A Pakistani court has ordered former president Pervez Musharraf's financial assets to be frozen and confiscated, a prosecutor said.
A hearing in Adiyala prison in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on Saturday ruled for his property to be confiscated and his Pakistani bank accounts to be frozen, Chaudhry Azhar, a public prosecutor, told the AFP news agency.
The hearing is adjourned until September 10, Azhar said.
Musharraf, the former military ruler, has been living in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since leaving office in 2008.
He is alleged to have been part of a "broad conspiracy" to have Benazir Bhutto, ex-premier and his political rival, killed in 2007 before presidential elections.
Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant in February over what they said was his failure to provide her with enough security.
The exact nature of the charges against him, however, has not so far been made clear.
"This is a criminal case and it’s most ridiculous that my name has been added because I’m supposed to have been in charge or that I failed to provide security," Musharraf told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
"In this, I have to appear personally in court [as] it can not be done through any lawyer appearing in the court."
"Because of many other reasons I am outside the country and I don’t want to appear in the court but when I go on the 23rd of March, when I go back to Pakistan I certainly will go in and appear in the court and answer questions," he said.
Bhutto was shot dead on December 27, 2007 as she was leaving an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
At the time, Musharraf's government blamed Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, for Bhutto's assassination.
Mehsud, who denied any involvement, was killed in a US drone attack in August 2009, one of the most high-profile casualties of the covert American campaign targeting al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border.
Bhutto, who served two terms as prime minister, had returned from exile two months before she was killed to stand for election.
Her widower Asif Ali Zardari led her Pakistan People's Party to election victory in February 2008 and is now president.
Social Justice: Current Affairs, Business, Politics, and all the reasons in the world to Thrive on Creative Discontent!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Candian Oil to the USA not soon enough....
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast, saying the project would provide a secure source of energy without significant damage to the environment.
In reaching its conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline from the oil sands deposits in Alberta would have minimal environmental impact, the administration dismissed criticism from environmental advocates, who said that extracting the oil would have a devastating impact on the climate and that a leak or rupture in the 36-inch-diameter pipeline could wreak ecological disaster. Opponents also said the project would prolong the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, threaten sensitive lands and wildlife and further delay development of clean energy sources.
The State Department said in an environmental impact statement that the pipeline’s owner, TransCanada, had reduced the risks of an accident to an acceptable level and that the benefits of importing oil from a friendly neighbor outweighed the potential costs.
Final approval of the $7 billion project will not come before the end of the year, after public hearings and consultation with other federal agencies. But the State Department report Friday gave the clearest signal yet that the administration was prepared to see Keystone proceed.
The pipeline is expected to open in 2013 unless delayed by lawsuits or other challenges.
For many in the environmental movement, the administration’s apparent acceptance of the pipeline was yet another disappointment, after recent decisions to tentatively approve drilling in the Arctic Ocean, to open 20 million more acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil leasing and to delay several major air quality regulations.
TransCanada has insisted that its pipeline will be as safe as any in North America. It has refused to change its application in the face of critics who say the half-inch thick pipe wall in the pipeline is insufficiently sturdy for maximum flow pressures, a claim the company denies.
TransCanada agreed to 57 conditions set by the Department of Transportation last spring, including burying the pipeline four feet below the surface, committing to frequent aerial and ground monitoring and setting the maximum distance between shut-off valves at 20 miles.
“We believe we are building the safest pipeline in North America,” said Terry Cunha, a TransCanada spokesman.
The Canadian government has lobbied hard for the pipeline extension, joining forces with oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil that have large investments in Canadian oil sands production. The future expansion of oil sands production is largely at stake since planned production growth could overwhelm current pipeline capacity in less than five years.
Gary Doer, the Canadian ambassador to the United States, said building the pipeline would produce 20,000 construction jobs and 100,000 additional indirect jobs in services and supplies. “It’s good for the U.S. economy, U.S. jobs and U.S. energy security,” he said. “If you ask Americans, would you choose Canada over the Middle East, they’d say yes.”
Mr. Doer said the carbon emissions from oil sands production and refining have declined by roughly 40 percent per barrel since1990, and further improvements were being developed. “We have to continue working on the sustainability of development,” he said. “We believe in clean water and air too.”
Canada, already the United States’ No. 1 source of imported oil, produced 1.5 million barrels a day of synthetic crude from oil sands in 2010 and hopes to expand that total to 2.2 million barrels in 2015 and then to 3.7 million barrels a day by 2025. That level of expansion will require not only the Keystone project, but also pipelines to the west coast of Canada, where the crude could be exported to China and the rest of Asia.
The Keystone expansion would increase Canada’s pipeline capacity by 700,000 barrels a day, roughly equivalent to the amount of oil Malaysia produces. Proponents say that would give a big lift to Canada’s economy, and increase trade between the two countries.
If Keystone is not ultimately approved, Canada could proceed with plans to build pipelines to its west coast to increase exports, but that would mean regulatory delays spurred by opposition from Native Canadian groups that have a large say in territories they occupy.
The Canadian Energy Research Institute, a research group with ties to the oil industry, estimates that the Keystone extension would mean more than $600 billion in additional investments and revenue from operations in existing and future oil sands projects through 2035.
According to IHS-Cera, a consultancy, carbon dioxide emissions from the oil sands, including the full cycle from production through combustion and exhaust from an automobile tailpipe, is greater than many Saudi, Mexican and Venezuela crudes but is comparable or even lower than heavy crudes produced in California, Nigeria and the Middle East and pumped in American gas stations.
UAE: So a Raped 18 yr old is to blame???? What is wrong with you??? Too much Sun!
A Muslim woman in Abu Dhabi who accused six men of gang rape -- and was consequently threatened with lashes for having premarital sex -- has retracted her allegations.
"According to court records the primary suspect, 19, called five of his friends – four Emiratis and one Iraqi – and invited them to join him."
Six men had been charged with the gang rape after a forensic examination.
Yet the woman, identified by the initials LH in news reports, retracted all of her accusatory statements in a hearing on Monday. If prosecuted and convicted for lying under oath she could face a punishment of up to two years in jail.
Dr. Theodore Karasik, a security analyst with Dubai-based think tank INEGMA, said the retraction was common in a legal system that can assign blame to victims of sexual assault.
"It's the nature of the law. The status here is that if a female is caught having illegal sex, no matter what the instance, this is seen as haram [forbidden]," he said.
An 18-year-old woman who told police she was the victim of a gang rape retracted her statement in a court hearing in Abu Dhabi, state newspaper The National reported. The woman had been charged with the crime of having sex out of wedlock after reporting the rape to police, and faced a sentence of lashes and jail time.
The case is latest high-profile prosecution on morality laws in the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier this year a couple was arrested for allegedly kissing in a Dubai restaurant, while neighboring Sharjah began a door-to-door campaign to catch unmarried couples cohabitating against the law.
In January a British woman told police she had been raped in a Dubai hotel, but she and her fiancé were instead arrested on accusations of having sex out of wedlock.
"These charges will make young women in the UAE, citizens and tourists alike, think twice about seeking justice and reporting sexual assaults for fear of being charged themselves," wrote Nadya Khalife, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, shortly after the hotel rape case became public.
"The message to women is clear: victims will be punished for speaking out and seeking justice, but sexual assault itself will not be properly investigated," Khalife said.
"According to court records the primary suspect, 19, called five of his friends – four Emiratis and one Iraqi – and invited them to join him."
Six men had been charged with the gang rape after a forensic examination.
Yet the woman, identified by the initials LH in news reports, retracted all of her accusatory statements in a hearing on Monday. If prosecuted and convicted for lying under oath she could face a punishment of up to two years in jail.
Dr. Theodore Karasik, a security analyst with Dubai-based think tank INEGMA, said the retraction was common in a legal system that can assign blame to victims of sexual assault.
"It's the nature of the law. The status here is that if a female is caught having illegal sex, no matter what the instance, this is seen as haram [forbidden]," he said.
An 18-year-old woman who told police she was the victim of a gang rape retracted her statement in a court hearing in Abu Dhabi, state newspaper The National reported. The woman had been charged with the crime of having sex out of wedlock after reporting the rape to police, and faced a sentence of lashes and jail time.
The case is latest high-profile prosecution on morality laws in the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier this year a couple was arrested for allegedly kissing in a Dubai restaurant, while neighboring Sharjah began a door-to-door campaign to catch unmarried couples cohabitating against the law.
In January a British woman told police she had been raped in a Dubai hotel, but she and her fiancé were instead arrested on accusations of having sex out of wedlock.
"These charges will make young women in the UAE, citizens and tourists alike, think twice about seeking justice and reporting sexual assaults for fear of being charged themselves," wrote Nadya Khalife, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, shortly after the hotel rape case became public.
"The message to women is clear: victims will be punished for speaking out and seeking justice, but sexual assault itself will not be properly investigated," Khalife said.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Syria: Assad must go!!! Now...
Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been using armoured columns against peaceful protests, tanks against hospitals, machine guns in mosques, and, reserving a special place for himself in hell, targeting children for torture and murder as a way of intimidating protesters.
The case of 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khatib, whose corpse was returned to his family smashed, burned, bullet-riddled and with his penis torn off, for the crime of having attended a protest march with his father, drew special revulsion in Syria and abroad.
But the people of Syria have shown a bravery and a fierce thirst for liberty that Assad could not have expected. An estimated 2000 people have been killed in the uprising to date. Protesters have started an ad hoc renaming of the streets of Syria's cities, with paper signs giving thoroughfares the names of "martyrs", demonstrators who have been killed by Assad's forces. There are many new street names appearing.
Violent repression is all Assad knows. He pretends to hold office through elections and, indeed, has won two of them with apparently remarkable support rates of 97 per cent of the vote. But he allows no one to run against him. He could never have won a real election. He is a member of the Alawite sect. This is an offshoot of Shia Islam, and a minority that makes up only about 7 per cent of the population. Three quarters of Syrians are Sunni Muslims.
Assad's father seized power in a coup in 1970. He was a ruthless dictator and is estimated to have killed some 20,000 Syrians in a bloodbath in the city of Hama when it resisted his rule. Bashar took over from his father in 2000 and is proving every bit as ruthless. But this time, it is not only one city rising up against the Assad dynasty. It is spreading to every city.
But as long as NATO was preoccupied with Gaddafi, Assad was able to operate with much less international scrutiny and pressure. That is about to change. "Assad has a very narrow window of time," wrote Jacques Neriah, former foreign policy adviser to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. "This window is more or less equal to the time in which Muammar Gaddafi remains in power. The moment Gaddafi steps down, Syria will experience all the attention of the Western powers, especially if the turmoil and armed suppression persist."
Assad deserves a great deal more attention, and not only because of his criminal brutality. The fall of Assad would be a great strategic prize. Assad's Syria is the only country in the Middle East that is a close ally of Iran. As the power of the US has waned in the Middle East, Iran has risen, a theocratic power with nuclear ambitions and thoughts of regional hegemony.
Syria is crucial to Iran's ambitions. Under Assad, Syria has helped Iran project power. It supports Iran's international militant network, Hezbollah, and has helped it to intimidate and influence Lebanon, which has become a client.
When Lebanon's plucky prime minister Rafiq Hariri stood up to Syrian interference through Syria's proxy, the president, Emile Lahoud, Assad allegedly threatened Hariri: "Lahoud is me. If you want me out of Lebanon, I will break Lebanon." Four months later, a massive car bomb killed Hariri and 21 others in central Beirut.
And Syria under Assad also supports the militant Hamas, whose political wing controls the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. Like Hezbollah, Hamas also operates a terrorist arm. Syria supplies military training, arms and money.
So even though Syria under Assad's Baath Party is a secular regime, it is nonetheless a linchpin of Shiite Islamist power and aggression throughout the Middle East.
To remove Assad would be to weaken Iran and to crimp its ambitions. It would also undermine its political and terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
The case of 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khatib, whose corpse was returned to his family smashed, burned, bullet-riddled and with his penis torn off, for the crime of having attended a protest march with his father, drew special revulsion in Syria and abroad.
But the people of Syria have shown a bravery and a fierce thirst for liberty that Assad could not have expected. An estimated 2000 people have been killed in the uprising to date. Protesters have started an ad hoc renaming of the streets of Syria's cities, with paper signs giving thoroughfares the names of "martyrs", demonstrators who have been killed by Assad's forces. There are many new street names appearing.
Violent repression is all Assad knows. He pretends to hold office through elections and, indeed, has won two of them with apparently remarkable support rates of 97 per cent of the vote. But he allows no one to run against him. He could never have won a real election. He is a member of the Alawite sect. This is an offshoot of Shia Islam, and a minority that makes up only about 7 per cent of the population. Three quarters of Syrians are Sunni Muslims.
Assad's father seized power in a coup in 1970. He was a ruthless dictator and is estimated to have killed some 20,000 Syrians in a bloodbath in the city of Hama when it resisted his rule. Bashar took over from his father in 2000 and is proving every bit as ruthless. But this time, it is not only one city rising up against the Assad dynasty. It is spreading to every city.
But as long as NATO was preoccupied with Gaddafi, Assad was able to operate with much less international scrutiny and pressure. That is about to change. "Assad has a very narrow window of time," wrote Jacques Neriah, former foreign policy adviser to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. "This window is more or less equal to the time in which Muammar Gaddafi remains in power. The moment Gaddafi steps down, Syria will experience all the attention of the Western powers, especially if the turmoil and armed suppression persist."
Assad deserves a great deal more attention, and not only because of his criminal brutality. The fall of Assad would be a great strategic prize. Assad's Syria is the only country in the Middle East that is a close ally of Iran. As the power of the US has waned in the Middle East, Iran has risen, a theocratic power with nuclear ambitions and thoughts of regional hegemony.
Syria is crucial to Iran's ambitions. Under Assad, Syria has helped Iran project power. It supports Iran's international militant network, Hezbollah, and has helped it to intimidate and influence Lebanon, which has become a client.
When Lebanon's plucky prime minister Rafiq Hariri stood up to Syrian interference through Syria's proxy, the president, Emile Lahoud, Assad allegedly threatened Hariri: "Lahoud is me. If you want me out of Lebanon, I will break Lebanon." Four months later, a massive car bomb killed Hariri and 21 others in central Beirut.
And Syria under Assad also supports the militant Hamas, whose political wing controls the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. Like Hezbollah, Hamas also operates a terrorist arm. Syria supplies military training, arms and money.
So even though Syria under Assad's Baath Party is a secular regime, it is nonetheless a linchpin of Shiite Islamist power and aggression throughout the Middle East.
To remove Assad would be to weaken Iran and to crimp its ambitions. It would also undermine its political and terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
UAE: Free the UAE 5
For the first time in the award’s ten-year history, Amnesty International today (25 August) announced two winners of its prestigious Freedom of Expression Award at the Edinburgh Fringe: Sold, directed by Catherine Alexander at the Pleasance Courtyard and The Wheel, directed by Vicky Featherstone at the Traverse.
The award, given to an outstanding Fringe production carrying a human rights message, in association with Fest magazine, was presented by Amnesty International Scotland Director John Watson. This year saw a record number of entries, with 92 productions nominated.
John Watson said:
“This was a year of firsts for the Freedom of Expression Award: the first time we’d had such a huge number of entries; the first comedian to be shortlisted in Mark Thomas; and our first joint winners, ‘Sold’ and ‘The Wheel’.
“With 92 productions entering for the award it’s perhaps fitting that we have two winners this year. Both are superb productions in quite different ways – but in both cases audiences are confronted with challenging questions about human rights.
“Amnesty marks its 50th birthday this year and protecting the right to freedom of expression has always been at the heart of our what we do. It’s why we’ve always worked so closely with artists and performers and it's why we’re delighted to be giving this award today.”
Judging the award were Joyce McMillan of the Scotsman and Neil Cooper of the Herald newspapers; academic, artist and researcher Stephanie Knight; Sam Friedman of Fest magazine and Amnesty International Scotland Director John Watson. The judging panel said of the two productions:
“The Wheel is a complex and epic story of how children can be corrupted by the ravages of war. By lurching through the centuries the way it does, it brings home the message that circumstances too often dictate how lives can go off the rails in a brilliantly performed, masterfully directed and profound piece of work that offers no easy answers except hope.”
"Sold is an ambitious, fast-moving show which combines a strong overview of the whole issue of slavery in human society with a series of powerful cameos of individual stories, involving trafficking into this country now. It's a memorable piece of agitprop drama which leaves us in no doubt that despite the increasing exposure of human trafficking in recent years, and widespread political debate on the issue, it is a problem that is not going away; in fact, if anything, it is growing worse, demanding real action from us all."
The other shortlisted productions were: Extreme Rambling (Walking the Wall), by Mark Thomas, at The Bongo Club; and Release, by Icon Theatre at the Pleasance Dome.
Amnesty’s involvement with the world’s largest arts festival is based on the celebration of freedom of expression and fighting for the rights of people whose free speech is denied. Amnesty’s 2011 Edinburgh Festival campaign is for the “UAE 5”, five men detained in the United Arab Emirates and charged with “insulting officials” after calling for democracy and criticising the government.
Amnesty is asking people at the festival to text (SMS) the word “FREEDOM” followed by their name to 81222 to join a petition, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the “UAE 5”, which will be presented to the United Arab Emirates’ embassy in London ahead of their trial, now set for the end of September. Amnesty campaigners are out on the streets of Edinburgh asking people to get involved.
The five men – blogger and political commentator Ahmed Mansoor, lecturer Nasser bin Ghaith and online activists Fahad Salim Dalk, Ahmed Abdul Khaleq and Hassan Ali al-Khamis - have been detained in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi since April. In June they were charged under article 176 of the Penal Code, which makes it a crime to publicly insult the country’s top officials. None of the men is known to have advocated any violence or change of government.
The award, given to an outstanding Fringe production carrying a human rights message, in association with Fest magazine, was presented by Amnesty International Scotland Director John Watson. This year saw a record number of entries, with 92 productions nominated.
John Watson said:
“This was a year of firsts for the Freedom of Expression Award: the first time we’d had such a huge number of entries; the first comedian to be shortlisted in Mark Thomas; and our first joint winners, ‘Sold’ and ‘The Wheel’.
“With 92 productions entering for the award it’s perhaps fitting that we have two winners this year. Both are superb productions in quite different ways – but in both cases audiences are confronted with challenging questions about human rights.
“Amnesty marks its 50th birthday this year and protecting the right to freedom of expression has always been at the heart of our what we do. It’s why we’ve always worked so closely with artists and performers and it's why we’re delighted to be giving this award today.”
Judging the award were Joyce McMillan of the Scotsman and Neil Cooper of the Herald newspapers; academic, artist and researcher Stephanie Knight; Sam Friedman of Fest magazine and Amnesty International Scotland Director John Watson. The judging panel said of the two productions:
“The Wheel is a complex and epic story of how children can be corrupted by the ravages of war. By lurching through the centuries the way it does, it brings home the message that circumstances too often dictate how lives can go off the rails in a brilliantly performed, masterfully directed and profound piece of work that offers no easy answers except hope.”
"Sold is an ambitious, fast-moving show which combines a strong overview of the whole issue of slavery in human society with a series of powerful cameos of individual stories, involving trafficking into this country now. It's a memorable piece of agitprop drama which leaves us in no doubt that despite the increasing exposure of human trafficking in recent years, and widespread political debate on the issue, it is a problem that is not going away; in fact, if anything, it is growing worse, demanding real action from us all."
The other shortlisted productions were: Extreme Rambling (Walking the Wall), by Mark Thomas, at The Bongo Club; and Release, by Icon Theatre at the Pleasance Dome.
Amnesty’s involvement with the world’s largest arts festival is based on the celebration of freedom of expression and fighting for the rights of people whose free speech is denied. Amnesty’s 2011 Edinburgh Festival campaign is for the “UAE 5”, five men detained in the United Arab Emirates and charged with “insulting officials” after calling for democracy and criticising the government.
Amnesty is asking people at the festival to text (SMS) the word “FREEDOM” followed by their name to 81222 to join a petition, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the “UAE 5”, which will be presented to the United Arab Emirates’ embassy in London ahead of their trial, now set for the end of September. Amnesty campaigners are out on the streets of Edinburgh asking people to get involved.
The five men – blogger and political commentator Ahmed Mansoor, lecturer Nasser bin Ghaith and online activists Fahad Salim Dalk, Ahmed Abdul Khaleq and Hassan Ali al-Khamis - have been detained in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi since April. In June they were charged under article 176 of the Penal Code, which makes it a crime to publicly insult the country’s top officials. None of the men is known to have advocated any violence or change of government.
Is it the month of being off by trillions???
WASHINGTON — Federal geologists published new estimates this week for the amount of natural gas that exists in a giant rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York to Virginia.
The shale formation has about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report from the United States Geological Survey. This is drastically lower than the 410 trillion cubic feet that was published earlier this year by the federal Energy Information Administration.
As a result, the Energy Information Administration, which is responsible for quantifying oil and gas supplies, has said it will slash its official estimate for the Marcellus Shale by nearly 80 percent, a move that is likely to generate new questions about how the agency calculates its estimates and why it was so far off in its projections.
The decision by the agency to lower the estimates comes amid growing scrutiny from Congress about how the administration calculates its numbers and why it depends on outside and industry-tied consultants to produce some of its reports.
Accurate estimates are important for lawmakers who are making long-term decisions about subsidies and policies relating to the nation’s energy mix. They are also essential for landowners and investors as they decide where and whether to lease their land to drillers or invest in gas companies. Some market analysts say that the large differences between public estimates for natural gas resources provide further evidence that there may be more risk and uncertainty involved with gas drilling than many investors realize. Amid growing questions about the administration’s research, Howard K. Gruenspecht, the agency’s acting director, appeared before Congress in July to reiterate that, despite some uncertainties, his agency’s estimates were accurate.
The shale formation has about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report from the United States Geological Survey. This is drastically lower than the 410 trillion cubic feet that was published earlier this year by the federal Energy Information Administration.
As a result, the Energy Information Administration, which is responsible for quantifying oil and gas supplies, has said it will slash its official estimate for the Marcellus Shale by nearly 80 percent, a move that is likely to generate new questions about how the agency calculates its estimates and why it was so far off in its projections.
The decision by the agency to lower the estimates comes amid growing scrutiny from Congress about how the administration calculates its numbers and why it depends on outside and industry-tied consultants to produce some of its reports.
Accurate estimates are important for lawmakers who are making long-term decisions about subsidies and policies relating to the nation’s energy mix. They are also essential for landowners and investors as they decide where and whether to lease their land to drillers or invest in gas companies. Some market analysts say that the large differences between public estimates for natural gas resources provide further evidence that there may be more risk and uncertainty involved with gas drilling than many investors realize. Amid growing questions about the administration’s research, Howard K. Gruenspecht, the agency’s acting director, appeared before Congress in July to reiterate that, despite some uncertainties, his agency’s estimates were accurate.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
UAE Rape of Expat Women
A QUEENSLAND woman spent eight months in a United Arab Emirates jail for adultery after complaining to police about being drugged and raped by co-workers.
Alicia Gali, 29, yesterday detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a Queensland lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack took place in 2008.
Warning other women against going to the UAE, Ms Gali said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities of being raped.
"These countries don't have the same laws as us. You can end up in serious trouble," she said.
Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Ms Gali had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media.
"It was just traumatising," she said.
"Everything that happened was the worst thing that somebody could go through."
"You're just totally alone in a foreign country, with no assistance from your employer or the embassy."
Ms Gali, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put ice in her drink.
She said it was the last thing she remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries.
"I didn't know what had happened. I was traumatised, I felt ill. I didn't even remember getting there or what had happened," Ms Gali said.
She said it was only when she took herself to hospital did she realise she had been sexually assaulted.
Later she learned she had been heard screaming and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious.
When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge.
"I realised when I was put in a police car that I was being taken to jail."
Ms Gali said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslim witnesses.
"I didn't even know what the charges were until five months into my sentence," Ms Gali said.
After serving eight months of a 12-month sentence, Ms Gali was pardoned and released and flew home in March 2009.
Since then she has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder, suffered claustrophobia and flashbacks.
"I felt depressed, angry and confused," she said.
"I was the victim. I'd had something wrong done to me and I was being punished."
Law firm Maurice Blackburn on Thursday filed a damages claim in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, alleging Ms Gali's employer failed to warn her of the risk of being drugged, raped, charged with adultery and jailed if she complained.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/queensland-woman-tells-of-her-jail-hell-in-united-arab-emirates/story-e6frfq80-1226028892697#ixzz1Vzjfn8vH
Alicia Gali, 29, yesterday detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a Queensland lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack took place in 2008.
Warning other women against going to the UAE, Ms Gali said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities of being raped.
"These countries don't have the same laws as us. You can end up in serious trouble," she said.
Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Ms Gali had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media.
"It was just traumatising," she said.
"Everything that happened was the worst thing that somebody could go through."
"You're just totally alone in a foreign country, with no assistance from your employer or the embassy."
Ms Gali, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put ice in her drink.
She said it was the last thing she remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries.
"I didn't know what had happened. I was traumatised, I felt ill. I didn't even remember getting there or what had happened," Ms Gali said.
She said it was only when she took herself to hospital did she realise she had been sexually assaulted.
Later she learned she had been heard screaming and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious.
When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge.
"I realised when I was put in a police car that I was being taken to jail."
Ms Gali said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslim witnesses.
"I didn't even know what the charges were until five months into my sentence," Ms Gali said.
After serving eight months of a 12-month sentence, Ms Gali was pardoned and released and flew home in March 2009.
Since then she has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder, suffered claustrophobia and flashbacks.
"I felt depressed, angry and confused," she said.
"I was the victim. I'd had something wrong done to me and I was being punished."
Law firm Maurice Blackburn on Thursday filed a damages claim in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, alleging Ms Gali's employer failed to warn her of the risk of being drugged, raped, charged with adultery and jailed if she complained.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/queensland-woman-tells-of-her-jail-hell-in-united-arab-emirates/story-e6frfq80-1226028892697#ixzz1Vzjfn8vH
UAE Unlawful Arrest
The ongoing ordeal of a U.S. businessman who has been rotting in a Emirate’s jail for more than three years, deprived of his civil rights, should serve as a warning to Americans and Westerners alike doing business with Emirate’s, a constituent monarchy of United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Shahin, a U.S. citizen, is just one of many foreigners who make up 80-95% of Emirate’s's 2.3 million residents. Until his arrest, Shahin was CEO of Deyaar Realty, once Emirate’s's second largest real estate developer, which, like Emirate’s's entire real-estate sector, was hit hard by the global economic recession.
Shahin was arrested without warrant or indictment in March 2008. Sources familiar with the case reported that he was held incommunicado for over two weeks, while his house and office were ransacked and his documents confiscated. He was deprived of food, water, sleep and access to a toilet for days. The brutality inflicted on Shahin caused his poor health to worsen, requiring him to undergo two major surgeries. After thirteen months he was charged with bribery, fraud and embezzlement
Shahin was forced to sign documents he did not understand, because of threats that his wife will be jailed and his children will be sent to a shelter. When finally "released" on bail, Shahin was promptly rearrested on newly trumped-up charges and still languishes in jail. Meanwhile, the Emirate’s government and its autocratic ruling family have ignored entreaties by the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador and members of Congress to discuss Shahin's plight. A letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to UAE's Ambassador asking him to intervene to ensure Shahin's health and safety while in prison remains unanswered nearly two years since it was delivered.
Shahin's Kafkaesque detention is not unusual in Emirate’s, where a growing number of foreigners are being subjected to the country's arcane Islamic legal codes and stripped of Western consideration for civil and human rights. The U.S. Department of State 2009 Human Rights Report for U.A.E., states: "while the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention... there were reports that the government held persons in official custody without charge or a preliminary judicial hearing...[and] There were also reports of prison guard brutality." Moreover, the report notes: "court decisions remained subject to review by the political leadership."
Other victimized foreigners are Canadians Karen and Daniel Andrews. The husband, Daniel, a senior executive at a multinational company, was lured to Emirate’s in 2005 by the promise of "paradise in the desert." They had a rude awaking when they lost everything. In a sobering account in The Independent, in April 2009, on "The Dark Side of Emirate’s," Karen noted, "The thing you have to understand about Emirate’s is -- nothing is what it seems. Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing -- a modern kind of place -- but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
These accounts are far from revealing the full array of substantive and procedural violations of due process and of basic decency Emirate’s has perpetrated on Shahin, the Andrews, and many other foreigners. Lured by the glitzy façade, Westerners have not been contemplating the Emirate's lack of transparency and its growing abuse of foreigners.
The number of foreign businessmen detained in Emirate’s is unknown, as the local authorities do not release such information. But media reports from Europe, the U.S., and other countries that supply the bankers, businessmen, engineers and others who labor to further Emirate’s's riches, reveal that such arrests have spiked since the Emirate's economic bubble burst in 2008. Foreigners should be especially wary, as Emirate’s's banking and economy are still on the decline, contrary to repeated assurances from local officials.
Still, Emirate’s's Western trappings and its well-crafted façade of the golden city in the desert continue to lure foreigners. But like every Arabian Desert mirage, many wake up with a mouthful of sand, and their life in shambles.
Shahin, a U.S. citizen, is just one of many foreigners who make up 80-95% of Emirate’s's 2.3 million residents. Until his arrest, Shahin was CEO of Deyaar Realty, once Emirate’s's second largest real estate developer, which, like Emirate’s's entire real-estate sector, was hit hard by the global economic recession.
Shahin was arrested without warrant or indictment in March 2008. Sources familiar with the case reported that he was held incommunicado for over two weeks, while his house and office were ransacked and his documents confiscated. He was deprived of food, water, sleep and access to a toilet for days. The brutality inflicted on Shahin caused his poor health to worsen, requiring him to undergo two major surgeries. After thirteen months he was charged with bribery, fraud and embezzlement
Shahin was forced to sign documents he did not understand, because of threats that his wife will be jailed and his children will be sent to a shelter. When finally "released" on bail, Shahin was promptly rearrested on newly trumped-up charges and still languishes in jail. Meanwhile, the Emirate’s government and its autocratic ruling family have ignored entreaties by the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador and members of Congress to discuss Shahin's plight. A letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to UAE's Ambassador asking him to intervene to ensure Shahin's health and safety while in prison remains unanswered nearly two years since it was delivered.
Shahin's Kafkaesque detention is not unusual in Emirate’s, where a growing number of foreigners are being subjected to the country's arcane Islamic legal codes and stripped of Western consideration for civil and human rights. The U.S. Department of State 2009 Human Rights Report for U.A.E., states: "while the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention... there were reports that the government held persons in official custody without charge or a preliminary judicial hearing...[and] There were also reports of prison guard brutality." Moreover, the report notes: "court decisions remained subject to review by the political leadership."
Other victimized foreigners are Canadians Karen and Daniel Andrews. The husband, Daniel, a senior executive at a multinational company, was lured to Emirate’s in 2005 by the promise of "paradise in the desert." They had a rude awaking when they lost everything. In a sobering account in The Independent, in April 2009, on "The Dark Side of Emirate’s," Karen noted, "The thing you have to understand about Emirate’s is -- nothing is what it seems. Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing -- a modern kind of place -- but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
These accounts are far from revealing the full array of substantive and procedural violations of due process and of basic decency Emirate’s has perpetrated on Shahin, the Andrews, and many other foreigners. Lured by the glitzy façade, Westerners have not been contemplating the Emirate's lack of transparency and its growing abuse of foreigners.
The number of foreign businessmen detained in Emirate’s is unknown, as the local authorities do not release such information. But media reports from Europe, the U.S., and other countries that supply the bankers, businessmen, engineers and others who labor to further Emirate’s's riches, reveal that such arrests have spiked since the Emirate's economic bubble burst in 2008. Foreigners should be especially wary, as Emirate’s's banking and economy are still on the decline, contrary to repeated assurances from local officials.
Still, Emirate’s's Western trappings and its well-crafted façade of the golden city in the desert continue to lure foreigners. But like every Arabian Desert mirage, many wake up with a mouthful of sand, and their life in shambles.
Secrets…but secrets about how your being governed…menacing complexity….how very Kafkaesque
If U.S. Rep. Ron Paul accomplishes nothing else in his campaign for the presidency, he has kept a needed spotlight on how quick we are as a nation to trade away our liberties for small measures of additional security.
In Iowa last weekend, where Paul came in second in the Republican Party’s straw poll, he consistently pressed a message that thrilled the party’s libertarian wing but annoyed the rest of them. The Patriot Act, he said — a law passed in a panic just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that dramatically expands the government’s authority to spy on citizens — is dangerously unconstitutional.
“The Patriot Act is an attack on our liberties and the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “We cannot protect liberty by taking liberty away from the American people.”
Criticism of the Patriot Act at this point might seem a little late, given that Congress and President Barack Obama reauthorized the law in May for another four years. But any debate that thoughtfully addresses the inherent tension in a democracy between personal freedoms and national security is never too little or too late.
Secret interpretation
And while the Patriot Act will remain the law of the land until at least 2015, civil libertarians are pushing the Obama administration to reveal its secret written interpretation of this law and of a related surveillance law. Two U.S. senators with insider knowledge, as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warn that Americans would be appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do.
The Patriot Act arguably runs afoul of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights in any number of ways, a particularly good example being the so-called “library records provision.” Under this provision — Section 215 — the FBI can obtain a court order forcing libraries and businesses to produce “any tangible things” that might assist in a terrorism investigation. Examples offered in the law include “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.”
On the face of it, this might not seem objectionable. Of course government needs access to records in terrorism investigations, and grand juries and the police have long had access to such records in criminal investigations. Defenders of Section 215 point to how the grand jury investigating the 1996 bombing in Atlanta’s Olympic Park subpoenaed bookseller records to show that a suspect, Eric Rudolph, bought a book on bombs.
Too wide a net
But unlike in a criminal investigation, the Patriot Act allows the FBI access to private records — “any tangible things” — even if the person targeted has been connected to no illegal activity at all, let alone terrorism. The only requirement is that the materials being sought must be “connected to” or “relevant to” an ongoing investigation. The law allows the FBI to cast too wide a net.
“The government might ask for ‘all the phone records’ of everyone making a call to Saudi Arabia last month or last year, or all the records of computer searches on ‘jihad’ or all records of people flying to Frankfurt,” said James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology. “A judge might approve those requests as ‘relevant.’ ”
In this respect, Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing “probable cause” that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
Section 215 further violates the Fourth Amendment, the American Civil Liberties Union argues, by failing to require that the FBI inform a person — even after the fact — that his or her privacy has been compromised. That is to say, should the feds decide to snoop into the paper trail of your life, you need not be told and may never know.
But if the FBI is checking out, say, the emails you wrote on a computer at your local library, couldn’t the librarian tell you? No. Section 215 places a gag order on the librarian, a fairly obvious infringement on the librarian’s First Amendment’s right to free speech.
“It simply could be a relationship with someone caught up in an investigation,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
Our inclination is to see the glass half empty and oppose this potentially dangerous infringement on the First Amendment. We have little confidence that it would not be — or, for that matter, has not been — abused by government agents. We remember too well the guilt-by-association communist witch hunts of the 1950s and the Chicago Police Red Squad surveillance of political organizations during the 1970s.
At the moment, perhaps the most pressing issue with respect to Section 215 is how broadly it is being interpreted by the Obama administration — we just don’t know. But Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, apparently have read the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of the law — possibly written during the Bush administration — and are deeply troubled by it. When Congress returns to Washington in the fall, they vow, they will push to have this document made public. They also will call for making public the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of government powers under the related Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act,” Wyden warned on the Senate floor in May, “they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
The American people deserve to know, without further delay, how the White House is interpreting these powerful laws that allow spying on law-abiding citizens.
A vigilant knowledgeable public is the best check against government infringements on our liberties.
In Iowa last weekend, where Paul came in second in the Republican Party’s straw poll, he consistently pressed a message that thrilled the party’s libertarian wing but annoyed the rest of them. The Patriot Act, he said — a law passed in a panic just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that dramatically expands the government’s authority to spy on citizens — is dangerously unconstitutional.
“The Patriot Act is an attack on our liberties and the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “We cannot protect liberty by taking liberty away from the American people.”
Criticism of the Patriot Act at this point might seem a little late, given that Congress and President Barack Obama reauthorized the law in May for another four years. But any debate that thoughtfully addresses the inherent tension in a democracy between personal freedoms and national security is never too little or too late.
Secret interpretation
And while the Patriot Act will remain the law of the land until at least 2015, civil libertarians are pushing the Obama administration to reveal its secret written interpretation of this law and of a related surveillance law. Two U.S. senators with insider knowledge, as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warn that Americans would be appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do.
The Patriot Act arguably runs afoul of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights in any number of ways, a particularly good example being the so-called “library records provision.” Under this provision — Section 215 — the FBI can obtain a court order forcing libraries and businesses to produce “any tangible things” that might assist in a terrorism investigation. Examples offered in the law include “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.”
On the face of it, this might not seem objectionable. Of course government needs access to records in terrorism investigations, and grand juries and the police have long had access to such records in criminal investigations. Defenders of Section 215 point to how the grand jury investigating the 1996 bombing in Atlanta’s Olympic Park subpoenaed bookseller records to show that a suspect, Eric Rudolph, bought a book on bombs.
Too wide a net
But unlike in a criminal investigation, the Patriot Act allows the FBI access to private records — “any tangible things” — even if the person targeted has been connected to no illegal activity at all, let alone terrorism. The only requirement is that the materials being sought must be “connected to” or “relevant to” an ongoing investigation. The law allows the FBI to cast too wide a net.
“The government might ask for ‘all the phone records’ of everyone making a call to Saudi Arabia last month or last year, or all the records of computer searches on ‘jihad’ or all records of people flying to Frankfurt,” said James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology. “A judge might approve those requests as ‘relevant.’ ”
In this respect, Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing “probable cause” that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
Section 215 further violates the Fourth Amendment, the American Civil Liberties Union argues, by failing to require that the FBI inform a person — even after the fact — that his or her privacy has been compromised. That is to say, should the feds decide to snoop into the paper trail of your life, you need not be told and may never know.
But if the FBI is checking out, say, the emails you wrote on a computer at your local library, couldn’t the librarian tell you? No. Section 215 places a gag order on the librarian, a fairly obvious infringement on the librarian’s First Amendment’s right to free speech.
“It simply could be a relationship with someone caught up in an investigation,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
Our inclination is to see the glass half empty and oppose this potentially dangerous infringement on the First Amendment. We have little confidence that it would not be — or, for that matter, has not been — abused by government agents. We remember too well the guilt-by-association communist witch hunts of the 1950s and the Chicago Police Red Squad surveillance of political organizations during the 1970s.
At the moment, perhaps the most pressing issue with respect to Section 215 is how broadly it is being interpreted by the Obama administration — we just don’t know. But Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, apparently have read the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of the law — possibly written during the Bush administration — and are deeply troubled by it. When Congress returns to Washington in the fall, they vow, they will push to have this document made public. They also will call for making public the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of government powers under the related Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act,” Wyden warned on the Senate floor in May, “they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
The American people deserve to know, without further delay, how the White House is interpreting these powerful laws that allow spying on law-abiding citizens.
A vigilant knowledgeable public is the best check against government infringements on our liberties.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Torture brought to you by Siemens and Nokia in Bahrain!!!
The interrogation of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar followed a pattern.
First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground in the Persian Gulf kingdom’s National Security Apparatus building. Then, they dragged him upstairs for questioning by a uniformed officer armed with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations, he says.
If he refused to sufficiently explain his communications, he was sent back for more beatings, says Al Khanjar, who was detained from August 2010 to February.
“It was amazing,” he says of the messages they obtained. “How did they know about these?”
The answer: Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England.
Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.
“The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.”
The images of the Arab spring crackdowns earlier this year unnerved Nikhil Gyamlani, who as a consultant for Trovicor and Nokia Siemens had developed monitoring systems and sold them to some of the countries. The authorities jammed or restricted communications to stymie gatherings and knew where to send riot police before a protest could even start, according to eyewitness reports.
At least 30 people have been killed so far in this year’s uprising in Bahrain, a U.S. ally situated between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Security forces beat paramedics, doctors and nurses who treated the wounded, and prosecutors have charged dozens of medical workers with crimes such as “incitement against the regime,” according to Human Rights Watch. In June, the U.S. put Bahrain on its list of human rights violators.
The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.
Uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain have drawn strength from technologies such as social-networking sites and mobile-phone videos. Yet, the flip side of the technology that played a part in this year’s “Facebook revolutions” may be far more forceful.
Rulers fought back, exploiting their citizens’ digital connections with increasingly intrusive tools.
They’ve tapped a market that’s worth more than $3 billion a year, according to Jerry Lucas, president of McLean, Virginia- based TeleStrategies Inc., organizer of the ISS World trade shows for intelligence and lawful interception businesses. He derives that estimate by applying per-employee revenue figures from publicly traded Verint’s lawful intercept business across the mostly privately held industry.
In the hands of autocrats, the surveillance gear is providing unprecedented power to monitor and crush dissent -- a phenomenon that Ben Wagner of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, calls “push-button autocracy.”
Besides Bahrain, several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year -- including Egypt, Syria and Yemen -- also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor. Trovicor equipment plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations.
Trovicor’s precursor, which started in 1993 as the voice- and data-recording unit of Siemens, in 2007 became part of Nokia Siemens Networks, the world’s second biggest maker of wireless communications equipment. NSN, a 50-50 joint venture with Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), sold the unit, known as Intelligence Solutions, in March 2009. The new owners, Guernsey-based Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, renamed the business Trovicor, coined from the Latin and Esperanto words for find and heart, according to the company’s website.
Bahrain is confronting alleged human rights violations through the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, a panel established in June by royal decree to probe the recent violence, says government spokesman Abdul-Aziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, the international counselor at Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority. Since July 24, the commission has recorded 140 allegations of physical abuse and torture, according to an Aug. 10 statement on its website.
The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and other human rights activists have blamed Nokia Siemens for aiding government repression. In 2009, the company disclosed that it sold a monitoring center to Iran, prompting hearings in the European Parliament, proposals for tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with Iran, and an international “No to Nokia” boycott campaign.
In Bahrain, officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He says he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members.
“Everyone was interrogated based on telephone calls that were checked -- and not only us, the activists,” he says. “Even our children, our wives, our sisters are being monitored.”
At Bahrain’s telecommunications regulator, Aldoseri says monitoring technology is used only by order of legal authorities such as judges and prosecutors. A former fighter pilot, Aldoseri, 33, led the drafting of Bahrain’s 2009 regulations for lawful interception.
Available online, the regulations make clear that every phone and Internet operator must provide the state with the ability to monitor communications. Phone companies also must track the location of phones within a 164-foot (50-meter) radius, the rules say.
For Bahraini security agents, monitoring centers are essential for gathering and printing text messages and other transmissions, Aldoseri says.
During the Arab spring, it was easy to spot the company’s fingerprints, says Gyamlani. Tuning in to Germany’s N24 news channel at his home in Munich, he immediately suspected that governments were abusing systems he’d installed.
Failed uprisings stood out to him because of the way the authorities quashed unrest before it spread, says Gyamlani, a native of India who moved to Germany 12 years ago to study and work.
Visitors to Trovicor’s headquarters on the third floor of a glass office building in Munich are greeted by a life-size statue of the company’s mascot -- a stalking panther -- by the reception desk. The mascot is a carryover from the Nokia Siemens unit, as were most of the company’s roughly 170 workers, current and former employees say.
Al Khanjar, the Bahraini activist beaten during interrogations about his text messages, is in hiding today. He says he’s reluctant to communicate by mobile phone and takes calls using Skype on a computer with software that disguises its location. The Internet connection is his only way of communicating with his wife and 9-year-old son.
“I’m hidden somewhere,” he says. “I’m unfortunately in Bahrain. They’re going to kill me. What to do? What to do?”
Al Khanjar took up the anti-torture cause after being detained and interrogated for six days in 2000. His jailers handcuffed him, hung him from a stick “like a goat” and beat the soles of his feet, he says.
He’s now spokesman for the government-banned Bahraini National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture. He and other activists have documented the security service’s human rights violations for a decade, he says. His activism includes work with the United Nations Committee Against Torture and appearances on Qatar’s Al Jazeera channel.
Al Khanjar says that on Aug. 15, 2010, three days after he returned from speaking about human rights to a committee at the House of Lords in London, plainclothes police knocked on his door in Bahrain at about 2:30 a.m. It was the start of a six- month ordeal.
For his first 85 days or so in custody, Al Khanjar saw no one from the outside, he says. For one agonizing stretch, his jailers forced him to stand without sleeping for five days. At other times they beat him with hoses and their hands and threatened him with sexual abuse, he says.
“They had collected their information from tracking calls,” he says, including whom he spoke with and what they said. “They told me a lot of things about our activities in the human rights field and political activities I’d participated in.”
And they showed him several pages of transcripts of his text messages. An interrogator held the papers in front of Al Khanjar, pointing out the Arabic words printed in black ink on white paper and reading aloud details such as the dates and recipients of the texts, he says.
Al Khanjar says he sent one of the messages on June 9, 2009, after a flight to Qatar to visit a friend. His trip was thwarted when Qatar refused him entry at the Bahrain government’s request. He suspected that his appearances on the satellite news channel, based in Qatar, explained the Bahraini government’s interest in his travel there. Al Khanjar fired off the text to a fellow activist. “What happened to me is because of Al Jazeera,” it read.
More than a year later, when Al Khanjar was in jail, authorities seized on a transcript of that message, asking what he meant by it, particularly the reference to Al Jazeera, he says. Suspicious of his explanation, officers threatened to put him in a solitary confinement cell with no toilet two floors down -- the same floor where they tortured prisoners.
“You cannot hear anything,” Al Khanjar says. “You don’t know the time. You don’t know if it’s day or night. No windows.”
Only after overhearing officers refer in radio chatter among themselves to their national security building as Jazeera did he conclude their interest in his innocuous text message was a misunderstanding that he had been making a reference to their facilities.
“They thought that I knew something about their code,” he says.
A prosecutor charged Al Khanjar with crimes that included establishing a group in violation of the law and inciting and participating in unauthorized meetings of more than five people for the purpose of undermining national security, according to a copy of the indictment translated by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
An arm of the England and Wales lawyers association, the committee sent a delegation to Bahrain that observed an Oct. 28, 2010, hearing in the case against Al Khanjar and 22 others arrested at the same time.
The detainees testified about being tortured while in custody, according to the bar committee’s February 2011 report: beatings, particularly to the legs and ears; being kept in stress positions or naked for prolonged periods; hanging in a position called falaqa in which the detainee is suspended from a bar and the soles of his feet beaten; and, in some cases, sexual abuse.
The actions violated both international law and the laws of Bahrain, the report concluded. “Credible and pervasive allegations of mistreatment and torture, which are dismissed as fabrication by the Public Prosecutor, completely undermine the rule of law,” it stated.
A separate military tribunal later tried him and others -- many, like him, in absentia -- and convicted them on charges that included trying to overthrow the government. Al Khanjar, who denies the charges in this and the earlier case, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Company executives understood that they had the only monitoring-center computers in the country, based on conversations with Bahraini officials, one of those familiar with the situation says.
Schaake, 32, who represents the Netherlands in the European Parliament, says companies should be barred from exporting such equipment to countries with poor human rights records. U.S. and EU export laws and UN sanctions control just a narrow slice of technology such as weapons systems or data encryption. International embargoes that cover a broader range of equipment target only a small circle of the worst actors, such as Myanmar and North Korea.
“It is time for more pressure, for more transparency and accountability when it comes to these products and services,” Schaake says. As a first step, Schaake says surveillance systems involving information and communications technology should join military items such as missile parts on lists of restricted exports.
Schaake helped to sponsor a parliamentary resolution in February 2010 that called for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, to ban exports of such technology to regimes that could abuse it. The commission hasn’t implemented the nonbinding resolution.
The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2010 barring federal contracts with any businesses that sold monitoring gear to Iran. An investigation ordered by Congress and completed in June by the Government Accountability Office was unable to identify any companies supplying the technology to Iran, partly because the business is so secretive, the agency reported.
“The United Nations should put pressure on those companies that supply equipment to these tyrant regimes,” he says.
Bahraini government regulator Aldoseri says the companies are all too happy to sell the equipment regardless of what happens once it’s installed.
First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground in the Persian Gulf kingdom’s National Security Apparatus building. Then, they dragged him upstairs for questioning by a uniformed officer armed with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations, he says.
If he refused to sufficiently explain his communications, he was sent back for more beatings, says Al Khanjar, who was detained from August 2010 to February.
“It was amazing,” he says of the messages they obtained. “How did they know about these?”
The answer: Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England.
Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.
“The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.”
The images of the Arab spring crackdowns earlier this year unnerved Nikhil Gyamlani, who as a consultant for Trovicor and Nokia Siemens had developed monitoring systems and sold them to some of the countries. The authorities jammed or restricted communications to stymie gatherings and knew where to send riot police before a protest could even start, according to eyewitness reports.
At least 30 people have been killed so far in this year’s uprising in Bahrain, a U.S. ally situated between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Security forces beat paramedics, doctors and nurses who treated the wounded, and prosecutors have charged dozens of medical workers with crimes such as “incitement against the regime,” according to Human Rights Watch. In June, the U.S. put Bahrain on its list of human rights violators.
The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.
Uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain have drawn strength from technologies such as social-networking sites and mobile-phone videos. Yet, the flip side of the technology that played a part in this year’s “Facebook revolutions” may be far more forceful.
Rulers fought back, exploiting their citizens’ digital connections with increasingly intrusive tools.
They’ve tapped a market that’s worth more than $3 billion a year, according to Jerry Lucas, president of McLean, Virginia- based TeleStrategies Inc., organizer of the ISS World trade shows for intelligence and lawful interception businesses. He derives that estimate by applying per-employee revenue figures from publicly traded Verint’s lawful intercept business across the mostly privately held industry.
In the hands of autocrats, the surveillance gear is providing unprecedented power to monitor and crush dissent -- a phenomenon that Ben Wagner of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, calls “push-button autocracy.”
Besides Bahrain, several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year -- including Egypt, Syria and Yemen -- also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor. Trovicor equipment plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations.
Trovicor’s precursor, which started in 1993 as the voice- and data-recording unit of Siemens, in 2007 became part of Nokia Siemens Networks, the world’s second biggest maker of wireless communications equipment. NSN, a 50-50 joint venture with Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), sold the unit, known as Intelligence Solutions, in March 2009. The new owners, Guernsey-based Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, renamed the business Trovicor, coined from the Latin and Esperanto words for find and heart, according to the company’s website.
Bahrain is confronting alleged human rights violations through the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, a panel established in June by royal decree to probe the recent violence, says government spokesman Abdul-Aziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, the international counselor at Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority. Since July 24, the commission has recorded 140 allegations of physical abuse and torture, according to an Aug. 10 statement on its website.
The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and other human rights activists have blamed Nokia Siemens for aiding government repression. In 2009, the company disclosed that it sold a monitoring center to Iran, prompting hearings in the European Parliament, proposals for tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with Iran, and an international “No to Nokia” boycott campaign.
In Bahrain, officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He says he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members.
“Everyone was interrogated based on telephone calls that were checked -- and not only us, the activists,” he says. “Even our children, our wives, our sisters are being monitored.”
At Bahrain’s telecommunications regulator, Aldoseri says monitoring technology is used only by order of legal authorities such as judges and prosecutors. A former fighter pilot, Aldoseri, 33, led the drafting of Bahrain’s 2009 regulations for lawful interception.
Available online, the regulations make clear that every phone and Internet operator must provide the state with the ability to monitor communications. Phone companies also must track the location of phones within a 164-foot (50-meter) radius, the rules say.
For Bahraini security agents, monitoring centers are essential for gathering and printing text messages and other transmissions, Aldoseri says.
During the Arab spring, it was easy to spot the company’s fingerprints, says Gyamlani. Tuning in to Germany’s N24 news channel at his home in Munich, he immediately suspected that governments were abusing systems he’d installed.
Failed uprisings stood out to him because of the way the authorities quashed unrest before it spread, says Gyamlani, a native of India who moved to Germany 12 years ago to study and work.
Visitors to Trovicor’s headquarters on the third floor of a glass office building in Munich are greeted by a life-size statue of the company’s mascot -- a stalking panther -- by the reception desk. The mascot is a carryover from the Nokia Siemens unit, as were most of the company’s roughly 170 workers, current and former employees say.
Al Khanjar, the Bahraini activist beaten during interrogations about his text messages, is in hiding today. He says he’s reluctant to communicate by mobile phone and takes calls using Skype on a computer with software that disguises its location. The Internet connection is his only way of communicating with his wife and 9-year-old son.
“I’m hidden somewhere,” he says. “I’m unfortunately in Bahrain. They’re going to kill me. What to do? What to do?”
Al Khanjar took up the anti-torture cause after being detained and interrogated for six days in 2000. His jailers handcuffed him, hung him from a stick “like a goat” and beat the soles of his feet, he says.
He’s now spokesman for the government-banned Bahraini National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture. He and other activists have documented the security service’s human rights violations for a decade, he says. His activism includes work with the United Nations Committee Against Torture and appearances on Qatar’s Al Jazeera channel.
Al Khanjar says that on Aug. 15, 2010, three days after he returned from speaking about human rights to a committee at the House of Lords in London, plainclothes police knocked on his door in Bahrain at about 2:30 a.m. It was the start of a six- month ordeal.
For his first 85 days or so in custody, Al Khanjar saw no one from the outside, he says. For one agonizing stretch, his jailers forced him to stand without sleeping for five days. At other times they beat him with hoses and their hands and threatened him with sexual abuse, he says.
“They had collected their information from tracking calls,” he says, including whom he spoke with and what they said. “They told me a lot of things about our activities in the human rights field and political activities I’d participated in.”
And they showed him several pages of transcripts of his text messages. An interrogator held the papers in front of Al Khanjar, pointing out the Arabic words printed in black ink on white paper and reading aloud details such as the dates and recipients of the texts, he says.
Al Khanjar says he sent one of the messages on June 9, 2009, after a flight to Qatar to visit a friend. His trip was thwarted when Qatar refused him entry at the Bahrain government’s request. He suspected that his appearances on the satellite news channel, based in Qatar, explained the Bahraini government’s interest in his travel there. Al Khanjar fired off the text to a fellow activist. “What happened to me is because of Al Jazeera,” it read.
More than a year later, when Al Khanjar was in jail, authorities seized on a transcript of that message, asking what he meant by it, particularly the reference to Al Jazeera, he says. Suspicious of his explanation, officers threatened to put him in a solitary confinement cell with no toilet two floors down -- the same floor where they tortured prisoners.
“You cannot hear anything,” Al Khanjar says. “You don’t know the time. You don’t know if it’s day or night. No windows.”
Only after overhearing officers refer in radio chatter among themselves to their national security building as Jazeera did he conclude their interest in his innocuous text message was a misunderstanding that he had been making a reference to their facilities.
“They thought that I knew something about their code,” he says.
A prosecutor charged Al Khanjar with crimes that included establishing a group in violation of the law and inciting and participating in unauthorized meetings of more than five people for the purpose of undermining national security, according to a copy of the indictment translated by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
An arm of the England and Wales lawyers association, the committee sent a delegation to Bahrain that observed an Oct. 28, 2010, hearing in the case against Al Khanjar and 22 others arrested at the same time.
The detainees testified about being tortured while in custody, according to the bar committee’s February 2011 report: beatings, particularly to the legs and ears; being kept in stress positions or naked for prolonged periods; hanging in a position called falaqa in which the detainee is suspended from a bar and the soles of his feet beaten; and, in some cases, sexual abuse.
The actions violated both international law and the laws of Bahrain, the report concluded. “Credible and pervasive allegations of mistreatment and torture, which are dismissed as fabrication by the Public Prosecutor, completely undermine the rule of law,” it stated.
A separate military tribunal later tried him and others -- many, like him, in absentia -- and convicted them on charges that included trying to overthrow the government. Al Khanjar, who denies the charges in this and the earlier case, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Company executives understood that they had the only monitoring-center computers in the country, based on conversations with Bahraini officials, one of those familiar with the situation says.
Schaake, 32, who represents the Netherlands in the European Parliament, says companies should be barred from exporting such equipment to countries with poor human rights records. U.S. and EU export laws and UN sanctions control just a narrow slice of technology such as weapons systems or data encryption. International embargoes that cover a broader range of equipment target only a small circle of the worst actors, such as Myanmar and North Korea.
“It is time for more pressure, for more transparency and accountability when it comes to these products and services,” Schaake says. As a first step, Schaake says surveillance systems involving information and communications technology should join military items such as missile parts on lists of restricted exports.
Schaake helped to sponsor a parliamentary resolution in February 2010 that called for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, to ban exports of such technology to regimes that could abuse it. The commission hasn’t implemented the nonbinding resolution.
The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2010 barring federal contracts with any businesses that sold monitoring gear to Iran. An investigation ordered by Congress and completed in June by the Government Accountability Office was unable to identify any companies supplying the technology to Iran, partly because the business is so secretive, the agency reported.
“The United Nations should put pressure on those companies that supply equipment to these tyrant regimes,” he says.
Bahraini government regulator Aldoseri says the companies are all too happy to sell the equipment regardless of what happens once it’s installed.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Super PAC; not a super hero; more likely a super threat
Mike Toomey, Bill Burton and Edward Conard: Each of these men is a close ally of one of the would-be next presidents of the United States. All three insist they have no involvement in their close associates’ campaigns.
That’s because they’re helping direct so-called Super PACs -- Burton for President Barack Obama, Toomey for Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Conard for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This role enables them to raise virtually unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and labor unions as long as they remain “independent” of the campaigns.
What these Super PACs do is to effectively lift the campaign-contribution limits, currently at $2,500 per individual, and allow wealthy interests and individuals to make the huge contributions that were the trademark of the era that ended with the Watergate scandal.
Political-action committees have long existed in U.S. politics. In the past, however, they couldn’t accept any corporate or labor-union contributions and individuals couldn’t give more than the legal limit. Two Supreme Court rulings and lax enforcement by the Federal Elections Commission led to the creation of the Super PACs, which, for the first time, can take unlimited money from special interests and individuals and use those funds on behalf of a specific presidential candidate.
They are supposed to be independent of the campaigns. It’s now clear that this separation is a travesty on both sides, making these entities and the big money the wave of the future.
“The idea that these Super PACs are independent from the candidates they’re supporting is absurd,” says Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates campaign-finance reform and who has brought legal action against these new fundraisers. “They are simply a mechanism for massive circumvention of the contribution limits that are supposed to apply to federal campaigns.”
Just look at the central players. Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff, is now considered the leading business lobbyist in Texas. He plays a major role in Make Us Great Again, one of several independent efforts on behalf of Perry. He owns an island with David Carney, Perry’s campaign manager, and maintains close relations with the governor.
Burton, who directs Priorities USA Action, was Obama’s deputy press secretary during the 2008 campaign and served in a similar post during the first two years of his presidency.
Conard was a fellow managing partner with Romney of the private-equity firm Bain Capital and keeps a close association with the Republican presidential candidate. This year, he set up a shell company and secretly funneled a $1 million contribution to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Romney’s White House run. He was forced to disclose his identity after questions in the media about the origins of that large anonymous donation.
Conard’s shell company, which only existed for four months, was set up to evade the law that requires Super PACS to identify donors but sets no limits on donations.
Restore Our Future has received major funding from people such as the hedge-fund tycoon John Paulson, who has given more than $1 million; under Federal Elections Commission rules, Romney was able to attend a event held by this “independent” entity as long as he didn’t directly solicit funds for it.
This Super PAC is led by several of Romney’s 2008 campaign advisers, who are intimately acquainted with some of the aides who are running the 2012 effort.
Burton’s partner is Sean Sweeney, who was a White House political aide in the Obama administration before joining this “independent” group.
Coordination doesn’t have to be direct or official to be strategic and helpful. David Plouffe, the top Obama political aide, and other operatives have trained their fire recently on Romney; so has Priorities USA Action.
It’s a safe assumption that if there’s a Romney-Obama matchup in the general election, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action will be on the airwaves in the battleground states of Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, and not in California or Texas.
The most ambitious “independent” venture may be the one supporting Perry. Even before he announced his presidential campaign, candidates from half a dozen such groups were assembling. Make Us Great Again reportedly had gotten word out and most of the focus now seems to be coalescing around that group.
This Super PAC has two invaluable assets: It enables rich Texans who’ve long backed Perry to make big contributions, and it eliminates any competitive disadvantage the late-starting candidate might have in taking on rivals who have a larger pool of smaller contributors. If past experience is any guide, look for Make Us Great Again to attack opponents, starting with Romney.
If these Big Money-funded groups end up playing a vital role in the presidential race, it’s a certainty, as Wertheimer frets, that they will surface in most congressional elections the next time. By then, all the checks and balances instituted after Watergate will have been rolled back.
That’s because they’re helping direct so-called Super PACs -- Burton for President Barack Obama, Toomey for Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Conard for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This role enables them to raise virtually unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and labor unions as long as they remain “independent” of the campaigns.
What these Super PACs do is to effectively lift the campaign-contribution limits, currently at $2,500 per individual, and allow wealthy interests and individuals to make the huge contributions that were the trademark of the era that ended with the Watergate scandal.
Political-action committees have long existed in U.S. politics. In the past, however, they couldn’t accept any corporate or labor-union contributions and individuals couldn’t give more than the legal limit. Two Supreme Court rulings and lax enforcement by the Federal Elections Commission led to the creation of the Super PACs, which, for the first time, can take unlimited money from special interests and individuals and use those funds on behalf of a specific presidential candidate.
They are supposed to be independent of the campaigns. It’s now clear that this separation is a travesty on both sides, making these entities and the big money the wave of the future.
“The idea that these Super PACs are independent from the candidates they’re supporting is absurd,” says Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates campaign-finance reform and who has brought legal action against these new fundraisers. “They are simply a mechanism for massive circumvention of the contribution limits that are supposed to apply to federal campaigns.”
Just look at the central players. Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff, is now considered the leading business lobbyist in Texas. He plays a major role in Make Us Great Again, one of several independent efforts on behalf of Perry. He owns an island with David Carney, Perry’s campaign manager, and maintains close relations with the governor.
Burton, who directs Priorities USA Action, was Obama’s deputy press secretary during the 2008 campaign and served in a similar post during the first two years of his presidency.
Conard was a fellow managing partner with Romney of the private-equity firm Bain Capital and keeps a close association with the Republican presidential candidate. This year, he set up a shell company and secretly funneled a $1 million contribution to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Romney’s White House run. He was forced to disclose his identity after questions in the media about the origins of that large anonymous donation.
Conard’s shell company, which only existed for four months, was set up to evade the law that requires Super PACS to identify donors but sets no limits on donations.
Restore Our Future has received major funding from people such as the hedge-fund tycoon John Paulson, who has given more than $1 million; under Federal Elections Commission rules, Romney was able to attend a event held by this “independent” entity as long as he didn’t directly solicit funds for it.
This Super PAC is led by several of Romney’s 2008 campaign advisers, who are intimately acquainted with some of the aides who are running the 2012 effort.
Burton’s partner is Sean Sweeney, who was a White House political aide in the Obama administration before joining this “independent” group.
Coordination doesn’t have to be direct or official to be strategic and helpful. David Plouffe, the top Obama political aide, and other operatives have trained their fire recently on Romney; so has Priorities USA Action.
It’s a safe assumption that if there’s a Romney-Obama matchup in the general election, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action will be on the airwaves in the battleground states of Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, and not in California or Texas.
The most ambitious “independent” venture may be the one supporting Perry. Even before he announced his presidential campaign, candidates from half a dozen such groups were assembling. Make Us Great Again reportedly had gotten word out and most of the focus now seems to be coalescing around that group.
This Super PAC has two invaluable assets: It enables rich Texans who’ve long backed Perry to make big contributions, and it eliminates any competitive disadvantage the late-starting candidate might have in taking on rivals who have a larger pool of smaller contributors. If past experience is any guide, look for Make Us Great Again to attack opponents, starting with Romney.
If these Big Money-funded groups end up playing a vital role in the presidential race, it’s a certainty, as Wertheimer frets, that they will surface in most congressional elections the next time. By then, all the checks and balances instituted after Watergate will have been rolled back.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
UAE : Limited democracy, fears of corruption restrain voters
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), an oil-rich economic hub, is gearing up for the parliamentary elections, for the second time in its history. But fear of corruption and tepid public interest threaten to turn the country's limited experiment with democracy into a dud.
Some 470 people from the confederation’s seven emirates have registered as candidates for the September 24 elections. They will be vying for half of the 40 seats in the country's Federal National Council (FNC), with the other half being filled by members appointed by the UAE’s seven hereditary rulers. Established in 1971, the FNC maintains only advisory tasks, not legislative power.
"There is a widespread perception that the FNC is a meaningless talking shop with real political power lying elsewhere," Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, deputy director of the Kuwait Research Program at the London School of Economics (LSE), told The Media Line.
The outbreak of the Arab Spring generated new pressures for political participation in the Gulf, and the UAE was no exception, Coates-Ulrichsen said. A petition signed by 133 prominent Emiratis in March called for the direct election of all FNC members and for it to be vested with full legislative and regulatory powers. Alongside the outbreak of violent unrest in Bahrain and Oman, and similar petitions for political reform in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, UAE authorities were feeling the heat of political pressure, perhaps for the first time in its 40-year history.
Not only does the FNC have very limited powers and is half appointed, only a small proportion of Emirati citizens will be allowed to vote, all of which may explain the widespread apathy. In the previous elections, held in December 2006, only 6,689 people, less than 1% of the country's population of one million, were entitled to vote. Moreover, the candidates will be vetted by government before the end of August, having to present a certificate of good conduct.
"Such a tightly controlled election runs counter to of the concept of participatory democracy and suggests that the election is more a public relations campaign for Western consumption than a genuine attempt at widening the distribution of power in the Emirates," Coates-Ulrichsen said.
A number of unnamed candidates told the Arab online news site Ilaf that some of the voters they met demanded money in return for voting for them. The candidates told the site that no legal mechanism currently exists to prevent vote buying.
Nor have elections brought any improvement in freedom of expression. To the contrary, human rights activists say the Arab Spring has caused officials to quash what little dissent was permitted. In April, for instance, they arrested five of the pro-reform activists who demanded constitutional reform and universal suffrage.
Coates-Ulrichsen of LSE said the intimidation of reformists in the UAE was also detrimental to the country's democratic drive.
"The arrest and continuing detention of Emiratis who called for political reform has had a chilling effect which dampens many people's desire to get involved in politics," he told The Media Line.
Let’s spin the wheel …..next on the movement towards Democracy…Syria, Saudi, Iran?
Let’s take of look at the dictatorships in your neighborhood (if you’re in the MENA region)….
SYRIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Tyranny -Discrimination of Women
WMD - Largest chemical weapons capability in the Middle East
Transit for Drugs Bound for Western Markets
Tens of thousands of Arab Syrian victims when regime ravaged Syrian Hama including the Grand Mosque
Muslim Turkey mobilized in 1998 the army for war against Arab Syria
Syrian official maps fake that the Turkish province Hatay is inside Syria
Invaded Israel in 1948 with the declared intent of destroying her
Invaded Arab Jordan (Black September 1970)
Occupied in 1948-1967 former Mandate for Palestine land (Himmah area)
Occupies Arab Jordanian land since 1970
Occupied Arab Lebanon from 1976 - 2005
Arab Jordan occupies land belonging to Arab Syria
The Golan Heights were transferred from the British Mandate of Palestine to the French Mandate of Syria in 1923, and are ruled by Israel since 1967
________________________________________
IRAN - DICTATORSHIP, ORG. OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Nuclear Ambitions - World Domination Ideology
Used Chemical Weapons During War With Muslim Iraq
Iraq-Iran War 1980 - 1988 Caused Over 1 Million Dead
Iranian President Calls for the Destruction of Israel
State Sponsored Anti-Semitism
State Sponsored Cult of Martyrdom and Blood
Religious Persecution - Public Stoning to Death and Other Cruel Executions
Discrimination of Women - "Ten Minute Marriages"
________________________________________
SAUDI ARABIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Homeland of arch terrorist Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 terrorists
Refuge of cannibal, sadist and mass murderer Idi Amin of Uganda
Saudi royals paid Osama Bin Laden and Taliban £200m "protection money"
Saudi religious leader calls for slavery's legalization
Middle Age type of theocracy - Religious police - Charges of witchcraft
Transfer and ethnic mutilation
Apartheid against non-Muslims - Death for adultery & apostasy from Islam
Two major cities (Mecca & Medina) forbid entrance of non-Muslims
Churches of other religious denominations than Moslem do not exist
World's only state where cinemas are banned
World's only state where it is illegal for women to drive
Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permissions, they are not allowed to drive, mix with men in public or leave home without covering themselves with black cloaks, called abayas.
Punishment by hand amputation, flogging & public beheading
Muslims worldwide indoctrinated by preachers funded from Saudi Arabia
Religious police prevents male firemen from rescuing girls burning to death
Despot King Fahd in Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest People"
________________________________________
MOROCCO - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Arab Morocco Occupies Saharawi Arab Republic
Claims EU (Spanish) areas: Canary Islands, Isla Perejil, Ceuta and Melilla
Women Can't Marry Without Male Guardian Consent
Illicit Drug Producer Bound for Western Markets
Built 2000-km separation wall to keep Saharawi guerilla out of occupied West Sahara
Saharawi Arabs Languish for Decades in World's Worst Refugee Camps
________________________________________
OMAN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Discrimination Against Women
________________________________________
UAE - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Imprisonment and Flogging for Marriage Across Faiths
No Democratically Elected Institutions or Political Parties
Judiciary's Decisions Subject to Review by Political Leadership
Law Specifically Prohibits Criticism of Government,
Ruling Families and Friendly Governments Under Penalty of Imprisonment
________________________________________
BAHRAIN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Hereditary Autocracy - No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Women Discrimination
________________________________________
ALGERIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
World Leader in Forced Disappearances
100,000 Persons Killed
Forced Arabization of Amazigh Culture
________________________________________
YEMEN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
About 100,000 Deaths in Civil War
Death for Apostasy - Women Can't Marry Without Guardian Consent
Most Females Genitally Mutilated During Childhood
________________________________________
SYRIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Tyranny -Discrimination of Women
WMD - Largest chemical weapons capability in the Middle East
Transit for Drugs Bound for Western Markets
Tens of thousands of Arab Syrian victims when regime ravaged Syrian Hama including the Grand Mosque
Muslim Turkey mobilized in 1998 the army for war against Arab Syria
Syrian official maps fake that the Turkish province Hatay is inside Syria
Invaded Israel in 1948 with the declared intent of destroying her
Invaded Arab Jordan (Black September 1970)
Occupied in 1948-1967 former Mandate for Palestine land (Himmah area)
Occupies Arab Jordanian land since 1970
Occupied Arab Lebanon from 1976 - 2005
Arab Jordan occupies land belonging to Arab Syria
The Golan Heights were transferred from the British Mandate of Palestine to the French Mandate of Syria in 1923, and are ruled by Israel since 1967
________________________________________
IRAN - DICTATORSHIP, ORG. OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Nuclear Ambitions - World Domination Ideology
Used Chemical Weapons During War With Muslim Iraq
Iraq-Iran War 1980 - 1988 Caused Over 1 Million Dead
Iranian President Calls for the Destruction of Israel
State Sponsored Anti-Semitism
State Sponsored Cult of Martyrdom and Blood
Religious Persecution - Public Stoning to Death and Other Cruel Executions
Discrimination of Women - "Ten Minute Marriages"
________________________________________
SAUDI ARABIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Homeland of arch terrorist Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 terrorists
Refuge of cannibal, sadist and mass murderer Idi Amin of Uganda
Saudi royals paid Osama Bin Laden and Taliban £200m "protection money"
Saudi religious leader calls for slavery's legalization
Middle Age type of theocracy - Religious police - Charges of witchcraft
Transfer and ethnic mutilation
Apartheid against non-Muslims - Death for adultery & apostasy from Islam
Two major cities (Mecca & Medina) forbid entrance of non-Muslims
Churches of other religious denominations than Moslem do not exist
World's only state where cinemas are banned
World's only state where it is illegal for women to drive
Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permissions, they are not allowed to drive, mix with men in public or leave home without covering themselves with black cloaks, called abayas.
Punishment by hand amputation, flogging & public beheading
Muslims worldwide indoctrinated by preachers funded from Saudi Arabia
Religious police prevents male firemen from rescuing girls burning to death
Despot King Fahd in Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest People"
________________________________________
MOROCCO - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Arab Morocco Occupies Saharawi Arab Republic
Claims EU (Spanish) areas: Canary Islands, Isla Perejil, Ceuta and Melilla
Women Can't Marry Without Male Guardian Consent
Illicit Drug Producer Bound for Western Markets
Built 2000-km separation wall to keep Saharawi guerilla out of occupied West Sahara
Saharawi Arabs Languish for Decades in World's Worst Refugee Camps
________________________________________
OMAN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Discrimination Against Women
________________________________________
UAE - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Imprisonment and Flogging for Marriage Across Faiths
No Democratically Elected Institutions or Political Parties
Judiciary's Decisions Subject to Review by Political Leadership
Law Specifically Prohibits Criticism of Government,
Ruling Families and Friendly Governments Under Penalty of Imprisonment
________________________________________
BAHRAIN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Hereditary Autocracy - No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Women Discrimination
________________________________________
ALGERIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
World Leader in Forced Disappearances
100,000 Persons Killed
Forced Arabization of Amazigh Culture
________________________________________
YEMEN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
About 100,000 Deaths in Civil War
Death for Apostasy - Women Can't Marry Without Guardian Consent
Most Females Genitally Mutilated During Childhood
________________________________________
As opposition fighters are pushing towards the Libyan capital, Twitter users applaud the "Arab Spring".
Statement by the NATO Secretary-General on the situation in Libya
"The Qadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Qadhafi realises that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better -- so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.
The Libyan people have suffered tremendously under Qaddafi’s rule for over four decades. Now they have a chance for a new beginning. Now is the time for all threats against civilians to stop, as the United Nations Security Council demanded. Now is the time to create a new Libya – a state based on freedom, not fear; democracy, not dictatorship; the will of the many, not the whims of a few.
That transition must come peacefully. It must come now. And it must be led and defined by the Libyan people.
NATO is ready to work with the Libyan people and with the Transitional National Council, which holds a great responsibility. They must make sure that the transition is smooth and inclusive, that the country stays united, and that the future is founded on reconciliation and respect for human rights.
Qadhafi's remaining allies and forces also have a great responsibility. It is time to end their careers of violence. The world is watching them. This is their opportunity to side with the Libyan people and choose the right side of history.
We will continue to monitor military units and key facilities, as we have since March, and when we see any threatening moves towards the Libyan people, we will act in accordance with our UN mandate.
Our goal throughout this conflict has been to protect the people of Libya, and that is what we are doing.
Because the future of Libya belongs to the Libyan people. And it is for the international community to assist them, with the United Nations and the Contact Group playing a leading role. NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace. Today, they can start building that future."
It's all in the numbers
SinoTech Energy Ltd. (CTE), a provider of equipment to boost oilfield production, was sued in the U.S. by an investor claiming securities violations after its shares plummeted.
Investor Bhushan Athale alleges that Beijing-based SinoTech’s financial reports were “inaccurate because the nature, size and scope of the company’s business was materially exaggerated,” according to a complaint filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court. Athale is seeking to sue on behalf of buyers of the company’s American depositary shares since its November initial public offering.
SinoTech plunged 42 percent to $2.35 on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Aug. 16 after Alfredlittle.com published a short- seller’s note saying the company’s largest customers were probably “nothing more than empty shells” and that it’s worth less than 63 cents a share. SinoTech called the note “inaccurate and defamatory.”
Trading has been halted in the shares and the company said in a statement yesterday that it intends to “cooperate fully” with Nasdaq to address the stock market’s concerns. The trading halt has rendered the ADS “essentially worthless,” Athale said in the complaint.
Rebecca Guo, a spokeswoman for the company in Beijing, didn’t return a phone call or respond to an e-mail placed to her office outside business hours in China seeking comment on the lawsuit.
In an Aug. 17 statement, the company said it wasn’t aware of material omissions in its financial statements and that it had appointed an independent committee to investigate.
“We are outraged by this blatantly self-interested, mercenary attempt to profiteer at the expense of SinoTech and its shareholders,” Chief Executive Officer Xin Guoqiang said in the Aug. 17 statement.
The case is Athale v. SinoTech Energy Ltd., 11-CV-5831, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Investor Bhushan Athale alleges that Beijing-based SinoTech’s financial reports were “inaccurate because the nature, size and scope of the company’s business was materially exaggerated,” according to a complaint filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court. Athale is seeking to sue on behalf of buyers of the company’s American depositary shares since its November initial public offering.
SinoTech plunged 42 percent to $2.35 on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Aug. 16 after Alfredlittle.com published a short- seller’s note saying the company’s largest customers were probably “nothing more than empty shells” and that it’s worth less than 63 cents a share. SinoTech called the note “inaccurate and defamatory.”
Trading has been halted in the shares and the company said in a statement yesterday that it intends to “cooperate fully” with Nasdaq to address the stock market’s concerns. The trading halt has rendered the ADS “essentially worthless,” Athale said in the complaint.
Rebecca Guo, a spokeswoman for the company in Beijing, didn’t return a phone call or respond to an e-mail placed to her office outside business hours in China seeking comment on the lawsuit.
In an Aug. 17 statement, the company said it wasn’t aware of material omissions in its financial statements and that it had appointed an independent committee to investigate.
“We are outraged by this blatantly self-interested, mercenary attempt to profiteer at the expense of SinoTech and its shareholders,” Chief Executive Officer Xin Guoqiang said in the Aug. 17 statement.
The case is Athale v. SinoTech Energy Ltd., 11-CV-5831, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)