Criminal Prosecution and Accountability

By Agence France-Presse

CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt's public prosecutor on Sunday ordered ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his sons to be questioned over violence against protesters and alleged corruption, MENA state news agency reported.

"The public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud decided today to ask for the questioning of former president Hosni Mubarak and his sons Gamal and Alaa," the official news agency reported.

Mubarak and his sons would be questioned about allegations and legal complaints that they were "connected to the crimes of assault against protesters, leading to deaths and injuries," said MENA.

He would also be quizzed on allegations of graft, it added.

An estimated 800 people were killed in clashes with police and the former president's supporters during weeks of protests that led to Mubarak's resignation on February 11.

ProPublica just sent out the following, with some 886 Government Documents that were released by the Federal Reserve:

Search the Fed’s Documents Detailing Their Lending to Banks During the Crisis

Goldstone report: the unanswered questions

Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly Israel's state policy

By Linn Washington Jr.

Herman Garner doesn’t dispute the drug charge that slammed him in prison for nine years.

Garner does dispute the damning circumstance that doing the time for his crime still leaves him penalized despite his having ended his sentence in the penal system.

Garner carries the “former felon” stain.

That status slams employment doors shut in his face despite his having a MBA Degree and two years of law school.

“I’ve applied for jobs at thousands of places in person and on the internet, but I’m unable to get a job,” said Garner, a Cleveland, Ohio resident who recently published a book about his prison/life experiences titled Wavering Between Extremes.

Recently Garner joined hundreds of people attending a day-long conference at Princeton University entitled “Imprisonment Of A Race,” that featured presentations by scholars and experts on the devastating, multi-faceted impact of mass incarceration across America.

AFL-CIO blog site about rallies-link in graphic

If you thought you didn't have a reason to participate in the April 4th "We Are One" {face book page link} rallies around the country this report will certainly plant that needed seed as they continue trying to destroy what America once was building successfully, through it's workers!

60min. 3 April 2011, if you missed this it's a must watch and or read!

Adrian Hamilton: Don't let Libya distract us from what {bush} Blair did

2 April 2011 - A terrible thought has struck me. Could the excitement over the war in Libya serve to make Tony Blair look less awful and deprive the Chilcot inquiry of what little sting it may have when it finally publishes later this year?

Of course the Government, and the many MPs who supported military intervention, argue that this time is different, that they have learnt the lessons of Iraq, sought proper UN sanction and eschewed action on the ground.

By Charles M. Young

The prime minister of Japan has said that his government is “not in a position where we can be optimistic” about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Is there any logical conclusion to draw from that statement other than that a large chunk of Japan is going to be uninhabitable?

They’ve got four nuclear reactors right next to each other in various states of disaster and probably meltdown. Two more are damaged. The workers on site are exhausted, sick and dying. The ocean and air around the plant are highly radioactive. The surrounding farms are producing radioactive vegetables. The drinking water in Tokyo is radioactive. If the Fukushima reactors keep exploding and burning and blowing radiation into the reservoirs, how long before Tokyo becomes Jonestown with a population of 13,000,000?

Cleaning up our environment is not only related to climate change, it means cleaning up the damage done, and in many cases known to be damaging by the businesses and corporations who caused it, all around us, especially that which kills over time, shorter times!

And people talk about the Taliban or al Qaeda video's while condemning them and any who are of the religious ideology they profess to be while the supporters of these wars call us a christian Nation as we say "God Bless America"!

This Rolling Stone updated report has more of the very graphic photo's then Der Spiegal first posted along with two Very Graphic Video's you may or may not want to view!

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them

March 27, 2011 - Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.

Since its founding three years ago, High Road for Human Rights (www.highroadforhumanrights.org) has vigorously advocated for the restoration of the rule of law in the U.S. – for an end to torture, an end to felonious surveillance of U.S. citizens, accountability for illegal conduct by administration officials, and a commitment to a constitutional balance of power, where the courts once again provide a check on abuses of power by the other branches of government.

{This may not be put together well as I've got some thirty plus years of thoughts rushing through my head, have since watching this last night, as I lived in and watched all this go down and the growth of their total control, not only here but across this planet, as compared to the first some thirty years of growing into and starting in the working professions.}

That own our Government, now are covered under the First Amendment, and 'our' representatives fighting so hard for while now gaining millions in campaign contributions, from their real employers, because corporations are now individual citizens and can give unlimited funds to garner what all they want!

I thought foreign contributions to political campaigns were illegal, that's what all the tepublicans were screaming about any Democratic Candidate from President on down for these past decades!

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MADRID (AP) — A human rights group has filed suit in a European court on behalf of a Spanish judge who won international fame by indicting foreign dictators but who was indicted himself on charges that he exceeded his authority by investigating Spanish Civil War atrocities, the group said on Friday.

The group, Interights, which is based in London, filed the suit Thursday with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, on behalf of Judge Baltasar Garzón, who is internationally famous for cases in which he indicted, among others, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden.

"lived in fear of being killed by them every day."

By their actions, not only in killing civilians but the mistreatment of the bodies of those killed, they raised the bar of more retaliation and blowback, you can't hide atrocities and war crimes in a conflict theater, not only towards them but all the soldiers serving in the occupation as well as a rise in international criminal terrorism, it only takes a few!

JBLM Soldier Morlock Sentenced To 24 Years For Killing Afghan Civilians

March 23, 2011 - Spc. Jeremy Morlock, one of five 5th Stryker Brigade soldiers out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord facing military charges of premeditated murder while deployed in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in a general court-martial Wednesday and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

The experts{?} may eventually find a way to negotiate the foreign occupations way out of Afghanistan but they certainly won't be able to negotiate away the extreme rise in the hatreds created by the decade plus long quagmire of that country, especially those by the children who survived and grew up in the carnage of or in Iraq and the rest of that region, leaving it to become that quagmire of insurgent warfare by leaving to invade, destroy and occupy Iraq. Iraq itself is still ongoing after eight years, as the invaders and occupiers, in Afghanistan, didn't fulfill the initial so called goals related to 9/11 attach on the U.S., rid the country of the Taliban, capture bin Laden and others and minimize or destroy the so called al Qaeda and help the Afghans rebuild after decades of War, destruction and Occupation. Afghanistan stopped being about anything related to 9/11 as the first drumbeat of War was pointed at Iraq.

The first of five US soldiers charged with killing unarmed Afghan civilians last year has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of premeditated murder.

The guilty plea and sentencing of Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, of Wasilla, Alaska, marked a key turning point in the most serious prosecution of alleged US military atrocities during 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

German magazine Der Spiegel this week published several photos related to the killings, one showing Morlock crouched grinning over a bloodied corpse as he lifted the dead man's head by the hair for the camera.

The military judge presiding over the case, Lieutenant Colonel Kwasi Hawks, accepted Morlock's plea deal with prosecutors at the end of a day-long proceeding at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Garment workers around 1900. (Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, photographer unknown)

23 March 2011 - Turn back the clock on New York City’s garment district to around the year 1900.

“The average work week was 84 hours, 12 hours every day of the week,” said Ellen Rothman with the Jewish Women’s Archive in Brookline, Mass. “During the busy season, the grinding hum of sewing machines never entirely ceased day or night.”

 

VICTORY! Court Says Plaintiffs Can Challenge Bush Wiretapping Law

Mar 21st, 2011 - In a huge victory for privacy and the rule of law, a federal appeals court today reinstated our landmark lawsuit challenging the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), a statute that gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to collect Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls.

If the past decade plus didn't answer that question, after 9/11, as well as the one about our 'freedoms', because you didn't pay attention to what's done in your names over the decades, maybe these very recent news reports will jog that overwhelming arrogance and total apathy embedded in the minds of this country.

A friend of american christianity is back in the news.

Adding to the recruitment by more then just the actions within the occupations and wars of choice, the ongoing hateful actions and rhetoric. The fear from within under the guise of 'religious?' ideology followed by the hateful and intolerant. But this 'preacher?', and those like him, the rehadists (R), aren't 'fighting them over there' nor anywhere, those we send over and over are!!

Hundreds protest in support of crusading Spanish judge
MADRID (AFP) – Spanish actors, writers and union leaders joined a protest in Madrid by hundreds of people on Saturday in support of embattled Judge Baltasar Garzon, who was suspended last year pending a trial for abuse of power.

Behind a placard reading "Truth, Justice and Redress" and a picture of Garzon, speakers called for an end to the "persecution" of the judge, best known for his attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from Britain for human rights abuses in 1998.

"The quality of Spanish democracy will not be complete until this situation is resolved," the head of the CCOO union, Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, told the crowd in the Plaza Mayor, in Madrid's historic centre. Others addressing the gathering included actress Pilar Bardem, the mother of Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem, and the poet Marcos Ana, who was imprisoned under the Franco dictatorship.

A statement by the umbrella group "In Solidarity with Garzon" which organised the demonstration called for an end to "the attempt to criminalise the actions of the judge" and condemned the "unacceptable inaction" of the Spanish government and judiciary in the case.

U.S. and coalition forces launched missiles and bombs at targets in Iraq including a “decapitation attack” aimed at Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other top members of the country’s leadership.

There were nearly 300,000 American, British and other troops at the border.
President George W. Bush warned Americans that the conflict "could be longer and more difficult than some predict." He assured the nation that “this will not be a campaign of half-measures, and we will accept no outcome except victory.”

Read about the cost of this war

Timeline

This Week in Peace History

On 8th anniversary of “Shock and Awe” launching U.S. war on Iraq

WHAT: Protest Action, Speak-Out
“HADLEY IS A WAR CRIMINAL: NO MORE WAR CRIMES!”

WHEN: Saturday Mar. 19, 2011, 3:30 PM -- Rain or Shine

WHERE: World Affairs Council (Conference)
St. Regis Hotel, 125 3rd St. (next to Museum of Modern Art)
San Francisco

[NOTE: this event immediately follows antiwar mass rally and march beginning NOON at UN Plaza in San Francisco]

Stephen Hadley has recently headlined news (CNN and other outlets) of the volatile events in the Middle East, advocating U.S. aggression against Libya. Hadley will be the focus of anti-war protest this Saturday in San Francisco.

By Dave Lindorff

Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor indicted for the murder of two young Pakistani motorcyclists, whom he gunned down in the back in broad daylight through his car windshield in a busy section of Lahore, Pakistan, has been freed, after the payment of $2.34 million in “blood money,” called diyya, to relatives of the two slain men.

The surprise “deal,” which Pakistani news reports are saying appears to have been forced on the relatives of the two men, who up to March 15 had insisted they wanted no blood money, but only justice, was announced in a court session March 16 in Lahore, at which the prosecution’s case of murder was to have been presented.

It's a simple point, but an important one, and one that gets overlooked. Whether or not you think a particular war is moral and good, the fact remains that war is illegal. Actual defense by a country when attacked is legal, but that only occurs once another country has actually attacked, and it must not be used as a loophole to excuse wider war that is not employed in actual defense.

eighth anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq.

Yep, and it seems now that the U.S. media is trying to spin their own rovian revisionist history as to why they didn't do their jobs, eight years later!

And after all this time, questions still remain as to why the United States launched the war in the first place.

Really Simon, questions? Seems hundreds of thousands here with added millions, us 'focus groups', around this planet were questioning before, on the day the invasion started and all these years later, as well as paying attention to the better late then never Inquiries held as well as all the proof then and through these eight years. Where have all of you been?

http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/media/panor165.html

By Dave Lindorff

The people of Afghanistan know who was flying the two helicopter gunships that brutally hunted down and slaughtered, one by one, nine boys apparently as young as seven years old, as they gathered firewood on a hillside March 1. In angry demonstrations after the incident, they were shouting “Death to America.”

Americans are still blissfully unaware that their “heroes” in uniform are guilty of this obscene massacre. The ovine US corporate media has been reporting on this story based upon a gutless press release from the Pentagon which attributes the “mistake” to “NATO” helicopters.

The thing is, this terrible incident occurred in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, where US forces have for several years been battling Taliban forces, and from which region they are now in the process of withdrawing. Clearly then, it is US, and not “NATO” helicopters which have been responding to calls to attack “suspected Taliban forces.”

By Ben Ferencz

After listening to that great introduction, you must have expected someone to come in here ten feet tall. Well, I used to be ten feet tall, but the problems of the world wore me down.

You've heard from two courageous young authors, Sandy Davies and David Swanson. Everybody's young compared to me - I'm going to start my 92nd year in a couple of weeks. They have the courage to speak out and call the government liars and then list the specifics about it. In my introduction to Sandy’s book, Blood On Our Hands, I asked: "Whose blood? On whose hands?" It's your blood, young people. And whose hands? Well, those who are responsible.