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Thursday, November 28, 2013

America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas.

Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere

By Colum Lynch  
Foreign Policy
November 20, 2013
[Emphasis added]

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. 

American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. 

The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an internationalbacklash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.

The Brazilian and German initiative seeks to apply the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to online communications. Their proposal, firstrevealed by The Cable, affirms a "right to privacy that is not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence." It notes that while public safety may "justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information," nations "must ensure full compliance" with international human rights laws. A final version the text is scheduled to be presented to U.N. members on Wednesday evening and the resolution is expected to be adopted next week.

A draft of the resolution, which was obtained by The Cable, calls on states to "to respect and protect the right to privacy," asserting that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy." It also requests the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, present the U.N. General Assembly next year with a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, a provision that will ensure the issue remains on the front burner.

Publicly, U.S. representatives say they're open to an affirmation of privacy rights. "The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. "We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations."

But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.

In recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially.

In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas.

The U.S. paper also calls on governments to promote amendments that would weaken Brazil's and Germany's contention that some "highly intrusive" acts of online espionage may constitute a violation of freedom of expression. Instead, the United States wants to limit the focus to illegal surveillance -- which the American government claims it never, ever does.  

Collecting information on tens of millions of people around the world is perfectly acceptable, the Obama administration has repeatedly said. It's authorized by U.S. statute, overseen by Congress, and approved by American courts.

"Recall that the USG's [U.S. government's] collection activities that have been disclosed are lawful collections done in a manner protective of privacy rights," the paper states. "So a paragraph expressing concern about illegal surveillance is one with which we would agree."

The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. 

But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus -- referred to as "soft law" -- that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners' data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms.

"They want to be able to say ‘we haven't broken the law, we're not breaking the law, and we won't break the law,'" said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations.  

The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that "we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations."

The United States negotiators have been pressing their case behind the scenes, raising concerns that the assertion of extraterritorial human rights could constrain America's effort to go after international terrorists. But Washington has remained relatively muted about their concerns in the U.N. negotiating sessions. According to one diplomat, "the United States has been very much in the backseat," leaving it to its allies, Australia, Britain, and Canada, to take the lead.

There is no extraterritorial obligation on states "to comply with human rights," explained one diplomat who supports the U.S. position. "The obligation is on states to uphold the human rights of citizens within their territory and areas of their jurisdictions."

The position, according to Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, has little international backing. The International Court of Justice, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, and the European Court have all asserted that states do have an obligation to comply with human rights laws beyond their own borders, he noted. "Governments do have obligation beyond their territories," said Dakwar, particularly in situations, like the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the United States exercises "effective control" over the lives of the detainees.

Both PoKempner and Dakwar suggested that courts may also judge that the U.S. dominance of the Internet places special legal obligations on it to ensure the protection of users' human rights.

"It's clear that when the United States is conducting surveillance, these decisions and operations start in the United States, the servers are at NSA headquarters, and the capabilities are mainly in the United States," he said. "To argue that they have no human rights obligations overseas is dangerous because it sends a message that there is void in terms of human rights protection outside countries territory. It's going back to the idea that you can create a legal black hole where there is no applicable law." There were signs emerging on Wednesday that America may have been making ground in pressing the Brazilians and Germans to back on one of its toughest provisions. In an effort to address the concerns of the U.S. and its allies, Brazil and Germany agreed to soften the language suggesting that mass surveillance may constitute a violation of human rights. Instead, it simply deep "concern at the negative impact" that extraterritorial surveillance "may have on the exercise of and enjoyment of human rights." The U.S., however, has not yet indicated it would support the revised proposal.

The concession "is regrettable. But it’s not the end of the battle by any means," said Human Rights Watch’s PoKempner.  

She added that there will soon be another opportunity to corral America's spies: a U.N. discussion on possible human rights violations as a result of extraterritorial surveillance will soon be taken up by the U.N. High commissioner.

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Source:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights_everywhere
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Friday, November 22, 2013

JFK Assasination Anniversary

Just Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? 



By Joseph Lazzaro 
International Business Times 
November 18 2013  


In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he assassinated President John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States and the only Roman Catholic elected to the office.  The commission said that on Nov. 22, 1963, at about 12:30 p.m. Central Time, Oswald fired three shots from behind the presidential motorcade on the sixth floor in the Texas School Book Depository building using a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
The report concluded the following: One shot struck Kennedy in the back of the neck and exited through his throat and then hit Texas Gov. John Connally, creating five wounds in Connally’s body. A shot after the aforementioned shot struck Kennedy in the rear portion of his head, killing him. Another shot missed the motorcade, but its ricochet injured bystander James Tague in the cheek as he stood 270 feet west of the motorcade on the Stemmons Freeway Overpass; the commission did not specify whether the missed shot was the first or third shot.
Accused Assassin Arrested In 90 Minutes
Approximately 90 minutes after the assassination, Oswald was captured in the Texas Theatre in Dallas. He was arrested first for the handgun murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, whom the Warren Commission concluded Oswald had also killed after the Dealey Plaza shooting, and he was later charged with murdering President Kennedy. However, the accused Oswald did not get to stand trial because Dallas strip club/nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald two days later, on Nov. 24, 1963, at 11:21 a.m. Central Time, as Oswald was being transferred by police from a Dallas police station cell to a nearby county jail.
Further, the accepted and widely published profile of Oswald in the initial months and years after the assassination was that of a “low-achievement, socially isolated, ill-educated Communist determined to kill someone of significance in the United States.” He was portrayed in the media as “a revolutionary who sought a change in the economic order from capitalism to communism by violent means,” or as a “mentally unstable/crazy person,” or some combination of the above.
A Second Commission, A Different Conclusion
Later, in 1979, a second U.S. government commission rendered a different conclusion regarding who killed President Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was very likely assassinated as a result of a plot/conspiracy, and that scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that at least two gunman fired at the president -- with three shots fired from the TSBD (the book depository) and one shot from the grassy knoll. However, the HSCA was unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.
Also, the HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission regarding Oswald’s role, but it specified which rifle shot from the TSBD missed the motorcade. The HSCA concluded that Oswald had fired three rifle shots at Kennedy, with the first missing the motorcade and the next two hitting it, the last of which struck Kennedy in the head, killing him.
However, rather than close the JFK assassination case, the Warren Commission’s and the HSCA’s work and conclusions did just the opposite.
In particular, questions remain about the Warren Commission’s failure to: interview some Dealey Plaza witnesses; review discrepancies between the conclusions of the Parkland Hospital physicians’ examination and the evidence provided by the Bethesda [Maryland] Naval Hospital’s autopsy photos; investigate the destruction of vital forensic presidential limousine evidence; evaluate the Dallas Police Department’s interrogation of Oswald.
These and other concerns have led many assassination researchers to reject the Warren Commission's conclusions, either in whole or in part, and argue, like the HSCA, that more than one person fired gunshots at President Kennedy that day in a plot or conspiracy to kill the president.
Conversely, lone-gunman supporters stand by the Warren Commission’s report and conclusion, on the grounds that not enough hard evidence exists to undermine the commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone.
Hence, one can summarize the state of the research and investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy as this:
To date, there’s no “smoking gun,” or, in other words, while there’s no incontrovertible evidence of a plot or conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, there is a pattern of suspicious activity, along with a series of anomalies and a commonality of interests among key parties, that compel additional research and the release to the public of key documents. 
Researchers' Work, Released Documents Revealing More Information
Of course, lone-gunman supporters argue that as far as who assassinated President Kennedy, there’s nothing more to research: for them, it’s a settled issue. Even so, each year, new evidence becomes available -- on a variety of aspects in the case -- that tell us more than we knew previously about what really happened on that ignominious and fateful day in Dallas.
Further, one current research trend concerns the life of Lee Harvey Oswald -- in addition to research into witness evidence, forensic evidence, Parkland medical exam/Bethesda autopsy evidence, ballistic evidence, limousine evidence and interrogation evidence.
As mentioned, in the initial months and years after the assassination, the accepted and widely circulated profile of Oswald was that of a “low-achievement, socially isolated, communist” or a “radical who sought a change in the economic order from capitalism to communism by violent means” or a “mentally unstable/crazy person,” or some combination thereof. 
However, the release of documents and research by historians, assassination researchers and other investigators indicates that Oswald was a much different person than the one who was initially portrayed after the assassination of President Kennedy.
Further, some of the recent, hard evidence on Oswald -- far from confirming a low-achievement individual -- reveals that he was a multiskilled individual who had a number of accomplishments. And while other pieces of hard evidence increase historians' clarity about various periods in Oswald’s life, much of it nevertheless begs other questions. 
18 Questions That May Get the Nation Closer To The Truth
It’s those questions -- 18 of which are listed below -- that, when answered, will give the American people and others around the world a better understanding of who Lee Harvey Oswald was.
1) The United States Navy Base at Atsugi, Japan, to which U. S. Marine Corps member Oswald was assigned from September 1957 to November 1958, was not just a run-of-the-mill U.S. Navy-operated defense base. It was and is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base. Among other intelligence operations, the Atsugi base was one of two bases from which the CIA operated the top secret U-2 spy plane, which flew reconnaissance and surveillance missions over the Soviet Union and China. Why was the low-achieving, nondescript Oswald assigned to such a top secret and important base?
2) When Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959, as a former Marine, a 201 File on him containing personnel documents should have been created by the CIA, because he had been stationed at a top secret naval base. No such file was immediately opened; instead, it was delayed. Why? 
Rather, a 201 File on him was created a year later, in December 1960, and that late opening compels questions regarding how the CIA interpreted Oswald’s defection. 
To underscore, the CIA’s treatment of Oswald’s defection was an anomaly -- it says something about who Oswald was, or, minimally, how his file was viewed by the CIA. If a former U.S. Marine defected from the United States to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and if he truly posed a risk of giving U.S. radar secrets and other sensitive information to the Russians, then why did the CIA did not immediately open a 201 File on him?
3) Oswald traveled through four nations in Europe en route to his defection to the Soviet Union, but he had virtually no money. As a person of modest means, how did Oswald finance his complicated defection trip?
4) During his trip through Europe to the Soviet Union, Oswald traveled from England to Helsinki, Finland, and initially checked in to the Hotel Torni  -- which was roughly equivalent to staying at the Ritz Carlton. Where did the cash-strapped, low-resource, working-class Oswald get the money to stay at such a high-class hotel?
Perhaps Oswald underestimated the Torni’s hotel fees, because he soon checked out and sought another hotel -- but his second choice wasn’t much cheaper: the Klaus Kurki Hotel -- another four-star hotel -- which was similar in quality to the Four Seasons. 
5) Upon arriving in the Soviet Union, Oswald said he was a U.S. Marine Corp. radar operator, and that he knew some “classified things” that he planned to give to the Soviets. However, Oswald was never punished by the U.S. government for making these disloyal statements. Why?
6) Oswald, despite his Marxist beliefs and defection to the Soviet Union, was later allowed to return to the United States after he decided he was wrong to defect and had become disillusioned with the form of communism practiced by the Russians. Despite his defection and all-but abandoned Soviet sympathies, and despite it being the height of the Cold War, Oswald was permitted by the U.S. government to return to the United States. Why?
7) Just before he re-defected to the United States, Oswald wrote to his mother, Marguerite Oswald, telling her that before he traveled to his home in New Orleans, “I plan to stop over in Washington for a while.” Why did Oswald stop in Washington, D.C.? What did he do there?
8) After he defected back to the United States from the Soviet Union, Oswald was de-briefed by the CIA, which the CIA initially lied about by claiming the interview did not occur. The CIA, when documents later surfaced that it had de-briefed Oswald, revised its story and called this meeting a “routine contact” for anyone who re-defected to the United States. Was this a routine contact? Or something more substantial? And why did the CIA initially lie about its contact with Oswald?
9) Some “Hands Off Cuba” leaflets, which Oswald distributed in August 1963 on the day of his arrest in New Orleans following a scuffle with anti-Castro protesters, were stamped with the address 544 Camp Street, which had no connection to any pro-Castro organization but did identify the building in which the offices of Guy Bannister, a private investigator involved in anti-Castro activities, were located. Why did they have a 544 Camp Street address?
10) The Warren Commission portrayed Oswald as a disgruntled, low-achievement loner. But the record shows that Oswald was a Civil Air Patrol cadet and a U.S. Marine Corps radar operator who was also trained in electronics, interrogation techniques and the Russian language. Oswald was also able to defect to the Soviet Union, live in Russia for two years and re-defect with a Russian wife … and gain re-admission to the United States in a matter of days after applying for re-defection. That’s a remarkable training, skills and accomplishment record for a low-achievement, low-resource citizen. How can one reconcile the Warren Commission’s profile with what the Oswald record shows?
11) The U.S. State Department extended Oswald a loan to pay for his travel expenses to return to the United States. As JFK Assassination Researcher Bob Harris points out, that’s pretty generous treatment during the height of the Cold War for someone with a Marxist past, who could have been a potential subversive and traitor to his country. Why did the State Department extend the loan?
12) After returning to the United States, Oswald contacted these three organizations within 90 days: the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Congress of Racial Equality -- three organizations at the top of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s subversive list. Why did Oswald contact the organizations Hoover was trying to infiltrate and undermine the most?
13) Despite being, arguably, the most important crime case in modern U.S. history, crime investigators in Dallas did not have a legal, stenographic record made of the interrogation of Oswald after his arrest, aside from memoranda written by interrogators. And the two forms of records are not remotely the same: The actual interrogation time of Oswald was about 10-12 hours -- why was there no stenographic record made that reflects that amount of time for the interrogation? And given the importance of the case, why wasn’t a professional stenographer used? And why wasn’t an audio recording of the interrogation sessions made?
14) As noted, Oswald was portrayed by the Warren Commission as being a low-achievement loner and a very ordinary person. Yet, throughout his life, Oswald was surrounded by high-achievement, extraordinary people: David Ferrie, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, George de Mohrenschildt, Ruth Hyde Paine and Michael Paine, to list a few. How can one reconcile the Warren Commission’s profile of Oswald with the relationships Oswald had with these accomplished individuals during his adult life?
15) The Warren Commission also portrays Oswald as a mentally unstable/crazy person, but Oswald was nevertheless able to attract and court -- in a foreign country, no less -- Marina Prusakova, a pharmacy employee, of Minsk, Russia (then the Soviet Union), whom he married in 1959. How can one reconcile the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was mentally unstable -- which generally is not viewed as a quality likely to attract a mate -- with Marina Prusakova’s willingness to marry Oswald?
Oswald was also able to re-defect to the United States with his Russian wife, quickly, after he requested to return to his native country. Why was he able to do so with such speed and ease?
16) CIA Operations Officer George Joannides of Miami, now deceased, guided and monitored the New Orleans chapter of an anti-Castro Cuban exile group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), that Oswald had a series of encounters with in the summer of 1963, three months before Kennedy was murdered.
Later, in 1978, Joannides served as CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but he did not disclose this obvious conflict-of-interest to the HSCA regarding his role in the events of 1963. Why?
HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey said that had he known who Joannides was at that time, Joannides would have not continued as CIA liaison and instead would have become a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the HSCA staff or by the committee.
17) Thirty-five years later, the CIA continues to oppose the release of Joannides’ files that relate to the JFK assassination. Why? (The public release of these files, among other classified JFK files, is being sought byauthor/researcher Jefferson Morley in the ongoing Morley v. CIA suit.) The CIA says the Joannides files must remain classified due to “national security.” Why?
18) The classified files of CIA officers David Atlee Philips, who was involved in pre-assassination surveillance of Oswald; Birch D O’Neal, who as counter-intelligence head of the CIA opened a file on defector Oswald; E. Howard Hunt; William King Harvey; Anne Goodpasture; and David Sanchez Morales -- when made public, these files will also help the nation determine what really happened in Dallas, who Oswald was, and how the CIA treated and handled his file. But as with Joannides’ files, the CIA said these files must remain classified until at least 2017, and perhaps longer, due to U.S. national security. Why? It has been 50 years. What event or act that occurred 50 years ago could possibly be in these files that could hurt U.S. national security? 
Determining Factor On Oswald - The Record
Answers to these questions, and others, will not incontrovertibly prove that there was -- or was not -- a second gunman in Dealey Plaza during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
But they will give the American people a better idea about whether the initial portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald by the media and authorities was the truth. Or a lie.

Source:
http://www.ibtimes.com/jfk-assassination-just-who-was-lee-harvey-oswald-1474038
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Friday, November 08, 2013

Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Immigrants Without Their Consent

In January 2013, Israel acknowledged that medical authorities have been giving Ethiopian immigrants long-term birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent. The Israeli government had previously denied the charges, which were first brought to light by investigative reporter Gal Gabbay in a December 8, 2012, broadcast of Israeli Educational Television’s news program, Vacuum. In January, the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general, Ron Gamzu, ordered all gynecologists to stop administering the drugs.
Gabbay interviewed over thirty women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the immigrant community were so low. Israeli medical authorities had been injecting women of Ethiopian origin with a drug alleged to be Depo-Provera, a highly effective and long-lasting form of contraception. In some cases, the drugs were reportedly administered to women waiting in transit camps for permission to immigrate to Israel. Writing for the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah makes the case that, “if the allegations are proven, this practice may fit the legal definition of genocide.”
Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but some rabbis have questioned their Jewishness. In May 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignited controversy when he warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Sources:
Alistair Dawber, “Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Jews without Their Consent,”Independent, January 27, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html.
Ali Abunimah, “Did Israel Violate the Genocide Convention by Forcing Contraceptives on Ethiopian Women?” Electronic Intifada, January 28, 2013,http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-violate-genocide-convention-forcing-contraceptives-ethiopian-women.
Beth Brogan, “Israel Admits Forced Birth Control For Ethiopian Immigrants,” Common Dreams, January 29, 2013, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/29-0.
Student Researchers: Shanti Williams (College of Marin); Elizabeth Saechao (Sonoma State University) 
Faculty Evaluator: Andy Lee Roth (College of Marin); Noel Byrne (Sonoma State University)