The Gay Courier has been established to provide news, information and info on, from and about the gay community, and other social events and happenings from around the world, from all sorts of sources, to all who are interested in this news, information and info!
The postings are as is, and all copyrights and or ownerships are and remain with the original copyright-holder and or owner!
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday
defended President Trump’s executive order instituting a ban on foreign
nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. The ban, which caused
chaos across the U.S. at airports over the weekend, has been criticized
on both sides of the aisle. In a press conference, Kelly said his
department knew the executive order was coming and that Homeland
Security staffers were involved in drafting it. Reports had suggested
that the department was blindsided by the order. “This whole approach
was part of what then-candidate Trump talked about for a year or two,”
Kelly added. “So we knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise it was
coming. And then we implemented it.” He also responded to claims from
Democrats that the executive order amounts to a ban on Muslims. “This is
not—I repeat, not—a ban on Muslims,” Kelly said, adding that religious
liberty is a “fundamental treasured value.” Republicans on Capitol Hill
have criticized the executive branch for how the directive was
implemented, noting that legal permanent residents and valid visa
holders were detained and others were blocked from boarding flights to
the U.S.
Federal prosecutors are considering child-pornography charges against Anthony Weiner, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The news comes according to sources familiar with the FBI and Manhattan
U.S. attorney’s investigation into allegations the former Democratic
congressman had exchanged sexually explicit messages with a 15-year-old
girl. The Journal reported that Weiner’s lawyers have met with
prosecutors and have attempted to dissuade them from bringing child-porn
charges, which carry a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. This
latest probe into Weiner’s sexting habits had a drastic effect on the
2016 presidential race, with FBI chief James Comey announcing mere weeks
before Election Day that agents had found a laptop used by Weiner,
containing emails potentially related to the probe of Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Andrew Wolfson , @adwolfson Published 5:45 p.m. ET
Jan. 30, 2017 | Updated 4 hours
ago
CLOSE
Protesters face off during Monday's
immigration rally in Louisville. Marty Pearl/Special to
CJ
Flying a large "Trump" flag, a mysterious convoy of military vehicles rolled
down Interstate 65 through Louisville on Sunday morning. But nobody is
claiming it.
A spokesman for Ft. Knox, Patrick Hodges, said it wasn't theirs.
Same for the Kentucky National Guard, said Maj. Stephen Martin, director
of public affairs.
A Defense Department spokesman, Maj. Jamie Davis, who examined images of
the four-truck procession for the Courier-Journal, said he doesn't think it
belonged to any service branch — and that the vehicles may have been military
surplus. ►RELATED: Should
Louisville be declared a sanctuary city?
Davis said it would violate regulations to fly such a flag on a military
vehicle. “That is not standard procedure,” he said. He also said it would have
been against the rules to run a military convoy without unit markings on the
trucks.
Chris Rowzee, a spokeswoman for indivisibleky, a new activist organization in
Louisville, said that as a retired veteran who served 28 years in the Air
Force, “I can't even begin to describe how disturbed I am by this.”
While Donald Trump is president, she said, the military is supposed to
be a nonpolitical organization in which servicemen and women swear an oath to
the Constitution, not to any particular president.
“To show a partisan political leaning on a military vehicle is very
reminiscent of Nazi Germany,” she said.
Invisibleky posted photos and a video of the convoy on its website.
Rowzee said the group thinks the trucks may have belonged to a military
contractor, if they weren't being operated by the military. ►READ MORE: Ky.,
Ind. colleges warn students over travel ban
Louisville Metro Police did not immediately respond to a question about
whether it received any calls about the convoy. Kentucky Transportation
Cabinet spokeswoman Naitore Djigbenou said it does not track military
convoys.
The vehicles are Humvees with a modified bed and the desert tan color
suggests they were or are Army vehicles, according to Tracey Metcalf,
administrator for the Military Vehicle Preservation Association in Independence,
Mo.
Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokeswoman, said in an email that
the photos of the vehicles were too blurry to say if they belonged to Army
units. Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at 502-582-7189 Watch a video of the convoy
here: http://indivisibleky.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/So-this-just-happened.mp4
Professor James Hathaway strongly criticizes UN's refugee agency.
Lawyers
gather to discuss how to gain access to a detainee held under a travel
ban imposed by U.S. President Donald Trumps executive order, at
Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S.
January 28, 2017. (KUVA: Yeganeh Torbat / Reuters)
PresidentDonald Trump’s
executive order to ban entry by citizens and refugees from seven
countries is clearly against international law, says law professor James Hathaway from University of Michigan.
James Hathaway (KUVA: University of Michigan)”My
first impression is that the executive order seems to be arbitrarily
designed. It isn’t a ban on all Muslims since most Muslims in the world
do not live in the prohibited countries. Nor is it based on places where
fundamentalist risks exist — for example, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey are
not on the list.”
Hathaway is one of the leading scholars of
refugee law and a visiting teacher in several universities around the
world. He emphasizes that international law has long prohibited the idea
of tarring everyone with the same brush.
“A government cannot
simply assert that because you are a Jew or black or a citizen of a
given country you are necessarily a threat. International law requires
that decisions be based on individuated merit, rather than stereotyping
everybody, assuming that all members of the class necessarily pose the
same concern.”
According to
Professor Hathaway The United States breaches articles 3 and 33 of the
Refugee Convention with President Trump’s executive order.
Article
3 says that The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this
Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or
country of origin.
According to article 33 No Contracting State
shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to
the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be
threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion.
A person gets
refugee status when he or she will be granted asylum by the receiving
country or admitted by the United Nation’s Refugee Agency UNHCR.
Professor Hathaway is surprised of comments by Academy Professor Martti Koskenniemi
who said on Wednesday before the implementation of the executive order
that the rights of refugees do not come before national security as a
sovereign country does have the right to decide who enters its
territory.
Hathaway thinks professor Koskenniemi is partly correct and partly not correct.
“The
Refugee Convention only regulates a state’s conduct once the person who
is a refugee comes under the jurisdiction of that country. So, if
Finland makes a decision about whether or not to help a refugee still in
Syria, that refugee isn’t yet under Finnish control. The Refugee
Convention doesn’t speak to that. I think that was what Professor
Koskenniemi tried to convey. The Refugee Convention itself, which has a
really powerful duty on non-discrimination in article three only applies
when the refugee actually comes under the jurisdiction of a country
that has signed the treaty.”
However
Professor Hathaway stresses the fact that the non-discrimination
provision of the Refugee Convention is immediately applicable when a
refugee is under the jurisdiction of The Contracting State.
”Today
[on Saturday], thanks to The New York Times, we know that there are
refugees arriving at JFK airport in New York who are being refused entry
on the grounds that they come from one of the listed countries.
Therefore it is clear that the United States is in breach of two
cornerstones of the Refugee Convention, which are articles 3 and 33.”
According
to Hathaway Koskenniemi did not take into account the United Nations
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 26 of the
treaty says that all persons are equal before the law and are entitled
without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
In
this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to
all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on
any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other
status.
“That article says that anytime a country adopts a law or
policy of any kind it must be conceived in a way that provides equal
protection for example without regard to religion. It can be a law on
any subject matter. It doesn’t have to involve only people who are
physically present as the Refugee Convention requires. A law that
discriminates on account on religion is in itself a breach of treaty the
United States has signed.”
Hathaway emphasizes
that entry can be denied where “reasonable grounds” are shown by the
state that an individual poses a risk to national security. No
group-based exclusions are possible.
”There is an argument that a
law passed several decades ago barring discrimination under the US
resettlement program would also be breached. The problem is that it is a
law that the US congress could amend, if it chose to do so. Sadly,
resettlement is a purely voluntary activity — it is not mandated by the
Refugee Convention. There is no duty for the United States to have this
program, but AS long as United States has this program, it has to
administer it in a non-discriminatory way.”
Only about 100 000
refugees are resettled in the whole world every year. The United States,
Canada and Australia do 90 per cent of this critical work.
”I
have being arguing for many years that a key part of fixing the refugee
crisis in the world right now is to move toward a more managed
protection system which would include an organized resettlement program
for whole world. People should not have to risk their lives on the
Mediterranean or by entrusting their fate to human traffickers in order
to reach safety.”
When it comes to
President Trump’s executive order, Professor Hathaway thinks UNHCR has
completely and utterly avoided its responsibility on the matter. Its
published response to the Trump plan amounts to saying that the agency
is really sorry this is happening and that UNHCR looks forward to
working with the US in the future.
“It says nothing about the
breach of international law. UNHCR has a duty under its Statute to
supervise the application of the Refugee Convention. The world should be
at least as upset at the UNHCR’s failure to speak honestly as at
President Trump’s horrible policy.”
In principle the United States could face legal responsibilities of breaching international law.
”In
theory a state party of the Refugee Convention, like Finland, could
take United States to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
But this has never happened, and is tragically unlikely given the
politics involved.”
In the United States courts do not usually
allow international law to be argued directly in a US court room, if
there is not a breach of domestic law.
“In the refugee context
the US Supreme Court has already acknowledged that the domestic law is
specifically designed to implement the Refugee Convention, so lawyers
will undoubtedly argue that any ambiguity must be resolved in favor of
respecting refugee law.”
Taking action in an escalating crisis for his 10-day-old administration, Mr.
Trump declared that Sally Q. Yates had “betrayed” the
administration, the White House said in a statement.
SYDNEY, Australia — On a December day in 1988, a teenager on a
spearfishing expedition found a body at the bottom of one of the wild,
honey-colored sandstone cliffs that line Sydney Harbor.
Naked, torn and battered by the rocks, the dead man was a promising
American mathematician, Scott Johnson. His clothes were found at the top
of the cliff in a neat pile with his digital watch, student ID and a
$10 bill, folded in a small plastic sheath. There was no wallet, and no
note.
The police concluded that Mr. Johnson, 27, had committed suicide, and a
coroner agreed. Fatal leaps from the cliffs around Sydney into the
fierce sea below were not uncommon, then or now.
But 28 years later, a new inquest into Mr. Johnson’s death has begun.
His brother, a wealthy Boston tech entrepreneur, has pressed the
Australian authorities for years to revisit the case, arguing that Mr.
Johnson was murdered because he was gay and that the police failed to
see it.
If so, it appears Mr. Johnson may not have been the only one.
Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter
During the 1980s and 1990s, the Australian authorities now say, gangs of
teenagers in Sydney hunted gay men for sport, sometimes forcing them
off the cliffs to their deaths. But the police, many of whom had a
reputation for hostility toward gay men, often carried out perfunctory
investigations that overlooked the possibility of homicide, former
officials and police officers say.
Now the police in New South Wales, the state that includes Sydney, are
reviewing the deaths of 88 men between 1976 and 2000 to determine
whether they should be classified as anti-gay hate crimes.
About 30 of the cases remain unsolved, and the police have not said how
many of the killings were tied to gangs. About a dozen victims were
found dead at the bottom of cliffs or in the sea, the police say.
The review and the inquest into Mr. Johnson’s death are casting light on
a shocking chapter of Sydney’s history, one that some say has yet to be
fully revealed.
“We can now see that predators were attacking gay men,” said Ted
Pickering, who was the police minister for New South Wales in the late
1980s. “And they were doing it with the almost-certain knowledge that
the police would not have gone after them. That was the police culture
of the day.”
No new arrests have been made in connection with the killings since the
review began in 2013, and the police declined to discuss the open
investigations. In many of the cases under review, the police said,
relevant evidence had not been collected at the time or has since been
lost.
“While the review is a difficult task because we can’t rewrite history,
we know it is important we do everything we can to ensure the best
outcomes in the future,” said Tony Crandell, an acting assistant
commissioner for the New South Wales Police Force.
But others have suggested that the review, which aims to determine which
cases may involve bias but not to solve them, is not a sufficient
response.
“It may be tempting for the police to concentrate on merely relabeling
crimes rather than doing fresh detective work to solve them,” said
Stephen Tomsen, a criminologist at Western Sydney University.
Sydney is a more tolerant city than it was decades ago, and critics say
that police attitudes have changed considerably. Uniformed officers now
march in Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, which drew a
quarter-million spectators last year and was attended for the first
time by a prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
But if the laws were changing slowly in the 1980s — New South Wales
decriminalized sex between men only in 1984 — society, including the
police, was even slower to do so.
“The police culture in Australia up to the early 1990s was hostile to
gay men,” Michael Kirby, a retired High Court justice who served during
that period, wrote in an email. “They were basically considered
antisocial, low-level criminals and lowlife types who did disgusting
things and should not be surprised that they got injured and even
killed.”
Justice Kirby, who is gay, added, “I do not believe that this extended
to a general conspiracy to back off professional investigations of
murder.” Rather, he said, there was “an attitude of complacency and
indifference. Certainly not the usual motivation of energy to track down
the murderers.”
Researchers who have studied the matter say the gangs were loose
alliances of young men, teenage boys and sometimes girls who looked for
victims to harass and assault at Sydney’s so-called gay beats — places
where gay men were known to meet, including secluded spots on the
cliffs. The gang members called it “poofter bashing.”
“There was a series of gangs,” said Stephen Page, a former New South
Wales detective who reopened some of the cases years later. “They
wouldn’t just hit one beat, they’d be aware of all of them.”
Few victims would have gone to the police, Professor Tomsen said. Most
gay men were closeted, and many would have feared being assaulted by the
police themselves. After the city’s first gay Mardi Gras parade was
broken up by the police in 1978, some marchers were beaten in their jail
cells.
“Any gay who was attacked would be seen as a foolish risk-taker if they reported that attack to police,” Professor Tomsen said.
Still, there were some arrests and prosecutions. In 1990, a Thai man was
attacked with a hammer at the top of a cliff and fell off the edge.
Three teenagers were arrested and convicted of murder.
According to a report by Sue Thompson, a former state-appointed liaison
between the New South Wales police and gays, one of the assailants told
the police: “The easiest thing with a cliff is just herding them over
the edge.”
The idea that the killing was part of a pattern was not seriously
pursued until years later. In 2000, Mr. Page, spurred by letters from a
grieving mother, reopened the case of Ross Warren, a 25-year-old
television news anchor who disappeared in 1989.
Mr. Warren’s body was never found, though his car keys were discovered
in a rock ledge. The police concluded that he had accidentally fallen
into the harbor. But Mr. Page found the original investigation had been
cursory at best.
“There was no crime scene, no evidence, and no witnesses to Ross Warren’s disappearance,” he said.
Mr. Page began looking into similar cases. In 2005, an inquest concluded
that Mr. Warren had been murdered, another man had been pushed or
thrown from a cliff, and there was a strong possibility that a third man
had been, too.
“This was a grossly inadequate and shameful investigation,” Magistrate
Jacqueline Milledge, a deputy state coroner, said of the police handling
of Mr. Warren’s death.
In all three cases, she said, the police had failed to account for the
possibility of homicide, even though men attacked in the same area who
did go to the police had “told of hearing their assailants threatening
to throw them off the cliff face.” The three killings remain unsolved.
When Steve Johnson learned that such cases were being revisited in
Sydney, he felt he finally had an possible explanation for his younger
brother’s death. Mr. Johnson had looked out for Scott since childhood,
when their parents divorced, and he considered suicide impossible.
“This was my brother, the person I was closest to, my soul mate,” Mr.
Johnson, 57, said in December, outside the Sydney courtroom where the
inquest began.
Scott Johnson had moved to Australia to be with his partner and was
pursuing his doctorate at Australian National University in Canberra. He
was a “virtuoso” mathematician, a “brilliant but remarkably gentle and
unassuming presence,” according to Richard Zeckhauser, a Harvard
economist who once wrote a paper with him.
Scott Johnson had applied for permanent residency, and his professional prospects were good.
“He would have been a first-round draft pick for any university in any
part of the world,” his brother said. “He had no reason to be stressed
or unhappy.”
The day he disappeared, Scott Johnson told his Ph.D. supervisor, Ross
Street of Macquarie University in Sydney, that he’d had a breakthrough
on a vexing problem that was crucial to his dissertation.
“It sounded like he had the whole thing in his head,” Professor Street
said at the December inquest. “He was happy about it. I was happy about
it.”
Today, evidence of what happened to Mr. Johnson, as in many of these
cases, is scant. He was found below a gay hangout, but the local police
officer who responded to the call testified that he had not known that
at the time.
The police found no signs of a struggle at the cliff top, but there had
been a storm that could have washed such evidence away. The site was
never secured as a crime scene.
In the years after Mr. Johnson’s death, his brother became wealthy in
the 1990s tech boom, selling a company that developed compression
technology for delivering sound and video over the internet to America
Online.
After reading about the 2005 inquest on the Sydney cliff deaths, Steve
Johnson began devoting some of his resources to finding out what had
happened to his brother. He hired an investigative journalist, Daniel
Glick, to go to Australia to dig up court records and other documents.
And he assembled an array of high-powered lawyers — his legal team
includes a former Massachusetts attorney general, Martha Coakley, who
said her firm took the case pro bono — to argue for reopening the case.
In 2012, a new inquest overturned the original finding of suicide. But
the coroner reached no conclusion about how Mr. Johnson had died, saying
that while anti-gay violence was a possibility, so was an accidental
fall.
When the current inquest resumes in June, it will hear new evidence, the coroner’s office has said.
Whatever the result, Steve Johnson and others hope it will spur further investigations of these cases.
“There was clearly a pattern to these deaths,” said Margaret Sheil,
whose brother Peter was found dead at the base of a cliff in 1983.
“Today, it is extraordinary to think that we would not have had an open
discussion about what happened. And if we had, it might have prevented
it happening to someone else.”
Federal
judge stays part of Trump's immigration ban after flustered U.S.
Attorney admits government didn't have time to think through "important
legal issues."
A company chairman was given a ticket for a performance of Schubert's
Unfinished Symphony. Since he was unable to go, he passed the invitation
to the company's Quality Assurance Manager.
The next morning, the chairman asked him how he enjoyed it and, instead of
a few plausible observations, he was handed a memorandum:
1. For a considerable period, the oboe players had nothing to do. Their
number should be reduced, and their work spread over the whole orchestra,
thus avoiding peaks of inactivity.
2. All twelve violins were playing identical notes. This seems unnecessary
duplicative, and the staff of this section should be drastically cut. If a
large volume of sound is really required, this could be obtained through
the use of an amplifier.
3. Much effort was involved in playing the demi-semiquavers. This seems an
excessive refinement, and it is recommended that all notes should be
rounded up to the nearest semiquaver. If this were done, it would be
possible to use trainees instead of craftsmen.
4. No useful purpose is served by repeating with horns the passage that has
already been handled by the strings. If all such redundant passages were
eliminated, the concert could be reduced from two hours to twenty minutes.
In light of the above, one can only conclude that had Schubert given proper
attention to these matters, he probably would have had the time to finish
his symphony.
A federal judge blocked part of President Trump’s executive order on
immigration on Saturday evening, ordering that refugees and others trapped at
airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home
countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or
issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s
actions.
Lawyers who sued the government to block the White House order
said the decision, which came after an emergency hearing in a New York City
courtroom, could affect an estimated 100 to 200 people who were detained upon
arrival at American airports in the wake of the order that Mr. Trump signed on
Friday afternoon, a week into his presidency.
At
least seven people, all of whom either hold green cards or U.S. visas,
are being detained at Los Angeles International Airport as a result of
an executive order signed Friday by President Trump, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
As activists scrambled to fight for their release on Saturday,
hundreds of demonstrators descended on LAX and San Francisco
International Airport to rail against Trump’s travel ban, which many
argue unfairly targets Muslims. Read more>>
Trump’s 'Extreme Vetting' Means Christians First, Muslims Last by Michael Stone
Christofascism: Trump’s "extreme vetting" gives preference
to Christians while openly discriminating against Muslims. In a new
executive order President Donald Trump makes good on his campaign
promise to halt Muslim immigration to the United States. NPR reports
Trump is ordering a “moratorium on any new refugees entering the United
States...
President Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s borders to
refugees was put into immediate effect Friday night. Refugees who were in the
air on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and
detained at airports.
The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers
representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas
corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their
clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification,
in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being
unlawfully detained at ports of entry.
The main witness in the 1955 trial of two white men who lynched black
teenager Emmett Till after he allegedly whistled at a white woman
recently confessed to having fabricated key parts of her testimony.
According to Timothy Tyson, a Duke University senior research scholar,
Carolyn Bryant Donham—who in 1955 was an attractive white mother of
two—confessed in 2007 to having lied about Till having made verbal and
physical advances at her. The allegations that he had done so were what
led to the two men, including Donham’s then-husband, killing the young
boy. “That part’s not true,” she told Tyson about such claims. She could
not recall what happened the rest of the evening at the country store.
The most famous account of their interaction included Till whistling at
her, which also may not have ever happened as the boy had a lisp. The
confession was revealed in Tyson’s new book, The Blood of Emmett Till.
President Donald Trump reportedly floated the idea of scrapping the
Electoral College, according to The Wall Street Journal. In a meeting
with congressional leadership at the White House this week, Trump
reportedly told the lawmakers he wanted to replace the Electoral College
with a national popular vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
shot down the idea, pointing specifically to the costly Florida recount
in 2000 and the potential headache it could cause if such a recount were
conducted on the level of the entire country. Trump’s reported
consideration of scrapping the Electoral College comes despite having
lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, and still won the presidency
because of the required 270 electoral vote threshold he crossed. After
losing the popular vote by several million ballots, Trump has called for
an investigation into alleged widespread voter fraud, for which there
is no evidence.
President Donald Trump’s statement on Friday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day
noticeably omits any reference to Jews. “It is with a heavy heart and
somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, and
heroes of the Holocaust,” the White House statement read. “It is
impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on
innocent people by Nazi terror.” The statement continued: “Together, we
will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.” Noticing
the lack of any mentions of the estimated six million Jews killed during
the Holocaust—or any other persecuted group, including homosexuals and
people with disabilities—Jewish leaders like Anti-Defamation League head
Jonathan Greenblatt criticized the White House. “Puzzling and troubling
@WhiteHouse #HolocaustMemorialDay [statement] has no mention of Jews,”
Greenblatt wrote on Twitter. “GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in
the past.” The Trump statement stands in stark contrast to President
Barack Obama’s final statement commemorating the day, in which he
proclaimed “we are all Jews.”
NM Lawmaker: Women ‘Have a Right to Get Slapped’ by Michael Stone
Trump loving New Mexico city councilor says women have a
right to cook, to clean, and to “get slapped.” Carlsbad City Councilor
J.R. Doporto is facing a firestorm of criticism after making derogatory
and demeaning remarks towards women on his Facebook page. Doporto,
complaining about women marching against Trump last...
CNN’s Tapper Tweets Bible Verse About Lying - Angry Trump Trolls Explode by Michael Stone
Jake Tapper hits a nerve with Trump supporters after
tweeting a Bible verse about lying. On Thursday CNN anchor Jake Tapper
tweeted the following proverb denouncing dishonesty: (Proverbs 12:22:
Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who act faithfully
are his delight. …) Even though Tapper...
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said today that he has canceled his trip to Washington to meet with President Trump.
Peña Nieto's message on Twitter came hours after Trump tweeted the
meeting should be canceled if Mexico won't pay for a border wall. Read more >>
An Israeli Finance Minister, who is in charge of implementing a law
to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank, is himself living in an
unlicensed building in an illegal colonial settlement on Occupied
Palestinian land – and he is just one of many Israeli officials living
in illegal settlements, according to a new report.
The report, released Wednesday by the Palestine Liberation
Organization, documented a number of top Israeli officials, many of whom
are tasked with displacing Palestinians or demolishing their homes,
living on illegally seized Palestinian land.
The Israeli Finance Minister Avi Cohen, lives in a colonial
settlement outpost of 40 fixed and mobile structures, which was
constructed on land stolen from Palestinian owners in the villages of
Qaryout, Saweiya and Al-Luban in the Nablus region.
The settlement where Cohen lives is an expansion of the larger
settlement of ‘Eli’ and is known as ‘Bilgi Maime’. But the Israeli
government did not approve this expansion, and Cohen’s part in building
his home on stolen Palestinian land is in direct violation of both
Israeli and international law. However, since Cohen has headed the
Regional Unit on Planning and Construction, under his watch the unit has
tacitly and actively allowed the expansion of settlements like Bilgi
Maime on Palestinian land.
Cohen himself was in charge of issuing demolition orders against
Palestinian homes, including some that were demolished in order to make
way for the construction of Cohen’s illegal settlement outpost. He also
defied an Israeli court order to dismantle the outpost, which was
reiterated every year from 2001 – 2007.
Cohen is one of a number of Israeli officials who are either living
in or contributing to illegal Israeli settlement outposts on stolen
Palestinian land. During a recent investigation into corruption charges
against the Yisrael Beitenu Party , the Israeli police discovered that
Agriculture Minister, Uri Ariel, transferred government funds to pay for
the debts of a settlement company that works in the West Bank named the
Samaria Development Co.
The new report found that a fund of NIS 2.4 million was transferred
to a private company from Israeli taxpayers to the executive arm of
Aamnah Movement, which is active in the field of settlement
construction.
This comes in the context of a new campaign of collective punishment
against Palestinian residents of the neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukaber in
Jerusalem, after one resident of the town ran his truck over a group of
Israeli soldiers.
Meir Turgeman, deputy mayor of the occupation municipality in
Jerusalem, and head of the local planning and construction committee,
announced that he intends to impose collective punishment against the
family members and neighbors of the deceased attacker.
The Israeli campaign also includes a resolution by the occupation
Minister of interior, who ordered the seizure of 12 identity passes from
members of Kanbar family (forcing these residents to move from their
homes into internal displacement), and the distribution of demolition
notices against 81 houses in the Al-Kanbar, Al-Jdeirh and Salaah
neighborhoods, belonging to families of Al-Kabnbar, Al-Jdeirh and
Salaah, under the pretext of being built without licenses.
Moreover, the campaign has also involved closing the main roads,
which disturbed the movement of transportation, as well as preventing
people from going to work and school, and hindered the ability to
provide first aid.
Troops also invaded several agricultural and commercial stores,
asking their owners to leave the areas, and finally threatened to carry
out the demolition orders.
Leading Candidate For Supreme Court Would Criminalize Gay Sex by Michael Stone
Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court includes Judge William
Pryor, a vehemently anti-gay Christian extremist. According to multiple
reports President Donald Trump has narrowed his choice to fill the
Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia to three potential
nominees: Judge William Pryor of Alabama, Judge Neil Gorsuch of
Colorado, and Judge Thomas Hardiman [Read More...]
Heads Roll At The Vatican Over Missionary Condom Scandal
A
public showdown over condoms and the firing of a Knights of Malta
missionary has made Pope Francis as mad as … well, as he gets.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
01.25.17 9:11 PM ET
ROME
— The Knights of Malta Prince and Grand Master position was supposed to
be a job for life. At least that’s what Matthew Festing, the
67-year-old Briton who has held the role for the last nine years,
thought until Pope Francis sacked him this week after a very public battle of wills, and won’ts, over condoms.
The scandal, which could be (and might be) the premise of the next Dan Brown novel, started last month when Festing fired the order’s Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager.
It
seems Boeselager, a German, concealed the fact that one of the two
Catholic missions offering medical assistance to sex slaves in Myanmar,
which he oversaw on behalf of the Knights of Malta, doled out condoms as
a part of its medical services.
According to UNAIDS (PDF),
in 2014 about 220,000 people in Myanmar were HIV-infected and about
11,000 died that year of related illnesses. Free condom distribution is a
“mainstay” of the fight against HIV/AIDS among all sex workers, and de
facto sex slaves are, of course, even more vulnerable.
But
the members of the Knights of Malta, while they are not full clerics,
do take the usual strict vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to the
Catholic Church, which prohibits the use of birth control for any
reason, even to stop the spread of a fatal epidemic.
The
Sovereign Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of
Malta (the Knights’ full formal name) dates back to the Crusades and is
under the Vatican structure. Its 13,500 members, 25,000 employees and
80,000 volunteers, are compelled to follow the rules set forth by the
Holy See.
But the question here has become, precisely, not who makes those rules, but who enforces them?
Boeselager was understandably not happy about being fired. And, according to the Knights’ own website, his dismissal wasn’t smooth by any standard.
After
it was discovered that Boeselager had been hiding the trail of the
condom handouts, two missions were shut down (a third was left open to
avoid creating a vacuum in medical services), and he was asked by
Festing to resign, which he refused to do.
“After
Boeselager refused this, eventually the Grand Master [Festing] had no
choice but to order him, under the Promise of Obedience, in presence of
the Grand Commander and the Cardinal Patronus, to resign,” the Knights’
press statement reads. “Boeselager refused again. Thus, the Grand
Commander, with the backing of the Grand Master and the Sovereign
Council and most members of the Order around the world, initiated a
disciplinary procedure after which a member can be suspended from
membership in the Order, and thus all Offices within the Order.”
Boeslager
then went to the pope himself, complaining that he’d been let go under
what he said were unreasonable circumstances and that he was surely
following the teachings of Francis when it comes to mercy and
ministering to those in the margins who may or may not be able to uphold
all the tenets of Catholicism.
Francis
apparently agreed. He appointed a five-member commission to investigate
the Knights of Malta matter, specifically the circumstances of the
firing—and the pope’s decision was met with an astonishing rebuke.
Citing their own constitution, the Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Council of the Knights of Malta issued a statement outlining why they were essentially saying no to the pope and his secretary of state.
“The
Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Order of Malta has learnt of the
decision made by the Holy See to appoint a group of five persons to shed
light on the replacement of the former Grand Chancellor. The
replacement of the former Grand Chancellor is an act of internal
governmental administration of the Sovereign Order of Malta and
consequently falls solely within its competence. The aforementioned
appointment is the result of a misunderstanding by the Secretariat of
State of the Holy See,” the statement said. “The Grand Master
respectfully clarified the situation yesterday evening in a letter to
the Supreme Pontiff, laying out the reasons why the suggestions made by
the Secretariat of State were unacceptable.”
Clearly, the pope did not see it quite that way.
Shortly afterward, the Vatican issued its own statement of clarification.
“For the support and advancement of this generous mission, the Holy See
reaffirms its confidence in the five Members of the Group appointed by
Pope Francis on 21 December 2016 to inform him about the present crisis
of the Central Direction of the Order, and rejects, based on the
documentation in its possession, any attempt to discredit these Members
of the Group and their work,” the statement said. “The Holy See counts
on the complete cooperation of all in this sensitive stage, and awaits
the Report of the above-mentioned Group in order to adopt, within its
area of competence, the most fitting decisions for the good of the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta and of the Church.”
The Knights of Malta didn’t budge, refusing to cooperate with the papal group.
That’s
when Francis decided that Festing had to go and called him in to ask
for his resignation which, according to a spokesman for the Knights of
Malta, he willingly gave. The Vatican will now assign an interim leader
until the Knights of Malta hold their own election for Festing’s
replacement.
While it may all seem
medieval and Machiavellian, even for Rome, there is another wrinkle—and a
distinctly American one—in this rather unholy thread.
The head of the Sovereign Council of the Knights of Malta is none other than Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, an American who is leading a campaign
against Pope Francis for allegedly giving the impression that rules on
divorced and remarried Catholics and LGBT Catholics have softened.
Burke and three other cardinals filed a list of dubia, or doubts, to Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about the pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).
Francis has refused to answer the dubia,
essentially drawing a line in the sand on the matter. Whether or not
the Knights of Malta mess is Burke’s attempt at revenge or to embarrass
the pope is a matter of conjecture. But this much is crystal clear:
pissing off the pope has consequences.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES PLAN TO HALT SYRIAN REFUGEE ADMISSIONS, LIMIT MUSLIM ENTRY "President
Donald Trump is preparing to issue an executive order dramatically
restricting refugee admissions to the U.S. and denying visas to
individuals from countries his administration deems high-risk, according
to congressional and advocacy organization sources briefed on a
draft." And the president plans to order the
construction of a Mexican border wall. [Jessica Schulberg and Sharaf Mowjood, HuffPost]
Royal Navy whistleblower William McNeilly leaked details about a
number of serious test fire issues aboard Britain’s Trident nuclear
submarine fleet a whole year before the June 2016 misfire that sent a
missile careening towards the US.
McNeilly published a dossier
highlighting a range of safety and security failures aboard Trident
submarines in May 2015 – more than a year before the latest mishap.
The Royal Navy submariner was detained and quietly discharged in June
of that year. Senior officers even sought to discredit McNeilly’s
claims by portraying him as an ill-informed junior sailor.
Speaking exclusively to RT on Tuesday, McNeilly said he now feels vindicated.
“I warned about this exact event over a year before it happened. I
was in the MCC / Missile Control Center during the end of patrol tests
in early 2015 and I witnessed with my own eyes the Trident system fail
its simulated missile launch tests.”
McNeilly claims to have seen Trident “fail 3 out of 3 WP 186 Missile
Compensating Tests” first-hand. He also says a “Battle Readiness Test
(BRT) was not even attempted due to seawater in the hydraulic system.”
The whistleblower’s comments come a day after the British government faced questions over a misfire incident that
occurred in June of 2016, just weeks before a crucial Parliamentary
vote on Trident’s renewal. The US government apparently requested that
news of the defective missile be kept secret to prevent mutual
embarrassment.
Citing his extensive technical training as a submarine weapons
engineer, McNeilly said it was his job “to learn about missile tests,
conduct missile tests, pass tests on missile tests, be in the Missile
Control Center during missile tests…”
“I had missile tests signed off in my task book. They wouldn’t have
been signed off in my task book if I didn’t know anything about them,
and clearly I was proven to be right.
“The government attempted to cover up the failed missile test and
they covered up all the other information in my Trident report.” Trident dossier
In his 18-page dossier, released to WikiLeaks in May of 2015,
McNeilly offered anecdotal evidence of potentially catastrophic failures
that took place during a series of end-of-patrol “shakedown” tests,
designed to see whether the weapons system “could have performed a
successful launch.”
It was during one such end-of-patrol test that the June 2016 misfire took place.
According to McNeilly, the routine tests are vital to determining “if
we really were providing the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent.”
The test McNeilly witnessed was “carried out 3 times and it failed, 3 times.”
“Basically the test showed that the missile compensation system
wouldn’t have compensated for the changes in weight of the submarine
during missile launches. Which means the missiles would’ve been launched
on an unstable platform, if they decided to launch.”
Other readiness exercises carried out at the end of the patrol also went wrong, claims McNeilly.
“Another test was the Battle Readiness Test (BRT), which proves that
the muzzle hatches could’ve opened whilst on patrol,” said McNeilly,
explaining that “the BRT was cancelled due to the main hydraulic system
containing mostly seawater instead of actual hydraulic oil.”
McNeilly has accused the British government of “endangering the
public and spending billions upon billions of taxpayers’ money for a
system so broken it can’t even do the tests that prove it works.” Read more: Fallon refuses to explain alleged Trident nuke malfunction, as US officials spill the beans
During an appearance at the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday,
President Trump plans to sign an executive order to direct federal funds to be
shifted toward the building of a wall on the southern border that became a
signature promise of his campaign.
He is also expected to target legal
immigrants as early as this week, the officials said, by halting a decades-old
program that grants refuge to the world’s most vulnerable people as he
begins the process of dramatically curtailing it.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly 
Federal prosecutors are considering child-pornography charges against Anthony Weiner, the Wall Street Journal reported 
The main witness in the 1955 trial of two white men who lynched black
teenager Emmett Till after he allegedly whistled at a white woman
recently confessed to having fabricated key parts of her testimony.
According to Timothy Tyson, a Duke University senior research scholar,
Carolyn Bryant Donham—who in 1955 was an attractive white mother of
two—confessed in 2007 to having lied about Till having made verbal and
physical advances at her. The allegations that he had done so were what
led to the two men, including Donham’s then-husband, killing the young
boy. “That part’s not true,” she told Tyson about such claims. She could
not recall what happened the rest of the evening at the country store.
The most famous account of their interaction included Till whistling at
her, which also may not have ever happened as the boy had a lisp. The
confession was revealed in Tyson’s new book, The Blood of Emmett Till.
President Donald Trump reportedly floated the idea of scrapping the
Electoral College, according to The Wall Street Journal. In a meeting
with congressional leadership at the White House this week, Trump
reportedly told the lawmakers he wanted to replace the Electoral College
with a national popular vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
shot down the idea, pointing specifically to the costly Florida recount
in 2000 and the potential headache it could cause if such a recount were
conducted on the level of the entire country. Trump’s reported
consideration of scrapping the Electoral College comes despite having
lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, and still won the presidency
because of the required 270 electoral vote threshold he crossed. After
losing the popular vote by several million ballots, Trump has called for
an investigation into alleged widespread voter fraud, for which there
is no evidence.
President Donald Trump’s statement on Friday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day
noticeably omits any reference to Jews. “It is with a heavy heart and
somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, and
heroes of the Holocaust,” the White House statement read. “It is
impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on
innocent people by Nazi terror.” The statement continued: “Together, we
will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.” Noticing
the lack of any mentions of the estimated six million Jews killed during
the Holocaust—or any other persecuted group, including homosexuals and
people with disabilities—Jewish leaders like Anti-Defamation League head
Jonathan Greenblatt criticized the White House. “Puzzling and troubling
@WhiteHouse #HolocaustMemorialDay [statement] has no mention of Jews,”
Greenblatt wrote on Twitter. “GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in
the past.” The Trump statement stands in stark contrast to President
Barack Obama’s final statement commemorating the day, in which he
proclaimed “we are all Jews.”
