maccabees
BBC ‘open to Gaza appeal rethink’
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has said it is open to reconsidering its earlier decision not to telecast a charity appeal for funds for Palestinians in Gaza.
The chief operating officer of the BBC, under fire for its refusal to air the appeal, said a reversal of the decision was possible if another request to air the appeal was made.
“We never say never and clearly, if the DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) came to us with another request when things have calmed down and we didn’t have the same worries about the controversial nature of this, we would look at it again in that light,” Caroline Thompson told Al Jazeera on Sunday.
The DEC is made up of charities including the British Red Cross and Oxfam and its request for telecasting an appeal for funds was turned down by the BBC.
In explaining its decision, the BBC said the telecast might compromise its impartiality.
In…
BBC Refuses to Show Gaza Appeal
The British Broadcasting Corporation has defended its decision not to participate in a television fund-raising appeal for Gaza, saying it did want to avoid compromising public confidence in its impartiality.
Normally all broadcasters show Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals without charge, but in a statement on Friday, the BBC said: “Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC’s public appeal to raise funds for Gaza.
“The BBC’s decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation, and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story.”
DEC ‘unhappy’
The DEC is an umbrella organisation representing a number of aid agencies, including Action Aid, Save the Children, the British Red Cross, Islamic Relief and Oxfam.
The organisation said its members will be providing immediate humanitarian aid, such as medicine, food and blankets,…
Israel Forms War Crime Defence Team
Daniel Friedman, the Israeli justice minister, has been appointed to lead a defence team should war crimes charges be brought following the 22-day war on Gaza.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Friday that Friedman would lead an inter-ministerial team to co-ordinate a legal defence for civilians and the military.
Israel has been criticised by many human rights organisations for using excessive force, including flame-generating chemical munitions, in densely populated areas during its aerial, naval and ground assault on the coastal strip, which began on December 27.
The Israeli army has already banned the publication of the identity of military leaders who fought Hamas in Gaza.
Ali Kashan, the Palestinian justice minister, met Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, in The Hague on Thursday to discuss “allegations of crimes”, a special adviser to the prosecutor said.
Gaza medics put the death toll in Gaza at…
Davos Delegates Gather To ‘Shape New World’
DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) — The head of the World Economic Forum has urged delegates to respond to the global economic crisis by shaping a “new world” as they braved snowstorms, icy roads and subzero temperatures Tuesday to gather for the five-day annual brainstorm in the Swiss Alps.
Delegates are arriving for the start of the World Economic Forum amid troubled times for the global economy.
Delegates are arriving for the start of the World Economic Forum amid troubled times for the global economy.
Speaking to CNN, WEF founder Klaus Schwab said the world was in the midst of a “transformational crisis” and admitted that Davos 2009 would be “more concerned, more austere and more modest” than previous events.
“The whole atmosphere is going to be different,” said Schwab. “Above all else this is a crisis of confidence. To re-store confidence you have to establish signposts that the world after the crisis will be different.…
Annan: World Faces ‘Crisis of Governance’
DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) — The worldwide economic recession has exposed a “crisis of global governance” that can only be addressed by the radical reform of the United Nations, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday as the World Economic Forum got under way in Switzerland.
Kofi Annan says the United Nations needs to be reformed. “The current architecture of managing global affairs is broken and needs to be fixed,” Annan said on the opening morning of the five-day annual meeting of global political and business leaders. “We have major new players coming on the scene and they need to be integrated and given a voice.”
Referring to the U.N. Security Council, which gives permanent places and vetoing powers to the U.S., the UK, Russia, China and France, Annan said: “We cannot continue to run the world based on countries that won a war 60 years ago. It’s either destructive competition or cooperation.…
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
Obama’s aunt, who had lived in U.S. illegally, faces April hearing
By Ted Bridis and Eileen Sullivan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration quietly withdrew in the weeks after Barack Obama’s election a rule requiring high-level approval before federal agents could arrest fugitive immigrants. Meanwhile, the future for Obama’s aunt, who had been living in the country illegally, will be determined at an immigration court hearing in April.
[in this era of terrorism, evil illegal immigrants, etc, why did it require “high level approval” to arrest “fugitive immigrants”? and why is that fact couched in a story seemingly about obama’s aunt?
Order on fugitive immigrant arrests short-lived
it’s not so much the story, but the context.
i wonder why a story like this is portrayed as either being against (or for, depending on your perspective) obama’s aunt, when the real story is in the first paragraph. “The Bush administration quietly withdrew in the weeks after Barack Obama’s election a rule requiring high-level approval before federal agents could arrest fugitive immigrants. Meanwhile, the future for Obama’s aunt, who had been living in the country illegally, will be determined at an immigration court hearing in April.” in this era of terrorism, when illegal immigration is such a hot-button issue, etc. why is “high-level approval” needed?
Obama ‘Is No Martin Luther King’
Glen Ford, the executive editor of Black Agenda Report, explains why he rejects ties between the US president-elect and the iconic civil rights leader. The two days touch: Dr Martin Luther King’s Birthday observance and Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, January 19 and 20, respectively.
To many, the juxtaposition is self-evident confirmation of the intersection of the two men’s missions. Dr King’s journey, which ended with his murder in 1968, and Obama’s ascent to the presidency, are seen to merge as the dates approach to form a perfect, tragic-glorious symmetry — a 48-hour revelation.
The coincidence of the calendar makes for good copy and grand sermons, but in fact reveals a great moral and political dissonance. It is true that there could have been no Obama presidency had Dr King and the movement he sprang from not existed, but that simple fact of history does not amount to a King benediction from the…
No Final Pardons From Bush
George Bush has, on his final full day as US president, commuted the sentences of two border patrol agents but steered clear of a high-profile pardon for former vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Bush commuted the 11-year prison sentence of Ignacio Ramos and the 12-year sentence of Jose Alonso Compean, who had been convicted of assault and violating the civil rights of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a Mexican drug dealer.
Davila pressed charges against them after he was shot while attempting to smuggle 300kg of marijuana into Texas in 2005. Davila, who said he was unarmed, was shot in the buttocks as he tried to flee back across the border to Mexico.
The two agents did not report the shooting to their superiors and tried to cover up the incident but their convictions drew sharp criticism from advocates of tough US border security policies who said they were just doing their jobs.
Early release
The…
Israel Accused of War Crimes
Human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying its use of white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip was indiscriminate and illegal. The accusations from the London-based organisation came as the scale of the destruction caused by the Israeli assault on the Palestinian territory overwhelmed Gazans.
Amnesty is not the first group to accuse Israel of using white phosphorus. Human Rights Watch made the accusation on January 10 and the UN has also said Israel used the munition during its offensive in Gaza.
Donatella Rovera, a researcher with Amnesty, said: “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate.” Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime,” she said.
Ample evidence
The use of white phosphorus is not prohibited under international law, but the indiscriminate use of…
Conyers Questions Iraq ‘Forgery’
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has asked current and former White House aides and ex-CIA officials to respond to questions about an alleged scheme to create a bogus letter in late 2003 linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.
In sending the interview requests Wednesday, Conyers is following up on a disputed story in journalist Ron Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which includes an account of how the mysterious letter originated.
The book cites statements from former CIA associate deputy director of operations Rob Richer and John Maguire, the former chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group/Near East Division, as indicating that the White House ordered the CIA to produce the bogus letter to retroactively justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Richer and Maguire gave Suskind on-the-record interviews, which the author recorded, discussing the reasons the letter…
The Afghan Scam
The untold story of why the U.S. is bound to fail in Afghanistan by Ann Jones:
The first of 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan next month to re-win the war George W. Bush neglected to finish in his eagerness to start another one. However, “winning” the military campaign against the Taliban is the lesser half of the story.
Going into Afghanistan, the Bush administration called for a political campaign to reconstruct the country and thereby establish the authority of a stable, democratic Afghan central government. It was understood that the two campaigns — military and political/economic — had to go forward together; the success of each depended on the other. But the vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable, democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast. Most Afghans now believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush administration’s real goal — to set up…
Gaza Conflict: Who Is A Civilian?
Heather Sharp |BBC News, Jerusalem: The bloodied children are clearly civilians; men killed as they launch rockets are undisputedly not. But what about the 40 or so young Hamas police recruits on parade who died in the first wave of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza?
And weapons caches are clearly military sites — but what about the interior ministry, hit in a strike that killed two medical workers; or the money changer’s office, destroyed last week injuring a boy living on the floor above?
As the death toll mounts in Gaza, the thorny question is arising of who and what can be considered a legitimate military target in a territory effectively governed by a group that many in the international community consider a terrorist organisation.
This is also the group that won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 and a year later consolidated its control by force.
So while it was behind a…
Group Accuses Israel of Firing White Phosphorus into Gaza
This is much the same as an earlier story submitted by someone else on disinfo. Some problems:
1. When using any smoke agent, one must fire a large amount to create the initial cloud and then fire every so often (according to conditions at the target; wind speed, temperature, etc, etc.) to keep the cloud up.
2. If firing a smoke mission, it is more useful to fire on a fuse setting that makes the round detonate when it hits the ground. This creates denser smoke. Airbursting spreads the smoke out around a larger area, making it (obviously) less dense. Add to that the fact that the smoke is going to be subject to the prevailing wind currents and thermal updrafts about 3 to 5 metres above the ground, which in an urban environment can be rather tricky and unpredictable.
3. The fact that one can use better smoke that DON’T ignite fires…
U.S. Rejected Israeli Plea to Attack Iran
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush rejected several Israeli requests last year for weapons and permission for a potential airstrike inside Iran, the author of an investigative report told CNN.cars ablaze and blocked streets in downtown Oakland.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists Iran’s nuclear program is only intended for peaceful purposes. Israel approached the White House in early 2008 with three requests for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex, said New York Times reporter David Sanger. His article appears in the newspaper on Sunday.cars ablaze and blocked streets in downtown Oakland.
According to Sanger, Israel wanted specialized bunker-busting bombs, equipment to help refuel planes making flights into Iran and permission to fly over Iraq to reach the major nuclear complex at Natanz, the site of Iran’s only known uranium enrichment plant.
The Ghost in the Machines: Evidence of Foreknowledge in the WTC Hard Drive Recoveries
Many are aware of the surge in put options purchased on American and United Airlines as well as several major tenants of the WTC in the days preceding 9/11, purchases the 9/11 Commission Report waves away in a footnote on pg. 499 as having no connection with the events of 9/11 because the unnamed “institutional investors” responsible had “no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.
More obscure, and nowhere mentioned in the Commission Report, are the facts of the WTC computer data recovery operation undertaken in late 2001 by Convar GmbH, a German firm.
Under conditions of hermetic secrecy, Convar used its proprietary technology to salvage data from the damaged hard drives of WTC tenants, as reported in December 2001 by Reuters and CNN.
NY Times: Interviews with Eyewitnesses. The Sept. 11 Records
A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, were made public on Aug. 12. The New York Times has published all of them.
The oral histories of dispatch transmissions are transcribed verbatim. They have have not been edited to omit coarse language.
Dossier Gives Details of Mumbai Attacks
NY times article explaining India giving its official dossier of the attacks on Mubai:
NEW DELHI — The exchanges are chilling.
“The hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire,” a supervisor instructed gunmen by phone during the Mumbai attacks in November. He added: “If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.”
A gunman replied, “Yes, we shall do accordingly, God willing.”
These are some of the grim details of the Mumbai attacks compiled by the Indian authorities and officially shared with the Pakistani government on Monday.
The compilation seems intended to achieve at least two objectives for India: demonstrate that the attackers were sent from Pakistan, and rally international support for India’s efforts to press Pakistan on its handling of terrorism suspects.
Posse Comitatus is Dead and Buried — H.R. 5122: John Warner National Defense Authorization Act
Nestled in this boring DoD bill chock full with spending, procurement and building appropriations guidelines and who owes what report to who is Section 1076. If you needed proof that Posse Comitatus is dead and buried, here it is:
Revises federal provisions allowing the President to utilize the Armed Forces in connection with interference with federal and state law to allow the President to employ the Armed Forces and National Guard in federal service to restore public order in cases of natural disaster, epidemic or other public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or domestic violence. Requires the President to notify Congress within 14 days of the exercise of such authority. Authorizes the President, when exercising such authority, to direct the Secretary to provide supplies, services, and equipment to persons affected by the situation.
H.R 5122: John Warner National Defence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2007
Meant “To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strength for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.
BUT if you just want to get to the good stuff, look at Section 1076.
