Palestinian detainees are systematically denied the right to meet a lawyer during interrogations by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, according to a report published today by an Israeli and a Palestinian rights group.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club say detainees from the occupied West Bank are cut off from the rest of the world in Israeli detention facilities. The report also cited cases of "systematic violence" and torture.
Israeli authorities deny Palestinian prisoners access to lawyers
Mr. Kissinger, Have You No Shame?
Ignore the recent excuses. Henry Kissinger's entire career was a series of massacres and outrages.
So our culture has once again suffered a degradation by the need to explain away the career of this disgusting individual. And what if we did, indeed, accept the invitation to "remember the context of his entire life"? Here's what we would find: the secret and illegal bombing of Indochina, explicitly timed and prolonged to suit the career prospects of Nixon and Kissinger. The pair's open support for the Pakistani army's 1971 genocide in Bangladesh, of the architect of which, Gen. Yahya Khan, Kissinger was able to say: "Yahya hasn't had so much fun since the last Hindu massacre." Kissinger's long and warm personal relationship with the managers of other human abattoirs in Chile and Argentina, as well as his role in bringing them to power by the covert use of violence. The support and permission for the mass murder in East Timor, again personally guaranteed by Kissinger to his Indonesian clients. His public endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party's sanguinary decision to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989. His advice to President Gerald Ford to refuse Alexander Solzhenitsyn an invitation to the White House (another favor, as with spitting on Soviet Jewry, to his friend Leonid Brezhnev). His decision to allow Saddam Hussein to slaughter the Kurds after promising them American support. His backing for a fascist coup in Cyprus in 1974 and then his defense of the brutal Turkish invasion of the island. His advice to the Israelis, at the beginning of the first intifada, to throw the press out of the West Bank and go for all-out repression. His view that ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia was something about which nothing could be done. Forget the criminal aspect here (or forget it if you can). All those policies were also political and diplomatic disasters.
Colfax pilot who posted S.F. airport security video steps forward
The pilot who posted a cell phone video on YouTube revealing potential loopholes in airport security identified himself Monday and said he is "pretty shocked" by the national uproar he has caused.
Chris Liu, a 50-year-old Colfax resident and 27-year veteran pilot, said in an interview with a Sacramento television station that he never imagined his "little video" of what he felt were lax procedures at San Francisco International Airport would get much attention.
NYC Gallery Patrons Ejected Over Gaza Flotilla T-Shirts
Four activists were forced to leave an art gallery in New York this month for wearing T-shirts promoting an effort to include an American boat in the next blockade-challenging Gaza flotilla.
The incident came on the final day of an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery called “Next Year in Jerusalem,” featuring pieces by the German artist Anselm Kiefer on the subject of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables
Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals. Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth. The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.
AIG Gets $4.3 Billion of Credit; Seeks to Exit Bailout
American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed out by the U.S., garnered $4.3 billion in bank credit lines in another step toward repaying taxpayers and gaining independence. The credit, provided by more than 30 banks and administered by JPMorgan Chase & Co., includes two $1.5 billion facilities, one for three years and the other for 364 days, AIG said today in a regulatory filing.
AIG’s property-casualty division Chartis Inc. got $1.3 billion, the insurer said. The firm rose $2.01, or 3.7 percent, to $56.34 at 10:03 a.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
Jewish activist faces jail for West Bank resistance
It is not every day that a leading Palestinian activist issues an emphatic statement of support for a Jewish Israeli – "this friend, whose friendship I am proud to share" – facing prison.
But then Jonathan Pollak, who could be jailed for between three and six months when the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court decides on his prosecution for illegal assembly today, is an unusual figure even in the long history of Israeli dissent.
Will generating ocean energy affect migration of sea creatures?
Without maps or GPS, great white sharks travel thousand of miles roundtrip from California to Hawaii or Australia to South Africa. Sea turtles hatched on the beaches of Florida travel the currents of the North Atlantic Gyre to Europe, Africa and South America before heading home.
And in one of the most mysterious and epic journeys of all, salmon from the streams and rivers of the Pacific Northwest head to sea and swim into the far reaches of the North Pacific before returning to spawn.
Israel won't attend racism conference fete
Israel says it won't participate in the 10th anniversary commemoration of a U.N. conference on racism that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism to racism.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the conference had "anti-Semitic undertones and displays of hatred for Israel and the Jewish world."
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