Canada puts US on 'torture list'

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Written by BBC News BBC News

Published: 18 January 2008 18 January 2008

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 BBC NEWS
Canada puts US on 'torture list'
The United States has been listed as a country where prisoners are at risk of torture in a training document produced by the Canadian foreign ministry.

It also classifies some US interrogation techniques as torture.

The manual - part of a training course on torture awareness for diplomats - also includes Israel, China, Iran and Afghanistan on its watch list.

A government spokesman said the manual did not reflect the views of Canada, which is an ally of the US and Israel.

"The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government," said a spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier.

The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under "definition of torture".

It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa's claims that Omar Khadr is not being mistreated.

There was no immediate response from either the US or Israel.

Exonerated

The document was provided to Amnesty International as part of a court case it is bringing against the Canadian government over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Canada has come under growing criticism following allegations that detainees were tortured in Afghanistan after its soldiers transferred suspects to Afghan security forces.

Amnesty is calling for stopping all transfers of prisoners to the Afghan authorities.

The torture awareness course was introduced after Ottawa was strongly criticised for its handling of the case of a Canadian who was deported from the US to Syria in 2002.

Syrian-born Maher Arar - who was accused of being an al-Qaeda member - says he was tortured during his 10 months in a Damascus jail - a claim strongly denied by Syria.

A Canadian government inquiry exonerated Mr Arar of any links with terrorist groups. It also showed that Canadian diplomats had not had any formal training on how to detect whether detainees had been abused.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7195276.stm

Published: 2008/01/18 01:24:53 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The North American Jewish federation system raised $2.4 billion last year.

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Written by Jewish Telegraph Agency Jewish Telegraph Agency

Published: 17 January 2008 17 January 2008

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[the UJC is definitely part of the Israel Lobby . . . ]

UJC raises $2.4 billion in '07

The North American Jewish federation system raised $2.4 billion last year.

Its umbrella organization, the United Jewish Communities, made the announcement Thursday for the system of 155 Jewish federations and 400 non-federated Jewish communities.
 
The local fund-raising branches raised $900 million through their annual campaigns and $1.3 billion in new contributions to endowment funds and planned giving programs. In 2006, UJC brought in $898.1 million from the branches and $2.3 billion in endowment funds and planned giving programs.
 
The system now has more than $13 billion in endowment funds, which yield approximately $1 billion per year.
 
The UJC also collected $90 million in 2007 through the Israel Emergency Campaign, which it started in 2006 after Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The campaign has collected more than $360 million.
 
The UJC raised another $52 million through supplemental giving campaigns.
 
"When the day is done, we all care about the bottom line," the UJC’s president and chief executive officer, Howard Rieger, said in a news release. "Well, the bottom line for UJC and the Jewish Federations of North America during 2007 is $2.4 billion. And in many respects, that is just the beginning of what we do."

Hardliners leave Israel coalition

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Written by BBC News BBC News

Published: 16 January 2008 16 January 2008

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 An Israeli right-wing party has pulled out of the coalition government in protest at the starting of peace talks on core issues with the Palestinians.

Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Lieberman said the land-for-peace talks would lead to Israel's destruction.

Israeli Arab politicians condemn the party as racist for advocating the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel to a future Palestinian state.

Despite its departure, the coalition still retains a parliamentary majority.

Read more: Hardliners leave Israel coalition

Double standard on divestment

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Written by Josh Reubner, Institute for Middle East Understanding Josh Reubner, Institute for Middle East Understanding

Published: 15 January 2008 15 January 2008

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Today, two movements for the promotion of human rights in Sudan and Palestine seek to emulate the successful role played by boycotts, divestment and sanctions in achieving democracy and equality in South Africa. The two movements, however, have received radically different receptions on Capitol Hill. This double standard testifies to Washington's selectivity when it comes to promoting human rights around the globe and its tendency to overlook the faults of its allies while using human rights as a pretext to punish its adversaries.

On 31 December, US President George W. Bush signed into law the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, which was passed unanimously by Congress earlier in the month. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, authorizes state and local governments to divest their holdings from corporations that profit from dealings with the Sudanese government and immunizes mutual fund managers from lawsuits for doing the same.

The practical impact of this legislation, however, is doubtful. US corporate investment in Sudan is minimal due to a host of sanctions and the connection between US corporate profits and human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese government or the Janjaweed militia is indirect at best. Nevertheless, any encouragement for divesting from corporations that profit from human rights abuses is a welcome step towards increasing corporate accountability.

If Congress believes that institutions should divest from corporations that profit from human rights abuses in one country, then morality and logic dictate that US policy should promote divestment from any corporation that profits from human rights abuses anywhere in the world.

The dictates of politics, however, intrude on the ability of Members of Congress to act in an ethically consistent fashion when it comes to Israel and the human rights abuses it inflicts daily on millions of Palestinian civilians living under its forty-year military occupation and siege of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

In the case of Israel, the link between US policy, human rights violations, and corporate profiteering is much more direct and tangible than in Sudan. Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid. A memorandum of understanding signed in August between the two countries promised to increase US military aid to Israel by 25 percent per year, totaling $30 billion over the next decade. The Pentagon then takes this taxpayer money and fills Israel's shopping cart with goodies from US corporations: Caterpillar bulldozers for the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of ten of thousands of olive trees; advanced communications gear from Motorola to facilitate Israel's myriad forms of travel restrictions and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians; and Lockheed Martin F-16's and Boeing F-15's to demolish Palestinian civilian infrastructure and injure and kill civilians.

Given that Israel repeatedly violates the terms of the US Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits US weapons from being used in an offensive manner or against civilians, and that US corporations are profiting handsomely from its violations of Palestinian human rights, one could reasonably expect that Capitol Hill would be at least as adamant, if not more, in encouraging divestment from these corporations as well as being supportive of boycotts to protest these violations.

Not so. In fact, just the opposite is true. Last year the House of Representatives voted 414-0 to condemn British institutions for voting to engage in boycott campaigns against Israeli institutions and products to protest Israel's human rights abuses.

Nor did Senator Dodd -- the champion of divestment from Sudan -- have anything to say about US corporate profiteering from Israel's human rights abuses in a recent "Dear Colleague" letter addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In it, Dodd argues for sustained US engagement after last month's Annapolis conference and enumerates confidence-building measures that Israelis and Palestinians should take to bolster recently launched negotiations.

Dodd's well-intentioned letter would be greatly strengthened if he and other Members of Congress would apply the same principles that govern their encouragement of divestment from Sudan towards ending US taxpayer subsidies to corporations that profiteer from Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians.

Josh Ruebner is the Grassroots Advocacy Coordinator for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. This commentary was originally published by the Institute for Middle East Understanding and is republished by EI with the author's permission.