Human Rights

Malala Yousafzai Meets President Obama, Asks Him To Stop Drone Attacks

October 13, 2013 Max Rivlin-Nadler www.gawker.com Educate! Drones, Human Rights, Parkistan, Wars and Militarism

"I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees," Yousafzai said in a statement after the meeting. "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact."

CPJ Report Reflects Seriousness Of US Press Freedom Gaps

October 13, 2013 Sandy Rowe, www.cpj.org Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Media

On Thursday CPJ launched its first comprehensive examination of press freedom conditions in the United States. The report, "The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America," highlights the growing threat to reporting on national security and similar sensitive government issues. It was written by Leonard Downie, Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post. CPJ determined that a systematic examination of these issues was warranted and commissioned Downie to ensure the report was thoroughly and carefully reported. We knew Len's contacts, access, and reputation would be helpful in such an endeavor and that his integrity would ensure the report was comprehensive and fair. Based on Downie's findings, CPJ staff and board prepared a list of six recommendationsthat we have sent to President Obama.

“Take Back the Streets” Report Details Excessive Police Force Against Protestors

October 12, 2013 Staff, www.aclu.org Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, NSA, Police abuse

In response to increasing restrictions on personal freedoms and civil protest, national human rights organizations from 10 countries this week launched the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO). They also released “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World,” a collection of case studies showing patterns of police crackdown and abuse against peaceful assembly, accompanied by concrete recommendations to expand free speech. "Fundamental rights and freedoms we enjoy are a direct result of protest movements of the past,” said Gastón Chillier, executive director of the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales in Argentina. “Freedom of speech and as a result, our societies, will only flourish if peaceful assembly is protected from excessive police force and government obstruction.”

Journalist Group Criticizes Obama For Attacks On Journalists

October 11, 2013 Glenn Greenwald, www.theguardian.com Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Media, Whistleblowers

It's hardly news that the Obama administration is intensely and, in many respects, unprecedentedly hostile toward the news-gathering process. Even the most Obama-friendly journals have warned of what they call "Obama's war on whistleblowers". James Goodale, the former general counsel of the New York Times during its epic fights with the Nixon administration, recently observed that "President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information" and added: "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Still, a new report released today by the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists - its first-ever on press freedoms in the US - powerfully underscores just how extreme is the threat to press freedom posed by this administration. Written by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr.

Martin O’Malley And Poisoning Baltimore’s Children

October 10, 2013 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org Educate! Energy, Environment, Health Care, Human Rights

One of O'Malley's destructive proposals is of particular interest because of the resistance to it organized by young people. O'Malley wants to stick a giant incinerator into a poor neighborhood in Baltimore. This monstrosity, called the Energy Answers Incinerator, would be the largest trash-burning incinerator in the nation, consuming 4,000 tons of trash a day including plastic, rubber, vinyl, metal, and household waste. In violation of state law this worse-than-a-major-coal-plant pollution machine would be situated less than a mile from Benjamin Franklin High School and Curtis Bay Elementary School. The incinerator would flood the air with mercury, nitric oxide, lead, dioxins, and particulate matter, producing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, respiratory problems, and -- if all the stars align -- just possibly a single uncomfortable question in a presidential "debate."

Time To Recognize National Sovereignty, Human Rights Of Native Indians

October 10, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.truthout.org Educate! Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Sovereignty

We often think of US Empire acting on the global stage through occupations and wars abroad, but the longest-running manifestation of US imperialism is the illegal occupation of portions of the United States and denial of the sovereignty of Native Indians, which continues today. The brutal history of this occupation and the fact that it is ongoing are largely ignored by most Americans, but awareness and the need for a peaceful resolution are imperative if we are to evolve into a cooperative and just society. In the past century, efforts by Native Indian nations to achieve recognition of signed treaties have been thwarted. When attempts to use domestic law failed, Native Indian Nations joined with other indigenous nations from around the world to gain recognition under international law. This effort, which took the form of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations, was sabotaged by the United States, Canada and some of their allies.

Five Stages Of Movement’s For Revolutionary Change

October 9, 2013 George Lakey, www.trainingforchange.org Strategize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Nonviolence, Occupy

We need to go beyond what has been done plenty of times in history -- to overthrow unjust governments through nonviolent struggle -- and create a strategy that builds at the same time as it destroys. We need a strategy that validates alternatives, supports the experience of freedom, and expands the skills of cooperation. We need a political strategy that is at the same time a community strategy, one that says "yes" to creative innovation in the here and now and links today's creativity to the new society that lies beyond a power shift. With the help and feedback of many activists from a number of countries I've created a strategic framework that aims to support today's activists, something like the way Otpur activists were supported by their strategy. I call it strategy for a living revolution. The strategy not only encourages creating new tactics and more boldness in using the best of the old, but it also helps activists sort out which tactics will be most effective.

Pressure Builds On Nordstrom For Selling Ahava

October 7, 2013 Annie Robbins, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Corporatism, Environment, Human Rights

Check out the YouTube station for Seattle’s performance investigators Credible Threat, who allied with Code Pink’s Stolen Beauty project have busted Nordstrom’s “social responsibility policies” wide open with a new video, published three days ago and titled, MUD IS A GRAY AREA: Talking with Nordstrom about Ahava and Occupation. Ahava is a cosmetics line that uses mud sourced from the occupied territories in the West Bank. Nordstrom sells the line. Many of the quotations in the video are taken from documents at the Stolen Beautywebsite, including documentation from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Update: Man Sets Himself On Fire On National Mall

October 7, 2013 Mike LaSusa, www.mikelasusa.wordpress.com Resist! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights

His motives are unclear at this point. Some reports cited eyewitnesses who say he saluted the Capitol building and that he may have referenced something about voting rights before lighting himself on fire. Whatever the case may be, the incident has achieved shockingly little airtime on both local and national media. Self-immolation has a long history as a form of political protest and the choice of venue for this particular incident strongly suggests that this is the case here. Politically-motivated self-immolation in the United States was a prominent protest “tactic” – as emotionless and academic as that term may be – during peak of domestic resistance to the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Here is a quick list (h/t Wikipedia) of those who self-immolated in protest of that war.

Intervention as Radical Struggle

October 6, 2013 Javier Sethness, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Organizing

In sum, it seems clear that radical struggle is the order of the day. Intervention, if it is to have concrete meaning or be relevant at all, seeks human happiness, tranquility, liberation - like art that is worth its name, in Marcuse's formulation. Undoubtedly, the threats aligned against the realization of these ends are considerable; Hegel was largely correct to identify history as a slaughterbench that sacrifices the happiness of humanity to hegemony. We can clearly see such analysis confirmed throughout the calamitous world today: Think of the recent Tazreen and Rana Square disasters in Bangladesh, or the 2011 Somali famine. However, it is also clear that humanity is capable of far more affirming projects than those that hold power today. Dialectical thought, and the praxis that may follow from it, can serve to overturn negation.

Why I Became A Working Class Organizer

October 6, 2013 Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com Organize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

What I really came to--the changes that came about were understanding that if this is a society that can perpetrate this kind of genocidal war on Third World countries such as Vietnam, it really made me want to question a lot of things about the U.S. and about foreign policy and about the U.S. government. So by 1967, I left, graduated from Berkeley, and went to the University of Michigan. I was a part of a program that required going to another disciplinary track. I went into sociology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor was hardly, you know, playing second fiddle to the University of California in terms of activity. So in 1967 I already went to the demonstration at the Pentagon against the draft and wrestled with the question of my 2-S status for practically about a year, and first thought I was going to do a conscientious objector route, did a lot of study of Martin Luther King's writings and also Mahatma Gandhi's writings on nonviolent resistance. And in 1968 was one of those momentous decisions, when I decided to return my draft card to my draft board and made myself subject to two years in prison. So that was one of the decisions.

Herman Wallace: ‘Angola Three’ Inmate Dies Days After Release From Solitary

October 4, 2013 Staff, www.theguardian.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Police abuse, Racism, Solidarity

"A 71-year-old man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana has died, less than a week after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial. Herman Wallace's attorneys said he died Friday at a supporter's home in New Orleans. Wallace had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and stopped receiving treatment. US district Judge Brian Jackson had ordered Wallace released from the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola on Tuesday after granting him a new trial. Jackson ruled women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the stabbing death of a 23-year-old prison guard, Brent Miller"

Palestinian Activist Budour Hassan Explains The Case Of A Jailed Syrian Journalist

October 3, 2013 Budour Hassan, www.socialistworker.org Organize! Human Rights, Syria

"SYRIAN SECURITY forces arrested Syrian journalist and Marxist dissident Jihad Asa'ad Muhammad near Athawra Street in central Damascus on August 20. News of his arrest was confirmed by his sister Lina, a fellow Marxist and anti-regime activist forced into hiding. Jihad had been among the few revolutionary activists who remained in the Syrian capital, a deceptively quiet bubble under the strangling iron fist of the regime, despite the ominous threat of arrest hovering over his head. Soon after his arrest, a Facebook page was created that both demanded Jihad's immediate release and republished articles he had written during and before the uprising."

North American Tour Of Documentary, Bhopali, And Survivor-Activist, Sanjay Verma

October 3, 2013 Reena Shadaan, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Bhopal, Corporatism, Environment, Human Rights

The Bhopal gas disaster has resulted in 25,000 deaths to date, and currently affects over 500,000 people. Chronic health problems stemming from initial exposure to MIC (including sickness in the respiratory, ocular, neurological, neuromuscular, gynecological and reproductive systems) continue to plague survivors 29 years later. Moreover, unsafe dumping practises by UCC have led to soil/groundwater contamination in 22 communities. Perhaps most tragic is the mutagenic effect of MIC exposure, leading to higher rates of developmental disabilities and congenital malformations amongst the children of survivors. Despite this, survivors have sustained a 29 year struggle for justice. The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, North America alongside Amnesty International Canada/USA, the Association for India’s Development (AID) and our local allies are launching a North American screening tour of the award-winning documentary, Bhopali, accompanied by survivor-activist, Sanjay Verma.

Statement from Dr. Tarek Loubani and John Greyson

October 2, 2013 Staff www.socialistworker.org/ Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Middle East, Palestine

"WE ARE on the 12th day of our hunger strike at Tora, Cairo's main prison, located on the banks of the Nile. We've been held here since August 16 in ridiculous conditions: no phone calls, little to no exercise, sharing a 3-meter-by-10-meter cell with 36 other political prisoners, sleeping like sardines on concrete with the cockroaches; sharing a single tap of earthy Nile water. We never planned to stay in Egypt longer than overnight. We arrived in Cairo on the 15th with transit visas and all the necessary paperwork to proceed to our destination: Gaza"

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