Human Rights

APA Whitewashes Torture

January 24, 2014 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Educate! Human Rights, Torture

"The decision not to pursue any disciplinary measure against John Leso, a former army reserve major, is the latest case in which someone involved in the post-9/11 torture of detainees has faced no legal or even professional consequences. In a 31 December letter obtained by the Guardian, the American Psychological Association said it had “determined that we cannot proceed with formal charges in this matter. Consequently the complaint against Dr Leso has been closed.” But the APA did not deny Leso took part in the brutal interrogation of the suspected 20th 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whose treatment the Pentagon official overseeing his military commission ultimately called “torture”."

Anti-Surveillance Activists Make It Personal

January 24, 2014 Counterforce, www.indybay.org Resist! Corporatism, Human Rights, Surveillance

"At 7am this morning, a group of people went to the home of Anthony Levandowski, a Google X developer. His house is a pompous, minimally decorated two story palace with stone lions guarding the door. After ringing his doorbell to alert him of the protest, a banner was held in front of his house that read "Google's Future Stops Here" and fliers about him were distributed around the neighborhood. The fliers detailed his work with the defense industry and his plans to develop luxury condos in Berkeley. […] At one point, his neighbor emerged from her house. She said she knew about his collaboration with the military but insisted he was a "nice person." We see no contradiction here. It is very likely that this person, who develops war robots for the military and builds surveillance infrastructure, is a pleasant neighbor. But so what? "

Doctor Angry Ohio Executed Inmate Despite ‘Horror’ Warning

January 21, 2014 Ed Pilkington, www.theguardian.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Death Penalty, Human Rights

"The anaesthesiologist who told a court that a new two-drug protocol used in an execution in Ohio would cause the inmate “agony and horror”, has expressed anger the state pressed ahead with the experiment despite his warnings[…]A minute-by-minute timeline of the execution recorded by the department of correction shows that the first syringe of midazolam and hydromorphone was injected into McGuire at 10.27am on Thursday, and the second syringe of the two-drug cocktail a minute later. At 10.42am, the medical team asked for five more minutes to be certain of death, and it was not until 10.52am – 25 minutes after the start of the execution – that the timeline records “no heart sounds, no lung sounds”. Jonathan Groner, a professor of clinical surgery at Ohio state college of medicine, said there were several disturbing issues thrown up by the department of correction's record. The actual cause of death would have been a massive overdose of hydromorphone, which is an opioid. “This was a death by narcotic overdose. When heroin addicts die they die unpleasantly — and that's what happened here.”

Eulogies For A War Criminal

January 21, 2014 Hadas Thier, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Human Rights, Palestine

"NEVER SPEAK ill of the dead, goes the old saying. But as Noam Chomsky pointed out, to not speak ill of Ariel Sharon would be to take a vow of silence, as there is nothing else that could be said. Following his long-awaited death on January 11 after years of existing in a vegetative state, mainstream media outlets such as New York Times published flowery rewritings of history, depicting Sharon as a dignified and charismatic, if "controversial," Israeli political leader. The real story of Ariel Sharon is of a war criminal and mass murderer. As British journalist Robert Fisk rightly wrote: "Thus do we remake history. How speedily did toady journalists in Washington and New York patch up this brutal man's image.""

Letters From A Youth (YSI) Jail

January 21, 2014 Sandra Khalifa and Arely Lozano-Baugh, www.youngist.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Youth

In 1963, “Letters from a Birmingham City Jail” gave a scathing indictment of American equality from a King behind bars. He found himself there for the future of Black and Brown youth - for our generation, our children and our grandchildren. But today we find our youth entrenched in a new system of segregation. Every year, thousands of youth of color are turned away not from the white-only lunch counter, but from the protections of a quality public education. Black and Brown youth are not being hosed down in the streets of Birmingham, Jacksonville, Selma, or other bastions of segregation. They are being pulled from the classroom for childish misbehavior and funneled through the school to prison pipeline. Black and Brown kids today are not handcuffed for their activism but stopped, frisked, and jailed. For this reason, in 2014, imagine we write you this letter from a Youth Services International’s (YSI) private juvenile prison cell.

500 Years of History: Mass Spying Always Aimed At Crushing Dissent

January 17, 2014 Washington's Blog, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, NSA, Revolution, Surveillance

No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they also do it to crush dissent, and then give a false rationale for why they’re doing it. The story of that struggle... the detailed history of the use of general warrants as instruments of oppression from the time of the Tudors, through the Star Chamber, the Long Parliament, the Restoration, and beyond. What is significant to note is that this history is largely a history of conflict between the Crown and the press. . . . the Crown were given roving commissions to search where they pleased in order to suppress and destroy the literature of dissent, both Catholic and Puritan. Today, Yes, we hear echoes to the Cointelpro program of the 60s and 70s … as well as King George’s General Warrants to the Colonies … and the Star Chamber of 15th century England.

Anti-SOPA Coalition Announces: “The Day We Fight Back”

January 17, 2014 Staff, www.thedaywefightback.org Resist! Human Rights, NSA, Surveillance

Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. If Aaron Swartz were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action. Now, on the the anniversary of Aaron's passing, and in celebration of the win against SOPA and PIPA that he helped make possible, we are planning a day of protest against mass surveillance, to take place this February 11th.

Chelsea Manning Awarded Sam Adams Integrity Prize For 2014

January 16, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org/ Create! Chelsea Manning, Human Rights, Whistleblowers

The Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) have voted overwhelmingly to present the 2014 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence to Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, U.S. Army Pvt. Manning is the 25 year-old intelligence analyst who in 2010 provided to WikiLeaks the "Collateral Murder" video – gun barrel footage from a U.S. Apache helicopter, exposing the reckless murder of 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, during the “surge” in Iraq. The Pentagon had repeatedly denied the existence of the "Collateral Murder" video and declined to release it despite a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Reuters, which had sought clarity on the circumstances of its journalists' deaths. Release of this video and other documents sparked a worldwide dialogue about the importance of government accountability for human rights abuses as well as the dangers of excessive secrecy and over-classification of documents. On February 19, 2014 Pvt. Manning - currently incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison - will be recognized at a ceremony in absentia at Oxford University's prestigious Oxford Union Society for casting much-needed daylight on the true toll and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq; human rights abuses by U.S. and “coalition” forces, mercenaries, and contractors; and the roles that spying and bribery play in international diplomacy.

Why I Keep Working To Close Guantánamo

January 15, 2014 Frida Berrigan,www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights

I have a long trip ahead of me this weekend. It begins with the Shore Line East commuter train in Old Saybrook, Conn. I will transfer to the Metro-North in New Haven. From Grand Central Station in New York, my roller bag and I will walk across town to the Bolt Bus stop at 12th Avenue and 33rd Street. I’ll hop a bus to Baltimore and spend the night with my mom. Then take the MARC train — the Baltimore to Washington, D.C. commuter train — to our nation’s capital, where I’ll join friends who have been fasting and demonstrating since Monday for the closure of Guantánamo and the end of torture and indefinite detention. I will be late. I will not be fasting. I have a pretty good excuse on both fronts: I am almost eight months pregnant.

Obamacare Is Not A Step Toward Single-Payer

January 14, 2014 Gary Lapon, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Corporatism, Health Care, Human Rights

"The ACA isn't a bridge to universal health care. It is a cul-de-sac, structured above all else to maintain the central role of the health care industry in general, and private insurance companies in particular. Achieving universal health coverage and access to care will require dismantling the core of the ACA and replacing it with something else entirely. Making a defense of the ACA in the way the Nation does--as a step in the direction of a single-payer system--cedes ground to the right and is counterproductive to the goal of winning health care as a human right."

Noam Chomsky: Sabra & Shatila Massacre That Forced Sharon’s Ouster Recalls Worst of Jewish Pogroms

January 13, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Chomsky, Human Rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

" It was almost a replica of the Kishinev massacre in pre-First World War Russia, one of the worst atrocities in Israeli memory, led to a famous nationalist poem by the main Israeli poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik, "City of Killing." The tsar’s army had surrounded this town and allowed the people within it to rampage, killing Jews for three days. They killed 45 people. That was—that’s pretty much what happened in Sabra-Shatila: Israeli army surrounded it, sent in the Phalangist forces, who were obviously bent on murder[…]Lebanese Christian terrorist force, allied with Israel. The soldiers watched as they illuminated it. They helped them enter. They watched for several days while they murdered, not 45 people, but somewhere—Israel claims 800, other analyses go up to several thousand. That’s the Sabra-Shatila massacre. The idea that Sharon had indirect—the tsar, incidentally, was bitterly condemned internationally for direct responsibility."

Noam Chomsky on the Legacy of Ariel Sharon: Not Speaking Ill of the Dead “Imposes a Vow of Silence”

January 13, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Chomsky, Human Rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

"Well, you know, there is a convention that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the recently dead, which unfortunately imposes a kind of vow of silence because there’s nothing else to say—there’s nothing good to say. What both Rashid and Avi Shlaim have said is exactly accurate. He was a brutal killer. He had one fixed idea in mind, which drove him all his life: a greater Israel, as powerful as possible, as few Palestinians as possible—they should somehow disappear—and an Israel which could be powerful enough to dominate the region. The Lebanon War then, which was his worst crime, also had a goal of imposing a client state in Lebanon, a Maronite client state. And these were the driving forces of his life."

The Last Gasp Of American Democracy

January 7, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Democracy, Human Rights, NSA

This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives. The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.

The Tasks Of The People-Powered Movement For 2014

January 5, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Strategize! Chelsea Manning, Climate Change, Corporatism, Democracy, Edward Snowden, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Fracking, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Health Care, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, NSA, Occupy, Solidarity, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

In this stage of movement development, which can take many years, the primary task of the people-powered social movement is to build national consensus through broad and deep grassroots organizing. The power holders are currently in a crisis management mode. They continue to defend their policies while shifting positions and taking countermeasures to undermine people power. During this stage public opinion is shifting, majorities oppose the current situation and are beginning to see that new alternative solutions must be put in place. People-powered activists are in a battle with the power holders for the hearts and minds of super-majorities of the people. We ended our last article with a key point that we need to highlight here: our goal is to build a mass movement, which has the support of super-majorities of Americans and has mobilized up to 3.5% of the population. Therefore, the target of our protests is not the government or a corporation, the target is the people: to educate and mobilize them. We want to show that there is an effective movement speaking to the people’s concerns and putting forth views that they support. We protest the power holders to expose their actions but do not expect them to be capable of addressing our concerns adequately in this stage.

This Spring: Worldwide Wave Of Transformation

January 5, 2014 Antonymous, www.waveofaction.org Resist! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Poverty

On the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, April 4, 2014, the spirit of MLK will rise again. We will engage a worldwide wave of action, “from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city. From every mountain side…” We will “let freedom ring.” Anonymous, Occupy and the 99% Movement have set up the dominoes for an unprecedented worldwide wave of action. The tipping point is near. We are calling on all Anons, nonAnons, collectives, organizations and conscious individuals to take autonomous nonviolent direct action throughout the global spring. For a sustained three-month cycle, we will swarm corrupt targets and rally around solutions to the vast problems we are confronted by.

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