'Our blood is cheaper than water': anger in Iraq over Trump pardons

Joe Biden to be lobbied to reverse decision to pardon security guards jailed over massacre

A burnt-out car at the site where Blackwater guards opened fire in western Baghdad on 16 September 2007. Photograph: Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty Images


Martin Chulov and Michael Safi
Wed 23 Dec 2020 

Iraqis have reacted with outrage to Donald Trump’s move to pardon four security guards from the security firm Blackwater who were jailed for a 2007 massacre that sparked an outcry over the use of mercenaries in war.

The four men were part of a security convoy that fired on civilians at a central Baghdad roundabout, killing 14 people including a nine-year old child and wounding many more.

The four guards – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – opened fire indiscriminately with machine guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people at a roundabout, known as Nisour Square.


Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians
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The killings were one of the lowest points of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and many Iraqis saw the convictions as a rare occasion where US citizens had been held to account for atrocities committed during the aftermath. Baghdad residents who spoke to the Guardian described the outgoing US president’s announcement as a “cruel slap” and an insult.
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“Trump has no right to decide on behalf of victims’ families to pardon these criminals,” said Dr Haidar al-Barzanji, an Iraqi researcher and academic. “It is at odds with human rights and against the law. In Iraqi law they can only be pardoned if the families of victims pardon them. I encourage the families of the victims to request a complaint against Trump when the Biden administration starts.”

The Iraqi human rights activist Haidar Salman tweeted: “I still remember my professor of haematology at Baghdad University department of pathology (who was shot during the massacre along with his family) when he returned to life after his two children and his wife were killed in Nisour Square and almost lost his mind.

“One reason for him to survive was to condemn the murderers. The person who releases these criminals is more of a criminal. The Iraqi government should ask the Biden administration to revoke the pardon.”

The carnage at Nisour Square came more than four years into the US invasion, which sparked a vicious sectarian war and mass displacement of Iraqis. The long US occupation had left citizens resentful of security convoys that carved swathes through traffic at will, sometimes shooting towards cars that had trailed too closely.

Private security contractors, supporting logistics companies, or in some cases the US military, were a frequent source of complaints about heavy-handed and disrespectful behaviour towards locals.

“We used to be terrified of them, especially Blackwater, who were the nastiest of them all,” said Ribal Mansour, who heard the chaos at Nisour Square on 16 September 2007, and ran to the scene. “What I saw there will haunt me for ever. It should have been a red line. For them to be freed by the US commander-in-chief is shameful.”
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Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in 2014, while Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was convicted of first-degree murder. Slatten was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each.

(Left-right) Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough. Photograph: AP

A federal judge threw out an initial prosecution, but the then vice-president, Joe Biden, promised to pursue a fresh prosecution, which succeeded in 2015.

As the incoming president, Biden is certain to be lobbied heavily by Iraqi officials to reverse the decision. “It will be the first thing we discuss with him,” said an aide to Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the Iraqi prime minister.

At the sentencing hearing, the US attorney’s office said in a statement: “The sheer amount of unnecessary human loss and suffering attributable to the defendants’ criminal conduct on 16 September 2007 is staggering.”

After news of the pardon emerged on Tuesday night, Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for one of the four pardoned Blackwater defendants, said: “Paul Slough and his colleagues didn’t deserve to spend one minute in prison. I am overwhelmed with emotion at this fantastic news.”

The pardons are among several the president has granted to American service personnel and contractors accused or convicted of crimes against non-combatants and civilians in war zones. In November last year, he pardoned three US servicemen who had been accused or convicted of war crimes, including a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire at three unarmed Afghans.

During the trial of the Blackwater contractors, defence lawyers argued their clients returned fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.

Pardons sink Trump further into swamp of his own shamelessness

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But in a memorandum filed after sentencing, the US government said: “None of the victims was an insurgent, or posed any threat to the Raven 23 convoy.”
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The memorandum also contained quotations from relatives of the dead, including Mohammad Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed. “That day changed my life for ever. That day destroyed me completely,” Kinani said.

FBI investigators who visited the scene in the following days described it as the “My Lai massacre of Iraq” – a reference to the infamous slaughter of civilian villagers by US troops during the Vietnam war for which only one soldier was convicted.

The Iraqi government announced an immediate ban on Blackwater following the killings – though it continued to operate in the country until 2009 – and the state department ultimately stopped using the firm to provide diplomatic security.

The massacre led to successive investigations into Blackwater and the wider private contractor industry by the US state department, the Pentagon, Congress and the UN.

Amid intense scrutiny, founder Erik Prince cut ties with the company in 2010, though he continued to work in the field, setting up an American-led mercenary army in the UAE that has since reportedly been deployed in Yemen.

Blackwater’s latest incarnation, Academi, is owned by private investors and continued after Prince’s departure to win state department and Pentagon contracts to protect US installations in war zones and train armed forces personnel.

The 14 victims killed by the Blackwater guards were Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim Abid Ayash, Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein.

All but one of the victims’ families accepted compensation payments from Blackwater: $50,000 for the wounded, and $100,000 for relatives of the dead.

Haitham al-Rubaie – who lost his wife, Mahassin, a doctor, and his son Ahmad, a 20-year-old medical student – was the only one to turn down the offer.

A former classmate of Ahmad said that Trump’s pardon was not surprising for Iraqis.

“The Americans have never approached us Iraqis as equals,” she told AFP. “As far as they are concerned, our blood is cheaper than water and our demands for justice and accountability are merely a nuisance.”

Additional reporting: Nechirvan Mando in Erbil

Revealed: all 27 monkeys held at Nasa research center killed on single day in 2019

27 primates euthanized at California facility
Outcry over revelation that animals were not sent to sanctuary

Oliver Milman THE GUARDIAN Wed 23 Dec 2020
 

A record 74,000 monkeys were used in experiments in 2017 in the US.

Photograph: Jean-François Monier/AFP/Getty Images

Every monkey held by Nasa was put to death on a single day last year, documents obtained by the Guardian show, in a move that has enraged animal welfare campaigners.

A total of 27 primates were euthanized by administrated drugs on 2 February last year at Nasa’s Ames research center in California’s Silicon Valley, it has emerged. The monkeys were ageing and 21 of them had Parkinson’s, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.

'Barbaric' tests on monkeys lead to calls for closure of German lab
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The decision to kill off the animals rather than move them to a sanctuary has been condemned by animal rights advocates and other observers.

The primates “were suffering the ethological deprivations and frustrations inherent in laboratory life”, said John Gluck, an expert in animal ethics at the University of New Mexico. Gluck added the monkeys were “apparently not considered worthy of a chance at a sanctuary life. Not even a try? Disposal instead of the expression of simple decency. Shame on those responsible.”

Kathleen Rice, a US House representative, has written to Jim Bridenstine, Nasa’s administrator, to demand an explanation for the deaths.

Rice, a New York Democrat, said she has been pushing for US government researchers to consider “humane retirement policies” for animals used in research. “I look forward to an explanation from administrator Bridenstine on why these animals were forced to waste away in captivity and be euthanized rather than live out their lives in a sanctuary,” Rice told the Guardian.

Nasa has a long association with primates. Ham, a chimpanzee, received daily training before becoming the first great ape to be launched into space in 1961, successfully carrying out his brief mission before safely splashing down into the ocean.

But the monkeys euthanized last year weren’t used in any daring space missions or even for research – instead they were housed at the Ames facility in a joint care arrangement between Nasa and LifeSource BioMedical, a separate drug research entity which leases space at the center and housed the primates.

Stephanie Solis, the chief executive of LifeSource BioMedical, said the primates were given to the laboratory “years ago” after a sanctuary could not be found for them due to their age and poor health. “We agreed to accept the animals, acting as a sanctuary and providing all care at our own cost, until their advanced age and declining health resulted in a decision to humanely euthanize to avoid a poor quality of life,” she said.

Solis said no research was conducted on the primates while they were at Ames and that they were provided a “good remaining quality of life”.

In recent years the US government has started to phase out the use of primates in research, with the National Institutes of Health making a landmark decision in 2015 to retire all chimpanzees used in biomedical studies. Critics of the practice argue it is immoral and cruel to subject highly intelligent, social creatures so similar to humans to such conditions.

However, other labs continue to use monkeys in large numbers – a record 74,000 were used in experiments in 2017 – with scientists claiming they are far better than other animals, such as mice, for studying diseases that also afflict humans.

Even when monkeys are retired from research purposes, the task of rehoming them in appropriate sanctuaries still proves haphazard.

“What tragic afterthoughts these lives were,” said Mike Ryan, spokesman for Rise for Animals, the group that obtained the freedom of information documents on the Ames primate deaths. “Nasa has many strengths, but when it comes to animal welfare practices, they’re obsolete.”

A Nasa spokesperson said: “Nasa does not have any non-human primates in Nasa or Nasa-funded facilities.”

Neanderthals

Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating

Seasonal damage in bone fossils in Spain suggests Neanderthals and their predecessors followed the same strategy as cave bears

Robin McKie Science Editor
21 Dec 2020
 

The site at Sima de los Huesos was a mass grave 400,000 years ago.

 : César Manso/AFP/Getty Images

Bears do it. Bats do it. Even European hedgehogs do it. And now it turns out that early human beings may also have been at it. They hibernated, according to fossil experts.

Evidence from bones found at one of the world’s most important fossil sites suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter.

The scientists argue that lesions and other signs of damage in fossilised bones of early humans are the same as those left in the bones of other animals that hibernate. These suggest that our predecessors coped with the ferocious winters at that time by slowing down their metabolisms and sleeping for months.

The conclusions are based on excavations in a cave called Sima de los Huesos – the pit of bones – at Atapuerca, near Burgos in northern Spain.

Over the past three decades, the fossilised remains of several dozen humans have been scraped from sediments found at the bottom of the vertiginous 50-foot shaft that forms the central part of the pit at Atapuerca. The cave is effectively a mass grave, say researchers who have found thousands of teeth and pieces of bone that appear to have been deliberately dumped there. These fossils date back more than 400,000 years and were probably from early Neanderthals or their predecessors.

The site is one of the planet’s most important palaeontological treasure troves and has provided key insights into the way that human evolution progressed in Europe. But now researchers have produced an unexpected twist to this tale.

In a paper published in the journal L’Anthropologie, Juan-Luis Arsuaga – who led the team that first excavated at the site – and Antonis Bartsiokas, of Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, argue that the fossils found there show seasonal variations that suggest that bone growth was disrupted for several months of each year.

They suggest these early humans found themselves “in metabolic states that helped them to survive for long periods of time in frigid conditions with limited supplies of food and enough stores of body fat”. They hibernated and this is recorded as disruptions in bone development.
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The researchers admit the notion “may sound like science fiction” but point out that many mammals including primates such as bushbabies and lemurs do this. “This suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such a hypometabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species including humans,” state Arsuaga and Bartsiokas.

The pattern of lesions found in the human bones at the Sima cave are consistent with lesions found in bones of hibernating mammals, including cave bears. “A strategy of hibernation would have been the only solution for them to survive having to spend months in a cave due to the frigid conditions,” the authors state.

They also point to the fact that the remains of a hibernating cave bear (Ursus deningeri) have also been found in the Sima pit making it all the more credible to suggest humans were doing the same “to survive the frigid conditions and food scarcity as did the cave bears”.

The authors examine several counter-arguments. Modern Inuit and Sámi people – although living in equally harsh, cold conditions – do not hibernate. So why did the people in the Sima cave?

The answer, say Arsuaga and Bartsiokas, is that fatty fish and reindeer fat provide Inuit and Sami people with food during winter and so preclude the need for them to hibernate. In contrast, the area around the Sima site half a million years ago would not have provided anything like enough food. As they state: “The aridification of Iberia then could not have provided enough fat-rich food for the people of Sima during the harsh winter - making them resort to cave hibernation.

”
A museum exhibit of a Neanderthal family, who faced brutal winters. 

Photograph: Nikola Solic/Reuters

“It is a very interesting argument and it will certainly stimulate debate,” said forensic anthropologist Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Northumbria University in Newcastle. “However, there are other explanations for the variations seen in the bones found in Sima and these have to be addressed fully before we can come to any realistic conclusions. That has not been done yet, I believe.”

Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London pointed out that large mammals such as bears do not actually hibernate, because their large bodies cannot lower their core temperature enough. Instead they enter a less deep sleep known as torpor. In such a condition, the energy demands of the human-sized brains of the Sima people would have remained very large, creating an additional survival problem for them during torpor.

“Nevertheless, the idea is a fascinating one that could be tested by examining the genomes of the Sima people, Neanderthals and Denisovans for signs of genetic changes linked with the physiology of torpor,” he added.

 The Sick Man of Europe Again

The Mutant Etonian Variant Of English Exceptionalism

Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu

21 December 2020

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces new Christmas Coronavirus restrictions on 19 December 2020. Photo: Toby Melville/PA Wire/PA Images

Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu argue that the Coronavirus itself is the main beneficiary of Boris Johnson’s neo-imperial policies leading to the inevitable ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Britain even before a hard Brex

Having initially joined the European Union as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ – as Britain’s dire financial straits were characterised throughout the 1960s and 70s – the metaphor of a diseased nation has turned into a cold, hard clinical reality as Britain prepares to leave the EU this winter. 

Boris Johnson’s announcement on Saturday of tier four restrictions for London and the south-east and stricter Christmas gatherings due to a much more infectious variant of the Coronavirus spreading through the population triggered the closing of many borders in Europe and beyond to British travellers. Days from Christmas and Brexit, Britain is cut off. The end of free movement has arrived and the dreams of a self-isolating nation longed for by Brexiters have been achieved.

Johnson’s announcement may have been sudden, but the British Government’s laissez faire attitude to lockdowns, poor tracking and tracing and its late ramping-up of testing – infused with a deadly exceptionalism – always ran this risk. 

While you can’t sing Rule Britannia to a virus, as Musa Okwonga observed early on in these pages, this is precisely what Boris Johnson and his Brexiters saw fit to do by citing our ‘world-beating’ innovations.

It now seems that the virus did listen to the absurd siren calls of an Empire ruling the waves – and took advantage of the combination of arrogance and ignorance. 

Beyond ExceptionalThe Etonian English Imperialism at theHeart of a Deadly COVID-19 Crisis

Hardeep Matharu

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Herded Out of Immunity 

The more the Coronavirus was allowed to run riot through Britain’s densely populated and highly mobile regions, the more likely an adaptive mutation was to occur. 

The highly infectious new variant – one of thousands – was initially sampled in September when it was named ‘Variant B.1.1.7’. However, it wasn’t deemed significant enough to be tracked until late October and a full investigation into its genomic sequencing began in early December under the name ‘VUI-202012-01’.

According to a report on Sunday by the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, it “demonstrated exponential growth during a period when lockdown measures were in place”. By the second week of December, more than 60% of all cases in London were ascribed to the new variant and around half of all cases in the south-east. 

Though there is no sign that this variant is more deadly, the rate of mutation has taken scientists by surprise. Of the 23 mutations, 17 were acquired all at once. This variant could have arisen in a chronically infected patient undergoing antibody therapy, but there are also reports that the prison system in Kent was a catalyst for the rise of infections. 

Whether the source was Britain’s overstretched, underfunded and dehumanising prison system or not, the reality of neglect and negligence in Johnson’s Coronavirus response made some such mutation mathematically much more likely.

Byline Times has spent the past eight months cataloguing the failures of Britain’s pandemic response which led to the highest death toll in Europe, the largest number of health and care worker deaths, and the worst economic performance of the G7.  

Its lax approach was evident from the very beginning, with the first lockdown in mid-March introduced late, after a ‘herd immunity’ approach towards the virus was explored – including by the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance who spoke of it on national television. Johnson himself had already told the Italian Prime Minister that he wanted herd immunity – a fact that only emerged after an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches many months on.

When it seemed as if this dangerous idea – which is not advocated in epidemiology except in the context of a vaccine – had been put to bed, it emerged again. Reports suggest that Johnson dismissed a recommendation from the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies to introduce a ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown in September after meeting three proponents of herd immunity: Anders Tegnell, the man behind Sweden’s disastrous COVID-19 approach and academics Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Carl Heneghan. 

Why during a serious health emergency have such fringe views taken hold in the highest positions of Government? 

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The Rule of Exceptionalism – Exceptionally Bad

Britain has one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world and is a global centre of both pharmaceuticals and genomics. Along with the US, its ‘pandemic preparedness’ was rated highly by the World Health Organisation. So there was no lack of prior capacity or medical knowhow in the UK. 

The failures have been of policy and attitude, and – as the twin disasters of Brexit and our Coronavirus response collide – there is a clear pathological path for this new British disease: the Etonian variant of English Exceptionalism.

From Johnson’s early suggestion that Britain could take on the Coronavirus by being “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion” to his more recent claims that Britain’s COVID-19 rates are higher than those in Italy and Germany because its people are too “freedom-loving”, a delusional sense of supremacy has reigned.

Britain’s ChernobylCOVID-19 & the Cost of Lies

Hardeep Matharu

But this is just ideology. In the same way that the closed minds of Soviet ideology led to the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, the propaganda and libertarian obsessions of  Johnson’s Vote Leave Government have exacerbated every wrong – from the herd immunity anathema to the scandal of procurement contracts handed out to Conservative Party donors. 

However, the Coronavirus doesn’t care about the phantoms of a vanished imperial past. What Britain was actually once renowned for – a pragmatic attitude to fact and an empiricist emphasis on evidence and science – would have been the greatest threat to the propagation and persistence of the Coronavirus. 

But, as with our exit from the EU, the voices of reason have been drowned out by bigotry and arrogance. We have only become ‘world-beating’ by beating ourselves up. We are only exceptional in our failures. And, as the country faces a hard Brexit more physically isolated than at any time since the Second World War, with no real enemies to blame but ourselves and having alienated all our allies, a final reckoning has come. 

AL JAZEERA journalists reportedly hacked with Israeli-made spyware

Thirty-six Al Jazeera staff members were targeted in an attack that some have blamed on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
 

A picture taken on Dec. 5, 2019, shows a general view of the headquarters of Al Jazeera Media Network, in the Qatari capital, Doha. Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images.

Al-Monitor Staff

Dec 21, 2020

Dozens of journalists working for Al Jazeera were hacked with spyware sold by an Israeli technology firm, in what a watchdog group says is possibly the work of hackers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Citizen Lab, a watchdog organization at the University of Toronto, says the phones of 36 Al Jazeera journalists, anchors, producers and executives, as well as a London-based journalist for Al Araby TV, were targeted. Researchers traced the hacks to mobile phone spyware known as Pegasus, which is developed and sold by Israeli-based NSO Group.

The hackers reportedly deployed a so-called “zero-click” attack, likely using the iPhone's iMessage function, the Citizen Lab report says. These interaction-less exploits don’t require victims to click on a suspicious link in order for NSO’s clients to break into their phones.

“The shift toward zero-click attacks by an industry and customers already steeped in secrecy increases the likelihood of abuse going undetected,” said the report, referencing a 2019 WhatsApp attack that targeted at least 1,400 phones through a missed voice call.

The Al Jazeera investigation was launched after one of the network’s investigative journalists, Tamer Almisshal, began receiving death threats on his phone. In January 2020, he gave his phone to Citizen Lab, which began monitoring the phone’s metadata


Citizen Lab concluded “with medium confidence” that the operators were linked to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose governments are both reported customers of NSO Group.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism and backing their regional rival, Iran. The two Gulf allies, along with Bahrain and Egypt, maintain an economic and diplomatic blockade on the energy-rich peninsula. As a condition for lifting the restrictions, the so-called Anti-Terror Quartet has demanded the tiny, oil-rich peninsula shut down the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera.

NSO Group, which must obtain the Israeli government’s approval before selling its sweeping surveillance tool to foreign governments, says its technology is built to “prevent and investigate terrorism and crime.” In the past, the cyber firm has pledged to prevent governments from using its products to carry out human rights abuses.

When reached by The Guardian newspaper for comment, a spokesperson for NSO Group said they were unaware of the most recent allegations involving Al Jazeera.

“We do not have access to any information with respect to the identities of individuals our system is used to conduct surveillance on,” the spokesperson said. “However, where we receive credible evidence of misuse, combined with the basic identifiers of the alleged targets and timeframes, we take all necessary steps in accordance with our product misuse investigation procedure to review the allegations.”

Citizen Lab said it has shared its findings with Apple, which confirmed that it is looking into the issue. In a statement to TechCrunch, the company urged customers to download the latest version of iPhone’s software to protect their data against such attacks.

This isn’t the first time Pegasus has been linked to the targeting of journalists by foreign governments. Saudi Arabia reportedly used software to spy on Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi before his murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard, who covers the kingdom and extensively reported on Khashoggi’s death, was reportedly targeted by the same spyware, Citizen Lab said earlier this year.

In June, Amnesty International accused Morocco’s government of using Pegasus to hack the phone of Omar Radi, a Moroccan journalist who has drawn the ire of Rabat for his critical reporting. In 2018, the London-based rights group said Saudi Arabia had deployed Pegasus to digitally spy on one of Amnesty’s staff members.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/12/al-jazeera-spyware-israel-spyware-nso-group-zero-click.html#ixzz6hTazta7V

Trump's coup goes beyond a grift: The president is desperately seeking any path to stay in power

New reporting shows that Trump really still thinks he can steal this election

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
DECEMBER 21, 2020 

For weeks now, Donald Trump's hopes of stealing the 2020 presidential election from the winner, Joe Biden, have been fading. Nonetheless, the dumbest and worst president in American history continued sending out fundraising appeals to his endlessly gullible supporters, giving birth to the theory — to which I, personally, subscribed — that Trump's coup is little more than another one of his many schemes to defraud people. After all, the Trump campaign spent very little on the actual legal efforts to challenge the election and redirected most of the cash into what is likely going to be used as a slush fund for Trump and his family.

And yet, as Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported in the New York Times on Saturday, Trump is deep in talks with an increasingly unhinged cast of characters, all of whom believe there must be a way to steal the election even though the Electoral College made Biden's win official last week. The president invited conspiracy theorists like his former lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn to the White House on Friday to discuss a potential declaration of martial law as a last-ditch effort to force a second vote in some swing states. That suggestion came from the disgraced Flynn, who has been involved in violently oppressive work on behalf of Turkey's authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The group also discussed "an executive order to take control of voting machines to examine them," though it's unclear what that would accomplish. There's no reason to think the voting machines were hacked and it's unlikely that Trump's team has the technical know-how to alter the machines to generate vote tallies more pleasing to Trump.

The chattering politicos of Twitter responded to news of such a bizarre spectacle by arguing about the odd placement of the article on page A28 in the New York Times print edition, with one side arguing that the president considering a military coup is major news no matter what, and the other side arguing that because Trump isn't going to pull it off there's no reason to get fussed about it. The latter group is wrong, of course, as Trump is still incredibly successful at undermining democracy, even if he's failing to steal the White House.

The story isn't just alarming because Trump is flirting with violence, either. It's alarming because it's proof that Trump is continuing to push these idiotic conspiracy theories because he really, truly does think there's still a way for him to steal this election.
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Democrats must face the lasting damage of Trump's coup attempt
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That isn't to say this coup is not a fundraising grift. Of course, it is. With Trump, everything is a cash grab. This one is apparently a desperate effort to stay one step ahead of the creditors he's quite likely up to a billion dollars in debt to. But the fact that he's actually taking meetings with wild-eyed conspiracy theorists like Sidney Powell, the head of his coup operations, and otherwise putting effort into this suggests that Trump really does think there's a "Get Out Of Democracy Free" card, and it's just a matter of finding the person who has it.

Similarly, Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr at Politico published a piece detailing Trump's weeks of making phone calls to various Republican officials, hoping they would just clear up this nagging "lost the election" problem for him, only to be rebuffed. (Not because these officials wanted to rebuff him, to be clear. It's just that there was no way for most of them to help him without opening themselves up to legal consequences.) Orr and Kumar document 31 different state and local officials Trump leaned on to steal the election for him — and that's not counting the House Republicans Trump pressured into signing an amicus brief supporting a petition to the Supreme Court to simply throw out the results in three swing states that went to Trump.

"There was always this feeling of supreme confidence that no matter how it looks it's all going to work out for him," Scott Jennings, a longtime GOP operative who is close to Trump's team, told Politico.





In particular, Trump's relentless abuse of Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, suggests he really does believe that it's just a matter of applying the right combination of bribes and blackmail before someone finally 'fesses up and admits that they actually do know how to make that nasty election just go away.

"Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing," Trump told the crowd at a Georgia rally. "So far we haven't been able to find the people in Georgia willing to do the right thing."

Where Trump got this idea that there's always a guy who knows his way around the rules isn't a mystery. Trump's mentor was the inarguably evil but definitely skilled lawyer/fixer Roy Cohn. Cohn really did have a talent for leveraging bribes and blackmailing anyone to help his clients, like Trump, evade the law or other obstacles. It's likely no coincidence that Trump's business went from successful to bankrupt after Cohn died. Cohn's influence is also seen in Trump's strategy to cheat in the election by leaning on the Ukrainian president for help using threats to withhold U.S. military aid.

But even Cohn didn't have the power to make an election just disappear with a few well-placed phone calls. Trump is just unburdened by Cohn's intelligence. He is not bright enough to see that this isn't one of those "I know a guy who can fix that for you" situations.

Of course, as neuroscientist Dr. Seth Norrholm told Salon's Chauncey DeVega, a huge part of the problem here is that Trump is surrounded by enablers. "The worst thing one can do for a malignant narcissist or an abuser like Donald Trump is to tell him or her that they are correct or to otherwise validate the lies and false persona," Norrholm explained.
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It's clear from the reporting that Trump has a nice, soft cushion of people around him — such as Rudy Giuliani or Michael Flynn — feeding his lies and encouraging him to believe that the magic wand Trump can wave to stop Biden's presidency is out there, somewhere.

Why does it matter whether Trump actually believes he can win? Well, it makes him more dangerous. If this was just a grift, it would be enough for Trump to keep sending fundraising emails and tweeting, but otherwise retiring to the golf course. But he's still actively looking for buttons to push — and entertaining violence as a way to get his way — and he still has many weeks left in office in which he can use his existing power to continue undermining democracy.

AMANDA MARCOTTE
Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.

MURDER INC. TRUMP & CO.

Sara Weinberger: 

Shining a light on the federal government’s killing spree  

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Published: 12/21/2020 12:52:32 PM

In June, Attorney General William Barr ordered the resumption of federal executions. Like a kid let loose in a candy store, Barr wasted no time.

On July 14, Daniel Lee Lewis, according to his lawyer, spent the last four hours of his life strapped to a gurney, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide his fate. On July 13, a federal judge had delayed his execution on the grounds that the constitutionality of Barr’s procedure for lethal injections had not been fully litigated. The Justice Department immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, Lewis was executed shortly after the court, in a 5-4 ruling, paved the way for 10 people to be executed by the federal government by year’s end.

The Supreme Court also rejected a petition by Lee’s family asking for a delay, because the coronavirus made it risky for them to attend his execution. The dangers associated with COVID-19 routinely deprive family members, spiritual advisers and attorneys from being present.

Wesley Ira Purkey and Dustin Lee Honken were executed that same week. According to his lawyers, Mr. Purkey had schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and brain damage, leaving him unable to understand the reasons for his death sentence. A federal district judge delayed his execution in order for the court to determine his fitness for execution, as well as whether lethal injection procedures violated his constitutional rights.

Again, the Supreme Court rejected the delays. Purkey was executed on July 16, without his spiritual adviser, a Buddhist priest, who was medically vulnerable to COVID. The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit by Purkey and Honken’s spiritual advisers claiming violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Lezmond Mitchell, who is Navajo and the only Native American on federal death row, was executed Aug. 26. The Navajo Nation fought his execution. For the first time in modern history, the federal government, which has jurisdiction over capital crimes occurring on reservations, carried out an execution for a crime committed on tribal land.

William Emmett LeCroy told a psychiatrist he believed that a nurse acquaintance was a former babysitter he called “Tinkerbell,” who sexually molested and cast a spell on him 20 years earlier. Killing her, he believed, was the only way to reverse the spell.

His lawyers appealed his death sentence on the grounds that his trial lawyers hadn’t adequately emphasized his mental illness and upbringing, which might have prevented his death sentence. Mr. LeCroy was executed on Sept. 22.

Christopher Andre Vialva, executed Sept. 24, and Brandon Bernard, executed Dec. 10, were the first two men in more than 70 years sentenced to death for crimes committed as teenagers. Both men were Black. The victims were white. There was only one Black person on the jury that convicted Vialva.

Brandon Bernard’s attorney requested a hearing regarding new evidence showing he played a lesser role in the crime. Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr took the case, requesting two weeks to prepare. Five of the original jurors stated they would not have sentenced him to death had this evidence been presented. Twenty-three prosecutors filed an amicus brief supporting the appeal. The Supreme Court denied the attorneys’ requests. Pleas to President Trump from Kim Kardashian, Jesse Jackson and AyannaPressley fell on Trump’s deaf ears.

Alfred Bourgeois received only 21 days’ notice of his execution, not enough time, according to his lawyers, to exhaust his legal options. Mr. Bourgeois is intellectually disabled, with an IQ between 70 and 75. A 2002 Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional to execute a mentally disabled person. The court denied Bourgeois’ appeal. He was executed on Dec. 11.

The execution of Orlando Hall, a Black man convicted by an all-white jury, and executed Nov. 19 for the murder of a Black teenage girl, was the first federal execution under a lame-duck administration in over a century. His court-appointed trial attorneys made many mistakes that contributed to his death sentence.

The federal government’s killing spree hasn’t made front page headlines. Each of the brief descriptions above points to violations of rights accorded by our legal system to all human beings, regardless of their crimes. Supreme Court decisions ignoring mental illness, intellectual disabilities, age, racism, Native American sovereignty and the consequences of COVID are deeply troubling.

Most disturbing is the rush to execute people who have lingered on death row for years. William Barr exploited human lives as a vehicle to help his boss win the election by portraying him as a man who stands for law and order. The Trump administration has killed more prisoners sine July than any other administration has done in a full year since 1896.

Lisa Montgomery, possibly the first woman executed by the feds since 1953, Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs are scheduled for execution before the Trump administration’s serial killings end … for now.

Sara Weinberger of Easthampton is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.

Nigeria: Tobacco Industry 'Front' Rejected By WHO, Others, Finds Footing in Nigeria

20 DECEMBER 2020
Premium Times (Abuja)

By Ben Ezeamalu

To bypass the provisions of the WHO-FCTC, the tobacco industry established a public health foundation.

As the four students of Whitesands College, Lekki, posed for the camera after emerging winners of the 2018 Conrad Challenge, the name of an entity screamed from a roll-up banner behind them: Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

The Junior Secondary School Two (JSS2) students had won the Smoke-Free World category of the Conrad Foundation Spirit of Innovation challenge held at the Kennedy Space Centre, USA.

With the World Health Organisation Framework for Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) urging Parties to ban or restrict all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship, particularly ones targeting youth populations, the companies found a subtle way.

The FCTC is a legally binding treaty that requires countries bound by the treaty -- or Parties -- to implement evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke. There are 182 Parties to the FCTC as of May 2020.

The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, the sponsors of the challenge, is a foundation funded by Philip Morris International (PMI), one of the biggest tobacco manufacturing companies in the world.

Bypassing an obstacle

Tobacco kills more than eight million people each year, with more than seven million of the deaths due to direct tobacco use, according to the World Health Organisation. About 1.2 million of the deaths are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.

To check the interference of the tobacco industry in countries' public health policies, the WHO-FCTC in Article 5.3 stated that, "In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law."

To bypass this provision, PMI established, in September 2017, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to "solving the global health crisis and ending smoking in this generation." PMI initially pledged to, starting from 2018, support the Foundation with $80 million annually over 12 years.

Two weeks after its launch, the WHO issued a statement saying there are a number of clear conflicts of interest involved with a tobacco company funding a purported health foundation.

"WHO will not partner with the Foundation. Governments should not partner with the Foundation and the public health community should follow the lead," the UN agency stated.

Several other renowned public health bodies, including the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also distanced themselves from any proposed partnership with FSFW. In January 2019, 279 global health organisations and public health leaders urged the WHO to reject any affiliation with the Foundation.

With millions of dollars in its coffers and the chances of partnership with notable public health organisations becoming a mirage by the day, FSFW found another way: give money to a foundation involved with young people. Enter the Conrad Foundation, which holds the annual Conrad Challenge, an innovation and entrepreneurship competition that encourages "young adults to participate in designing the future through purpose-driven education," according to information on its website. Other sponsors of the challenge include Dell Technologies, Bezos Family Foundation, and Kennedy Space Centre, among others.

But it is the involvement of the Foundation for a Smoke-free World that had raised eyebrows among tobacco-control advocates and other public health professionals.

"There is generally a difference between the provisions of the FCTC and the ways in which parties are legally obligated to adhere to those provisions," said Michél Legendre, Associate Campaign Director at Corporate Accountability.

"But there is no doubt that groups like the Conrad Foundation, which are affiliated with the industry, can be considered as advertising and promotion. This is clearly laid out in Article 5.3. More broadly, the FCTC seeks to protect children and adolescents, so any targeting of these groups by industry affiliates like the Conrad Foundation is in violation of the treaty."

The FSFW's 2019 tax return shows that PMI has continued to be the sole funder for its activities. An analysis of the tax return by Tobacco Tactics reveals that the grants and contributions for the year 2019 are not primarily focused on funding scientific research but appear to be in line with the Foundation's public relations and advocacy strategies.

"Only one in six of the grantees listed in this tax return (seven out of a total of 45) appear to be based within academic institutions."

Since it was introduced in Nigeria two years ago, 248 secondary school students have participated in the Conrad Challenge across four categories comprising aerospace and aviation, cyber technology and security, energy and environment, and food and nutrition. For the 2020-21 challenge, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World has introduced a new 'special category' named 'Repurposed Farmlands and Tobacco Crops.'

"A reduced demand of tobacco could bring devastating consequences to smallholder tobacco farmers who are economically dependent on tobacco crops for their livelihood," the Conrad Foundation said in a statement. "We challenge you to develop 21st-century agricultural technology solutions to increase smallholder agriculture efficiency and productivity to either repurpose tobacco farmlands for a different crop, or utilise farmlands for a different crop, or utilise the tobacco plant for a different purpose."

When contacted, the Conrad Challenge Nigeria denied any links with the tobacco industry.

"Conrad Challenge in Nigeria is currently only sponsored by the Conrad Foundation and through scholarships from Clarkson University New York," the foundation said in an e-mailed response.

In a follow-up email from the Conrad Foundation, the organisation said its funder, the FSFW, is independent of the tobacco industry.

"This is a misrepresentation of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), which is an independent, nonprofit, private foundation committed to reducing deaths and diseases caused by smoking.

"For three years, FSFW has sponsored Conrad Challenge categories through grants that were aimed at eliminating and reducing e-cigarette usage and waste, as well as helping smallholder tobacco farmers who are seeking alternative livelihoods."

Prior to beginning the Conrad Foundation's relationship with FSFW, the organisation continued, the Conrad Foundation carefully examined FSFW's organizational documents to ensure its independence from any influence by the tobacco industry.

"Confirming FSFW's independence was vital to the Conrad Foundation's decision to accept FSFW funding."

After its initial funding promise, PMI amended its agreement with FSFW this year by adjusting its pledge thus: $80 million for 2018 and 2019; $45 million in 2020; $40 million in 2021; and $35 million from 2022 to 2029.

A FSFW spokesperson said the Foundation supports the full implementation of the FCTC and had authored and published papers that cite the need to fill gaps in its implementation.

"However, the Foundation does not agree with a biased interpretation of Article 5.3, which focuses on the governments who are the FCTC signatories and is not meant for nonprofit organisations like the Foundation," the organisation said in an e-mailed statement.

The statement reiterated that FSFW is independent of PMI and operates in a manner that ensures its independence from the influence of any commercial entity.

Drafting government's policy

The 2020 edition of Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction, published by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World-funded Knowledge Action Change, called for Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) to be regarded as complementary, rather than inimical to reducing the global death and disease from smoking.

Although it noted that "there is no such thing as absolute safety," the report stated that the newer Safer Nicotine Products (SNP) have been in circulation for more than a decade, with evidence that they are much less risky than combustibles.

The report accused tobacco-control advocates of making misleading claims about the SNP which has led to an increase in the number of smokers who now believe that SNP are no safer or may even be more dangerous than cigarettes. This action, it stated, has allowed "activist NGOs" and academics to attract substantial funding from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, through Bloomberg Philanthropies. These NGOs, the report continued, had done nothing but spread bad science and misinformation, undermining the promise of THR products by putting governments under pressure to ban their use.

More than 16,000 people are killed by tobacco-caused diseases in Nigeria every year, according to the Tobacco Atlas.

Last July, the Nigeria Tobacco Control Alliance (NTCA) petitioned the Industry, Trade and Investment ministry accusing the tobacco industry of using agencies of government to draft a 'Policy on Conventional Tobacco and Non-Combusted Alternatives to Cigarette Smoking' in clear contravention of the National Tobacco Control (NTC) Act, 2015, its regulations; and the WHO-FCTC which Nigeria ratified in 2015.

The 19-page draft document listed the benefits from the tobacco sector to include employment creation, a significant contribution to Nigeria's GDP, and a significant increase in government revenue.

It also noted that there would be more than one billion smokers globally by 2025 and "it makes sense to offer less harmful, yet satisfying non-combusted alternatives for those smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke." It encouraged the switch to alternative products that do not combust tobacco but produce aerosol with potential to present less risk of harm compared to those found in cigarette smoke. Some of these alternatives include Electrically Heated Tobacco, Carbon Heated Tobacco Product, and E-Vapour Products.

"Epidemiologically, it has been clearly established that smoking increases the risk of developing a smoking-related disease. It has equally been demonstrated that if a smoker quits, the risk of developing a smoking-related disease decreases.

"So, it is wise to make available these alternatives to cigarettes for adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke."

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the draft document was sponsored by PMI and sent to the ministry of industry, trade and investment. Both PMI and the ministry did not respond to requests for comments.

It was not the first time the tobacco industry in Nigeria had attempted to flout the provisions of the WHO-FCTC. In 2014, the British American Tobacco Nigeria organised a training for police officers in Lagos on the enforcement of the then newly-passed tobacco control legislation in the state.

In its petition, the NTCA said such "outdated ploys" have been used by the tobacco industry in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria to undermine their tobacco control policies and open up the market to "unproven safer alternatives." The group advocated that every novel tobacco product, including heated tobacco products and e-cigarettes, be banned in Nigeria while every new product be subjected to thorough regulatory scrutiny.

"Many countries have seen the gimmick [of the tobacco industry] and have taken strict measures against all kinds of tobacco products in the interest of public health and safety," said Akinbode Oluwafemi, who signed the petition on behalf of the NTCA, a network of frontline civil society organisations, NGOs, and professional groups working on tobacco control, public health and cancer control in Nigeria.

One of the most recent gimmicks by the tobacco industry was the action by Philip Morris, in July, after the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the outcome of PMI's 2016 application to market its flagship heated tobacco product, IQOS, as a "modified risk tobacco risk product" in the U.S. In its ruling, the FDA noted that although the data submitted by PMI showed that IQOS may reduce exposure to harmful substances, it does not reduce the risk of disease and death when compared to cigarette smoking.

PMI immediately responded to the ruling, describing it as a "historic public health milestone." The company's managing director. sub-Saharan Africa, Bahman Safakish, told Nigerian journalists that providing smokers with science-based less harmful alternatives is a "commonsense solution to improve public health."

Anna Gilmore, a Professor of Public Health, described Philip Morris action in the aftermath of the FDA ruling as "worrying," and noted that, ultimately, the company is focused on profitability and not the well-being of tobacco users.

"There is a couple of things that might be worth flagging, one is that it's not just that Philip Morris is misrepresenting this decision but that, actually, in doing that, they try to push governments down a room for tobacco control that is not the most effective."

IQOS - which contains both tobacco and nicotine - was launched in South Africa in 2017, and plans are underfoot to extend the product to other African countries as soon as possible, Mr Safakish told the Nigerian Tribune in an interview last August.

Ms Gilmore, who is also the Director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, UK, said while independent research on IQOS showed that exposure to some chemicals was reduced, there was an increased exposure to other chemicals.

"And the critics also looked at the risk issue and showed that there really is no evidence that the risk of diseases is reduced and disease markers, if you like, are not reduced."


Read the original article on Premium Times.

Journalist arrested after exposing the plight of Palestinians in Israeli prisons

Bushra Al-Taweel, 27, was detained on 8 November while going home from Jenin via an Israeli military checkpoint near the illegal Yitzhar settlement

Laila Ahmet
Anjuman Rahman
December 1, 2020 

A Palestinian journalist and activist has been detained for the fifth time by the Israeli authorities after being released earlier this year from an eight-month term of administrative detention, when she was held with neither charge nor trial. Bushra Al-Taweel, 27, was detained on 8 November while going home from Jenin via an Israeli military checkpoint near the illegal Yitzhar settlement.

Palestinian journalists face growing threats, intimidation and violence as their freedoms are curtailed by the Israeli occupation. Journalism is a crucial pillar of democracy that holds those in power to account, so it comes as no surprise that Israel takes extreme measures to block any accurate reporting of the rights violations and crimes committed by its security forces in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Al-Taweel's mother, Muntaha, she was facing a lot of harassment and could neither move freely between cities in Palestine nor get a job to have an income to live on. "She is also, of course, prohibited from travelling abroad and cannot establish any commercial or economic project to develop, nor achieve her ambitions and goals as a professional journalist working with freedom and independence."

Al-Taweel is being held in Hasharon Prison in northern Israel where, her mother claims, she is being "tortured" by Israeli interrogators who are attempting to get "baseless confessions" from her. Palestinian journalists frequently report abuse by Israeli security forces and prison officers.

Palestinian woman detained by Israel soldiers at military checkpoint

Bushra Al-Taweel is the latest in a long line of Palestinian journalists who the Israeli occupation forces have harmed or killed, but the authorities have been unable to silence their criticism of the Israeli occupation and its unjust prison system. Soldiers rarely face legal consequences for their actions, and there is no sign that this will change anytime soon.

"There is no freedom for journalists to cover or publish what is newsworthy," explained Al-Taweel's mother. "They confiscated her cameras more than once, and she has borne insults and abuse from Israeli soldiers out in the field to cover events. They often fire tear gas and stun grenades at journalists to prevent them from filming."

Last year, Israeli soldiers arrested Al-Taweel in Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, following the release of her father, a former leader of the local municipality in the town, Jamal Al-Taweel. She was first arrested when she was just 17, serving five months of an 18-month sentence before being released as part of a 2011 prisoner swap deal.

The fourth time that she was arrested was due to her coverage of issues affecting Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by the Israelis. "She covered things like the suffering that they and their families go through; the stopping of prisoners' stipends, and the use of administrative detention," said Mrs Al-Taweel.

The frequent arrest and harassment of Bushra Al-Taweel is symptomatic of the Israeli government's intention to discredit anyone who dares to speak out about the reality for Palestinians living under occupation and siege. Such brave individuals are silenced and, if necessary, taken out of the equation by Israel.

Bushra Al-Taweel, 27, was detained on 8 November while going home from Jenin via an Israeli military checkpoint near the illegal Yitzhar settlement


After graduating from Modern University College in Ramallah in 2013, Bushra launched the Aneen Al-Qaid Network, a media platform run by ex-prisoners, journalists, lawyers and humanitarian activists, who highlight the plight of Palestinian prisoners. She wanted to give voice to the suffering, especially of the mothers and children held by the Israelis, letting the world know what is happening through the media.

Israel has killed 46 Palestinian journalists since the outbreak of the Aqsa Intifada in 2000, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate revealed in early November. The announcement was made during a rally outside the UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza Strip on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. Tahseen Al-Astal, the deputy head of the syndicate, called on the UN to assume its responsibility to protect journalists and bring to account the Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians.

"The Syndicate records between 500 and 700 [Israeli] occupation attacks and crimes against Palestinian journalists every year," he pointed out. "It's time for these crimes to stop and to hold accountable those who committed them and those who issued the orders."

Muntaha Al-Taweel is concerned about the effect that the latest arrest will have on her daughter. "It will affect her psychologically because freedom is the most valuable thing that a person possesses. Prison is difficult and cruel, especially in light of the coronavirus. If she is infected, the prison authorities will not provide any medical treatment."

'They Tried to Freeze Me to Death': Torture and Resistance in Israeli Prisons

Even brief detentions during the Covid-19 pandemic can mean a death sentence. The majority of Palestinian prisoners are held in very cramped conditions, where social distancing is impossible. Moreover, they are left without the necessary sanitising, cleaning equipment and medical care to help to protect themselves.

There are currently around 4,500 Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails, 700 of whom require medical care. Israel has consistently failed to provide prisoners with basic precautionary measures during the pandemic, and even withdrew some food and hygiene products from prison canteens so that they couldn't buy them. "Families send money to prisoners so that they can make essential purchases of food and personal hygiene items," said Mrs Taweel. "If they are taken off the shelves by the Israelis, what can the prisoners do? Why aren't governments around the world holding Israel to account for such injustice?"

Bushra Al-Taweel was subjected to an administrative detention order yet again this week for a period of four months. No charges have been made against her. The detention order is renewable indefinitely.

"My daughter, Bushra al-Taweel, was arrested simply because she is a journalist with the credibility to expose the crimes of Israel and its occupation," said Muntaha Al-Taweel. "The world needs to sit up and take notice of what the occupation state is doing, especially against women and children."