TV News LIES

An appeals court said Wednesday a former senior Department of Justice lawyer who wrote the so-called "torture memos" authorizing harsh treatment of suspected terrorists is protected from lawsuits.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a convicted terrorist's lawsuit filed against John Yoo. Jose Padilla alleged Yoo's memos allowed for his captors to subject him to harsh interrogation that amounted to unconstitutional torture.

The Israeli military said Wednesday it has closed its investigation into the shelling deaths of 21 members of a single Palestinian family and would not file any charges in what was one of the gravest incidents in the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip.

The military's move, which exonerates Israeli soldiers from any responsibility in the killings, outraged relatives of the killed Palestinians and the Israeli human rights group that had pressed for the investigation. They said the findings proved the army is not capable of investigating the conduct of its soldiers.

Earlier this week, Israel ordered Palestinian farmers in Deir Istiya, a major West Bank olive producing village, to uproot 1,400 trees by the end of this month. By comparison, this order is 400 more trees than the total number uprooted in all of 2011.

Since the Mamluk period, Deir Istiya has been one of the largest olive producing regions in the West Bank. But, even with 10,000 dunums of agricultural land, the village's full farming capacity is weakened by Israel's military and civilian occupation. Nearby, eight settlements are built on, or adjacent to, a total of 15,000 dunums of Palestinian land. "From my parents' house we can see were they built a settlement on our land," says Amal. And from the outposts, wastewater seeps into and is illegally dumped into a natural spring used by Palestinians producing olives.  Amal says the wastewater flows down from the settlements like a river, "but it isn't a river." At times, the wastewater overflows from the dumping site to onto Palestinian orchards. Last fall, over 100 trees in Deir Istiya were destroyed by flooded wastewater.

A senior UN official in Geneva last week listed Israel among the countries that she says are restricting the activities of human rights groups.

The statement, issued on Wednesday by UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay, lists Israel along with countries such as Belarus, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Ethiopia and Venezuela.

One of the activists that were called over brought a history book, out of which he started reading out loud the names of villages demolished by the Nakba, on which the city of Tel Aviv was built. Policemen warned him that if he keeps on reading he will be arrested. After a moment or two they fulfilled this threat. As he was dragged to the police van he kept on reading. "Shayka Muwannis, Abu Kabir, Salama...." The reading continued, though, from the cards held by those inside the blockade, one by one the names were read, repeated by everybody "Ijlil Shamalyyia, Sawalima, Yazur..." When a couple of dozens were reading out the names the cops stood helpless.

Charles Taylor, the U.S.-educated guerrilla leader who fought his way to the presidency of Liberia, was convicted Thursday of crimes against humanity — including murder, rape and slavery — for his role in assisting a bloody rebel movement in neighboring Sierra Leone.

The conviction, in the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, was hailed by chief prosecutor Brenda J. Hollis as a triumph for the idea that political leaders should be held accountable for their deeds in “the new reality” of an international justice system composed of a half-dozen U.N. courts headquartered in the verdant Dutch city of the Hague.