US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign should stand trial, says Amnesty Intl. ● US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns. Amnesty International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians. The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.

The Dawn: US drone strikes may tantamount to war crimes: Amnesty

So much attention concerning the intelligence community lately has been focused on the NSA. There has been a bit of looking at the FBI as well, but for the most part the CIA has been left untouched -- even though when the Washington Post released details of the US's black budget (thanks to Ed Snowden), it surprised many people to discover that the CIA still has a significantly larger budget than the NSA. Late last week, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer had a fantastic article revealing some details of a still-classified report put together by the Senate Intelligence Committee which apparently rips the CIA to shreds over its torture program, both in how ineffective the program was, but also in how the CIA tried to avoid any real oversight from Congress.

Robert Stevens: The Fifth Estate: A dishonest film about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange ■ Director Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate is the second major film this year dealing with the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. It is no improvement on the previous risible effort, Alex Gibney’s documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. Its failings are not primarily the fault of weaknesses in direction or poor performances. Rather it was commissioned and produced by DreamWorks, with a screenplay by Josh Singer, based on two very dubious books, both hostile to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the organisation itself. From this point on the project was unsalvageable as an essentially untruthful work based on politically suspect and prejudiced source material. Despite claims by the director and others involved that the film was not conceived as an attack on Assange and WikiLeaks, it is a tendentious work promoting a definite agenda. ● Assange has, for more than three years, been denied his basic democratic rights, forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. His life and freedom remain threatened by immensely powerful enemies. He is the victim, the persecuted. This is simply glossed over. Condon has airbrushed the last three years out of his WikiLeaks story. Everything after Assange’s December 2010 detention in London is covered in less than five minutes, reduced to a few title cards, interspersed with the fictional Assange speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy. The Fifth Estate is a tawdry project, and everyone involved in it, artistically and financially, should be ashamed of themselves.

Antoine Lerougetel: Mass student protests in France against deportation of Roma schoolgirl ■ The mobilisation of thousands of high school pupils throughout France against the deportation of the 15-year-old Roma schoolgirl Leonarda Dibrani and her family to Kosovo has destabilised the government of Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande. The brutality of the seizure of Leonarda—she was taken from a coach while on a school outing, against the protests of her teacher and in front of her schoolmates—has triggered broad popular disgust. While pursuing reactionary austerity policies, Hollande and his Interior Minister Manuel Valls have resorted even more openly to the racist policies of the National Front, scapegoating immigrants for the social crisis. Social anger over this policy has now exploded. The wave of outrage forced Hollande to address the public on television on Saturday. But rather than assuaging the anger of the students, he made things even worse. He defended the action of the authorities against Leonarda, not wanting to snub Valls. Then he made a “generous gesture” to the Roma girl, inviting her to come back to France—but only if she left her family behind.

Anthony Torres: French Interior Minister Manuel Valls proposes mass deportation of Roma ■ French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has once again turned on the Roma, demanding their expulsion to Eastern Europe. His comments, attacking the Roma ethnicity as a whole, illustrate the reactionary nature of the Socialist Party (PS), which is reacting to the unpopularity of its policies of austerity and war by fomenting racism and moving towards the positions of the neo-fascist National Front (FN). On September 24, Manuel Valls stated: “The Roma should go back to Romania or Bulgaria and stay there.” The following day, he confirmed his words asserting: “I have no correction to make, my words only shock those who are ignorant of the issue.” [10/01/13]

Vony Rambolamanana: Leonarda, une parmi tant d'autres ■ Rappelons tout d'abord que l'asile est strictement encadré juridiquement. La convention de Genève du 28 juillet 1951 permet à toute personne arrivant en France, même de façon irrégulière, d'obtenir un titre de séjour provisoire afin de demander l'asile. Leonarda a fait partie de ceux-là et la récente tragédie de Lampedusa illustre l'acuité de cette question. En 2012, 55 000 demandeurs d'asile sont arrivés en France, dont des familles avec enfants (dont 14 000 demandes concernaient des mineurs accompagnants), ou plus rarement des mineurs isolés. Toutefois, le droit se heurte à une très officieuse pression politique, à la fois l'œuvre d'associations de défenseur des demandeurs d'asile mais surtout du gouvernement en place qui rappelle fréquemment que la France n'est pas en mesure d'accueillir tout le monde.