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Saturday 27 August 2011
How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
The boy, small and frail, is struggling to stay awake. His head lolls to the side, at one point slumping on to his chest. "Lift up your head! Lift it up!" shouts one of his interrogators, slapping him. But the boy by now is past caring, for he has been awake for at least 12 hours since he was separated at gunpoint from his parents at two that morning. "I wish you'd let me go," the boy whimpers, "just so I can get some sleep."
During the nearly six-hour video, 14-year-old Palestinian Islam Tamimi, exhausted and scared, is steadily broken to the point where he starts to incriminate men from his village and weave fantastic tales that he believes his tormentors want to hear.
This rarely seen footage seen by The Independent offers a glimpse into an Israeli interrogation, almost a rite of passage that hundreds of Palestinian children accused of throwing stones undergo every year.
Israel has robustly defended its record, arguing that the treatment of minors has vastly improved with the creation of a military juvenile court two years ago. But the children who have faced the rough justice of the occupation tell a very different story.
"The problems start long before the child is brought to court, it starts with their arrest," says Naomi Lalo, an activist with No Legal Frontiers, an Israeli group that monitors the military courts. It is during their interrogation where their "fate is doomed", she says.
Sameer Shilu, 12, was asleep when the soldiers smashed in the front door of his house one night. He and his older brother emerged bleary-eyed from their bedroom to find six masked soldiers in their living room.
Checking the boy's name on his father's identity card, the officer looked "shocked" when he saw he had to arrest a boy, says Sameer's father, Saher. "I said, 'He's too young; why do you want him?' 'I don't know,' he said". Blindfolded, and his hands tied painfully behind his back with plastic cords, Sameer was bundled into a Jeep, his father calling out to him not to be afraid. "We cried, all of us," his father says. "I know my sons; they don't throw stones."
In the hours before his interrogation, Sameer was kept blindfolded and handcuffed, and prevented from sleeping. Eventually taken for interrogation without a lawyer or parent present, a man accused him of being in a demonstration, and showed him footage of a boy throwing stones, claiming it was him.
"He said, 'This is you', and I said it wasn't me. Then he asked me, 'Who are they?' And I said that I didn't know," Sameer says. "At one point, the man started shouting at me, and grabbed me by the collar, and said, 'I'll throw you out of the window and beat you with a stick if you don't confess'."
Sameer, who protested his innocence, was fortunate; he was released a few hours later. But most children are frightened into signing a confession, cowed by threats of physical violence, or threats against their families, such as the withdrawal of work permits.
When a confession is signed, lawyers usually advise children to accept a plea bargain and serve a fixed jail sentence even if not guilty. Pleading innocent is to invite lengthy court proceedings, during which the child is almost always remanded in prison. Acquittals are rare. "In a military court, you have to know that you're not looking for justice," says Gabi Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who has represented many children.
There are many Palestinian children in the West Bank villages in the shadow of Israel's separation wall and Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. Where largely non-violent protests have sprung up as a form of resistance, there are children who throw stones, and raids by Israel are common. But lawyers and human rights groups have decried Israel's arrest policy of targeting children in villages that resist the occupation.
In most cases, children as young as 12 are hauled from their beds at night, handcuffed and blindfolded, deprived of sleep and food, subjected to lengthy interrogations, then forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language few of them read.
Israeli rights group B'Tselem concluded that, "the rights of minors are severely violated, that the law almost completely fails to protect their rights, and that the few rights granted by the law are not implemented".
Israel claims to treat Palestinian minors in the spirit of its own law for juveniles but, in practice, it is rarely the case. For instance, children should not be arrested at night, lawyers and parents should be present during interrogations, and the children must be read their rights. But these are treated as guidelines, rather than a legal requirement, and are frequently flouted. And Israel regards Israeli youngsters as children until 18, while Palestinians are viewed as adults from 16...
During the nearly six-hour video, 14-year-old Palestinian Islam Tamimi, exhausted and scared, is steadily broken to the point where he starts to incriminate men from his village and weave fantastic tales that he believes his tormentors want to hear.
This rarely seen footage seen by The Independent offers a glimpse into an Israeli interrogation, almost a rite of passage that hundreds of Palestinian children accused of throwing stones undergo every year.
Israel has robustly defended its record, arguing that the treatment of minors has vastly improved with the creation of a military juvenile court two years ago. But the children who have faced the rough justice of the occupation tell a very different story.
"The problems start long before the child is brought to court, it starts with their arrest," says Naomi Lalo, an activist with No Legal Frontiers, an Israeli group that monitors the military courts. It is during their interrogation where their "fate is doomed", she says.
Sameer Shilu, 12, was asleep when the soldiers smashed in the front door of his house one night. He and his older brother emerged bleary-eyed from their bedroom to find six masked soldiers in their living room.
Checking the boy's name on his father's identity card, the officer looked "shocked" when he saw he had to arrest a boy, says Sameer's father, Saher. "I said, 'He's too young; why do you want him?' 'I don't know,' he said". Blindfolded, and his hands tied painfully behind his back with plastic cords, Sameer was bundled into a Jeep, his father calling out to him not to be afraid. "We cried, all of us," his father says. "I know my sons; they don't throw stones."
In the hours before his interrogation, Sameer was kept blindfolded and handcuffed, and prevented from sleeping. Eventually taken for interrogation without a lawyer or parent present, a man accused him of being in a demonstration, and showed him footage of a boy throwing stones, claiming it was him.
"He said, 'This is you', and I said it wasn't me. Then he asked me, 'Who are they?' And I said that I didn't know," Sameer says. "At one point, the man started shouting at me, and grabbed me by the collar, and said, 'I'll throw you out of the window and beat you with a stick if you don't confess'."
Sameer, who protested his innocence, was fortunate; he was released a few hours later. But most children are frightened into signing a confession, cowed by threats of physical violence, or threats against their families, such as the withdrawal of work permits.
When a confession is signed, lawyers usually advise children to accept a plea bargain and serve a fixed jail sentence even if not guilty. Pleading innocent is to invite lengthy court proceedings, during which the child is almost always remanded in prison. Acquittals are rare. "In a military court, you have to know that you're not looking for justice," says Gabi Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who has represented many children.
There are many Palestinian children in the West Bank villages in the shadow of Israel's separation wall and Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. Where largely non-violent protests have sprung up as a form of resistance, there are children who throw stones, and raids by Israel are common. But lawyers and human rights groups have decried Israel's arrest policy of targeting children in villages that resist the occupation.
In most cases, children as young as 12 are hauled from their beds at night, handcuffed and blindfolded, deprived of sleep and food, subjected to lengthy interrogations, then forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language few of them read.
Israeli rights group B'Tselem concluded that, "the rights of minors are severely violated, that the law almost completely fails to protect their rights, and that the few rights granted by the law are not implemented".
Israel claims to treat Palestinian minors in the spirit of its own law for juveniles but, in practice, it is rarely the case. For instance, children should not be arrested at night, lawyers and parents should be present during interrogations, and the children must be read their rights. But these are treated as guidelines, rather than a legal requirement, and are frequently flouted. And Israel regards Israeli youngsters as children until 18, while Palestinians are viewed as adults from 16...
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Catrina Stewart @'The Independent'
Pacing - A Short-Film by Aidan Moffat
Recently, on the final touring weekend of three with Malcolm Middleton, I started to relieve the boredom by messing about with the video camera on my phone. I’d forgotten it was there; I’m still getting used to the idea of having a multi-functional device in my pocket. I made a little film that was intended to be part of a longer (short) movie about how boring the backstage areas at gigs are these days. There was a time when the dressing room was a consummate den of debauchery, but these days I’m happy with a cup of tea, some nuts, a few ciders and a good Wi-Fi connection. The plan was to continue to make little films like this and then compile them, but I got bored with that pretty quickly and never got round to making another. It turns out making a movie about being bored was pretty boring – who could have guessed?
Anyway, as you’ll see, I’m a pacer.
Via
Ready for Day One (Meet the Libyan postwar planners who put the Bush administration's Iraq team to shame)
Allow me, in what I'm sure is a spirit of a priori hopefulness, to offer some tiny grounds for optimism. For the last several months, I have been following the deliberations of the Tripoli Task Force. This body was established in April by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the rebel government based in Benghazi, in order to plan for the post-Qaddafi transition. One of the peculiar advantages of the military stalemate that lasted until this past weekend is that it gave the task force ample time to plan for Day One of the new government.
Over time, the group's core members moved from Benghazi to Dubai. By the time the Qaddafi regime fell, about 70 people were engaged fulltime in the task of planning. This group oversaw a network of hundreds of Libyans, mostly professionals, divided into 17 teams responsible for policing, water supply, fuel, schools, and the like. They made a point of studying precedent. According to Sohail Nakhoody, who served as chief of staff to Aref Ali Nayed, a Libyan businessman who headed the task force (and now serves as the new government's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates), "We had in front of us the experience of Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia." Iraq served as a kind of anti-template, especially on questions like how to treat regime elements -- i.e., no "de-Baathification."
Let me pause for a moment to recall the absurdity of the George W. Bush administration's own planning process for Day One of a post-Saddam Iraq. Back in the summer of 2002, the U.S. State Department established the Future of Iraq Project, a study exercise that brought Iraqi exiles together with American academic experts and government officials. But once Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld persuaded Bush to transfer control of postwar Iraq to the Defense Department, the entire effort was scrapped. In The Assassins' Gate, journalist George Packer describes meeting an Iraqi-American lawyer in Baghdad desperately trying to interest the new authorities in the State Department's 250-page report on transitional justice, and finding no takers. The planning process was transferred to a group of retired military officers heading something called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), whose very name denoted the strict limits of its mandate. Security was outside ORHA's mandate; so were politics and governance. Those things were supposed to take care of themselves. As we know now, they didn't...
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James Traub @'FP'
Friday 26 August 2011
Gadhafi’s Loose Weapons Could Number a ‘Thousand Times’ Saddam’s
It’s a concern familiar to those who watched Iraq’s insurgency evolve. Saddam Hussein, like Gadhafi, amassed a vast array of conventional weaponry for defense against enemies both foreign and domestic. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003, looters made off with tons of explosives from unprotected military arsenals, making arms available to a brewing insurgency. With the end of Gadhafi’s rule seeming nigh, arms control and human rights experts are paying close attention to the security of the country’s weapons stockpiles, fearing they could end up in the hands of a pro-regime insurgency or other militants outside the country.
Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, has spent time on the ground in Libya during the uprising. He tells Danger Room that “weapon proliferation out of Libya is potentially one of the largest we have ever documented — 2003 Iraq pales in comparison — and so the risks are equally much more significant.”
Many in the West worry about the remnants of Gadhafi’s chemical-weapons program and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. However, Bouckaert says it’s Libya’s vast arsenals of low-tech gear like artillery shells and Grad missiles that are most likely to be fashioned into insurgent weapons, such as improvised explosive devices. The Libyan military certainly has plenty of them. Only a few months into the war, thousands of 122-mm Grad rockets were found stashed in abandoned bunkers in eastern Libya. “If Gadhafi loyalists decide to mount an Iraqi-style insurgency, they have access to a thousand times the explosives that the insurgents in Iraq had,” says Bouckaert.
Libya’s mines are also useful as weapons in a possible post-Gadhafi insurgency. Precise estimates of just how many mines Gadhafi’s forces have accumulated over the years are hard to come by. For their part, rebels estimate that pro-Gadhafi forces have already laid tens of thousands of the device to halt rebel movement...
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Adam Rawnsley @'Wired'
Depleted Uranium Weapon Use Persists, Despite Deadly Side Effects
War and the Tragedy of the Commons, Part 5
By 2003, reports were surfacing of cancer clusters and birth disorders in conflict areas of the Balkans and Iraq, raising fears about human exposure to depleted uranium (DU) and its fate and transport in war environments. Gulf War Syndrome, a catchall for mysterious and disabling symptoms and conditions suffered by nearly 40 percent of 540,000 veterans of the three-week ground war (which killed fewer than 200 US soldiers), remained an unyielding conundrum. A colleague and I prepared a fact sheet on depleted uranium, given its first use in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and growing use by the United States and Britain in subsequent wars. We labored in a meager research environment and detected an unsettling complacency around the question of environmental health impacts of DU munitions.
Little governmental research on Gulf War veterans was being conducted other than a small study on 29 veterans with DU metal shrapnel fragments in their bodies, cancer cluster reports were dismissed as anecdotal and alarmist, and DU was pigeonholed as "weak" and "feeble" radiation with no predictable risk. Thus, the US decision to use DU in weapons was made in an environment of uncertainty and intentional ignorance about the health risks to those exposed in conflict and post-conflict situations. Accustomed to policing and polluting everyone's backyard, the Department of Defense (DoD) still maintains a shroud of secrecy around depleted uranium, as it has with abandoned hazardous waste contaminating military bases and countries in which our government has waged war...
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H. Patricia Hynes @'truthout'
Barbarian Flashmob Converts 'Marcus Bachmann' in Glitter Baptism at Clinic
Join the Horde! http://www.twitter.com/CGoHome
http://www.facebook.com/ColumbusGoHome
Stop taxpayer funds to Bachmann's anti-gay clinic: http://bit.ly/rkViU8
Producer: Sarah Webster Norton
Choreographer: John Agurkis
Edited by Dan Feidt & Gus Ganley
Earlier today in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, an army of gay barbarians marched on Michele and Marcus Bachmann's "clinic", condemning the couple's attempt to "pray away" their discredited gay conversion therapy.
The flashmob protest — inspired by Marcus's assertion that gays are "barbarians who need to be disciplined" — comes in the wake of the unlicensed therapist's peculiar reversal, now denying he or his "therapists" ever practiced the harmful therapy.
In an attempt to clear up the confusion, the group of "gay barbarians" approached the clinic earlier this morning in hopes to speak to Marcus. When the staff saw a horde of over 100 barbarians approaching, they locked the clinic doors.
Undaunted, the barbarians at the gates demanded to see Marcus. Significant medical evidence suggests the "therapy" is a farce.
The barbarians were locked out of the office, but remained undaunted and fabulous at the gates, along with newly converted "Marcus."
The barbarians then began chanting "you can't pray away the gay, baby I was born this way!". Finally, a visibly frustrated "Marcus" emerged in front of the clinic and confronted the horde yelling "you barbarians need discipline!" as he reprimanded the dancing barbarians with a black leather whip. They responded by showering him with glitter, and after the sparkling baptism "Marcus" gave in to his barbaric urges, joining the horde in their infectious flashmob dance.
The Marcus impersonator was a local actor.
"Let's be clear: Marcus Bachmann is the practitioner of an unhealthy, unscientific and dangerous practice," explained Nick Espinosa, one of the event organizers. "It seems all too convenient that the minute Michele Bachamann becomes a candidate for President Marcus starts making a desperate attempt to walk back his previous statements."
Marcus's inexplicable change of orientation on the use of "ex-gay" therapy comes a month after an interview in which he claimed to only use the therapy "at the patient's discretion." This statement also contradicts video evidence from an undercover investigation that shows employees of the clinic clearly encouraging the widely-discredited therapy.
"The American people have a right to know: does the Bachmann family profit from bogus "gay reparative therapy" or not," continued Espinosa. "The medical evidence against the practice aside, the Bachmann's subversive marginalization of the LGBT community is despicable."
Today's action was organized by the same young man who previously glittered Newt Gingrich, inspiring a national trend in political protest of anti-LGBT sentiments from political candidates and campaigns.
"It's clear that the Bachmanns are the real barbarians here, and their archaic views on LGBT equality will no longer be tolerated," Espinosa said.
BACKGROUND:
Michele Bachmann has a long history of controversial anti-gay politics, and has compared the gay lifestyle to "bondage and slavery."
Her anti-gay views have been a focal point of her career as a politician, but lately she has shied away from reporters' questions about her controversial comments and taxpayer-funded "reparative therapy" clinic. While Michele Bachmann has long railed against federal safety net programs like Medicaid, the Bachmann & Associates clinic has received over $137,000 in Medicaid funds and over $27,000 in other state and federal funds.
For years, the scientific and medical communities — including groups like the American Psychology Association — have dismissed "reparative therapy" (also known as "conversion therapy" or "ex-gay therapy") as dangerous and unethical.
abumuqawama Andrew Exum
I would like to congratulate Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi, the 2011 North Africa Hide & Go Seek Champion. Well done, Mu'ammar.
Town Produces 321% More Energy Than It Uses
A small Bavarian town in Germany called Wildpoldsried produces 321% more energy than it uses, from renewable and natural sources. It sells the excess energy for about $5.7 million each year. The point they are at now in terms of energy production and independence was reached by starting a plan about fourteen years ago to develop more clean energy sources and green building projects. The town with a population of about 2,500 started work on a huge community initiative involving the construction of new buildings and energy sources. The new buildings included a school, community hall and gym, and they employ solar panels, as do 190 private households. Five biogas digesters, nine windmills, three hydroelectric projects, ecological flood control and a natural waste water treatment system were part of the plan for energy independence. It all has worked well, and the town is debt-free. This is a community that previously was focused on farming for most incomes...
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Jake Richardson @'care2'
BETTY PAGE - No.1 (Fetish Comix)
A fine artist from Las Vegas, Nevada, Dirk Vermin, put out this (as well as issue 2 , Punk Comix! coming soon to this blog!), in 1992. Great fantasy pieces,with Betty and Dracula, Rod Serling, Frankenstein, Ed Gein and more! All done in fantastic black and white ! I have tons of Betty stuff and this is some of the rarest. Only 1000 copies in existence! Mine's hand signed by the artist and numbered 851/1000!
Download
HERE
Do check out the rest of the blog - some great stuff there...
Dangerous Cybercrime Treaty Pushes Surveillance and Secrecy Worldwide
As part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties--the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime--is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention’s intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are amongst those who have ratified within the last year. However, among non-European countries, only the U.S. has ratified the Treaty to date, making Canada and Australia’s efforts unique. The Treaty has not been harmless, and both Australia and Canada are fast-tracking legislation (Australia's lower house approved a cybercrime bill last night) that will enable them to ratify the Treaty, at great cost to the civil liberties of their citizens.
Leaving out constitutional safeguards
Australia’s invasive bill highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the Convention on Cybercrime: the Treaty’s failure to specify proper level of privacy protection necessary to limit the over-broad surveillance powers it grants law enforcement agencies. This creates problems in countries like Australia since, as the Australia Privacy Foundation points out, Australia lacks the legal constitutional safeguards afforded to many other democratic countries:
Leaving out constitutional safeguards
Australia’s invasive bill highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the Convention on Cybercrime: the Treaty’s failure to specify proper level of privacy protection necessary to limit the over-broad surveillance powers it grants law enforcement agencies. This creates problems in countries like Australia since, as the Australia Privacy Foundation points out, Australia lacks the legal constitutional safeguards afforded to many other democratic countries:
The CoE Convention has to be read within the context that applies in CoE countries – where there are substantial and actionable constitutional protections for human rights. The absence of any such countervailing protection for human rights in Australia makes it completely untenable for the Convention to be implemented in Australia without very substantial additional provisions that achieve a comparable balance.Bills proposed in Canada (read here and here) are also affected by the Convention’s flaws as they adopt the lowest possible standard of protection against many of the invasive powers they grant. The bills provide law enforcement access to sensitive data on the mere suspicion it might be useful to an investigation. Indeed, at times they leave out the safeguards altogether, as noted in a letter from Canadian privacy scholars and civil society organizations:
[the legislation] will give state agents the power to access ...highly sensitive personal information, even where there is no reason to suspect it will assist in the investigation of any offense...What [this] facilitates, simply put, are unjustified and seemingly limitless fishing expeditions for private information of innocent and non‐suspicious Canadians...
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Katitza Rodriguez @'EFF'
Government backs down on plan to shut Twitter and Facebook in crises
The government has climbed down on plans to ban suspected rioters from using social networking websites in times of civil unrest.
The home secretary, Theresa May, told social networks at a meeting on Thursday that the government had no intention of "restricting internet services".
Research in Motion (RIM, the maker of BlackBerry), Facebook and Twitter were summoned to the meeting with May after David Cameron signalled a clampdown on the sites following the recent riots in England.
The social networks were poised to face down the government on its plans, which they warned could usher in a new form of online censorship in the UK.
However, government ministers sought to back away from the prime minister's comments and instead focus on how law enforcement could better use Twitter and Facebook in emergencies.
A Home Office spokeswoman described the meeting as constructive. May chaired the meeting with the Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne, and members of the Association of Chief Police Officers.
The Home Office said in a statement: "The discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and co-operation to prevent the networks being used for criminal behaviour. The government did not seek any additional powers to close down social media networks."
The possibility of banning suspected rioters from social networks was first raised by Cameron a fortnight ago when he vowed to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of the riots and looting.
Hours before the meeting human rights groups sent an open letter to government ministers warning that powers restricting the internet could be "susceptible to abuse" and undermine free speech.
May is understood to have opened the meeting by immediately ruling out restrictive measures and indicating that it was a discussion about improving law enforcement online.
According to sources at the meeting, police acknowledged that they "needed to do more" with regard to learning how to use social media. The Metropolitan police are understood to have said they were "slightly behind" other forces when it came to Twitter and Facebook.
Surprisingly, RIM was not forced to explain how its BlackBerry Messenger service differed from other social networks, despite the system reportedly having played a pivotal role for the rioters.
A spokeswoman for Facebook said the discussion was constructive, building on work her firm already did to ensure Facebook was "one of the safest places on the internet". She said: "We welcome the fact this was a dialogue on working together to keep people safe rather than about imposing restrictions on internet services."
A Twitter spokeswoman said: "Governments and law enforcement agencies around the world use Twitter to engage in open, public, communications … we've heard from many that Twitter is an effective way to distribute updates and dispel rumours in times of crisis or emergency."
In a statement RIM said: "RIM continues to maintain an open, positive, dialogue with the UK authorities and continues to operate [within] UK regulations."
The Home Office meeting followed a study of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian, that cast doubt on the rationale behind Cameron's proposal to bar suspect rioters from Twitter and Facebook.
Josh Halliday @'The Guardian'
The home secretary, Theresa May, told social networks at a meeting on Thursday that the government had no intention of "restricting internet services".
Research in Motion (RIM, the maker of BlackBerry), Facebook and Twitter were summoned to the meeting with May after David Cameron signalled a clampdown on the sites following the recent riots in England.
The social networks were poised to face down the government on its plans, which they warned could usher in a new form of online censorship in the UK.
However, government ministers sought to back away from the prime minister's comments and instead focus on how law enforcement could better use Twitter and Facebook in emergencies.
A Home Office spokeswoman described the meeting as constructive. May chaired the meeting with the Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne, and members of the Association of Chief Police Officers.
The Home Office said in a statement: "The discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and co-operation to prevent the networks being used for criminal behaviour. The government did not seek any additional powers to close down social media networks."
The possibility of banning suspected rioters from social networks was first raised by Cameron a fortnight ago when he vowed to do whatever it took to prevent a repeat of the riots and looting.
Hours before the meeting human rights groups sent an open letter to government ministers warning that powers restricting the internet could be "susceptible to abuse" and undermine free speech.
May is understood to have opened the meeting by immediately ruling out restrictive measures and indicating that it was a discussion about improving law enforcement online.
According to sources at the meeting, police acknowledged that they "needed to do more" with regard to learning how to use social media. The Metropolitan police are understood to have said they were "slightly behind" other forces when it came to Twitter and Facebook.
Surprisingly, RIM was not forced to explain how its BlackBerry Messenger service differed from other social networks, despite the system reportedly having played a pivotal role for the rioters.
A spokeswoman for Facebook said the discussion was constructive, building on work her firm already did to ensure Facebook was "one of the safest places on the internet". She said: "We welcome the fact this was a dialogue on working together to keep people safe rather than about imposing restrictions on internet services."
A Twitter spokeswoman said: "Governments and law enforcement agencies around the world use Twitter to engage in open, public, communications … we've heard from many that Twitter is an effective way to distribute updates and dispel rumours in times of crisis or emergency."
In a statement RIM said: "RIM continues to maintain an open, positive, dialogue with the UK authorities and continues to operate [within] UK regulations."
The Home Office meeting followed a study of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian, that cast doubt on the rationale behind Cameron's proposal to bar suspect rioters from Twitter and Facebook.
Josh Halliday @'The Guardian'
Thursday 25 August 2011
Suelette Dreyfus talks Wikileaks
Suelette Dreyfus is an Australian-American researcher, journalist and writer. She wrote the cult classic book Underground with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Watch the full episode here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3294021.htm
Panellists: Nick Minchin, Former Liberal Minister; Hanifa Deen, Pakistani-Australian author; Daniel Pipes, American political commentator; Doug Cameron, Labor Senator; and Suelette Dreyfus, academic and author of Underground.
Panellists: Nick Minchin, Former Liberal Minister; Hanifa Deen, Pakistani-Australian author; Daniel Pipes, American political commentator; Doug Cameron, Labor Senator; and Suelette Dreyfus, academic and author of Underground.
Israeli Video Games in Gaza
He looks at the camera with bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit.
I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she’s the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo “kisses.”
It’s not a formal picture. He’s outside on a sunny day. It looks like he was probably moving when the picture was snapped; his arms seem to be swinging a little. As with most almost two-year-olds, I suspect it was hard to get him to stay still long enough for a photo.
It’s a happy picture, the kind that makes you smile; perhaps it reminds you of funny, energetic little children you know or remember.
Until you see the next picture. It was taken on his second birthday. His name was Islam Quraiqe’.
Death from a drone strike is not pretty. The small body is charred, ripped apart; internal organs are pouring out.
He had been riding with his father and uncle on a motorcycle in Gaza whenthe missile hit them. His 29-year-old father, a member of the Palestinian resistance, and 32-year-old uncle physician were also killed. Five bystanders, including a woman, were injured.
The missile was fired remotely by an Israeli sitting in front of a video screen and operating one of the many drones that periodically fly over Gaza and shoot Palestinians like fish in a fishbowl. The operators are usually female, the preferred group for this kind of desk job...
I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she’s the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo “kisses.”
It’s not a formal picture. He’s outside on a sunny day. It looks like he was probably moving when the picture was snapped; his arms seem to be swinging a little. As with most almost two-year-olds, I suspect it was hard to get him to stay still long enough for a photo.
It’s a happy picture, the kind that makes you smile; perhaps it reminds you of funny, energetic little children you know or remember.
Until you see the next picture. It was taken on his second birthday. His name was Islam Quraiqe’.
Death from a drone strike is not pretty. The small body is charred, ripped apart; internal organs are pouring out.
He had been riding with his father and uncle on a motorcycle in Gaza whenthe missile hit them. His 29-year-old father, a member of the Palestinian resistance, and 32-year-old uncle physician were also killed. Five bystanders, including a woman, were injured.
The missile was fired remotely by an Israeli sitting in front of a video screen and operating one of the many drones that periodically fly over Gaza and shoot Palestinians like fish in a fishbowl. The operators are usually female, the preferred group for this kind of desk job...
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Alison Weir @'Counterpunch'
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