04/19/11

Permalink Yemen protesters killed ahead of UN meeting

Police kill at least three people and wound hundreds, as UN Security Council prepares to discuss the country's crisis.

"Security forces" have opened fire on demonstrators in the capital Sanaa and Taiz, south of the capital, killing at least three people and injuring hundreds. The violence on Tuesday comes as the UN Security Council discusses the crisis in the country for the first time. Pro-democracy protesters have been demanding for two months the resignation of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president, who has ruled the country since 1978. Two people died and nearly 100 were hit by bullets when riot police stopped protesters marching towards Sanaa's main Zubeiri street, near the home of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the vice president, medic Mohammed Qobati said. Protesters stoned the riot police and set fire to a security vehicle, witnesses said. At least one person was also shot dead and another wounded in Taiz after police opened fire in the city when protesters burned tyres in the street. Organisers of the Taiz protest said that four people, including a newspaper photographer, were arrested.


Permalink US lobbied to block Gaza War report

The US administration of President Barack Obama has reportedly made efforts to block an independent UN investigation into Israel's war against the Gaza Strip. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice was behind the move to prevent a more thorough UN investigation of alleged war crimes committed by Israeli troops during the 2008-2009 conflict, Foreign Policy cited diplomatic cables of WikiLeaks website.

In one cable, Rice spoke with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon repeatedly on May 4, 2009 to urge him to block an inquiry into Israel's attacks on UN sites in Gaza. Rice "underscored the importance of having a strong cover letter that made clear that no further action was needed and would close out this issue," the US diplomatic cable said. In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the International Criminal Court that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with Washington.

The UN probe committee, headed by Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of committing war crimes by using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians and using people as human shields.


Permalink Fidel quits Communist Party leadership as Cuba looks to reform

Fidel Castro has stepped down as head of Cuba’s Communist Party. The move comes as the party holds a key congress to plot the country’s future. President Raul Castro said he has presented some 300 reforms in an attempt to end Cuba’s economic crisis by correcting past policy mistakes. The reforms aim to boost the Caribbean island’s state-dominated, debt ridden, unproductive economy. Raul Castro, younger brother of Fidel, took over the presidency in 2008 and plans to reduce the size of the state and expand the private sector while keeping central planning and control. The congress also backed a new two-term limit of 10 years for the country’s future leaders to avoid political inertia. Fidel Castro ruled the country for nearly 50 years during which time Cuba’s politics stagnated. Most of Cuba’s senior political figures are in their late 70s and early 80s.

BusinessInsider: Castro Resigns From Party Leadership And Calls For Liberalization


Permalink Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq. Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time. The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd". But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.


Permalink Gitmo Proceedings Will Be ‘Stalinist Show Trials,’ Legal Authority Charges

The future trials planned for prisoners in Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be "Stalinist show trials" as their preliminary proceedings "have already proven them to be Travesties of Justice," a distinguished international law authority warns.

"Even worse yet," [says Francis Boyle, professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign, the] "fully-functioning Stalinist Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will quickly become conveyor-belts of death for alleged and already tortured terrorist suspects along the lines of the Texas execution chamber operated by George Bush Jr. when he was the 'governor’ of that state and tortured to death 152 victims by means of lethal injection."

[Saying the Gitmo proceedings are grievously deficient, Boyle asserted] "they constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U.S. Army’s own Field Manual 27-10, the Laws of Land Warfare (1956.)"

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Boyle said, "executing persons detained as a result of armed conflict without a fair trial before a regularly constituted court constitutes a grave war crime" and the Stalinist-type show trials would do just that, says Boyle. He predicted the Guantanamo Bay prison will become Americas first-ever Nazi-style death camp.


Permalink Pakistan Moves to Curb More Aggressive US Drone Strikes, Spying

The Pakistani military’s recent demands on the United States to curb drone strikes and reduce the number of U.S. spies operating in Pakistan, which have raised tensions between the two countries to a new high, were a response to U.S. military and intelligence programs that had gone well beyond what the Pakistanis had agreed to in past years. The military leadership had reached private agreements in the past on both the drone strikes and on U.S. intelligence activities in Pakistan, but both had changed dramatically in ways that threatened the interests of Pakistan.


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