ONLY OUR MONKEYS RUN FREE

With the internment of the Chairperson of the Irish Anti-Internment League, Dee Fennell, and the privatization of Irish Water, neither our rivers or speech, are any longer free. In fact a monkey in the US, has more Civil Rights, than an Irish person in Occupied Ireland, almost 45 years after the start of the Civil Rights Campaign there. Certainly with regard to Habeus Corpus and Free Speech, this is the case, as both articles below, demonstrate. I have been banned today myself, despite not being affiliated, to any political group, by Facebook, because British Agents are both censoring and carrying out a campiagn of harrassment, with numerous complaints to Facebook and group managers there. Irish Blog is being slowed by intranets, to the point, some people give up on access. However, there are still the faithful, for which I am grateful. I ask you, to please share the posts and pictures, particulery related to Political Internment and Censorship in Ireland. beir bua, brionOcleirigh

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2015

Statement by the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton

The arrest, detention charges and remand for Dee Fennell speech in Lurgan Easter Sunday is an attack on the fundamental right to have and express a political opinion as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.This is a stark warning that both the British and the 26 counties states are determined to silence anyone who dares to question the status quo or express their opposition to British rule and partition. Last August the Minister of Justice of the 26 counties announced draconian new laws designed to silence and imprison Republicans for expressing a political opinion. Now the Stormont regime is moving along the same path. These measures can also be extended to cover all forms of political dissent, whether political, social or economic. People need to be warned against this and say it.Bodies of civil and political rights must protest against this gratuitous attack on the human rights of Irish citizens. When the centenary of the 1916 Rising fast approaching, it is obvious that the British puppet regime in Stormont is trying to silence the Irish Republicanism and take underground. Such coercive methods have failed in the past as this effort will also fail. Fin / Crioch

Apes are people too? NY judge grants human rights to chimpanzees

Published time: April 21, 2015 17:02

Get short URL

Reuters / Yves Herman

3.7K2461

Tags

Animals, Conflict, Court, Human rights, Science, USA

Chimpanzee and human DNA differ by only about 1 percent – but should chimps be given human rights? A US judge said "yes" on Monday, ruling that apes held at a New York university are covered by the same laws that let humans challenge their detention.

New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe said a pair of chimpanzees held at Stony Brook University are covered by a writ of habeas corpus – a legal principle that lets people challenge the credibility of their detention. The duo, named Hercules and Leo, reside at the university for research purposes.

The lawsuit against the university was originally filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project in December 2013, in an attempt to free Hercules, Leo, and two other chimpanzees living on private property.

The courts threw out the suit, but the group has been appealing ever since, receiving a victory on Monday after convincing Jaffe that the apes are sufficiently intelligent enough to be covered under habeas corpus.

The verdict has allowed for a Stony Brook University representative to be ordered to appear in court to provide a legally acceptable reason for detaining Hercules and Leo. That hearing has been scheduled for May 6.

During the hearing, the university will respond to a petition by the animal rights group which argues that Hercules and Leo should be set free and moved to a sanctuary.

“The NhRP (Nonhuman Rights Project) has asked that Hercules and Leo be freed and released into the care of Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Ft. Pierce, Florida. There they will spend the rest of their lives primarily on one of 13 artificial islands on a large lake in Ft. Pierce, along with 250 other chimpanzees in an environment as close to that of their natural home in Africa as can be found in North America,” the Nonhuman Rights Project wrote on its website.

READ MORE: Argentine court extends human right to freedom to orangutan

However, it remains unclear whether the chimps will actually be freed.

Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University, cautioned against reading too much into the ruling.

“The judge may merely want more information to make a decision on the legal personhood claim, and may have ordered a hearing simply as a vehicle for hearing out both parties in more depth,” he wrote in an email to Science. “It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons if the judge has not yet heard the other side’s arguments.”

Regardless of whether the apes are granted personhood after the hearing, the group says it plans on using the ruling as precedent in future cases.

“This is a big step forward to getting what we are ultimately seeking: the right to bodily liberty for chimpanzees and other cognitively complex animals,”Natalie Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“We got our foot in the door. And no matter what happens, that door can never be completely shut again.”

A similar ruling was made in Argentina last year, with orangutans being granted the status of “non-human persons” with legal rights.

However, the verdict contradicts a separate New York ruling made just four months ago, when a court stated that a chimpanzee is not legally a person and therefore not entitled to human rights.

Proxy British Rendition Guilty of Torture European Court of Human Rights

The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) runs a global incarceration operation of suspected terrorists, known as “extraordinary rendition”, which from 2001 to 2005 captured an estimated 150 people and transported them around the world. A document which is a summary of 42 classified CIA documents given to the British in 2002 meant for "Eyes Only" in the intelligence community, but the program's roots can be clearly discovered in British internment practiced in British Occupied Ireland outlawed by the European Court of Human Rights to which the British promised cessation only to replacing it with rendition, often using the US to torture and intern in return for British training.

The US government has threatened the British government that the US-British intelligence relationship could be damaged if this material were released.  The dimensions of this program for the most part are still classified but revelations regarding torture, includes documentation of the fact the CIA conducted "continuous sleep deprivation" under threats of harm, rendition, or being "disappeared," were declared by a British court as being "at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. "Eyes Only" in the intelligence community, but the program's roots can be clearly discovered in  Rendered persons are reported to have undergone torture by the receiving countries. This occurs with the cooperation and training of the United Kingdom who trained the CIA with its colonial experience with internment torture worldwide. Britain still practices internment without trial and deprivation torture in British Occupied Ireland.

European Court of Human Rights Finds CIA Guilty of Torture

America must now apologise to the German citizen, a victim of mistaken identity who was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA

By Amrit Singh

December 13, 2012 "The Guardian" --  The much-maligned European court of human rights has this week shown itself at its very best: standing up for the rights of an individual who has been denied justice for almost nine years since he was abducted, secretly detained, and tortured under the CIA's rendition program.

Khaled El-Masri, a German national, was seized by Macedonian security officers on 31 December 2003, at a border crossing, because he had been mistaken for an al-Qaida suspect. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonian custody for 23 days, after which he was handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven to Skopje airport, where he was handed over to the CIA and severely beaten.

The CIA stripped, hooded, shackled, and sodomized el-Masri with a suppository – in CIA parlance, subjected him to "capture shock" – as Macedonian officials stood by. The CIA drugged him and flew him to Kabul to be locked up in a secret prison known as the "Salt Pit", where he was slammed into walls, kicked, beaten, and subjected to other forms of abuse. Held at the Salt Pit for four months, el-Masri was never charged, brought before a judge, or given access to his family or German government representatives.

The CIA ultimately realised that it had mistaken el-Masri for an al-Qaida suspect with a similar name. But it held on to him for weeks after that. It was not until 24 May 2004, that he was flown, blindfolded, earmuffed, and chained to his seat, to Albania, where he was dumped on the side of the road without explanation.

In December 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a press conference – while then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stood by her side – that the United States had admitted it had made a mistake. But the US government still refused to acknowledge its shameful conduct in el-Masri's case and waged a successful campaign to prevent other governments from disclosing the truth.

El-Masri's subsequent search for justice has repeatedly been thwarted. The United States succeeded in getting el-Masri's US lawsuit dismissed on "state secrets" grounds without even responding to his allegations; in 2007, the US supreme court declined to review that dismissal. The Macedonian government resorted to bald-faced lies, claiming that it played no role in his detention or abuse, despite overwhelming evidence confirming his account. The German government refused to disclose what it knew about el-Masri's case, and apparently caved to US pressure not to seek extradition of CIA officials involved in el-Masri's rendition.

Today, the European court of human rights delivered a measure of justice to el-Masri. It vindicated his account of his ill-treatment, and unanimously found that Macedonia had violated his rights under the European Convention, including by transferring him to US custody in the face of a risk of ill-treatment, and facilitating and failing to prevent his being subjected to CIA "capture shock" at Skopje airport.

This is the first court to comprehensively and specifically find that the CIA's rendition techniques amounted to torture. The decision stands in sharp contrast to the abject failure of US courts to deliver justice to victims of US torture and rendition.

Both the United States and Macedonia must now issue el-Masri a full-scale public apology and appropriate compensation. Macedonia should also commit to an internationalized investigation capable of holding its officials accountable. There are plenty of examples of such inquiries into national issues that are too politically charged to handle unaided: Northern Ireland's 1997 Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) included members from Canada, the United States, and Finland.

But Europe's work is not over yet. Macedonia was not the only European country complicit in CIA renditions. A 2006 inquiry by Swiss Senator Dick Marty implicated 14 European governments – including the United Kingdom – in the CIA's "spider's web" of rendition operations. But with the exception of Italy, whose highest court recently upheld the convictions of US and Italian officials for involvement in rendition, neither the UK nor other complicit countries – including Lithuania, Romania, and Poland, which hosted secret CIA prisons – have conducted effective investigations capable of holding officials accountable for their participation in rendition.

The human rights principles at stake extend to the use of the death penalty. European governments are prohibited from transferring criminal suspects to the United States if they risk execution; yet Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national, was secretly flown to Guantánamo Bay after being held in secret CIA prisons in Romania and Poland. He now faces a possible death sentence after a trial by military commission that does not meet international standards.

The European court's decision in the el-Masri case is a clarion call for accountability for the flagrantly illegal CIA rendition program.

The time has come for European governments to stand up to the United States and break the conspiracy of silence, regardless of the diplomatic consequences. As former Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammerberg, rightly said on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 11 September attacks:

"The purported cost to transatlantic relations of pursuing such accountability cannot be compared to the damage inflicted on our European system of human rights protection by allowing ourselves to be kept in the dark.