Category: The Fifth Column

(HRW) – Zaid Itani, the well-known actor exonerated of spying for Israel, has described in detail his forced disappearance in Lebanon and torture in detention, Human Rights Watch said today. On May 29, 2018, military investigative judge, Riad Abu Ghaida, closed the case against Itani and charged two people with falsely accusing him. Itani was released without bail on March 13. Lebanese authorities should conduct a thorough and impartial investigation of Itani’s allegations of forced disappearance and torture at the hands of State Security, Human Rights Watch said. Zaid Itani…

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(HRW) – United States law enforcement has used undercover distributions of phones to monitor suspects’ activities, raising rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said today. The Justice Department should disclose its policies regarding the tactic and whether it is currently being used.  Human Rights Watch has identified two forms of this technique that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has used or, evidence suggests, has contemplated using. One involved the undercover sale of BlackBerry devices whose individual encryption keys the DEA possessed, enabling the agency to decode messages sent and received by…

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(Garrison) – For nearly four decades, since the Reagan administration, some among America’s “school choice” movement have advocated for the use of “voucher” systems to give parents more control over their children’s education. Various jurisdictions around the country have implemented the concept, with varying (and much-debated) results. Most opposition to vouchers comes, as one might imagine, from supporters of government-run, aka “public,” schools for the vast majority of  students. Their concerns include loss of funding for those public schools as students migrate to private alternatives, the destruction of America’s secular…

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(FEE) – President Trump announced his second nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday. Perhaps as forward in the minds of conservatives as preserving the right to keep and bear arms, expressly protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment, is how the new justice might rule on the Trump administration’s various immigration policies, decried by the left as “fascist!” and supported by the right as the federal government’s “constitutional duty.” Yet federal regulation of immigration is a power both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison maintained was “no where delegated to…

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(TFC) – The opening shots of the largest trade war in history were fired this morning at midnight EST. President Trump’s tariffs went into effect. “China is forced to strike back to safeguard core national interests and the interests of its people,” said the Chinese commerce ministry. China is expected to return fire by adding tariffs to American-made products in the automotive, meat, and seafood industries. These are industries where his base voters work. Trump has promised to retaliate against any response from the Chinese with more tariffs imposed on…

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(HRW) – First the bad news: the United Nations secretary-general’s annual report on children and armed conflict found a 35 percent increase in violence against children compared to the year before. But there’s good news too: incidents of armed groups – be they government forces or rebel groups – using schools for military purposes are down 14 percent from the previous year, with 188 schools affected. That’s important for students who have safer schools to learn in, and raises hopes that new generations will be equipped with the knowledge and…

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Photo courtesy of Rutahsa Adventures www.rutahsa.com – published with permission by Leonard G. on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 1.0). (GV) – During the Inca empire, also known as Tawantinsuyo, ancient Peruvians developed a broad network of roads and bridges so the extensive territory could communicate. Of all the bridges that existed back then, the only one that remains today is the Q’eswachaka or Queshuachaca (literally, “rope bridge” in the Quechua language), which spans a narrow pass over the Apurímac River in the province of Canas, located in the southern region of Cusco. Ultimo puente…

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The US cited for its decision the council’s perceived bias toward Israel and a lack of institutional credibility. But the departure symbolizes a retreat from leadership on human rights abroad as human rights conditions at home have come under sharp criticism. The decision came just days after the UN high commissioner for human rights denounced the US practice of forcibly separating children from their migrant and asylum seeker parents at the US border. The US has also sought to increase the number of immigrants detained by requesting additional funding to…

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(Sputnik) – The cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee of the British House of Commons has issued two reports conceding that the country’s intelligence agencies were complicit in the abduction, detention and torture of terrorism suspects to far greater degree than has previously been known. The reports dealt with the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Panel members led by former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve pored over more than 40,000 declassified documents and received the testimony of both former detainees and employees of MI5 in the course of its investigation. In a press release accompanying the reports’ publication, the committee members claimed…

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(Garrison) – Well, here we go again. On June 27, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Cue crisis, as defined by President John F. Kennedy’s inaccurate characterization of the Chinese analog: “Two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity.” Democrats and Republicans have, for 30 years, alternated between anticipation and fear, depending on which party was in position to choose Kennedy’s successor. As a “swing vote” — reliably tied to neither party’s policy agenda — since the day he donned the robe in…

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