Posted on August 15th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The Al-Jazeera bureau chief in Afghanistan, Samer Allawi, a Palestinian from the West Bank, has been in Israeli detention for the past week, He was stopped and taken into custody just before crossing the border to Jordan, as he was returning to Afghanistan following a three-week visit to his home and family in the West [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on May 2nd, 2011 by Marian Houk
The transcript of the White House briefing, about 20 hours after Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by American special forces, is now posted online here. President Obama’s counterterrorism Adviser John Brenner said to journalists this afternoon/evening that President Obama and his advisers watched the American operation that killed Ben Laden “in real time”, [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Human Rights, International Law, Pakistan, USA
Posted on May 2nd, 2011 by Marian Houk
Is the “War on Terror” now over? Can we go back to life the way it was before? Because, for sure, there’s no way to ask any questions about this. [Though, there are probably videos that will be shown later...] U.S. President Obama said it was a “targetted operation”… which “took care to avoid civilian [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Pakistan, USA
Posted on June 23rd, 2010 by Marian Houk
The Washington Post reported that U.S. President Barack Obama said, after General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation today as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, that “The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general … It undermines the civilian control of [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Journalism and Journalists, USA
Posted on February 20th, 2010 by Marian Houk
In today’s news: Karzai says NATO still causes too many civilian deaths: “Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that NATO’s efforts to prevent civilian deaths during its operations are not enough because innocent people keep dying, as the military alliance continued its offensive in a key Taliban stronghold … Karzai said that NATO has made [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, International Humanitarian Law, Iraq, USA
Posted on January 23rd, 2010 by Marian Houk
“One of US President Barack Obama’s most publicized and internationally applauded first acts upon coming into office was his executive order to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay within a year”, as Sara Kuepfer Thakkar wrote in an analysis for the Zurich-based ISN Security Watch, but “The deadline for closing Guantanamo, which expires [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Torture, USA
Posted on October 9th, 2009 by Marian Houk
After just nine months in office, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2009. As CNN reported, there were gasps in the room when the head of the Nobel prize committee made the announcement this morning. The head of the Nobel prize committee explained that Obama won for his extraordinary efforts to [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Nuclear technology and weapons, Palestine & Palestinians, USA, United Nations
Posted on August 30th, 2009 by Marian Houk
The Washington Post, in an article published on Saturday, reported that “previously unpublicized details about the transformation, in 2005-2006, of the man known to U.S. officials as [Khalid Sheik Mohammed ] KSM [was transformed] from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its ‘preeminent source’ on al-Qaeda. This [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Torture, USA
Posted on August 28th, 2009 by Marian Houk
One of the documents on interrogation techniques released this week in Washington [[see our previous post here ]] was an internal CIA report that, as AP says, describes “two instances in 2007 in which the CIA was allowed to exceed the guidelines set by Bush administration lawyers allowing prisoners to be kept awake for up [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Torture
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Marian Houk
Yes. It emerged last week that in July 2002, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had authorized waterboarding of al-Zubayda, a Palestinian-born suspected member of al-Qayda captured in Pakistan in March 2002 — who then may have implicated “the mastermind of 9/11″ under torture, while recalling something he had watched on Al-Jazeera television. Then-Vice President Dick [...]
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Filed under: Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Torture, USA
