Rand Paul Wants to Ban 8-Year-Old Immigrants from America

Rand Paul Wants to Ban 8-Year-Old Immigrants from America

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won the coveted position of "Republican liberals kind of like" with his drone-related filibuster earlier this year. Paul will surely disappoint them today with his demand that the Senate delay immigration reform until until we figure out how the Boston marathon bombers got into America, and how to prevent that from happening in the future. The thing is, we know how the Tsaraevs got into America. It's not because there were warning signs and they slipped through our fingers. They got into America because they were kids.

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Algerians in London protest against shale gas and the lack of a national debate

Algerians in London protest against shale gas and the lack of a national debate

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

by HAMZA HAMOUCHENE, AMINE MOUFFOK, MERIEM AIS, and RACHIDA LAMRI

It was during an informal discussion in London, organised by Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC) on the topic of the dangers of shale gas exploitation in Algeria, that some participants, learning of the imminent official visit of the Algerian Minister of Energy and Mining to London, felt compelled to take action.

The information presented during the discussion left participants extremely concerned with the potentially deleterious consequences of shale gas extraction in Algeria, through hydraulic fracturing “fracking”. A shale gas well requires the high-pressured injection of colossal quantities of water (20 000 m3), mixed with a concoction of over 750 chemical substances (29 of which are known or suspected carcinogens, presenting health and environmental risks), together with sand, in order to fracture highly impermeable rock, leading to the release of shale gas. This technique has raised major concerns for its substantial use of water (particularly worrying for the Sahara) and for the potential leaking of these chemical substances into groundwater. It was, therefore, rejected by many communities across the world, including France. Indeed, the latter banned it on its soil, but has been invited to experiment with it in Algeria.
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Partial Readings: The Violence We Can, and Can’t, Prevent

Partial Readings: The Violence We Can, and Can’t, Prevent

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

By Colin Kinniburgh

It’s been a grim week. Whether it was the bombing at the Boston marathon or the explosion of a fertilizer plant in small-town Texas, the week’s events have instilled, for many in the U.S., a renewed sense of vulnerability to mindless violence. Reports of atrocities in all corners of the globe, many of them far more lethal than the Boston bombing, have hardly been comforting. Neither have developments in Congress, where the crucial components of new gun control legislation were shot down, while CISPA—the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a major blow to internet freedom—passed in the House.

Killing three and leaving close to two hundred wounded, the Boston marathon bombings have resonated around the world, with their symbolic weight adding to the trauma experienced by the immediate victims. Messages of sympathy and solidarity are pouring in from around the world, including from actual war zones. In response to the violence, many on the scene have showed tremendous courage and fortitude, including runners who ran on from the finish line to the hospital to donate blood.

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FBI: Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed 'radical Islam'

FBI: Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed 'radical Islam'

    Sunday, April 21, 2013   No comments

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by a foreign government as a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer" whose personality had changed drastically in just a year, according to the FBI.

As investigators considered possible motives for Monday's fatal bombings, U.S. authorities acknowledged that an unnamed government had contacted the FBI to say the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen “had changed drastically” since 2010 and was preparing to leave the United States “to join unspecified underground groups,” according to an official statement from the FBI.

U.S. officials have not named the foreign nation, but it is presumed to be Russia. Tsarnaev traveled there in 2012 and stayed for six months.

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US prepares $130m military aid package for Syrian rebels

US prepares $130m military aid package for Syrian rebels

    Sunday, April 21, 2013   No comments

The US readied a package Saturday of up to $130m in non-lethal military aid to Syrian opposition forces while European countries consider easing an arms embargo, moves that could further pressure the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

US secretary of state John Kerry was expected to announce the plans about the defensive military supplies at a meeting Saturday that was bringing together the Syrian opposition leadership and their main international allies.

The supplies possibly could include body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and advanced communications equipment.

US officials said the details and costs were to be determined at the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss Kerry's announcement.

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President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria

President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria

    Monday, April 15, 2013   No comments

ROBERT FISK

Old Mohamed Said al-Sauda from Deraa, in his tawny gown and kuffiah headscarf, sat at the end of a conclave of tribal elders, all newly arrived in Damascus for an audience with no less than the President himself. They sat – only one woman in a blue dress among them – round a long table in the Damas Rose Hotel drinking water and coffee, rehearsing their anxieties. How should they talk to the young armed men who came into their villages? How should they persuade the rebels not to damage their land and take over their villages? "We try to talk to the saboteurs and to get them to go back to rebuilding the country," al-Sauda told me. "We try to persuade them to put aside their arms, to stop the violence. We used to have such a safe country to live in."

These men, middle-aged for the most part with tough, lined, dark faces, are the first line of defence of the Assad regime, the landowners and propertied classes of the peasants who benefited most from the original Baathist revolution and whose prosperity has been threatened by the mass uprising against the regime. They come from Tartus, Deraa, the Damascus countryside, from Hama and Latakia, and they speak the language of the Assad government – up to a point. "Syria is a mosaic unlike any other in the world," says Salman Hamdan. "The sectarian divide does not exist in our country. Muslims, Christians, they are the same. It is a conspiracy that is classifying people. Some have chosen the homeland; others have decided to be ungrateful to their country for personal gain."

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Opposition leader jailed for insulting Kuwaiti ruler

Opposition leader jailed for insulting Kuwaiti ruler

    Monday, April 15, 2013   No comments

Kuwaiti opposition leader and former MP Mussallam al Barrak (pictured) was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday after being convicted of making statements insulting the country's ruler, Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah, at an October 15 rally.

A Kuwaiti court on Monday sentenced main opposition leader and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison after he was convicted of insulting the emir of the OPEC member country.

Barrak, a nationalist, was charged with making statements deemed offensive to the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, at a public rally on October 15.

Criticising the emir is a felony that carries a maximum of five years in jail.

"The court has sentenced the defendant Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison with immediate effect," said judge Wael al-Atiqi in a half-packed courtroom in the Palace of Justice in the capital Kuwait City.

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Barbara Boxer, AIPAC seek to codify Israel's right to discriminate against Americans

Barbara Boxer, AIPAC seek to codify Israel's right to discriminate against Americans

    Sunday, April 14, 2013   No comments

A bill introduced by the California Democrat would uniquely exempt Israel from long-standing requirements imposed on all other nations

In order for the US to permit citizens of a foreign country to enter the US without a visa, that country must agree to certain conditions. Chief among them is reciprocity: that country must allow Americans to enter without a visa as well. There are 37 countries which have been permitted entrance into America's "visa waiver" program, and all of them - all 37 - reciprocate by allowing American citizens to enter their country without a visa.

The American-Israeli Political Action Committee (Aipac) is now pushing legislation that would allow Israel to enter this program, so that Israelis can enter the US without a visa. But as JTA's Ron Kampeas reports, there is one serious impediment: Israel has a practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim backgrounds to enter their country or the occupied territories it controls; it also bars those who are critical of Israeli actions or supportive of Palestinian rights. Israel refuses to relinquish this discriminatory practice of exclusion toward Americans, even as it seeks to enter the US's visa-free program for the benefit of Israeli citizens.

As a result, at the behest of Aipac, Democrat Barbara Boxer, joined by Republican Roy Blunt, has introduced a bill that would provide for Israel's membership in the program while vesting it with a right that no other country in this program has: namely, the right to exclude selected Americans from this visa-free right of entrance. In other words, the bill sponsored by these American senators would exempt Israel from a requirement that applies to every other nation on the planet, for no reason other than to allow the Israeli government to engage in racial, ethnic and religious discrimination against US citizens. As Lara Friedman explained when the Senate bill was first introduced, it "takes the extraordinary step of seeking to change the current US law to create a special and unique exception for Israel in US immigration law." In sum, it is as pure and blatant an example of prioritizing the interests of the Israeli government over the rights of US citizens as one can imagine, and it's being pushed by Aipac and a cast of bipartisan senators.

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Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf admits secret CIA drone deal with US

Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf admits secret CIA drone deal with US

    Saturday, April 13, 2013   No comments

Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former military ruler, has for the first time admitted doing a secret deal with America to allow CIA drone strikes against terrorist targets.

His comments contradict repeated Pakistani denials that the US has ever been given permission for the strikes. They come amid growing evidence that the country’s intelligence service is collaborating with its American counterpart.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Musharraf, who returned to Pakistan three weeks ago, said he had authorised strikes “only on very few occasions where the target was absolutely isolated and had no chance of collateral damage”.

The first strike on Pakistan soil came in 2004, five years into Mr Musharraf’s reign, killing a tribal leader seen as an enemy of the government. Since then there have been more than 300 strikes and more than 3,000 deaths.

Islamabad has publicly condemned the attacks, describing them as an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.

They provoke intense anger and have been blamed for stoking anti-American sentiment in the country. Yet there has long been suspicion that Pakistan had given consent.

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Russia strikes back with Magnitsky list response

Russia strikes back with Magnitsky list response

    Saturday, April 13, 2013   No comments

Russia has released the list naming 18 Americans banned from entering the Russian Federation over their alleged human rights violations, as a direct response to the so-called Magnitsky list revealed by the US on Friday.
...

Before the Magnitsky list was released, Russia warned that the reaction would be in accordance with the “rules of parity.”

“We will not publish anything substantially different in terms of the numbers [of names] published by the American side,” explained Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The final version of the list of Russian officials and businessmen who will be banned from entering the United States while their stateside assets will be frozen includes 18 people. Sixteen of them are said to be “directly responsible” for Magnitsky’s death in prison, according to Washington's version of events.

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US officials involved in legalizing torture and indefinite detention of prisoners (The Guantanamo List)
1) David Spears Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney (2005-2009)
2) John Choon Yoo, Assistant US Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice (2001-2003)
3)  Geoffrey D. Miller, retired US Army Major General, commandant of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), the organization that runs the Guantanamo Bay detention camps (2002-2003)
4) Jeffrey Harbeson, US Navy officer, commandant of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), the organization that runs the Guantanamo Bay detention camps (2010-2012)


US officials involved in violations of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens abroad
5) Jed Saul Rakoff, Senior US District Judge for the Southern District of New York
6) Preetinder S. Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York
7) Michael J. Garcia, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York
8) Brendan R. McGuire, Assistant US Attorney
9) Anjan S. Sahni, Assistant US Attorney
10) Christian R. Everdell, Assistant US Attorney
11) Jenna Minicucci Dabbs, Assistant US Attorney
12) Christopher L. Lavigne, Assistant US Attorney
13) Michael Max Rosensaft, Assistant US Attorney
14) Louis J. Milione, Special Agent, US Drug Enforcement Administration
15) Sam Gaye, Senior Special Agent, US Drug Enforcement Administration
16) Robert F. Zachariasiewicz, Special Agent, US Drug Enforcement Administration
17) Derek S. Odney, Special Agent, US Drug Enforcement Administration
18) Gregory A. Coleman, Special Agent, US Federal Bureau of Investigation

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