pressure. He said the panel thinks the approval process should be completed.

Baker says the committee concluded the West Bank is not occupied because it has no sovereign power.

Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967. Jordan had annexed it in 1948 in a move not recognized by most of the international community, but renounced all claims to the territory in 1988.

Original Report : Jul. 8, 2012 

Unjustified killing: UN wants US drone attacks explained

A UN investigator has called on Washington to provide justification for the increasingly widespread use of military drones to carry out targeted killings. He says drone attacks, which take innocent civilian lives, may be violating international law.

The US military and CIA use drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Washington should clarify the legal basis for the policy of killing suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and associates rather than trying to capture them, Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, said in a report. The 28-page document addressed to the UN Human Rights Council was released ahead of the body’s debate on the issue in Geneva.

"The government should clarify the procedures in place to ensure that any targeted killing complies with international humanitarian law and human rights and indicate the measures or strategies applied to prevent casualties, as well as the measures in place to provide prompt, thorough, effective and independent public investigation of alleged violations," the report says.

Obama administration repeatedly lies about drone kills?

If the increasingly frequent discussions about America’s drone program have you scratching your head, here’s an explanation: Obama administration officials have given inconsistent and conflicting accounts of the strikes, a new report reveals.

According to a write-up published this week by ProPublica, the White House has given infrequent and almost always inconsistent explanations for air strikes conducted by America’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Although officials with the Obama administration rarely offer input on the civilian casualty count carried out by the controversial aircraft, the numbers that have been handed over to journalists— albeit usually on the condition of anonymity — range from zero to hundreds.

In conducting his research, Justin Elliot of ProPublica writes that he relied less on statistics drafted by overseas outlets that are considered more critical of the US drone program, instead favoring figures supplied by officials with direct ties to the Obama White House.

“Last month, a ‘senior administration official’ said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the ‘single digits,’” ” writes Elliott. “But last year ‘US officials’ said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.”

“Both claims can't be true,” Elliott acknowledges.

On his own part, US President Barack Obama told an audience during an Internet town hall earlier this year that drones had not caused "a huge number of civilian casualties." Depending on who you ask, however, the actual civilian body count may be as high as 832, as the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports.

Back in America, though, explanations offered to many of the country’s largest media outlets suggest that some people within the Obama administration are either not being truthful with reporters or else White House staffers themselves are largely uninformed.

In April 2010, an “internal CIA accounting” provided to the Washington Post suggested that “just over 20 civilians” had lost their lives to drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama began his first term in January 2009. As recently as this May, however, the New York Times quoted a senior Obama administration official as saying that the number of civilians killed by drones under the president’s watch is in the “single digits.”

Another report published by McClatchy last year puts the number of civilians killed between August 2009 and August 2010 at “about 30.” To the New York Times, however, a CIA officer suggested that zero civilians had been executed between May 2010 and August 2011.

Taking into account another three separate drone articles that relied on government insiders for information, Elliott writes that, if the claims are true, “it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.”

Analyzing three other accounts provided to the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN by government officials, Elliott notes, “it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration — when the drone program was still in its infancy.”

Of course, if Obama officials say that the current administration wasn’t behind the bulk of civilian casualties, they have that covered with another explanation as well: earlier this month, the New York Times published an article that answers just how the White House handles drone statistics: all military-age males in and around targeted strike zone are considered combatants, not civilians, because, “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."

Full report from RT  | 19 June, 2012

Tariq Ramadan : Mubarak will get away!

Published on Jun 17, 2012 by enqilab : In an interview, Tariq Ramadan gave his views on Egyptian Presidential Elections. He thinks that Mubarak will get away due to the law of Egypt.

Meet the Seven Guantánamo Prisoners Whose Appeals Were Turned Down by the Supreme Court.

17.6.12 : I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

This week, the Supreme Court took a decision not to accept appeals by seven Guantánamo prisoners who, over the last few years, either had their habeas petitions denied, or had their successful petitions overturned on appeal. The ruling came the day before the 4th anniversary of Boumediene v. Bush, the 2008 case in which the Supreme Court granted the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights.

That led to a number of stunning court victories for the prisoners between 2008 and 2010, but in the last two years no prisoners have had their habeas petitions granted, because judges in the D.C. Circuit Court, a bastion of Bush-era paranoia about the “war on terror,” where the deeply Conservative Senior Judge A. Raymond Randolph holds sway, have unfairly rewritten the rules in the government’s favor, so that it is now almost impossible for a habeas petition to be granted.

This is a particularly low point in Guantánamo’s bleak history, because, with the Supreme Court’s refusal to rescue habeas corpus, and its death as a remedy for the Guantánamo prisoners, the remaining 169 men — and especially the 87 already cleared for release but still held –  are now trapped, possibly forever, because all three branches of the US government have failed them.

In addition to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration has failed the remaining prisoners, not only through the President’s failure to close Guantánamo within a year, as he promised, but also through his refusal, ever since, to show any interest in belatedly fulfilling his promise. Blame also lies with Congress, where lawmakers have cynically imposed onerous restrictions on the ability of the administration to release or transfer any of the remaining prisoners, with the intention of making it impossible for the administration to close the prison — and almost impossible for anyone to be released.

As Tom Wilner (attorney and “Close Guantánamo” steering committee member) noted back in January, a waiver exists in the latest legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allowing the President to bypass Congress when it comes to releasing prisoners, but President Obama has not yet chosen to use it.

Israel cabinet approves committee to oversee West Bank settlement construction.

An outpost near the Mitzpe Kramim settlement in the West Bank. Photo by Michal Fattal

The government approved the establishment of a ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning to deal with issues relating to settlement construction.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who gives the final say on all matters relating to settlement construction, voted against the decision, despite the fact that the wording of the decision clearly stated that his authority would not be affected. Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz also voted against the decision, along with several other ministers.

The establishment of the committee was one of the steps announced by Netanyahu to garner the support of right-wing ministers to vote against a bill aimed at regulating West Bank outposts. Netanyahu presented the option as a response to the ministers who sought to transfer the decision-making process over settlement building from Barak to a ministerial committee.

The responsibilities of the committee were designated vaguely, including the formation of an official governmental policy regarding unregulated building in the West Bank.

Full report :

Tunisia's Ben Ali sentenced to life for Arab Spring deaths

Published on Jun 14, 2012 by france24english : A Tunisian military court sentenced ex-president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to life in prison Wednesday over his role in the killing of protesters in the towns where the Arab Spring began. Earlier he was given a 20 year sentence for inciting violence.

...attempted a citizen’s arrest of Tony Blair.

 Attempts made so far
STOP PRESS: 11.05 BST, 14th June 2012. Tom Grundy has just attempted a citizen’s arrest of Tony Blair in Hong Kong. Here is his press release:

PRESS RELEASE: 14/6/12

Images, video and update to follow. Contact: Tom Grundy – Hong Kong-based British activist. (+852) 68411717 / twgrundy@gmail.com

“This evening, I attempted a citizen’s arrest upon Tony Blair, who was speaking at Hong Kong University. I did this in the hope of renewing debate around the solid war crimes case against him, and in order that the campaign to conduct citizen’s arrests against Blair continues whenever and wherever he goes. The action was legal under cap. 221 of the Laws of Hong Kong, section 101(2) which allows for citizen’s arrest upon suspicion of serious crimes. He mis-led the British public over the 2003 Iraq invasion and caused the deaths of at least 100,000 people. I believe it to be abhorrent that HKU is sponsoring a talk about faith hosted by a man who set religious tolerance back decades.

Blair admitted in 2009 that he would have gone to war regardless of Iraq’s alleged WMDs – international law does not allow a war of aggression in the name of regime change. He stated in 2002 that Iraq’s production of WMDs was ‘beyond doubt’ and thus misled the British people. The use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs may constitute ‘aggression’ in that they are indiscriminate and cause large civilian causalities. His actions leading the Iraq invasion were therefore a clear violation of…

Article 5.2 of the 1998 International Criminal Court Rome Statute (awaiting adoption).

the Court… “shall exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once a provision is adopted in accordance with articles 121 and 123 defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to this crime.”

Article 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.

“Article 33: 1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.”

Ron Kukal on the Israeli's attack Liberty!

Ron Kukal, former US Navy Petty Officer and USS Liberty survivor, discusses his firsthand account of Israel’s attack on the Liberty on June 8, 1967; the carnage of dead sailors below decks from the Israeli torpedo strike; Phil Tourney’s book What I Saw That Day; how PTSD still effects Kukal’s life and family relationships; the dangers facing Liberty survivors who dare tell the truth about the attack; and Kukal’s thanks to the rescue ships and sailors who saved the Liberty from sinking and helped get it back to port.

Ron Kukal « Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton

Rotting in Guantanamo?

Published on Jun 12, 2012 by democracynow : The Supreme Court has refused to hear any new Guantánamo appeals even though half of the men being held were cleared for release five years ago. Critics of Monday's decision say it leaves the fate of prisoners — many of them long cleared for release — in the hands of a conservative D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has constantly sided with military prosecutors and refused to order the release of any prisoner. The high court also refused to reinstate a lawsuit by former "enemy combatant" José Padilla against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. We're joined by two guests: Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and investigative journalist Andy Worthington, who reports that of the 169 prisoners still held, over half — 87 in total — were cleared for release by President Obama's Guantánamo Review Task Force. "In a lot of practical ways [the Supreme Court decision] marks the end of the Guantánamo litigation that began more than 10 years ago. ... Detainees have won about two-thirds of their challenges in the trial courts, but the D.C. Circuit ... has overturned every single one of those cases that's been appealed to it. And in doing so, it's created standards that make it virtually impossible to win a case."