Monthly Archives: June 2015

The ‘parasite law’ in Belarus

In the Soviet Union, anyone without an official job could be charged with ‘parasitism’ and sentenced to internal exile. Now Belarus has revived the idea.

By Ekaterina Loushnikova. Published June 16, 2015 at openDemocracy.

This year the Belarusian government issued a decree on ‘the prevention of social dependency.’ Belarusians immediately christened it ‘the parasite law’, after the legislation current in the Soviet Union from 1961 until 1991. ‘Parasites’ included housewives, artists, opposition politicians, freelance journalists and so on – anyone who didn’t have an official work contract or who didn’t work at all.

I am a parasite

Almost all my friends in Belarus are officially parasites. And indeed I am one myself – I have been freelance for ten years now. In 2004 I left my job on theKomsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. It was just after the Beslan school hostage crisis and Putin’s abolition of elections for regional governors. Journalism also seemed to have been abolished, and replaced by propaganda and porn.

I remember a special edition of ‘Komsomolka’, as it was usually known: Putin’s naked torso on the front page and a ‘best actress’s breast’ contest on the back. After that I decided to abandon my career on the paper and became a ‘foreign agent’, working freelance for Western media outlets. One day the FSB chief in Kirov denounced me on local TV as the head of a CIA conspiracy in the city. I didn’t sleep that night, expecting a knock on my door at any moment. But they didn’t arrest me: evidently even the FSB likes its little jokes. Continue reading →

Keeping Up With The Neighbors

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The relationship between Canada and the United States is friendly for the most part. We share a common border. Official business is done in English for the most part in both countries. Until a couple years ago, you didn’t need a passport or Real ID to travel between the two countries. However, as will happen in friendships sometimes, one of the two becomes envious of something the other has, and they decide that they need that item themselves.

Canada felt that way about us. We had something called the Patriot Act which we could use as “legal” justification to violate the civil and/or constitutional rights of people or groups that the government deemed threatening, and Canada didn’t – until yesterday.

Graphic: Government of Canada

Yesterday, Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and Peter MacKay, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, welcomed the royal assent of C-51, also known as the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015.

Graphic: Government of Canada

We’ve written about C-51 before. In our previous article, we pointed out that among other things, C-51 allows a judge to impose up to a year of house arrest on someone who has neither been convicted nor charged with any crime, as well as require him/her to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet at all times. It also criminalizes the communication of statements advocating what the state deems to be terrorism. Continue reading →

Israel vs Palestine: David & Goliath in 2015

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The United Nations HRC (Human Rights Council) is scheduled to release a 277-page report this week regarding findings of their investigation into the 2014 Gaza War. The Israeli response to Hamas-fired rockets was a 50-day campaign of shelling, air strikes and ground encroachment resulting in more than 2,256 Palestinians killed, including 1,563 civilians, a U.N. report said last March. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel also died in the conflict.

The HRC began their investigation last July, and held earlier findings to consider further evidence.

Tribute to four boys killed on Gaza beach. Image via Twitter.

Most everyone has seen the horrifying footage of the four Palestinian teenage boys running for their lives on the beach last summer. Most of us remember that the Israeli military killed those four children only because they could, not because the boys posed any threat at all. And no one can forget the footage of the families of these kids finding out their most precious thing in life was ripped from them. The Israelis issued a report totally exonerating themselves of all wrong doing for this incident.

The Senator from Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has proclaimed the HRC report to be a waste of time. Israel is now releasing their own findings of their own investigation, and have decided after careful and thoughtful consideration, that the Gaza War campaign was a completely legal military exercise meant only for Israel to protect herself. The UN numbers are disputed, the total devastation is disregarded, and the report is labeled as objective. Continue reading →

Amid Torture, Experts Say CIA’s Other Crime Was ‘Human Experimentation’

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

Written by Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-15-15.

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency inlaid in the floor of the main lobby of the Original Headquarters Building. Photo by user:Duffman (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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. Continue reading →

MEPs’ mounting TTIP opposition scandalously silenced ahead of knife-edge US vote

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Faced with a possible shock rejection of TTIP by MEPs, Brussels simply cancelled the vote this week – and now Washington moves swiftly to speed up the publicly unpopular trade deal.

By Molly Scott-Cato. Published June 11, 2015 at openDemocracy.

Open_the_Door_to_Transparency-_-StopTTIP_-_15543248792

Image: Wikipedia

For a while there, it looked like the EU/US TTIP deal – the monumental power grab by corporations over democracy – was, far from “fast-tracking” in the US, crawling along the slow lane, or maybe even stalled in the hard shoulder. Democrat senators dug their heels in last month on TTIP (and the equally contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) deal), claiming these trade deals would drag down US wages and cost American jobs.

But these Democrats eventually decided to switch sides.

And now it looks like Obama is going for a high-stakes vote to renew the ‘fast-track’ TTIP negotiation process (minimising democratic oversight) as early as tomorrow (Friday).

It’s in this light that we have to view the scandalous decision by the EU presidency to deny myself and other MEPs a vote on TTIP this week. Continue reading →

In Your Hands: One Massive Political Object Lesson

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By occupostal for Occupy World Writes.

tpa-vote

Friday’s House of Representatives vote against Trade Promotion Authority was a mixed victory, which some (like me) would say is a temporary one. The House had split TPA into two parts, unlike the Senate which had passed it—the second part being for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to fund retraining for job loss from the TPP. That’s the part that had Democrats angling to defeat the two-part “fast track” package—because on that vote they’d be joined by more Republicans who on ideological principle would vote against TAA along with them. One part goes down, the whole deal does. And that’s what happened.

For now. A re-vote on TAA is scheduled for Tuesday. Either the battle will be turned then, or the war will go on until a probable victory–even if it has to be later than sooner–for TPA and at least some of the trade agreements in its wake become a reality. I haven’t changed my mind on inevitability since Friday morning’s post Is It All Over But the Denying?

So the question is, what’s a 99-percenter citizenry going to do in order to turn the tide of trade dealing that’s swamping our lives? Continue reading →

In Public Challenge to Obama, Family of Drone Victim Asks: ‘What is the Value of an Innocent Life?’

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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.’

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published June 13, 2015.

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)

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.” Continue reading →

Will Norway allow Snowden safe passage to receive prize?

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The Norwegians must not let their relationship with the US stand in the way of this chance to defend the fundamental principles of democracy.

Edward Snowden. Photo by Laura Poitras / Praxis Films [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Edward Snowden. Photo by Laura Poitras / Praxis Films [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Written by THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN. Published 6-8-2015 in OpenDemocracy.

A few months ago, it was as if everybody wanted to be Charlie (Hebdo). This gesture was laudable enough (if not always credible), but who wants to be Edward Snowden? After two years, the world’s most important whistleblower is still in Moscow. His chances of returning to a normal life remain slim, in spite of the recent ruling in the US Court of Appeals that the NSA’s storage of telephone metadata is indeed illegal.

Western politicians confronted with the Snowden affair typically respond in a vague and equivocal way. If pressed, they might say that their country does not condone mass surveillance, perhaps adding that it is not in their mandate to engage directly with Snowden’s situation. However, they are wrong on both counts. Just as they criticise rights violations in other countries, they can and should support Snowden, especially now that a high legal authority in the US has indirectly confirmed that he was right to blow the whistle. Moreover, objectionable forms of surveillance do take place, if not on the same scale as in the US, in European countries as well. Continue reading →

Is It All Over But the Denying?

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By occupostal for Occupy World Writes

Under fast track, ‘fast’ is little more than a euphemism for ‘avoid the public, and benefit the fortunate few,’ warns Ohio State law professor Margot Kaminski. (Photo: Backbone Campaign/cc/flickr)

When you know how the outcome is going to play out—and not well—the old expression goes “It’s all over but the crying.” We may very well be in that spot with passage of the Trade Promotion Authority(TPA)—which has already passed in the U.S. Senate and is due for a vote in the House of Representatives today. Like the followup trade agreements that TPA is meant to grease the skids for—the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), and now TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement)—it may get as many repeat votes as needed to force it through to a foregone conclusion.

So at this moment, it makes sense to look at a few specific issues: TPA or “fast track” itself, the constitutionality of the whole alphabet soup, and the naked power relationship between government and the forces of capitalism. Both crying and denying are part of the view here. Continue reading →