Iraqi authorities hang 34 people in a single day

NewKerala

BAGHDAD : More than 30 people were executed by Iraqi authorities on Thursday following their conviction for various crimes, the United Nations reported on Tuesday. It is the largest number of confirmed executions within a single day in years.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was shocked to learn that 34 people, including two women, were executed in Iraq on Thursday. "Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day," she said.

The United Nations believes at least 1,200 people have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004, but the government is reluctant to release official figures. The UN said at least 63 people are thought to have been executed since mid-November of last year.

"Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure," Pillay said about Thursday's executions. Iraq lists 48 crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed, including non-fatal crimes such as damage to property.

"Most disturbingly," said Pillay, "we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress. I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty."

Tuesday's report comes just two days after Human Rights Watch warned that Iraq risks falling back towards authoritarian rule amid allegations that security forces have tortured detainees at a secret prison, cracked down on freedom of expression and attacked peaceful protesters as well as journalists. Executions were commonly used by the government of Saddam Hussein.

The opposition in Iraq has compared Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a dictator as he has failed to appoint defense and interior ministers, giving him full control over those ministries. al-Maliki has also failed to appoint a minister of National Security Affairs. (BNO News)

Evidence found of pro-NATO massacre in Sirte, Libya

Liberation
Derek Ford

NTC government turning back the clock on women's rights

The U.S. government and NATO countries used alleged human rights violations as a pretext for the war on Libya. These allegations were later proven false by numerous human rights groups, including Amnesty International. Now evidence has surfaced pointing to human rights violations committed by the pro-NATO Libyan rebels.

Human Rights Watch announced on Oct. 24 that they had discovered 53 decomposing bodies at a hotel in the city of Sirte, which rebels were using as a prison. Evidence indicates that many or all of the victims appear to have been summarily executed. Some of them had their hands tied behind their back, bullet holes were found in the ground and spent rifle shells were strewn about. Many were shot in the head. Several have already been identified as Gaddafi supporters.

The UK Defense Minister said that the mass killing may be a war crime but that it would be “virtually impossible” for Britain to investigate, although Britain, along with the United States, played an integral part in the war.

Quryna, a local newspaper in Sirte, reported on Oct. 26 that 267 bodies of Gaddafi supporters were buried in a mass grave. The story, which cited the Red Cross, said that the bodies were found throughout Sirte and its suburbs and had been buried by the NTC.

Just days before these gruesome discoveries, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated the imperialists' line. He told the press at NATO headquarters in Brussels that “Our military forces prevented a massacre and saved countless lives.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Throughout the seven-month war, pro-NTC rebels were notoriously brutal. Peter Bouckaert, of Human Rights Watch, said that “This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law.”
NTC attacks women’s rights

On Oct. 23, as Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the NATO-backed National Transition Council, was officially declaring Libya “liberated” he also announced that Libyan law will now be in accordance with sharia. While sharia law can be interpreted in various ways, Jalil singled out Libyan laws on divorce and marriage in his speech: “The law of divorce and marriage … This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped.”

Previously in Libya, women were allowed to marry and divorce freely and polygamy was outlawed. After divorce, women left marriages with their previous assets, the family home and generally all joint assets. These practices will now be abolished and polygamy and secret marriages will be legalized.
This may be the first of many laws to turn back the clock on women’s rights in Libya. Under Moammar Gaddafi’s government, women were highly educated and well-represented in all occupations, including positions in the government. This is the liberation that NATO has brought to Libya.

From Barbarism to Barbarism? Outrage and the Fight for Justice

Global Research
Cynthia McKinney

After Georgia was forced by the United States Supreme Court to abandon its scheme to deny Black people the right to an undiluted vote and representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person elected to the Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction.

The year was 1962. During his tenure, Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become the Senate's Chair of the Judiciary Committee. From this position, he was able to bottle-up legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia, especially its Black residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy Johnson practiced the art of leadership and engaged in the fight for justice. He produced solid results for a people who were hungry for justice.

Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the numbers are way too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely "being there," in the end exercising no leadership at all and becoming a spectator to power in abandonment of those who need the effective use of power the most. The art of the struggle has veritably been abandoned for merely occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the struggle for the seat at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.

As I was commiserating over the Troy Davis situation with a former member of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the highest possible position within that body for his party, he lamented that for all of his years in the Legislature, he had not introduced a single death penalty bill. I quickly interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires and sticking his fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his colleagues on the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he couldn't do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions his former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism by my state.

Occupying these "seats at the table" is important. Engaging in the struggle for justice is important. And contrary to what many would have us believe, leadership is important. That's why so much effort is spent on co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of conscience that we do have and preventing authentic representatives of our values to occupy those seats at the table.

Therefore, more is required of us. We must hone the skill of discernment. We must not give our vote to just anybody to occupy these positions of power. We must not allow "posers" to represent us. Posers are those who wear the jackets of authority, who are put in positions of power by us, but who do not engage in the artful use of that power on our behalf. Discerning who is friend and who is poser has been difficult. But, is being made more possible by the arrogance now of those who do not have the interests of the people at heart. They seem not to care that their "neanderthal" is showing. But we can look at them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions are a clue that they do not share our values.

Unfortunately, posers exist all around us: and in the media, too. The job now of people of conscience is to make sure that we don't enable these posers by our own supportive behavior. My friend reminded me that Leroy Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s than are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to stop and think about that.

More is less? What role have we all had to play in such a circumstance? Is our leadership more of a reflection of who we are than we have acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to get a better result?

Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia. There is more to come unless we affirmatively take steps to stop it. Republican voters cheered at the prospects of more executions at a recent Presidential debate. In a recent article, Africom brags on its lessons learned from Libya:

"The command had to define what effects it needed, and what specific targets would contribute to achieving those effects – a precise endeavor, Ham said. If attacking a communications node, planners must ask themselves what does that particular node do? How does it connect to other nodes? What’s the right munition to use? What’s the likelihood of collateral damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s the right delivery platform? And finally, how to synchronize attacks." http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65344

“That level of detail and precision ... was not something the command had practiced to the degree that we were required to do in Odyssey Dawn,” Ham said. . . . If we were to launch a humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control, airfield management, those kind of activities?” he said.

The United States has to craft those practices with African partners, he added.

U.S. allies in Libya are as barbaric as their sponsors. Despite youtube's efforts to dissuade it from being seen, please watch this video sent to me from France:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00LBdf1uy2E&feature=player_embedded&skipcontrinter=1

As committed Libyans valiantly resist the entire NATO arsenal of modern and old-fashioned killfare, a new kind of perverse global plantation is being created. There is a clear and present danger that Africa and Asia will become U.S. killing fields for the next decade or more while the United States, itself, becomes a police state--unless we stop this poser leadership that really stopped representing us a long t. If we fail to stop them, watch that video again--and welcome to the new America, hauntingly familiar to a place we never left.

Governor Perry's Death Mission

Der Spiegel
Marc Pitz

In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty.

In Texas, Steven Michael Woods is slated for execution on Tuesday, despite considerable doubts about his guilt. The inmate is fighting to have his sentence commuted, but his chances are diminishing. State Governor Rick Perry is considered a champion of the death penalty. 

It's a gruesome record, but Rick Perry is proud of it. "Your state has executed 234 death-row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," NBC's Brian Williams told the Texas governor during this week's presidential debate. Did he ever struggle to sleep at night, Williams continued, "with the idea that anyone of those might have been innocent"?

Before Williams had finished, the auditorium erupted in cheers, even whistles, as if the spectators welcomed this killer number. Then Perry answered grimly: "No sir, I never struggled with that at all."

Asked what he made of the applause, he said: "I think Americans understand justice."

This bizarre moment was almost lost in the subsequent coverage of the Republican candidates' debate. For one man, however, it was a bad omen: Steven Michael Woods.

Woods, 31, is incarcerated in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses Texas' death row, a four-hour drive east of the capital Austin. His execution for capital murder is set for Tuesday -- one day after the next Republican debate. It would be the 19th execution this year in Texas alone.

Grave Doubts about Verdict
 
There's more, though: Woods, his lawyers and his friends insist he is innocent.

There are indeed grave doubts about the verdict. Marcus Rhodes, Wood's co-defendant and a former friend, has admitted to the double murder in question and already been sentenced -- but to life in prison. Rhodes' DNA was found on the weapons, but not that of Woods.

Yet all courts so far have rejected Wood's appeals. Even the US Supreme Court refused to take up the case. Alex Calhoun, Wood's defense lawyer, has now filed a clemency petition with Governor Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, as a last resort.

Black Man Executed In Texas Despite Evidence Of Retardation

NewsOne

A Texas man convicted of murdering two people, and paralyzing another, was executed Tuesday, despite evidence he suffered from metal retardation.

Milton Mathis, 32, was convicted in 1999 for shootings that killed a 24-year-old, Travis Brown III, and 31-year-old, Daniel Hibbard.

The Texas Correctional system discovered that Mathis suffered from mental retardation after IQ tests were administered, but decided to go through with execution because prosecutors contended that his criminal behavior indicated “near-normal intelligence.”

In 2001, Gov. Perry vetoed a bill passed by the Texas legislature banning the execution of the mentally retarded, saying that the state’s judicial system already contained adequate protections for such defendants. Supporters of the bill disagreed, pointing to evidence indicating that at least a half-dozen prisoners with mental deficiencies had been executed since 1990.

Steven Rocket Rosen, who defended Mathis in his original trial, said there was “no excuse” for the actions of his client. But he said Mathis’s mental problems were severe and had been aggravated by heavy drug use from a young age.

According to court records, Mathis began smoking PCP and marijuana soaked in formaldehyde, known as “fry,” as early as age 12.

Help Us Transmit This Story

  Add to Your Blogger Account
  Put it On Facebook
  Tweet this post
  Print it from your printer
  Email and a collection of other outlets
  Try even more services