Jon Snow of Channel 4 News argues it is time for the US to lead a change in the relationship of it and the UK with Iran, in the Lord Garden Memorial Lecture at Chatham House on 21 June 2012.
Author: alannahpriestley
Palestinian Authority police brutality against anti-Mofaz protests
Special Report: Palestinian Grassroots Anti-apartheid Wall Campaign
For two consecutive days, EU and US-trained Palestinian Authority (PA) police and un-uniformed thugs attack Palestinians protesting against the invitation of Israeli war criminal Shaul Mofaz to Ramallah.
Saturday 30th June started as a protest against the invitation of Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas extended to former Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Chief-of-Staff and former Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz. Following massive opposition to the visit, from the independent Palestinian youth movements, as well as from political parties across the board , the PA postponed the visit. Mofaz was Chief-of-Staff of the IOF from 1998 until 2003, and then Israeli Defence Minister from 2003 until 2006, making him directly responsible for Israeli war crimes during the Second Intifada and the during the 2006 war against Lebanon. Under his command, the IOF carried out numerous atrocities, such as the massacre in Jenin refugee camp in 2002 and the murder of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including hundreds of children.
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Systematic torture in Syria
There is never an excuse for torture. Torture on all sides must be condemned. But there is a big difference between a regime carrying out torture as policy and the individual acts of revenge-taking by a guerrilla army which has both its disciplined and undisciplined, even criminal, elements.
Gerald Tan: A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Syrian intelligence agencies are running torture centers across the country where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with acid, sexually assaulted, and their fingernails torn out.
Renowned terrorist Yitzhak Shamir dead at 96
Here’s from his appearance on Mastermind.
London in the Age of Inequality
From Christopher Lydon’s outstanding Radio Open Source: A fascinating conversation with John Lanchester, editor of the London Review of Books and author of the new novel Capital.
Lydon writes:
John Lanchester has written a sprawling neo-Dickensian novelCAPITAL about London in the age of funny money and the crash of 2008. He got the germ of it five years ago, noticing a parade of “florists, dog-walkers, pilates instructors” on his own once-modest street south of the Thames, being radically made-over for bankers and the blooming investment-services class — “manifestly symptomatic,” as he says, “of a boom that would turn into a bust.” Like Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend, CAPITAL has what the Brits call a “state of the nation” feel, delivered in the voice attributed to Dickens of the “special correspondent for posterity.” But of course he’s illuminating an affliction gone global by now, describing life as lived in New York, too, or Shanghai, or Boston for that matter. One moral that Lanchester has given his tale is: “We are not in this together,” inverting the Tory slogan. In conversation he adds a touch from the Gospel of Mark: “To them that hath shall be given.” I marvel at how casino capitalism and its costs come clearer, stranger, more ridiculous, more destructive, more outrageous in fiction than in fact – how the right novels can feel truer than the news.
Reinforcements Arrive
In other news from Syria, a respected German daily is reporting that UFOs have made contact with Khalid Abu Salah and joined the Syrian opposition. At an event marking the latest transfer of T-72s and Mi-24s to Syria, Vladimir Putin denounced the UFO intervention as an irresponsible intrusion into the country’s internal affairs.
‘You ever think you are incompetent?’ Paxman interviews treasury minister
Jeremy Paxman interviews a hapless Chloe Smith on Newsnight, June 26, 2012.
Noam Chomsky & Tariq Ali on the Julian Assange Show
Not a particularly enlightening conversation, but interesting nevertheless for the people involved. Syria, with over 10,000 people dead, does not feature at all in this conversation supposedly about activism in the Middle East. But it’s RT, so I suppose that’s to be expected.
A surprise Arab drive for freedom, the West’s structural crisis and new hope coming from Latin America. That’s the modern world in the eyes of Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali, two prominent thinkers and this week’s guests on Julian Assange’s show on RT.
June TaxCast
The Tax Justice Network‘s latest TaxCast is out. Hosted by Naomi Fowler, each 15 minute podcast follows the latest news relating to tax evasion, tax avoidance and the shadow banking system. The show features discussions with experts in the field to help analyse the top stories each month.
In this month’s show: celebrity tax avoidance, Greece’s missing billions, what should have been on the G20 agenda and trade mispricing – the tricks of the corruption trade.
A Cruel and Unusual Record
Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, has scathing words for Obama’s human rights record, his indiscriminate use of drones, and his assault on civil liberties.
Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.
The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
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