Yesterday the Orthodox Union condemned an attack by Jewish colonists on a mosque near Nablus in the West Bank, and said it is "beyond the pale." Yesterday, the ADL also condemned the vandalism.
That Jewish extremists may have used such despicable methods to express political opposition is beyond the pale. We join with Israel’s political, military and religious leadership in condemning this disgraceful assault.
A good start. Don’t expect ADL to change its focus, though.
Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor; J’Ann Allen, the wife of a retired military officer and Sandra Mansour, a Palestinian refugee, issued a public invitation to Elie Wiesel to go to Gaza with them.
This invitation was issued as he spoke before a standing-room crowd of around 2,800 people on Tuesday, December 1st, at St. Louis University.
Here is the complete text of Sandra's account: http://www.ctsastl.org/gaza/mansour.pdf
There is no doubt this nation is at a “cross roads.” There is no doubt the states’ legislatures are speaking up against the federal government. There is no doubt the citizens are demanding the federal government’s respect of its Constitutional limitation on powers. So, what does the county sheriff have to do with any of this?
We, the people of our various states, have elected our sheriffs to preserve and protect our Constitutional rights. Classically, we see this role as being executing by protecting us from thieves and robbers and by exercising appropriate restraint to insure they do not violate our rights by conducting improper searches and seizures against us. A good sheriff does both of the above.
A great sheriff, however, goes beyond the two aforementioned roles. A great sheriff will stand on the side of the people who elect him or her, and do that which is necessary to preserve their rights.
Now, let me explain the reason for the catchy title of this brief article. If (or when) the people have a face-off with the federal government, and many ordinary citizens gather to demand their rights, what happens when words do not matter? On which side of the line would you want your sheriff standing? With the people, or against the people? I think we can all agree we want the sheriffs’ guns pointed away from us and not at us.
Clearly, the sheriff has an important decision to make when such events occur. One of the unfortunate things that has occurred over the decades is that the federal government has, in so many cases, been viewed, and accepted, as always on the right side. In so many cases, when federal law enforcement officials enter into matters of local jurisdiction, if our local officials are not “rubber-stamping” their actions, that is because they are busy rolling out the red carpets.
Sheriff Mack appears to be making a valiant effort to correct this misguided reception of federal influence. We, the people, elect our sheriffs. We do not elect federal law enforcement officials. We provide substantial tax dollars to our sheriffs, for the hiring of deputies and for properly equipping them to deal with out-of-control situations where ordinary citizens cannot.
Our sheriffs have quite an infrastructure in place. They are not our state representatives. They are the “guns” behind our state representatives. It is good to support action through our legislatures, and by all means, this should continue. But think about how important it is to have law enforcement, with its infrastructure in place, on our side. When words stop mattering, we just might find our sheriffs to be invaluable.
I urge citizens to promote our Constitutional causes by educating and offering assistance in any way we can. Our rights are not just about words and legislators. We must convince our sheriffs (if they are not already convinced) that they need to be on the side of the people. Our sheriffs need to hear from us. And, as usual, if we find complacent or uncommitted sheriffs, we need to vote them out.
We need to work with Sheriff Mack or at least parallel to him. Good job, Sheriff Mack!
The promise to ease up on photographers in the United Kingdom has turned out to be just another government LIE. Police in London are continuing their war against photography as evidenced by this video.
According to the photographer who was a working journalist:
It had taken less than two minutes from the first click of my camera. My subject was the Gherkin, an iconic London landmark photographed hundreds of times a day and, as it turned out, the ideal venue to test claims from a growing number of photographers claiming they cannot take a picture in public without being harassed under anti-terrorist laws. [...]
By the time they looked at my images, threatening me with arrest for obstruction if I didn’t show them, the officers had stopped a second photographer.
by Alex Ralph and Sean O’Neill
Nursery-age children should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by Islamist extremists, according to a leaked police memo obtained by The Times.
In an e-mail to community groups, an officer in the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit wrote: “I do hope that you will tell me about persons, of whatever age, you think may have been radicalised or be vulnerable to radicalisation … Evidence suggests that radicalisation can take place from the age of 4.”
The police unit confirmed that counter-terrorist officers specially trained in identifying children and young people vulnerable to radicalisation had visited nursery schools.
by Becky Akers
We’re doomed: someone posted the pattern for Superman’s cape and a link to the manufacturer of its magic fabric on the net. That means bad guys with sewing machines and the desire to leap tall buildings in a single bound probably can after 15 minutes of cutting and stitching. Heck, the capes may even endow them with X-ray vision so they can peer through our clothing.
Oh, wait, bad guys already do that. And now they’re wiping egg off their faces after publishing online a classified manual detailing the highly hush-hush rigmarole for “airport security screening.” Supposedly rife with “sensitive security information,” these 93 pages confirm what we all know: anyone wearing a badge or one of the State’s unfashionable outfits glides past checkpoints without hassle from the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) goons. So do “foreign dignitaries equivalent to cabinet rank and above,” though these are the most dangerous sociopaths on the planet: they lie, steal, and start wars. Indeed, were you listing threats to the public’s safety, you’d begin with them and bubonic plague. Not the TSA. It grants these liars, thieves, and murderers a pass so LaWanda and her blue gloves can spend more time groping innocent taxpayers and passengers.
A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him “inconvenient questions” during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.
Professor Stephen Schneider’s assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book.
McAleer, a veteran journalist and film maker, has recently made a documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong’ which takes a sceptical look at the science and politics behind Global Warming concerns.
He asked Professor Schneider about his opinions on Climategate – where leaked emails have revealed that a senior British professor deleted data and encouraged colleagues to do likewise if it contradicted their belief in Global Warming.
Professor Phil Jones, the head of Britain’s Climate Research Unit, has temporarily stood down pending an investigation into the scandal.
Professor Schneider, who is a senior member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he would not comment on emails that may have been incomplete or edited.
During some testy exchanges with McAleer, UN officials and Professor Schneider’s assistants twice tried to cut short McAleer’s question.
However as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider’s assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider.
The guard demanded to look at the film crews press credentials and refused to allow them to film until Professor Schneider left the room.
McAleer said he was disappointed by Professor Schneider’s behaviour.
“It was a press conference. Climategate is a major story – it goes to the heart of the Global Warming debate by calling into question the scientific data and the integrity of many scientists involved.”
“These questions should be answered. The attempts by UN officials and Professor Schneider’s assistant to remove my microphone were hamfisted but events took a more sinister turn when they called an armed UN security officer to silence a journalist.”
Two officers corralled the film crew and one officer can be seen on tape threatening the cameraman. The Guard can also be heard warning that if the crew did not stop filming their would seize the equipment and the journalists expelled from the conference.
McAleer says he has made an official complaint tabout the incident.
“I have met Mr Christopher Ankerson the UN’s head of security for the conference and he has confirmed it was Professor Schneider’s staff who asked the security guards to come corral us at the press conference. Mr Ankerson could not say what grounds the security guard had for ordering us to stop filming.”
“This is a blatant attempt to stop journalists doing journalism and asking hard questions. It is not the job of armed UN security officers to stop legitimate journalists asking legitimate questions of senior members of the UN’s IPCC.”
Professor Schneider was interviewed for McAleer’s “Not Evil Just Wrong” documentary but lawyers later wrote to McAleer saying he was withdrawing permission for the interview to be used.
McAleer, who is from Ireland, has gained quite a reputation for asking difficult questions of those who have been promoting the idea of man-made Global Warming.
His microphone was cut off after he asked former vice-president Al Gore about the British court case which found that An Inconvenient Truth had a nine significant errors and exaggerations. Almost 500,000 people have watched the incident on youtube.
Stuart Littlewood argues that an academic boycott of Israel is now urgent in the light of an Israeli High Court ruling that the Israel occupation forces acted within their rights when they abducted, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in Gaza 21-year-old Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam just weeks before she was due to complete her degree at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank.
Poor Berlanty. What did she do to deserve this crushing blow to her hopes and life chances?
The Israeli High Court has denied Berlanty Azzam justice – again – and prevented her returning to Bethlehem University for the final few weeks to complete her degree.
On 28 October this Christian student at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University was abducted by the “Israel Defence Forces”, "the world's most moral army”, after attending a job interview in Ramallah, then blindfolded and handcuffed and dumped in Gaza. She had lived in the West Bank since 2005 after being granted a permit.
There was only one kind of permit available in 2005 – an entry permit to Israel. But the Israeli state claimed that this permit was insufficient and Berlanty should have obtained some other permit, even though the state admits that none existed at the time.
State representatives took her permit, a key piece of evidence, and never produced it to the court. After six weeks of double-talk the court accepted the state's claim that Berlanty entered the West Bank illegally. We hear a lot about how independent Israel’s justice system is. Here’s proof, if any were needed, that it is simply a tool of the military.
To avoid accusations that her residence was not Bethlehem, Berlanty had for the last four years resisted the temptation to return to Gaza and visit her folks. She and her parents submitted numerous applications to change the Gaza address recorded on her identity card to her actual place of residence, Bethlehem, but to no avail. Israel controls the Palestinian population registry and refuses to register changes in address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank – another example of how Gazans are effectively imprisoned.
This, of course, is in breach of her human rights. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. In 1999 Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) signed an agreement establishing a 28-mile road corridor giving Palestinians safe passage between the two parts of Palestine – yet another empty gesture.
“We are disappointed that the Israeli military and High Court have interfered with the Church’s educational mission at Bethlehem University by denying Berlanty to be brought back to Bethlehem to complete her studies,” said Brother Peter Bray, the vice chancellor, on hearing the court ruling. “We realize that Berlanty is one of the many people in Gaza who suffer so unjustly.”
Indeed. Since 2000 Israel has implemented a sweeping ban, preventing youngsters from Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. A 2007 High Court decision determined that students from Gaza wishing to study in the West Bank should be allowed to do so “in cases that would have positive humanitarian implications”.
However, to the best of her legal team’s knowledge, since that judgment was handed down Israel hasn’t issued a single entry permit. Only last summer 12 students from Gaza were refused permits to study at Bethlehem University. Back in the late 1990s, about 1,000 students from Gaza studied in the West Bank, most of them in disciplines that are not offered in the Gaza Strip.
Like Berlanty, an estimated 25,000 people currently living in the West Bank have been declared "illegal" by Israel solely because the address on their identity card is in the Gaza Strip. Some of them have lived in the West Bank for decades but Israel simply does not recognize their right to be there. They are extremely limited in their daily movements and live in fear of being detained and “deported”, just as Berlanty was. Consequently they have very limited opportunities for employment, business and studies. This policy not only breaches Israel’s obligations under international to treat the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a “single territorial entity”, but it also chokes any prospect of healthy development in Palestinian society.
It is no use pretending that things will change – unless other countries give Israel a dose of its own medicine. How does the Berlanty case and the thousands like it sit with the great and the good who piously reject the idea of an academic boycott against Israel?
All political parties fight against such a boycott for muddle-headed reasons. The recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme uncovered the influence of the Israel lobby and its money on the Conservative Party. Another particularly obnoxious group that’s hopelessly out of touch with reality is the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI). At their party's conference they tabled a motion squashing an academic boycott, saying that "Israeli universities are centres of free debate and discussion and that the universities contain Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, a boycott does nothing to resolve a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and is indeed counter-productive as it discourages dialogue." This motion against the boycott was passed with an overwhelming majority.
The aim of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel is to “maximize support for the State of Israel within the party and Parliament” and “encourage a broad understanding of Israel’s unique political position as the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Their stated purpose is:
In other words, they act as a prop within the British Parliament for this racist military regime.
Such blind allegiance and bizarre conduct contribute to the tragedy of Berlanty and countless other Palestinian youngsters. Without these beacons of misplaced support across the Western world lawless Israel would be sunk.
Boy, were they barking up the wrong tree. Brandon Mayfield is a patriot, an Army veteran, and a lawyer who makes a point of representing indigent defendants. The only thing Mayfield ever did "wrong" was convert to the Muslim religion. And that, he says, is exactly why the FBI convinced themselves that was HIS fingerprint found at the Madrid bomb site, even when Spanish authorities told them they were wrong.
The FBI used the Patriot Act to throw Mayfield in jail, and "sneak and peek" and electronically eavesdrop on the Mayfield family.
They leaked reports to the media that Mayfield was responsible for the Madrid bombing and locked him up for two weeks as a "material witness." They thoroughly searched Mayfield’s property: "What are these Spanish documents?!" The answer was, "That’s my son’s homework from Spanish class."
A likely story.
Eventually Mayfield and his family settled with the FBI. They accepted $2 million and an apology, but Mayfield insisted on retaining the right to challenge the constitutionality of the Patriot Act. He filed that suit immediately, and a U.S. District Judge ruled in the Mayfields’ favor in 2007. Of course the Bush administration appealed.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled December 10 that Mayfield has no standing to pursue the suit because “his injuries already have been substantially redressed by the settlement agreement, and a declaratory judgment would not likely impact him or his family.”
Illegal search and seizure, schmillegal schmearch and schmeizure, says the court.
Mayfield’s lawyer, Elden Rosenthal, is not pleased. "We strongly disagree with the appeal court’s decision," he told the Oregonian. "The law is not always just, the courts are not always right. What is right here is that American citizens are entitled to protection from an oppressive government. What is wrong here is that the right was not provided."
The Mayfield family still has the option of appealing their case to the Supreme Court, but they haven’t made that decision yet. They’re still reeling from this week’s decision by the Court of Appeals.
Brandon Mayfield committed the egregious sin of being a Muslim. His son compounded this vicious terrorist act by studying Spanish in school. It was Mayfield’s hope that through his lawsuit he could protect other Americans from suffering the persecution his family endured. But in the wake of the circuit court’s decision, the Patriot Act lives on – due to a technicality.
Watch our 2005 video about the Brandon Mayfield case.
After an annual meeting of the Bilderberg Club in May 2009, the establishment of the global management system of institutions seemed to have been given a boost, repeating the plots of American apocalypitc blockbusters.
As soon as the financial top had opted for a lingering crisis, global managers were instructed to work in two major ways: first, to invent a myth about the danger of swine flu pandemic (in order to take control of the national healthcare systems and reorganize the World Health Organization (WHO) into a global healthcare ministry) and impose a threat of global warming to gain control of world natural resources and introduce a unified 'green' tax (alongside with creation of a new sub-national managing body- an international ministry of ecology).
Both tasks aim to intimidate the population and thus substantiate any policies undertaken by international organziations. Chairman of the Board of Governors 'British Petroluem', Peter Suterlan, once frankly admitted that he would like to impose fear of global warming in order to increase taxes and make people revise their lifestyle.
The implementation of the first scenario suggested by the Bilderberg Club is currently underway.
After the WHO announced the A/H1N1 pandemic on July 11, 2009, a real hysteria was launched in mass media worldwide, and people were told to get prepared for the pandemic in November and undergo vaccination (in 2005 the WHO added an amendment to its Charter which says that duirng a pandemic the organization does not recommend but gives instructions and orders, and the number of vaccines should be no less than 4.6 billion). The operation reached its peak when in late September Barack Obama signed a decree to impose 'a flu pandemic sanitary emergency', which means that the citizens could be vaccinated against their will and kept in special quarantine zones. Amid panic, Americans and West Europeans were involved in mass immunization, which unveiled that the pandemic had been paid in order to let pharmaceutical companies thrive on it, and also as a weapon against 'unwanted' population (and now we all know what a swine flu vaccine is). It was also used as a so-called 'innovative' mechanism of handling political processes- which was so actively used in Ukraine. In view of this, the WHO gained extra powers and strengthened its status.
Now we are witnessing another show titled “The UN Copenhagen climate change conference”, currently held in the Danish capital (it will run through December 18) and aiming to work out a document to limit global emissions and replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. Thirty thousand participants, including 60 heads of states and prime mnisters, have arrived there on December,7.
The EU, being one of the major organizers of the summit, had elected its first President, who was immediately described in the media as a creature of the Bilderberg club: on November, 15, a few days before his appointment, Herman Van Rompuy met with the club`s top managers at Val Duchesse castle outside Brussels, where he spoke about the need to revise the mechanism of the EU`s financing and suggested a unified 'green' tax which would go directly to Brussels. The fact that the issue was covered in the media proves that members of the Bilderberg Club are no longer going to conceal that they are the real bosses in Europe.
Such confidence annoyed some of the European Parliament members. One of them, an Italian Mario Borghezio, said: “All three candidates (for the role of the EU president) often attended meeting at the Bilderberg club, and I think that they should explain whether they are honest candidates representing their native country or just members of secret groups which had been organized to discuss pressing social and other kinds of issues”. Another MP, an Englishman Nigel Farage criticized Rompuy`s appointment and called him a 'puppet-leader' in the hands of Barroso. He even dared to say that the EU is an authoritarian dictatorship ruled by bureaucracy which is not elected by anybody. Commenting on the Lisbon Treaty, Farage told the delegates: “It took you 8,5 years of intimidation, lying and disrespect towards democratic referendums to lobby this deal!”
Immediately after his appointment as the EU President, Van Rompuy (known in Europe as 'master of compromising') assured his patrons that he perfectly understood all the tasks he was facing. Speaking at a press-conference, Herman Van Rompuy said that 2009 has become the 'first year of global management' (he meant the G20), while the Climate Summit in Copenhagen is a next step in this direction'.
The Danish government carried out a reshuffle and appointed Lykke Friis, pro-dean at the Copenhagen University, as Climate Minister to replace Connie Hedegaard, a member of the Bilderberg Club. The latter swapped her title to First Commissioner on the EU Climate, which was introduced in October 2009 especially in order to control the reduction of CO2 emissions by 20% by the year 2020. Hedegaard is a member of numerous committees and organizations, including the Danish Atlantic Treaty Association led by Robert Gunther.
What goals are being pursued in Copenhagen this time?
Lord Christopher Monckton, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, explained: “When I read this treaty I see that the authors are talking about the establishment of 'one world Marxist government'. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, ‘climate debt’ – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement,” Monckton warned. He then noted that the new treaty would be supported by most of the third world countries 'as they think they will receive money for it'. And the US President will sign it without expecting two thirds of the Senate and the Congress to ratify it.
And the 'world government', which would be empowered to interfere in other countries` economic and ecological policies, and the 'enforcement'- these all are just mechanisms to 'transfer resources' which actually means reforming economies of the non-western countries with the use of progressive technologies in order to gain control these resources within that level of consumption permitted in the West that would guarantee a drop in the planet`s population.
It is no secret that the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted after the idea of global warming resulting from anthropogenic factors had been promoted among scientists. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was prtensented as an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Protocol sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. The US, being the world`s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has not ratified the Protocol. The EU (now comprising the Baltic States and the countries of Eastern Europe) took the burden of the responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%, Japan and Canada- by 6%. The Protocol limits emission in Russia and Ukraine to a percentage increase or decrease from their 1990 levels. The developing countries, including China and India were not included in numerical limitation of the Kyoto Protocol.
However, the implementation of the Kyoto deal failed to help in resolving environmental problems but added a new commodity to the international market: quota on GHG. It turned into a pure speculation and let the financial capital grasp onto a vital energy sector in the developing countries. Due to their imperfect industrial policies, the developed states could not succeed in modernization and GHG reducing. That is why they found another means to fulfill their obligations: a developed state helps a developing one to reduce emissions and then counts the limited tons of GHG as if those were reduce on its territory. Very soon hundreds of companies and foundations joined this 'green' quota games hoping to thrive on it. In the long run, the international environmental market received the strongest expansion ever, and it originally there were only three purchasers: the World Bank, the governments of the Netherlands and Japan, now their number has increased sharply, and professional speculators now make up to 40% of the participants in hydrocarbon exchanges.
Having accepted the conditions, Russia later faced an ambiguous situation: the country has large stocks of free greenhouse gases but this is because in 1990s its industry was in severe crisis, and all emissions then even fell below 30%.
The international community plans to introduce new emission quotas to restrict industrial development and impose western environmental standards that require implementation of very costly projects (and these expenses will never be compensated by the sums earned on 'green' quotas trading). And taking into consideration that climate in Russia requires constant expenditures on energy, the country will hardly be able to restore its industrial power.
A group of developed nations have prepared a brand new document especially for the Copenhagen summit. The document says that the divison into developed and developing nations has long become outdated, while today all the states should be obliged to cut GHG emissions and provide assisstance to the poorest countries. The treaty is expected to be legally binding as well so that the states approved new rules at the governmental level. But the differences between the participants were so great that they only managed to agree on a road map plan without discussing the figures.
However, high promises of financial and investment assisstance proved to be more effective than legal mechanisms, and ahead of the summit the leading developing nations followed in the West`s footsteps and pledged GHG emissions cuts by 2020. The EU announced a 20% reduction from the 1990 level, while the US said it will reduce its emissions by 17% from the 2005 level (in accordance with a draft law approved by the House of Representatives). India claimed it wil reduce 20-25%, whiel South Korea and China announced the figures of 30% and 40-45% respectively.
Russian WWF, Greenpeace and Ecoprotection activists said 'Russia should play the leading role at the talks. We can and should remain at the 1990 level of 30%. And then we shoud proceed with further reduction”. At the Russa-EU summit in November, Dmitry Medvedev said the country would try to reduce its GHG emissions up to 25% by 2020, and added that by 2050 Russia will be ready to cut emission by no less than 50% in comparison to the 1990 level.
This kind of unanimity hides the real differences between the participants of the summit and the gravity of environmental problems and adds fuel to the fire caused by the idea of 'catastrophic global warming'. Recently, the Prince of Wales Charles has delivered a report in which he said that 'nations have less than 100 months to act to save the planet from irreversible damage due to climate change.
Global management does everything to hide the real state of affairs. It ignores information and scientific research from alternative sources, especially if the threat of global warming and its anthropogenic factors are being argued (mind the recent leakage of e-mails from the University of East Anglia`s Climatic Research, the so-called 'climate gate').
The Cape Town, South Africa-based Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) "conduct(s) large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific projects for public-sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies," and disseminates its findings widely.
In May 2009, it issued a damning report titled, "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law." At the time John Dugard was the UN's Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine. At his January 2007 suggestion, the study was undertaken "to scrutinise (his) hypothesis from the perspective of international law." It stated:
"Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. What are the legal consequences of a regime of prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid for the occupied people, the Occupying Power and third States?"
Given South Africa's past, the HSRC had an "obvious interest" in pursuing these issues. After 15 months of research, its report concluded that:
"....Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise, which implements a system of apartheid."
Although occupation is legal after armed conflict, it's intended only to be temporary. International law also prohibits the unilateral annexation or permanent acquisition of territory through force, and Fourth Geneva obligates signatories to protect civilians in time of war and occupation.
Its Article 3 states:
"Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat (out of the fight) by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria."
Its Article 4 defines "protected persons" as follows:
"Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals."
Its Article 49 states:
"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." Neither shall "The Occupying Power....deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
In addition, numerous UN resolutions established "no legal validity" for occupied land acquisitions or settlement building. When violations of international law occur, no nation may recognize or support the unlawful situation or the state responsible.
In addition, colonialism and apartheid are particularly serious international law breaches because they fundamentally violate core legal order standards and values. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed self-determination as "one of the essential principles of contemporary international law," obligating all states to respect and promote it. Colonialism is in clear violation.
The 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (the Declaration on Colonialism), condems "colonialism in all its forms and manifestations," including settlements deemed to be illegal.
According to the 1973 International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the Apartheid Convention), this practice is state-sanctioned discriminatory "inhuman" racism "committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."
Apartheid is an international crime. The above definition builds on the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). In addition, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime under the Court's jurisdiction. Israel is flagrantly guilty but not yet held accountable.
International laws prohibiting colonialism and apartheid are "peremptory," meaning they are "accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as (standards) from which no derogation is permitted." Every country is legally bound to respect and observe them. They're also duty bound to:
-- work cooperatively to end individual state violations;
-- not extend recognition to lawless ones; nor
-- provide them aid in any form.
Legal Framework in the OPT
Applicable international law recognizes:
-- the Palestinians' right to self-determination;
-- the fact that Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegally occupied;
-- that Israel has no sovereignty over these Territories, only an earlier temporary administrative right no longer applicable;
-- that land seizures are illegal; so is the Separation Wall as the ICJ affirmed in 2004;
-- that the 2005 Gaza "disengagement" left Israel in control; and
-- that, as an Occupying Power, international law obligates Israel to "abide by the....rules of armed conflict (and relevant human rights laws) in its administration of the territories."
For over 42 years, Israel willfully violated the law under a dual discriminatory regime. Its occupation and land seizures are illegal. Its settlers are protected under civil laws assuring them free movement and essential services. Palestinians come under military law and its courts with procedures that violate international judiciary standards. Israel's High Court affirmed the bifurcated system that "discriminate(s) between these two groups by according (them) very different rights, protections, and life chances in the same territory." This system violates the laws of armed conflict, and also the international legal colonialism and apartheid prohibitions.
Under the Declaration on Colonialism, this practice exists when states annex or otherwise lawlessly retain territorial control and deny indigenous peoples their right to self-determination. Israel does it six ways by:
-- violating the integrity of the Occupied Territories:
-- prohibiting meaningful self-government;
-- integrating the area's economy into its own;
-- controlling its resources;
-- denying the population economic enfranchisement, free movement, expression, its historical heritage, their right to develop and practice it, and equal justice under the law; and
-- maintaining a 42-year state of war, including killings, targeted assassinations, mass arrests, incarcerations, torture and abuse, and other degrading and humiliating treatment.
Under ICERD's Article 3, apartheid is prohibited as a particularly egregious form of discrimination, without precisely defining the practice. The Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute went further with a better one and by criminalizing certain apartheid-related acts - specifically, "inhuman (ones) committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other and systematically oppressing them."
Both focus on systematic, institutionalized discrimination to achieve racial segregation and unchallenged dominance. Under the Apartheid Convention's Article 2, HSRC determined that:
-- Israeli measures deprive Palestinians of their right to "life and liberty of person;"
-- they include state-sponsored violence; killings; extrajudicial assassinations; arbitrary arrests and incarcerations; torture and abuse; other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; kangaroo court justice in military tribunals; and administrative detentions without charge, adequate access to counsel, trial, or proper judicial review;
-- state-sponsored collective punishment seriously impairing life and health, especially in Gaza under siege;
-- Palestinians have no free and equal participation in their political, social, economic and cultural lives;
-- they're also denied their basic human rights and freedoms with regard to free movement; their right of return; to live anywhere in historic Palestine freely in the land of their birth; and to a nationality through self-determination;
-- they're denied economic self-determination and their right to work anywhere in historic Palestine;
-- their trade unions aren't recognized so they can't represent Palestinians effectively;
-- under military occupation, their right to education, medical care and other essential services is seriously impaired;
-- censorship laws restrict free expression and opinion;
-- military orders deny free assembly and public gatherings of 10 or more persons without express permission; non-violent gatherings are regularly suppressed with live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas, and various other weapons;
-- most Palestinian parties are considered illegal; charities, cultural organizations and other institutions and agencies connected to them are subjected to closure and attack;
-- home and community intrusions, beatings, arrests, and killings occur regularly; and
-- all of these practices occur in extreme form in Gaza under siege, the one difference being Jewish settlers no longer reside there, but, at any time, Israel may decide to return them and displace Palestinians by so doing.
The West Bank, in contrast, is balkanized into cantons and enclaves in which group identity determines residence and free entry. Jews have the choicest parts and keep expanding them, leaving Palestinians shrinking amounts of the rest.
HSRC's report concluded that Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid are "systematic and comprehensive, as the exercise of the Palestinian population's right to self-determination has been frustrated in all of its principal modes of expression."
Comparing Israeli and South African ApartheidDespite differences, Israeli and South African apartheid practices are defined by similar dominant features. Three legislative pillars underpinned South Africa's:
-- the first demarcated people into racial groups through the 1950 Population Registration Act; it institutionalized racial discrimination by affording special rights, privileges and services to whites and denied them to blacks;
-- the second segregated people by geographic areas, allocated by law to different racial groups; it restricted passage from assigned areas to others to insure white supremacy; overall, it constituted "grand apartheid" by establishing "Homelands" or "Bantustans" in which "denationalized" blacks were transferred and forced to reside, while whites got special political rights denied blacks;
-- the third was a matrix of draconian security laws and policies, employed to suppress opposition and reinforce racial domination "by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination."
In the OPT, Israel has the same three pillars:
The first legally establishes Jewish identity and affords preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews alone. Palestinians are discriminated against as inferior by religion, ethnicity, and subsequent social status.
Israel's citizenship laws underpin the system under which Jews anywhere in the world automatically qualify for citizenship in an exclusive Jewish state. The 1950 Law of Return defines Jewishness and begins saying:
"Every Jew has the right to immigrate to this country."
The 1952 Citizenship Law granted automatic citizenship to Jewish immigrants, while denying non-Jews similar rights. The 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law banned Palestinian family unification, giving Jews alone special rights.
The second pillar reflects Israel's policy to expropriate choice land, segregate and dominate. It plays out through separating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, seizing increasing amounts of it for settlement development, and separating Palestinians by means of walls, barriers, checkpoints, separate roads, a discriminatory permit and ID system, and a militarized matrix of control.
In contrast, Jews have free movement and freedom. The "geographic fragmentation has the effect of crushing Palestinian socio-economic life, securing Palestinian vulnerability to Israeli economic dominance, and of enforcing a rigid segregation of Palestinian and Jewish populations," similar to South African apartheid.
The third pillar is Israel's "invocation of security" to justify sweeping restrictions on Palestinian free expression, opinion, assembly, association and movement and enforce them through suppression of dissent, conflict, state-sponsored violence, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and incarcerations, torture and abuse, and other kinds of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
In sum, these policies are "integrated and complementary elements of an institutionalised and oppressive system of Israeli domination and oppression over Palestinians as a group; that is, a system of apartheid," under which Israeli repression is harsh, discriminatory, and illegal under international law.
Although Israel bares primary responsibility, the international community must act cooperatively to remedy the situation as follows:
-- require Israel start dismantling the structures and institutions of occupation, colonialism and apartheid;
-- have it pay reparations for decades of lawlessness; and
-- assure Palestinians can exercise their right of self-determination or have equal rights as citizens in one Israeli/Palestinian state.
"The realisation of self-determination and the prohibition on apartheid are peremptory norms of international law from which no derogation is permitted." These principles obligate the entire world community to cooperate to end all breaches everywhere, including in Occupied Palestine. Failure to do so constitutes "an internationally wrongful act." Further, any state aiding another's lawlessness axiomatically becomes complicit in the commission of crimes, requiring other nations to hold it accountable.
International organizations like the UN bear equal responsibility. As the ICJ stated in its Separation Wall ruling, this body is obligated to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one it helped initiate through its 1947 partition plan under UN General Assembly Resolution 181. At a time Jews comprised one-third of the population, it gave them 56% of the choicest land, the rest to Palestinians with Jerusalem designated an international city.
HSRC and John Dugard urged the ICJ to rule on this matter in accordance with the UN Charter's Article 96 authorizing "The General Assembly or the Security Council (to) request (an ICJ) advisory opinion on any legal question." Under Article 65 of the ICJ's Statute, it "may give an advisory opinion on any legal question at the request of whatever body may be authorized by or in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations to make such a request."
According to HSRC, at issue is the following:
"Do the policies and practices of Israel within the (OPT) violate the norms prohibiting apartheid and colonialism; and, if so, what are the legal consequences arising from Israel's policies and practices, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UN General Assembly (1960) Resolution 1514 (on granting independence to colonial countries and peoples), and other relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?"
After 61 years of displacement and 42 years of occupation, these matter remain unresolved.
Source: Media With A Conscience
By Carlos Miller
After being treated like a child molester by a cop in a shopping mall, award-winning videographer Scott Rensberger reached up to snap a picture of the offending officer.
The officer did what many officers would do in that situation; he lifted his hand in front of the camera to block the photo. Contact was made.
Rensberger was then arrested for battery on a police officer.
Now he is demanding his charges be dropped as well as an apology. He plans to file a complaint. He should be talking to a lawyer.
Read The Rest Here
"The Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture," Jameel Jaffer, Director of ACLU's National Security Project, said in a conference call with reporters. "Now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity."
While he credited Obama for having disavowed torture under his watch, Jaffer said that "on every front, the administration is actively obstructing accountability by shielding Bush officials from civil liability, criminal investigation and even public scrutiny for their role in authorizing torture."
"It's the last month of 2009, and not a single torture victim has had his day in court," said ACLU Attorney Ben Wizner. "Not a single court in a torture case has ruled on the legality of the Bush administration’s torture policies."
In response to a question from Raw Story, Jaffer said refusing to prosecute past acts of torture sets "an extremely dangerous precedent" in the legal system. "Torture victims can be denied their day in court solely based on assertions made by their torturers," he said.
"We still don't have a definitive binding determination that what went on in the last eight years was illegal," he added. "And without that kind of determination, it will be all too easy for an unscrupulous lawyer in an unscrupulous future administration to write another memo saying that there is no legal prohibition against monstrous conduct."
"Torture is not an issue where there should be one person on both sides of the table on Hardball -- torture is universally prescribed as clearly illegal."
The Obama administration has evaded transparency by "seeking to cover up details of enhanced interrogation programs," said Alex Abdo, ACLU's attorney for torture FOIA lawsuits, citing the president's refusal to release photos, memos and documentation that detail instances of torture -- largely under the pre-text of state secrets.
"The effect of the Obama administration's argument across these civil cases is the creation of a sweeping immunity doctrine for torturers," said Abdo, citing as one example Obama's defense of torture memo author John Yoo.
"The government can engage in torture, declare it a state secret or a matter of national security, and by virtue of that declaration avoid any accountability for conduct that the entire world and the United States have always recognized as illegal in all instances," he said.
"We're frustrated by the growing gap between Obama administration's rhetoric on accountability and the reality," Jaffer said.
"I think there is an obvious connection between what the president is saying about the commitment we've got to human rights and the work we're doing here inside the United States to hold people accountable for the violations of both domestic and international law," Jaffer said, referring to Obama's acceptance of the Nobel Prize today.
Last week, ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson told Raw Story that Obama's support for key Patriot Act provisions is "a major travesty."
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