Posts in category Human Rights
Written by Court: Former Bush official cannot be sued over ‘enemy combatant’ memos
Washington (CNN) — A convicted American terrorist plotter and his mother lost another legal round Wednesday in their efforts to hold accountable a former Bush administration official who issued legal memos supporting harsh interrogation techniques for suspected enemy combatants.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit from Jose Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, who claimed the man’s constitutional rights were violated when he was held for years in solitary confinement at a military prison in South Carolina.
The issue was whether John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, deserved “qualified immunity” as a government official from such suits. A federal judge earlier had said the litigation could proceed.
Disabled parents fight to keep newborn at home
A disabled couple in Mississauga are fighting to keep their newborn son after social workers threatened to take the boy away unless he receives round-the-clock care from an “able-bodied attendant.”
Maricyl Palisoc and her partner, Charles Wilton, are the parents of a healthy month-old baby boy named William. Both parents have cerebral palsy, a disorder that limits their motor skills and slurs their speech, but has no effect on their cognitive abilities.
However, the Peel Children’s Aid Society is concerned about the couple’s ability to take care of their son and has expressed an intention to remove William from their home unless his parents secure 24-hour care from an able-bodied person.
The boy’s mother told CBC that she and her partner do not want to lose their son.
2,000 Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike and Zero News Coverage
There are currently 2000 Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons, though judging by the lack of coverage of the story in the mainstream media you’d never know it. Two of the prisoners involved are now in a critical condition, having been on hunger strike for 60 days and counting. They are protesting prison conditions, including the widespread use of solitary confinement, lack of medical treatment, and most importantly the use by the Israelis of the prisoner category described as administrative detention.
Under this particular category prisoners can be held indefinitely at the behest of the military without any charges being brought, no trial, or even so much as a hearing to be made aware of the evidence against them. Currently, over 300 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons and detentions centers under administrative detention, including six women and six children.
According to the website of the Palestinian prisoner support organization Addameer,
19 of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are being kept in solitary confinement. One of those, Ahmad Sa’adat, has been held in isolation for three years and is yet to be charged with a crime.
It is also claimed that the Israeli prison authorities are waging a campaign of punishment against the hunger strikers, which includes daily raids on their cells, the confiscation of personal belongings, cutting their electricity supply, and various other measures deemed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
China Reportedly Threatens ‘Torture’ For Tibet Informants
Media rights advocacy group Reporters Without Borders says Chinese authorities openly threaten with “torture” those who circulate information on the situation in Tibet.
In its statement Thursday, the Paris-based group expressed outrage at the policy of terror, which it said is openly pursued by the Chinese authorities in Gan Lho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the northwestern province of Gansu. The statement says police have posted notices in public places in which those who circulate certain views and information are threatened with “beating” and “torture.”
It says the information on the posted notices was exposed in Tibet Post International and a Tibetan news website based in Dharamsala, India, the center of exiled Tibetans.
Reporters Without Borders says that the aim of the torture threats is “to instill terror in all those who might circulate information about the government’s repressive policies” against Tibetans. The group warns that posting warnings of physical reprisals is in violation of Article 2 of the international Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which China has signed.
Israel targets Palestinian solar panels in bid for West Bank dominance
Israel has refused to co-operate with the UN’s fact-finding mission, expected to investigate Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It comes after the organization authorized the probe on Thursday. As RT’s Paula Slier reports, Israel shows little sign of stopping its policy of expansion in the area.
Stop Showing Up For the War
Written by Can you hear them? The dogs of war are barking. They’re getting very loud. These guys want to fight. They want to fight bad. They’re growling, snarling and salivating as they think about all the glorious death and destruction they can cause. These animals can’t wait to see the people melt. They hunger for the human misery they can cause,. They long to feast upon the mangled and dismembered bodies of their victims and wallow in the radioactive glow of rubble where fabulous cities once stood. This is the mentality of the sub-human leadership in a couple of well known nations. These vicious animals plan on being safe in their hardened bunkers while the peoples of their nations suffer from their arrogance and inept statesmanship. READ MORE »
What if the GOP is Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of Republican Voters?
Fox News has seen it fit to fire Judge Andrew Napolitano. His show “Freedom Watch” was, in my opinion, the only news program on Fox, perhaps on television, worth watching. He delivered the freedom message with great eloquence, consistency and integrity. He is certainly, again in my opinion, a much more watchable and likeable host than Bill O’Liely or Sean Scammity. He simply makes a lot of sense to me when he speaks. READ MORE »
‘Anonymous’ hacker group threatens ‘reign of terror’ against Israel
The hacker group “Anonymous” released a video Friday threatening to begin a ‘reign of terror’ against Israel, in the latest round of cyber warfare between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli hackers.
The video, which was posted on YouTube in the early hours of the morning, blamed Israel for committing ‘crimes against humanity,’ and criticizing it for its treatment of Palestinians.
I Am the 0.00000000143%
I am an individual. I am unique. I am the smallest minority. I am one out of seven billion or so. That’s approximately 0.00000000143%. I am approximately the 0.00000000143%, and I am still significant. I matter. I have as much right to exist in this world as anyone else. I have as much right to express my opinion. I have as much right to pursue my interests as anyone else. I have as much right to acquire private property, goods and services in a fair and equitable manner as anyone else. I respect everyone else’s natural rights, and everyone else should respect mine. If I need help, I would appeal to your sense of humanity and generosity to try to convince you to offer your help on a voluntary basis, I would not ask a violent organization to steal from you or coerce you through threats of imprisonment, or worse, into turning your hard earned property over to meet my needs. READ MORE »
Whitewashing Omar Khadr
In a revealing new book, The Enemy Within, the Sun’s Ezra Levant brings Omar Khadr’s story back into the public eye. Having completed his U.S. sentence in October 2011, Omar Khadr could return to Canada at any time. He may well be released, thanks to a lenient system that will likely credit him for the time he has served awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay. With Parliament back in session, Levant brings his razor-sharp perspective to bear on a story that is vital to our notions of citizenship and justice, and to our national security.
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So, what can we expect to happen with Omar Khadr when he inevitably returns to Canada?
Unfortunately, it’s not hard to guess. When Maher Arar came back to Canada after he was released from a prison in Syria, he was hailed as a hero and celebrity. Every anti-war, anti-Western activist with an axe to grind–which includes a large swath of Canada’s mainstream media–turned his homecoming into a triumph. If only they treated our wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan so warmly.
If Maher Arar became a minor celebrity after his wrangle with the Syrian security system, with a secondary role played by Washington and Ottawa, it’s a virtual lock that Omar Khadr–the leading man in a supposed morality play pitting the Bush administration, perennial bugbear of the left, and its Guantanamo “gulag” against a purportedly naive and pitiable “child soldier” from Canada–is set to become nothing less than a superstar.
Unlike Arar, who enjoyed only a fraction of the sympathy and media coverage, Khadr will be coming home to the built-in fan club that he’s amassed since his capture. Arlette Zinck, the professor at Edmonton’s King’s University College who struck up a tender pen pal relationship with Khadr — “Whenever you are lonesome, remember you have many friends who keep you in their prayers. Each morning at 9 o’clock, I include you in mine,” she wrote to him in Guantanamo, referring to Khadr as “my dear student”–has led the charge in turning her campus into a factory for Khadr groupies.
The Money Tree and the Evil of Good Intentions
“Do you think money grows on trees?”
Dad
It’s something most of us learn when we’re very young. Money isn’t easy to come by. You have to earn it. You have to work for it. You have to do your chores. You have to get a job delivering newspapers. You have to mow people’s lawns or shovel their walks when it snows. You have to do something productive and then people will pay you. Only then can you go to the candy store and buy yourself a treat, or spend your Saturday afternoon in a dark movie theater enjoying an eye popping spectacle. That was part of Americana when I was growing up, learning that things weren’t just handed to you, they needed to be earned. READ MORE »
Saudi woman who defied driving ban in fatal crash
A Saudi woman who defied the country’s ban on female drivers was badly hurt in a crash on the weekend that killed her passenger.
Manal al-Sharif was hospitalized with “several injuries” Saturday after her four-wheel-drive car overturned, reports AFP. A female companion in the car died on the scene.
Al-Sharif, 32, was arrested and detained for 10 days last May after posting a YouTube video of herself at the wheel of a car. She became the face of a campaign against the ban.
Drugs, Medicines, Vaccines and the Freedoms to Discover and Believe
2012 Leave a Comment
There are several important principles I prescribe to and I try my best to adhere to them in my life. These principles form the basic tenets to building a free society. The most basic of these beliefs is the idea that you own yourself. Any person is the owner of their own body. No one should be able to force a person to do something with their own body that they do not want to do. No one should be able to force another person to eat a certain food, or take a certain medication, or ingest anything of any kind if that person does not want to, even if it’s supposedly for the benefit of that person, even if it’s for the benefit of all humankind. Only non coercive methods of convincing someone to partake in any kind of ingestion, injection, or procedure, invasive or non invasive, is acceptable, or we are not free. READ MORE »