A constructive comparison of Israel and apartheid South Africa

By Kenya Palestine Solidarity Committee
Pambazuka News

Comparisons between Israel’s control over the Palestinians and apartheid South Africa can yield crucial clues on how to move towards the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Image]

How legitimate are comparisons of Israel’s control over the Palestinians and apartheid South Africa’s treatment of blacks?

Occupy Gaza: Boats Sailing Now to Gaza

By US to Gaza

At this moment, two boats are in international waters in the Mediterranean heading to Gaza. One boat, the Saoirse from Ireland, includes parliamentarians among its passengers. The other, the Tahrir, carries representatives from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Palestine.

The U.S. Representative on the Tahrir, Kit Kittredge, was a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope mission in Athens in July. A journalist from Democracy Now is on the Tahrir also. Civil society organizations in Gaza await their arrival, and look forward to the delivery of letters collected from thousands of U.S. supporters in the To Gaza With Love campaign.

We need your help to make this mission a success. Please take these actions immediately:

Torture Victims Sue George W. Bush in B.C. Provincial Court

By Center for Constitutional Rights

Hearing Date Set for January after Justice of the Peace Accepts Information Submitted on Behalf of Four Men Allegedly Tortured Under Bush’s Order and Consent

On October 20, as former U.S. president George W. Bush visited Surrey, British Columbia as a paid speaker at a regional economic summit, a Justice of the Peace in the British Columbia provincial court in Surrey accepted the sworn information submitted on behalf of four men who allege they were tortured under Bush’s command. The information, laid pursuant to section 504 of the Canadian criminal code, includes four counts of inflicting torture, contrary to section 269.1 of the code. The court set a hearing date for January 9, 2012.

Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest

By Ralph Lopez
Daily KOS

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office.   The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company.  The company was under contract to the Department of Defense.   The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the “mass acquisition” of American weapons.  The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Monday, September 26, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet.  Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding.

Torture Room, Abu Ghraib

NATO uses Mustard Gas in Bani Walid (confirmed)

By Ozyism

Reports that NATO has used Mustard Gas in Bani Walid have been coming from eye witnesses from within the beseiged town.  A gruesome image of a victim of such terrorism has come out in social networks.

Most argue that this terrorism is implemented to force Libyans into submission. They have refused to surrender and give the country to NATO, so NATO has resorted to terrorism and a slow genocide.

Should Canadian authorities arrest Dick Cheney for war crimes when he comes to Vancouver?

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson seeks Dick Cheney’s arrest
By Carlito Pablo
The Straight

Ex–vice president Dick Cheney may receive a rude welcome in Vancouver.

Dick Cheney is coming to town on September 26 to promote his book In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. But Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson has other plans for one of the most controversial figures of the modern era, a powerful man who publicly admitted having allowed torture.

The cofounder of the international group Lawyers Against the War wants the government of Canada either to bar the former U.S. vice president from entering the country or, if he’s allowed in, to arrest and prosecute him for torture, war offences, and crimes against humanity. And if Canada isn’t keen on punishing the ex–vice president to former president George W. Bush, Davidson argues, then it should extradite Cheney to a country that is willing and able to prosecute him.

WikiLeaks: How U.S. tried to stop Spain’s torture probe

By Carol Rosenberg
Miami Herald

It was three months into Barack Obama’s presidency, and the administration — under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies — turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain:

Don’t indict former President George W. Bush’s legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations.

Obama refuses cooperation with Poland’s CIA ‘black site’ probe

News from Poland

The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected a request from prosecutors in Warsaw for assistance in the investigation into the alleged CIA prisons in Poland, where captives claim they were tortured. [Image: A giant billboard has appeared on Ulica Żydowska in Poznan, designed by the Abnormals.org artistic group.]

Ten things you need (but don’t want) to know about the BP oil spill

By Daniela Perdomo
Global Research

How the owner of the exploded oil rig has made $270 million off the disaster, and nine other shocking, depressing facts about the oil spill.

It’s been 37 days since BP’s offshore oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, crude oil has been hemorrhaging into ocean waters and wreaking unknown havoc on our ecosystem — unknown because there is no accurate estimate of how many barrels of oil are contaminating the Gulf. 

Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight

By David Ray Griffin
911 Truth

At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane – a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,1 by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie.”2

Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement, Part II

By Elizabeth Woodworth

Part II: A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010

Abstract

In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account.  Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a “conspiracy theory” ignoring science and common sense.

This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.

Vaccine-Austim Link Suppressed: Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship and 14 Monkeys

By Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carey
Age of Autism

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues. 

Modern Day Slavery Worldwide

Afghanistan: The Explanations Don’t Stack Up

From the 2008 film, Opium War

By Michael Brull

Our war in Afghanistan is usually justified as an anti-terrorist mission or a nation-building exercise. But neither of these explanations is actually true.