Uncategorized – Page 67

Nine killed in South Carolina 'hate crime' shooting

June 18, 2015 by Nasheman

Police say a white gunman killed at least nine people at historic African-American church in city of Charleston.

Police have released photos of the suspect of the shooting [The Associated Press]

by Al Jazeera

An unknown gunman has killed at least nine people at a historic African-American church in the US city of Charleston, in what police called a hate crime.

Reports on Thursday said police found eight bodies inside the church. Two other victims were rushed to the hospital, where one of the injured died.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley called the shooting “an unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy”.

“We will make sure that this person will pay for this act.”

The suspect was described as a 21-year-old white man wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and boots, Charleston police said in a message on Twitter.

“I do believe that this is a hate crime,” Gregory Mullen, police chief of Charleston, told reporters.

“This is a situation, which is unacceptable in our society. We will catch this individual.”

Charleston Police Department spokesman Charles Francis said the shooting occurred at the Emanuel AME Church around 01:00 GMT. He had no information on victims.

Al Jazeera’s John Terrett, reporting from the US capital Washington DC, said church pastor Clementa Pinckney, who is also a state senator, reportedly was among the dead. Officials did not immediately release the names or any details of the victims.

Earlier on Wednesday, Pinckney met with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited South Carolina as part of her presidential campaign.

A bomb threat was later reported near the scene of the church shooting, Charleston County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Eric Watson said.

People who were gathered in the area were told by police to move back.

A police chaplain was present at the scene of the shooting, and a helicopter with a searchlight hovered overhead as officers combed through the area.

A group of several men stood in a circle in front of a hotel near the church. “We pray for the families, they’ve got a long road ahead of them,” Reverend James Johnson, a local civil rights activist, said during the impromptu prayer service.

The website for the church said it has one of the largest and oldest African-American congregations in the region. It was built in 1891 and is considered a historically significant building, according to the National Park Service.

Following the incident, US presidential candidate Jeb Bush cancelled his visit to Charleston later on Thursday.

Worshippers embrace after a group prayer across the street from the scene of a shooting in Charleston [AP]

Ramadan fasting ban: China Uighur Muslims forced to skip fasting during Holy Month

June 17, 2015 by Nasheman

by Mugdha Variyar, IBT

China is reportedly forcing officials in the restive Xinjiang region to swear that they will not fast during the holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Thursday.

Xinjiang is home to Uighur Muslims, and China has cracked down on the region ever since Islamist militants carried out deadly terror attacks in the recent years.

In continuation of last year’s ‘ban’ on Ramadan fasting, state websites have been putting up notices asking officials and civil servants, and even students and teachers, to not observe Ramadan, according to Reuters.

In some particularly restive counties in Xinjiang, officials have been asked to give assurances, orally and in writing, “guaranteeing they have no faith, will not attend religious activities and will lead the way in not fasting over Ramadan”, Reuters reported citing state media.

Ramadan is the holiest month of the year for Muslims around the world, which involves fasting from dawn to dusk and offering prayers and reading the Quran over 30 days.

Apart from a ‘ban’ on fasting, China is also stoking religious sentiments by ordering halal restaurants to remain open during the day in the Jinghe county, while also ordering shops to continue selling cigarettes and alcohol.

China’s clampdown on the month of Ramadan in the restive region is being seen as a provocation for more unrest in the region.

“China is increasing its bans and monitoring as Ramadan approaches. The faith of the Uighurs has been highly politicized, and the increase in controls could cause sharp resistance,” Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled Uighur group, the World Uyghur Congress, was quoted saying.

China already ruffled feathers by imposing a ban on burqas in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi in December last year.

Around 20 million Muslims live in China, with eight million Uighur Muslims, who speak Turkish, concentrated in the Xinjiang region in the country’s northwest.

4 UK schools ban Ramadan fast for Muslims

June 16, 2015 by Nasheman

A total of four primary schools in the UK have imposed a ban on Muslim students preventing them from fasting.

by World Bulletin

A total of four primary schools in the U.K. have imposed a ban on fasting for Muslim students during the month of Ramadan, according to British media.

Barclay Primary School in east London — one of the four schools that operate under a common foundation called Lion Academy Trust — informed the parents of the students of the decision in a letter sent last week.

Written by the school’s acting head, Aaron Wright, the letter asserted that children were not required to fast during Ramadan under Islamic Law, but were only required to do so “when they become adults”.

“Previously, we have had a number of children who became ill and children who fainted or who have been unable to fully access the school curriculum in their attempt to fast,” the head also said.

In the letter, the duration of fasting — 18 hours last year as it is mentioned in the letter — was described as quite long for a child without sustenance and water.

The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) condemned the fasting ban.

“We believe that there are sufficient and stringent rules within Islam which allow those who are unable to fast, to break fast,” the Mail Online quoted a spokesman of the association as saying.

The Muslim Association of Britain also stressed that this was a decision that should be left up to the parents of the students.

The other three schools that will implement the ban are Sybourn, Thomas Gamuel and Brook House Primary Schools.

There are about 3 million Muslims in the U.K.

The holy month of Ramadan, the ninth of the Islamic lunar calendar,begins Wednesday.

Amid torture, experts say CIA's other crime was 'human experimentation'

June 16, 2015 by Nasheman

Formerly classified document exposes how agency’s attempt to legitimize abusive interrogation program was itself another layer of crime

A demonstrator is held down during a simulation of waterboarding outside the US Justice Department in 2007. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

After the Central Intelligence Agency was given authority to begin torturing suspected terrorists in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, newly published documents show that another of that program’s transgressions, according to experts, was a gross violation of medical ethics that allowed the agency to conduct what amounted to “human experimentation” on people who became test subjects without consent.

Reported exclusively by the Guardian on Monday, sections of a previously classified CIA document—first obtained by the ACLU—reveal that a long-standing policy against allowing people to become unwitting medical or research subjects remained in place and under the purview of the director of the CIA even as the agency began slamming people into walls, beating them intensely, exposing them to prolonged periods of sleep deprivation, performing repeated sessions of waterboarding, and conducting other heinous forms of psychological and physical abuse.

The document details agency guidelines—first established in 1987 during the presidency of Ronald Reagan but subsequently updated—in which the CIA director and an advisory board are directly empowered to make decisions about programs considered “human subject research” by the agency.

As journalist Spencer Ackerman reports:

The relevant section of the CIA document, “Law and Policy Governing the Conduct of Intelligence Agencies”, instructs that the agency “shall not sponsor, contract for, or conduct research on human subjects” outside of instructions on responsible and humane medical practices set for the entire US government by its Department of Health and Human Services.

A keystone of those instructions, the document notes, is the “subject’s informed consent”.

That language echoes the public, if obscure, language of Executive Order 12333 – the seminal, Reagan-era document spelling out the powers and limitations of the intelligence agencies, including rules governing surveillance by the National Security Agency. But the discretion given to the CIA director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research” has not previously been public.

The entire 41-page CIA document exists to instruct the agency on what Executive Order 12333 permits and prohibits, after legislative action in the 1970s curbed intelligence powers in response to perceived abuses – including the CIA’s old practice of experimenting on human beings through programs like the infamous MK-Ultra project, which, among other things, dosed unwitting participants with LSD as an experiment.

The previously unknown section of the guidelines empower the CIA director and an advisory board on “human subject research” to “evaluate all documentation and certifications pertaining to human research sponsored by, contracted for, or conducted by the CIA”.

Critics have long blasted any members of the medical community who participated in the torture program as traitors to their ethical and professional duties, but as the Guardiannotes, “The CIA, which does not formally concede that it tortured people, insists that the presence of medical personnel ensured its torture techniques were conducted according to medical rigor.”

But Steven Aftergood, a scholar of the intelligence agencies with the Federation of American Scientists, told the Guardian that these men who were tortured by the agency were, in fact, being studied by medical professionals to see how they would respond to such treatment. In addition to the inherent crime of that abuse, they were also unwitting subjects who never gave their informed consent to be studied in this way. “There is a disconnect between the requirement of this regulation [contained in the document] and the conduct of the interrogation program,” Aftergood explained. “They do not represent consistent policy.”

And Nathaniel Raymond, a former war-crimes investigator with Physicians for Human Rights and now a researcher with Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative, put it this way: “Crime one was torture. The second crime was research without consent in order to say it wasn’t torture.”

In public challenge to Obama, family of drone victim asks: 'What is the value of an innocent life?'

June 15, 2015 by Nasheman

Seeking official apology, Faisal bin Ali Jaber says, ‘Imagine that your loved one was wrongly killed by the U.S. government. Imagine they would not even admit their role in the death of your family members.’

In April, U.S. President Barack Obama, pictured with director of the CIA John Brennan, publicly apologized for the killing of two western hostages. (Photo: file)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

The family of two U.S. drone victims is refusing to keep their pain silent as they seek an official apology by U.S. President Barack Obama for the deaths of their kin.

In a CNN op-ed published on Friday, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni civil engineer, issued a public challenge to the U.S. leader—who recently made public statements about the deaths of two westerners killed by U.S. drone strikes, but has refused to acknowledge Yemeni civilian casualties.

“What is the value of a human life?” Jaber asks.

In the column, Jaber describes how following the August 2012 strike that killed Waleed and Salem bin Ali Jaber, the family had to identify them “from their clothes and scraps of matted hair.”

And how in the wake of the strike, while the family awaited an official apology, they were instead presented with “$100,000 in sequentially-marked U.S. dollars in a plastic bag.”

Jaber writes: “A Yemeni security service official was given the unpleasant task of handing this over. I looked him in the eye and asked how this was acceptable, and whether he would admit the money came from America. He shrugged and said: ‘Can’t tell you. Take the money.'”

“The secret payment to my family represents a fraction of the cost of the operation that killed them,” he continues. “This seems to be the Obama administration’s cold calculation: Yemeni lives are cheap. They cost the President no political or moral capital.”

In contrast to the experience of Jaber and other relatives of innocent Yemenis killed by the U.S. drone war, in April, Obama publicly acknowledged that a U.S. counterterrorism operation had killed an American, Warren Weinstein, and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto. The lawsuit follows another failed court challenge in Germany in which Jaber’s family sought to prosecute the home of Ramstein Air Base for its role in “facilitating American covert drone strikes in Yemen.”

“Like a lot of Americans, my family and I watched the President’s speech at home,” Jaber writes. “But while many praised him for his forthrightness, we do not share that view. His speech shocked us. No, it was worse: his speech broke our hearts.

“As I watched,” he continues, “I thought of my dead relatives, names that so far as I know have never crossed the President’s lips: Waleed and Salem bin Ali Jaber.”

On Monday, Jaber filed a suit asking a Washington D.C. district court to issue a declaration that the strike that killed Salem and Waleed was unlawful. He is seeking no monetary compensation.

“Imagine that your loved one was wrongly killed by the U.S. government, and the White House would not apologize. Imagine they would not even admit their role in the death of your family members,” Jaber concludes. “We simply want the truth and an apology. We will not rest until it is ours.”

Israel bars UN investigator from entering Gaza

June 15, 2015 by Nasheman

It was the second time Makarim Wibisono, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, had been barred entry by Israel. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)

by Press TV

As the prospect of a UN report on Israel’s 2014 bloodletting in Gaza draws nearer, the world body’s point man on human rights situation in the occupied territories is kept outside the Palestinian territory by Israel.

Tel Aviv once again prevented Makarim Wibisono from visiting the coastal enclave last week, with Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon saying outright on Monday, “We didn’t allow this visit.”

“Israel cooperates with all the international commissions and all (UN) rapporteurs, except when the mandate handed to them is anti-Israeli and Israel has no chance to make itself heard,” the official said, despite the age-old and unflinching US-led support for Israel on the international arena, most visibly at the United Nations.

Wibisono reports to the UN Human Rights Council. The council has been investigating the war and whose relevant report is expected to be published in the coming days.

Israel had also barred Wibisono from entering last year for a similar visit.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians lost their lives and some 11,000 were injured in the July-August 2014 assaults. Gaza Health officials say the victims included 578 children and nearly 260 women with more than 3,100 children injured in the offensive.

The UN has said Israel was responsible for the deadly bombing of several UN institutions, including schools, in which displaced Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

In a report released Sunday, Israel defended its conduct in the war, calling it both “lawful” and “legitimate.”

Israel has been invariably justifying its incessant attacks on the impoverished sliver by alleging it has a duty to defend itself against the rockets fired from Gaza. The projectiles are seldom known to have caused injury or damage.

'No Justice': Israel clears itself for 2014 killing of children on Gaza beach

June 13, 2015 by Nasheman

Families and witnesses respond with outrage and calls for ‘international community to act’

This print memorializes the children killed by Israel’s July 2014 attack on Gaza City beach: Mohammad Ramiz Bakr (11), Ahed Atef Bakr (10), Zakariya Ahed Bakr (10), and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr (9). (Image by Nicole Manganelli/emprints)

by Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams

The Israeli military announced Thursday it has exonerated itself for killing four children on a beach in Gaza during last summer’s seven-week military assault on the besieged strip, prompting expressions of outrage and demands for justice from family members and international journalists who witnessed the attack.

“There is no justice in the internal investigation,” declared Mohammed Bakr, father of 11-year-old Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, who was slain in the bombing along with his cousins Ahed Atef Bakr (10), Zakariya Ahed Bakr (10), and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr (9).

“We are counting on the [International Criminal Court] and human rights,” added the bereaved father. “We are not afraid and we are confident we will win because the world is with us.”

On July 16 of last year, the children were struck and killed by Israeli explosives while they played soccer on Gaza City’s beach. In addition to the four who were slain, three people aged 11 to 21 were severely wounded.

Tragically, the attack was not unique. The Israeli air war and ground invasion, politically and financially backed by the United States, was waged against one of the most densely-populated areas in the world, where roughly half of residents are children and Palestinians are not able to leave due to a military blockade and siege. At least 2,145 Palestinians were killed in 50 days, the vast majority of them civilians and at least 578 of them children.

However, because the beach attack was waged in plain view of a hotel patronized by international journalists, it was thrust into the global media spotlight, with many prominent reporters serving as direct eye-witnesses and some even aiding the wounded.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks was one of the witnesses. “There is no safe place in Gaza right now,” he wrote soon after the attack. “Bombs can land at any time, anywhere.”

“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don’t fit the description of Hamas fighters,” he added.

However, after the subsequent internal investigation of the killing, the Israeli military cleared itself of wrongdoing, declaring the killings an accident. In a statement released Thursday, Israeli Army spokesperson Lt Col Peter Lerner said that “the Military Advocate General found that the attack process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements.”

The statement went on to claim that the attacks were justified because Israeli forces had reason to believe the children were Hamas “militants.” However, investigators admitted that the probe only included testimony from Israeli soldiers and officers.

The military’s version of events were quickly called into question by witnesses, including The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont, who pointed out the following discrepancies:

Beaumont was never contacted for a statement despite being a willing witness.
The numerous journalists in the area found no evidence of Hamas combatants near the site at the time of the attack.
The bombing occurred at a crowded civilian beach often frequented by workers as well as sunbathers and swimmers.
It is not clear from the investigation how the military failed to recognize that the victims were clearly children.

Moreover, the military’s proclamation of its innocence contradicts the recent testimony of its own soldiers. Last month, 60 Israeli officers and soldiers who took part in the war said that the “massive and unprecedented harm” inflicted on the population of Gaza stemmed from the top of the chain of command, which gave orders to shoot indiscriminately at civilians.

Josh Ruebner, policy director for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, toldCommon Dreams, “The killing that occurred on the beach that day was magnified a hundred fold [during last summer’s war]. Yet there have been no cases in which Israel has held itself accountable for any of these horrific war crimes in Gaza, either from last summer or Operation Cast Lead in 2009. The U.S. is complicit.”

The results of Israel’s inquiry were announced just days after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon removed the Israeli military from an official list of groups that violate children’s rights, following heavy pressure from the United States and Israel. Israel, backed by the U.S., has vigorously opposed UN investigations into war crimes.

“Israel behaves as if it’s a country above international law,” declared Zakariya Bakr, the uncle of the killed Bakr cousins, on Friday. “We urge the international community to act seriously to stop this farce.”

CIA declassifies 9/11 documents on al-Qaeda

June 13, 2015 by Nasheman

A firefighter breaks down following the twin tower attacks in New York, September 11, 2001. (AFP/File)

by Andolu Ajansi

The CIA has declassified documents running to almost-500 pages ten years after the completion of an investigation into purported flaws within the intelligence community which may have led to a failure to stop September 2001 attacks.

The Office of Inspector General’s investigation, prompted by a joint Congressional inquiry in 2005, uncovered several systemic problems within country’s intelligence agencies which missed warnings about the 9/11 plot to attack US targets.

Al-Qaeda operatives crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon headquarters in Washington DC, killing thousands.

“Concerning certain issues, the team concluded that the CIA and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” the report read.

The inspectors, according to the report, also found out that intelligence agencies had “no comprehensive strategic plan” to thwart the al-Qaeda threat.

The inspector general’s report also accuses George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, of failing to develop a strategy against al-Qaeda “despite his specific direction that this should be done”.

Angry correspondence between the then CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson and Tenet who rejected Helgerson’s critical draft report in 2005.

“Your report challenges my professionalism, diligence and skill in leading the men and women of US intelligence in countering terrorism,” Tenet wrote to Helgerson.

Although there has been speculation that some Saudi Arabian officials might have supported al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the investigators note a lack of evidence to support such a claim.

“The team encountered no evidence that the Saudi government knowingly and willingly supported al-Qaeda terrorists,” the report read.

The document is a compilation of the full version of the 2005 Office of Inspector General’s investigation plus several other related documents in addition to two other reports from the Counter Terrorism Center which were released in 2005 and 2010.

Australia pays off smugglers to return migrants to Indonesia

June 12, 2015 by Nasheman

The country’s navy paid about US$30,000 in cash to people-smugglers to turn their boat packed with 65 migrants back to where they came from.

Australia has adopted one of the toughest stands against asylum seekers trying to reach its shores by boat. | Photo: Reuters

The Australian navy has paid a group of people smugglers thousands of dollars to turn around their boat carrying 65 migrants and head back to Indonesia, and while the controversy heats up surrounding this case, Prime Minister Tony Abbot Friday refused to deny this was true.

“We don’t go into the details of operational measures to fight crime, we don’t go into the details of operational measures on national security, and I’m certainly not going to go into the details of operational matters on the water now,” Abbott told reporters.

.@TonyAbbottMHR: “Australia does NOT negotiate with terrorists….but people-smugglers? no f*cking worries” #auspol

— John Wren (@JohnWren1950) June 12, 2015

The fact is Australia has vowed to stop the flow of asylum seekers reaching its shores when possible, adopting one of the harshest stances against migration. But critics and activists have criticized the method of paying off smugglers, a case that is now being investigated by Indonesia. The Australian government is sending those asylum seekers who do arrive in the country to camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for long-term detention. Australian and Indonesian news reports revealed earlier this week that the people-smugglers were paid about US$6,000 each to abandon their journey to Australia and return to Indonesia after being intercepted at sea. The Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton have denied the reports, but Abbott has declined to do so, citing operational security, according to Reuters.

#auspol Labor spent billions on ppl smugglers shipping terrorists with no identification to Australia. pic.twitter.com/jrTxmPJYZt

— captain zero (@ccar1259) June 12, 2015

In Indonesia, the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson Armanatha Nasir said the captain of the asylum-seeker vessel that was paid to return was being detained on charges related to people-smuggling.

Nasir said the captain and his five-member crew told him that they were each paid about US$6,000 to turn back the ship.

Zimbabwe offers new exchange rate: $1 for 35,000,000,000,000,000 old dollars

June 12, 2015 by Nasheman

Central bank discards local currency after years of hyperinflation which at one point reached 500,000,000,000%

An old Z$100tn note, pictured in 2010. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

by The Guardian

Zimbabweans will start exchanging “quadrillions” of local dollars for a few US dollars next week as President Robert Mugabe’s government discards its virtually worthless national currency.

The southern African country started using foreign currencies including the US dollar and South African rand in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was ruined by hyperinflation, which hit 500 billion per cent in 2008.

At the height of the country’s economic crisis, Zimbabweans had to carry plastic bags bulging with banknotes to buy basic goods. Prices were rising at least twice a day.

From Monday, customers who held Zimbabwean dollar accounts before March 2009 can approach their banks to convert their balance into US dollars, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, John Mangudya, said in a statement.

Zimbabweans have until September to turn in their old banknotes, which some people sell as souvenirs to tourists.

Bank accounts with balances of up to 175 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars will be paid $5. Those with balances above 175 quadrillion dollars will be paid at an exchange rate of $1 for 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars.

The highest – and last – banknote to be printed by the bank in 2008 was 100tn Zimbabwean dollars. It was not enough to ride a public bus to work for a week.

The bank said customers who still had stashes of old Zimbabwean notes could walk into any bank and get $1 for every 250tn they hold. That means a holder of a 100tn banknote will get 40 cents.

The bank has set aside $20m to pay Zimbabwean dollar currency holders.