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Wednesday’s criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis. Named in the referral to the DOJ for possible violations of federal law are: Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; FBI Agent Peter Strzok; FBI Counsel Lisa Page; and those DOJ and FBI personnel “connected to” work on the “Steele Dossier,” including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente. With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber.  Sessions appointed Huber months ago to assist DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz.

This is no law-school case-study exercise, no arcane disputation over the fine points of this or that law. Rather, as we say in the inner-city, “It has now hit the fan.”  Criminal referrals can lead to serious jail time.  Granted, the upper-crust luminaries criminally “referred” enjoy very powerful support.  And that will come especially from the mainstream media, which will find it hard to retool and switch from Russia-gate to the much more delicate and much less welcome “FBI-gate.” As of this writing, a full day has gone by since the

letter/referral was reported, with total silence so far from The New York Times and The Washington Post and other big media as they grapple with how to spin this major development. News of the criminal referral also slipped by Amy Goodman’s non-mainstream DemocracyNow!, as well as many alternative websites. The 11 House members chose to include the following egalitarian observation in the first paragraph of the letter conveying the criminal referral: “Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.” If this uncommon attitude is allowed to prevail at DOJ, it would, in effect, revoke the de facto “David Petraeus exemption” for the be-riboned, be-medaled, and well-heeled.

Amidst another week of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence, fifteen faith leaders representing U.S. churches and faith organizations have called on Congress to condition U.S. military aid to Israel upon Israel’s “compliance with applicable U.S. laws and policies.” These leaders--representing Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Orthodox, Quaker and other major Christian groups--agree that unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel has contributed to “sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.”  [SEE LETTER BELOW]   As a Quaker peace lobby that has advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace for decades in Washington, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is proud to be a partner in this effort.   These organizations draw upon their decades of experience in the region, during which they have collectively witnessed the horror of suicide bombing, rocket attacks, shootings of civilians, home demolitions, forced displacement, and other widespread human rights violations. These faith groups “recognize that each party — Israeli and Palestinian — bears responsibilities for its actions and we therefore continue to stand against all violence regardless of its source.”      Unconditional U.S. military aid has become one of those sources fueling violence and further entrenchment of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories. This statement highlights the United States’ responsibility to hold Israel accountable for “a troubling and consistent pattern of disregard by the government of Israel for U.S. policies that support a just and lasting peace.”

Congress must investigate possible violations of U.S. law The latest State Department human rights report on Israel and the Occupied Territories provides a devastating account of Israel’s human rights violations against civilians, many of which involve the misuse of U.S.-supplied weapons. This diverse religious coalition has called for “an immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the U.S. Arms Export Control Act,” and urges Congress to “ensure that our aid is not supporting actions by the government of Israel that undermine prospects for peace”.     The signers affirm that these are laws that “should be enforced in all instances regardless of location,” but that it is especially critical for Israel to comply with laws that regulate the use of U.S. supplied weapons, since Israel is the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. Notably, the United States has initiated investigations of violations of these laws by other countries, and on four different occasions between 1978 and 1982, the Secretary of State notified Congress that Israel “may” have violated the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act.   The coalition has called for renewed investigations into human rights violations documented by the State Department’s report, including Israel’s escalation of home demolitions, forced displacement, suppression of dissent, and its use of prohibited weapons in densely populated areas during Israel’s military Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.  

Echoing urgent warnings from Israeli leader The letter also echoes the urgency for immediate action to secure a diplomatic settlement to the crisis that has been acknowledged by scores of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Ehud Barak, Israel’s current Defense Minister and former Prime Minister. In a historic speech delivered at the prestigious Herzliya National Security Conference in Israel in early 2010, Mr. Barak warned of Israel’s future in the absence of a political settlement, saying in stark terms:   “The reality is cruel but simple. Between the Jordan River...and the Mediterranean, 12 million people live, 7.5 million Israelis and 4.5 million Palestinians. And the simple truth is that as long as in this territory to the West of the Jordan River, there is one political entity which is called Israel[...]and if this bloc of Palestinians would not be able to vote, it’s going to be an apartheid state.”     Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. interests require urgent efforts to avoid the nightmare that Israeli leader Ehud Barak has described as an apartheid state. A just and peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians requires that all parties to a conflict are held accountable and that a comprehensive, inclusive diplomatic settlement be secured. An essential step for Congress to support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts is to heed these warnings, and hold Israel accountable for how it uses U.S. military aid. (See full letter at:http://www.fcnl.org/middle_east

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, appeared today before the Senate Intelligence Committee, his first appearance since outright lying to that Committee last March about NSA bulk collection. In his prepared opening remarks, Clapper said this: Who, in the view of the Obama administration, are Snowden's "accomplices"? The FBI and other official investigators have been very clear with the media that there is no evidence whatsoever that Snowden had any help in copying and removing documents from the NSA. Here, Clapper is referring to "accomplices" as those who can "facilitate the return of the remaining" documents. As Snowden has said, the only ones to whom he has given those documents are the journalists with whom he has worked. As has been publicly reported, the journalists who are in possession of thousands of Snowden documents include myself, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman/The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica.

Is it now the official view of the Obama administration that these journalists and media outlets are "accomplices" in what they regard as Snowden's crimes? If so, that is a rather stunning and extremist statement. Is there any other possible interpretation of Clapper's remarks? UPDATE: In response to media inquiries about what Clapper meant when he referred to "accomplices", a spokesman for the DNI's office, Shawn Turner, is saying this: "anyone who is assisting Edward Snowden [to] further harm our nation through the unauthorized disclosure of stolen documents." (Turner declined to be more specific when asked if that included journalists.) Turner may be reluctant to admit it, but that essentially dispels all doubt - if there was any - that Clapper was publicly accusing journalists who publish Snowden documents of being "accomplices" in his "crimes". That a top-level Obama official is publicly accusing journalists of criminality for their journalism seems like fairly big (though unsurprising) news. posted by Glenn Greenwald

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has accepted the complaint lodged in January alleging that UK military personnel committed war crimes against Iraqis in their custody between 2003 and 2008. She has ordered a preliminary investigation. It is the first step into a possible criminal prosecution against Britain’s political and military leaders, including politicians, senior civil servants, lawyers, Chief of Defence Staff and Chief of Defence Intelligence, who bear ultimate responsibility for systematic abuse of detainees in Iraq. This is the first time the ICC in The Hague has opened an enquiry into a Western state. Almost all of the ICC’s indictees have been African heads of state or officials.

Bensouda’s decision flows from an official complaint by the British Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) last January. Their 250-page submission, the most detailed ever submitted to the ICC on war crimes committed by British forces in Iraq, took years to compile. It documented the new facts and additional evidence that had become available since the initial complaint in 2006.

The list of the most serious allegations is damning. They include the use of sensory deprivation and isolation, food and water deprivation, the use of prolonged stress positions, the use of the “harshing” technique which involves sustained aggressive shouting in close proximity to the victim, a wide range of physical assault, including beating, burning, electrocution or electric shocks, both direct and implied threats to the health and safety of the detainees and/or friends and family, including mock executions and threats of rape, death, torture, indefinite detention and violence.

Last week charges of Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy were recommended against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Tragically, Sergeant Bergdahl was once again crucified, without evidence or trial, throughout mainstream, alternative and social media. That same day Sergeant Bergdahl was offered as a sacrifice to primarily Republican politicians, bloggers, pundits, chicken hawks and jingoists, while Democrats mostly kept silent as Sergeant Bergdahl was paraded electronically and digitally in the latest Triumph of the Global War on Terror, President Ashraf Ghani was applauded, in person, by the American Congress. Such coincidences, whether they are arranged or accidental, often appear in literary or cinematic tales, but they do, occasionally, manifest themselves in real life, often appearing to juxtapose the virtues and vices of a society for the sake and advancement of political narratives. The problem with this specific coincidence for those on the Right, indulging in the fantasy of American military success abroad, as well as for those on the Left, desperate to prove that Democrats can be as tough as Republicans, is that reality may intrude. To the chagrin and consternation of many in DC, Sergeant Bergdahl may prove to be the selfless hero, while President Ghani may play the thief, and Sergeant Bergdahl's departure from his unit in Afghanistan may come to be understood as just and his time as a prisoner of war principled, while President Obama's continued propping up and bankrolling of the government in Kabul, at the expense of American servicemembers and taxpayers, comes to be fully acknowledged as immoral and profligate.

Buried in much of the media coverage this past week on the charges presented against Sergeant Bergdahl, with the exception of CNN, are details of the Army's investigation into Sergeant Bergdahl's disappearance, capture and captivity. As revealed by Sergeant Bergdahl's legal team, twenty-two Army investigators have constructed a report that details aspects of Sergeant Bergdahl's departure from his unit, his capture and his five years as a prisoner of war that disprove many of the malicious rumors and depictions of him and his conduct.

As documented in his lawyers' statement submitted to the Army on March 25, 2015, in response to Sergeant Bergdahl's referral to the Article 32 preliminary hearing (which is roughly the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury), the following facts are now known about Sergeant Bergdahl and his time prior to and during his captivity as a prisoner of war:• Sergeant Bergdahl is a "truthful person" who "did not act out of a bad motive"; • he did not have the intention to desert permanently nor did he have an intention to leave the Army when he left his unit's outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009; • he did not have the intention of joining the Taliban or assisting the enemy; • he left his post to report "disturbing circumstances to the attention of the nearest general officer". • while he was a prisoner of war for five years, he was tortured, but he did not cooperate with his captors. Rather, Sergeant Bergdahl attempted to escape twelve times, each time with the knowledge he would be tortured or killed if caught; • there is no evidence American soldiers died looking for Sergeant Bergdahl.

In protest of unelected dictator Thaksin Shinawatra and his proxy regime led by his own nepotist-appointed sister Yingluck Shinawatra, anti-regime protesters plan to shut down Thailand's capital of Bangkok starting on Monday, January 13, 2014.  The necessity of continued mass mobilizations is due in part to the current regime's immense foreign backing - including across the West's mass media who continue to claim Thaksin Shinawatra's rule is legitimate despite him being a convicted criminal hiding abroad and openly running the country through a series of nepotist proxies which have included both his brother-in-law and now sister. While unthinkable and unacceptable in any other country, news fronts such as the BBC, New York Times, CNN, Reuters, AP, AFP and others insist that this cartoonish, criminal arrangement is somehow representative of "democracy" in Thailand.  The New York Times, despite defending what is by all measures an absurd abuse of the principles of representative governance, would even report in its article titled, "In Thailand, Power Comes With Help From Skype," that:  For the past year and a half, by the party’s own admission, the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges. 

The country’s most famous fugitive,Thaksin Shinawatra, circles the globe in his private jet, chatting with ministers over his dozen cellphones, texting over various social media platforms and reading government documents e-mailed to him from civil servants, party officials say.  It might be described as rule by Skype. Or governance by instant messenger, a way for Mr. Thaksin to help run the country without having to face the warrant for his arrest in a case that many believe is politically motivated. There is no question that an accused mass murderer and convicted criminal hiding abroad from a 2 year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants, and a long list of pending court cases, is illegally running Thailand by proxy.  Of course, just as a convicted criminal running America or England via Skype would be a laughable prospect entirely unacceptable by Americans or English, likewise, it is unacceptable in Thailand. The sham elections the regime is planning for February 2, 2014 which have Thaksin Shinawatra's sister and brother-in-law once again at the top of the candidate list, have already been boycotted by all opposition parties, leaving the regime alone posting campaign posters along Thailand's roads, reminiscent of scenes of sham elections carried out in North Korea. 

Who is Thaksin Shinawatra and Why do People Detest Him?

In response four petitions by tribal leaders complaining that U.S. drone strikes were killing civilians, Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and the junior judge on Pakistan two-judge Peshawar High Court panel decided that the drone were war crimes as they killed innocent civilians. The panel says that the drone strikes were inhumane and violated the UN Charter on Human Rights.  The court is asking the government of Pakistan to push a UN resolution to condemn the strikes and declare them a war crimes, writing [according to translation by The Press Trust of India, "The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future.  If the US vetoes the resolution, then the country should think about breaking diplomatic ties with the US."

Shahzad Akbar, lawyer for victims in the case, is quoted as saying, "This is a landmark judgment. Drone victims in Waziristan will now get some justice after a long wait. This judgment will also prove to be a test for the new government: if drone strikes continue and the government fails to act, it will run the risk of contempt of court."

The administration also does have a policy of paying the family of civilians it kills in the Middle East "grief payments" of a few thousand dollars per body. While the current administration may be hesistant to take action in the UN against the U.S. elections are fast approaching.  This Saturday's election sees the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) party leading in current polls.  Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the party's leader, promises a zero-tolerance policy on drone strike civilian deaths.  He comments, "Drone attacks are against the national sovereignty and a challenge for the country's autonomy and independence." The U.S. has often accused hostile regimes like the governments of Syria, Sudan, Iran, and North Korea of war crimes in recent years.  However, it has seldom been on the receiving end of such accusations, despite an aggressive (and expensive) overseas military program.

Eight months after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies began an aerial campaign against the Houthi rebels, the civilian death toll continues to mount. More than 5,600 people, including 2,615 civilians and 500 children, have been killed since March. The vast majority of civilian deaths are attributable to coalition airstrikes.  Human rights groups have warned about war crimes and the continued humanitarian calamity in Yemen. “Yemen in five months is like Syria after five years,” Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in August. “The humanitarian situation is nothing short of catastrophic. Every family in Yemen has been affected by this conflict.” Complicit in the growing humanitarian disaster is the United States and its unchecked arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies. The Barack Obama administration agreed to transfer more than $64 billion in weapons and services to members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) during its first five years. On Oct. 20, the U.S. government approved an $11.25 billion deal to sell warships to Saudi Arabia, ignoring calls from human rights activists to refrain from selling certain military equipment in light of the civilian toll it is inflicting. In continuing to provide weapons, intelligence and logistical support to Riyadh, including precision rockets and internationally banned cluster munitions, the U.S. is contributing to Yemen’s suffering.

Take the Sept. 28 coalition airstrike that hit a wedding party, killing dozens and wounding many more. Among the dead were women and children. The White House expressed concern about the incident, but its words ring hollow, given that the U.S supplied the planes used in the attack. In a report on Oct. 6, London-based advocacy group Amnesty International investigated 13 coalition airstrikes from May to July that killed an estimated 100 people, including 59 children. The group found that some of the strikes hit civilian objects such as “homes, public buildings, schools, markets, shops, factories, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure,” as well as civilians fleeing in vehicles and those delivering humanitarian assistance. Amnesty said the strikes violate international law and found “damning evidence of war crimes,” which warrant an international investigation and the suspension of certain arms transfers. A United Nations panel has accused all sides of human rights abuses, but singled out coalition forces for committing “grave violations.” But international condemnation has done little to ease the devastation wrought by the strikes.

A group of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans are seeking $34.5 billion dollars in damages from wealthy individuals and companies they accuse of financing and profiting from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and other abuses of their rights. The plaintiffs include Palestinians who have lost family members in Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their lawsuit is the latest effort to expose and curb the role of organizations that operate as tax-exempt US charities in fueling violence and settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land. It names as defendants US tycoons Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Irving Moskowitz and Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison.

Adelson is renowned for using his huge casino fortune to advance his pro-Israel political agenda and is a major financial backer of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party. Saban has donated millions of dollars to US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Moskowitz is one of the main financiers of settler efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The lawsuit also names Israeli diamond magnate and settlement builder Lev Leviev and Christians United for Israel founder, the US Evangelical pastor John Hagee. Twelve US-based charities and a number of Israeli and US corporations are also named as defendants. The charities include Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, The Hebron Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities.

The plaintiffs, represented by the law firm Martin McMahon and Associates, allege that the defendants are directly responsible for violence and for the expansion of settlements. The lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC, federal court on Monday, alleges a wide range of crimes under US and international law, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, perjury and pillage. It alleges that charitable donations are sent to the Israeli army, a violation of US laws against funding a foreign military. Last December, some of the same plaintiffs using the same law firm sued the US Treasury for allowing billions of dollars of tax-exempt donations to flow to Israeli settlements. This lawsuit targets those who are supplying the money. Several are powerful billionaires who the lawsuit contends have defrauded the US tax authorities by funnelling huge sums of money meant for illegal purposes through tax-exempt organizations. According to the lawsuit, approximately $1 billion is sent through these organizations each year, with $104 million going to the Israeli army in 2014.

A series of public inquests should be held into the deaths of civilians who are alleged to have been killed unlawfully by the British military following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the high court has ruled.In a ground-breaking judgment that could have an impact on how the British military is able to conduct operations among civilians in the future, the court ruled on Friday that up to 161 deaths should be the subject of hearings modelled upon coroners' inquests.In practice, a series of hearings – possibly amounting to more than 100 – are likely to be held as a result of the judgment, which follows a three-year legal battle on behalf of the Iraqis' families.

Each hearing must involve a "full, fair and fearless investigation accessible to the victim's families and to the public", the court ruled, and should examine not only the immediate circumstances but other issues surrounding each death.As a first step, the court ordered Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, to announce within six weeks whether any of the deaths are to result in prosecutions, or to explain any further delays over prosecuting decisions.After years of judicial review proceedings, and in the face of determined opposition from the Ministry of Defence, which appeared anxious to maintain control over any investigative process, the court concluded that hearings modelled upon coroners' inquests were the best way for the British authorities to meet their obligations under article 2 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which protects the right to life.

The court also ruled that this should be just the start of the process by which public hearings will examine the alleged misconduct of some members of the British armed forces who served in Iraq.Following the completion of the Article 2 hearings – into allegedly unlawful killings – further hearings should be established in order to meet the UK's obligations under Article 3 of the ECHR, the court said. These will inquire into allegations of torture and lesser mistreatment of individuals detained by British troops in Iraq, focusing on a sample of the most serious of the 700-plus cases in which such allegations have been made.In December last year the MoD said it had paid out £14m in compensation and costs to 205 Iraqis who alleged unlawful imprisonment and mistreatment, and that it was negotiating a further 196 payments. Several hundred more claims were expected to be lodged.

All attempts to reform mass incarceration through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics, the courts and state and federal legislatures are useless. Corporations, which have turned mass incarceration into a huge revenue stream and which have unchecked political and economic power, have no intention of diminishing their profits. And in a system where money has replaced the vote, where corporate lobbyists write legislation and the laws, where chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with inadequate public transportation, sever people in marginal communities from jobs, and where the courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state, this demands a sustained, nationwide revolt. “Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left,” said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders.

These boycotts, they said, will be directed against the private phone, money transfer and commissary companies, and against the dozens of corporations that exploit prison labor. The boycotts will target food and merchandise vendors, construction companies, laundry services, uniforms companies, prison equipment vendors, cafeteria services, manufacturers of pepper spray, body armor and the array of medieval instruments used for the physical control of prisoners, and a host of other contractors that profit from mass incarceration. The movement will also call on institutions, especially churches and universities, to divest from corporations that use prison labor. The campaign, led by the Interfaith Prison Coalition, will include a call to pay all prisoners at least the prevailing minimum wage of the state in which they are held. (New Jersey’s minimum wage is $8.38 an hour.) Wages inside prisons have remained stagnant and in real terms have declined over the past three decades. A prisoner in New Jersey makes, on average, $1.20 for eight hours of work, or about $28 a month. Those incarcerated in for-profit prisons earn as little as 17 cents an hour. Over a similar period, phone and commissary corporations have increased fees and charges often by more than 100 percent. There are nearly 40 states that allow private corporations to exploit prison labor. And prison administrators throughout the country are lobbying corporations that have sweatshops overseas, trying to lure them into the prisons with guarantees of even cheaper labor and a total absence of organizing or coordinated protest.

Corporations currently exploiting prison labor include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Caterpillar, Chevron, the former Chrysler Group, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, International Paper, JanSport, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Koch Industries, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sears, Shell, Sprint, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart and Wendy’s.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is appealing a ruling ordering her to reconsider her decision not to investigate Israel’s lethal attack on an aid flotilla to Gaza five years ago. But Geoffrey Nice, lead counsel for victims and families of those killed in the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, told The Electronic Intifada that the arguments Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has put forward are “complete hogwash.” Nice, who worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2006, led the prosecution of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Nice and his law firm Stoke and White also represent the government of Comoros, the Indian Ocean archipelago state where the Mavi Marmara is registered. Instead of doing her job and properly investigating the case, Nice said, Bensouda’s appeal is “a last ditch attempt to do what would be expected of her by the US and supporters of Israel.”

A professor of law at London’s Gresham College who has previously represented victims before the ICC, Nice said he doubted that Bensouda even had a right to go to the appeal judges at this stage. He said his first legal response would be to ask them to throw her appeal out on procedural grounds. Serious errors Earlier this month, a panel of ICC judges found in a scathing 2-1 ruling that Bensouda had made serious errors of fact and law in her decision not to pursue the case. They said that the chief prosecutor had underestimated the seriousness and international significance of the crimes and ordered her to review her decision not to proceed with an investigation into the attack. In the early hours of 31 May 2010, Israeli commandos boarded and seized the flotilla boats in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Israeli forces carried out a particularly violent armed attack on the largest vessel, Mavi Marmara, killing nine persons. A tenth victim died of his injuries in June 2014. The victims were all Turkish citizens. One of them, 18-year-old Furkan Doğan, was also a US citizen.

The initial request for the ICC to investigate the killings was submitted in 2013 by Comoros. Bensouda decided not to proceed with a full investigation in November 2014. Ignoring evidence In a notice of appeal filed Monday, Chief Prosecutor Bensouda says that the judges overstepped their mandate and trampled on her prosecutorial discretion by ordering her to review the case. She also claims that the ruling gives her no clear explanation of how to review her decision. But Nice said that her claims are “absolute rubbish” and the judges’ ruling is very clear about what matters and evidence should be looked at again. The judges’ 16 July ruling lists a long litany of errors by the prosecutor.

A lawsuit has been filed in a US court seeking to stop non-profit groups from sending billions of dollars worth of tax-exempt donations to support illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli army.

A group of American citizens filed the suit on December 21 against the US Department of Treasury, claiming about 150 non-profits have sent an estimated $280bn to Israel over the past two decades. The lawsuit claims, according to Al Jazeera, that the donations were “pass-throughs” and “funnels” to support the Israeli army and the illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The lawsuit claims that certain non-profit groups (including the Falic Family Foundation, FIDF (Friends of the Israeli Defence Force), American Friends of Ariel, Gush Etzion Foundation, American Friends of Har Homa, and Hebron Fund) directly contributed, tax-exempt, to violations of US law and international law, subverted US foreign policy, and contributed to countless crimes and human rights abuses targeting Palestinians. The Treasury Department, which has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit, declined to comment, stating in an email to Al Jazeera: “We don’t comment on pending litigation.”

“A bust-out is a scheme customarily employed by organized crime to deplete the assets of a legit­imate business, thus forcing it into bankruptcy.” State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation 1988 Report, “Subversion By Organized Crime And Other Unscrupulous Elements of the Check Cashing Industry” “BUSTOUT: a confidence scheme in which an established business is taken over, a large stock of merchandise is purchased on credit and quickly sold, and the business is then abandoned or bankruptcy is declared.”  – Merriam-Webster Dictionary Mark Mitchell has continued exploring the financial instability of the last four years, including the crash of 2008 and the Flash Crash of 2010.  His conclusion is that various activities associated with market manipulation (e.g., naked short selling, high frequency trading, derivatives such as Credit Default Swaps and synthetic CDOs, sponsored access, regulatory capture, press manipulation) follow a familiar leverage-and-loot pattern and can be traced to a fairly cohesive network that includes Italian and Russian organized crime, Sunni extremist financiers with ties to Al Qaeda, the Russian FSB, the Albanian Mafia, agents of the Iranian regime, and close associates of Michael Milken. The result, “The Miscreants’ Global Bust-Out”, is 230 pages long. DeepCapture will be publishing it in approximately 25 installments over the coming weeks.

In Thursday night’s GOP debate, the final matchup before the Iowa caucus, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeated his promise to conduct “carpet bombing” in the Middle East to combat ISIS forces. Yet he did not acknowledge that carpet bombing is a war crime under the international Geneva Conventions. The Fox News moderators challenged Cruz on his voting record not lining up with his “tough talk” on national security. “You opposed giving President Obama authority to enforce his red line in Syria,” they asked. “You have voted against the Defense Authorization Act for three years. How do you square your rhetoric with your record, sir?” Instead of addressing the discrepancies in his voting record, Cruz defended his past promises of “carpet bombing” and “saturation bombing” parts of Iraq and Syria, saying it was a successful strategy for the United States during the Persian Gulf War.

The Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. joined decades ago along with nearly every other country in the world, explicitly forbids carpet bombing. “Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden,” the agreement reads. “An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.” When Cruz said Thursday that the U.S. should “lift the rules of engagement” in wartime, he did not explain whether that included rejecting the Geneva Conventions. Cruz is also incorrect to cite the Gulf War as a positive example of carpet bombing. The U.S. used laser-guided precision bombing during that conflict, which “substantially reduced the accidental damage that would otherwise have befallen civilian buildings.” Even so, thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Cruz, who is poised to win or take second place in the Iowa caucus, has previously offered incorrect information about carpet bombing.

Cruz is also not the first GOP candidate to advocate for a practice that violates international law. In December, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump called for the ability to assassinate the family members of terrorists. Such intentional killing of civilians would consitute a war crime.

A lawsuit in the United States has been filed against former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the 2010 Israeli commando attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen were executed by Israeli forces and over fifty Turkish passengers were wounded.  The trial will be the first time a former Israeli Prime Minister will be put on trial for reasons of international terrorism. The family of Furkan Doğan, the American citizen who was assassinated in the attack, filed the lawsuit in the Central District Court of California and notice of the trial was handed to Barak last night, October 20, in Los Angeles when he spoke in the Distinguished Speaker series of Southern California  (http://speakersla.com/speakers/ehud-barak/).  According to a press release (http://mavi-marmara.ihh.org.tr/en/main/news/0/case-opened-against-former-israeli-pm-ehud-ba/2969) from the Turkish International Humanitarian organization that sponsored the Mavi Marmara ship,  charges against Barak include his planning and leadership in the murder of Furkan Doğan and others in international waters, Willful killing, attempted willful killing, intentionally causing serious injury to body or health, international terrorism, plundering, intentionally causing damage to property, restriction of people's freedom and instigating violent crimes. 

American attorneys Hydee Dijsktal and Dan Stormer, the British law firm, Stoke & White, British Professor Dr. Geoffrey Nice and UK attorney Rodney Dixon are the legal team for the Dogan family. Ehud Barak was almost arrested in France in 2010 when he went to a weapons expo. by hopping off the plane last minute with the trial opened against him by the wives of martyrs in France. Other legal proceedings against Barak and other senior members of the Israeli government are in the works.  In 2010 in France, the widows of Cevdet Kılıçlar and Necdet Yıldırım, two others executed by Israeli commandos, brought a lawsuit against Barak which he evaded when he was informed of the French lawsuit as he was about to deplane in Paris to attend a weapons expo in France. In the case brought in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICC prosecutor has ruled that the attack by Israeli commandos upon the Mavi Marmara in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a war crime. Additionally, the 7th High Criminal Court in Istanbul, Turkey has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of four senior Israeli government officials in a lawsuit filed in Turkey http://www.incanews.net/en/turkey/313/turkish-court-orders-arrest-of-4-israeli-officials . The Israeli officials named by the court are Israel's former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy.

Due to political considerations dealing with the State of Israel, the Ministry of Justice of Turkey has delayed sending to Interpol the “red notice” much to the consternation of those seeking justice.

Russian investigative authorities detained two more suspects for their alleged involvement in the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. The arrests came one day after FSB Chief Alexander Bortnikov announced the arrest of two persons, the discovery of the escape car and the securing of DNA evidence and other evidence. The head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation’s Republic Ingushetia, Albert Barakhayev, informed the press about the arrest of two additional suspects for their alleged involvement in the murder of the Russian politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow.

The head of the North Caucasian republic’s Security Council identified one of the two detainees as Anzor Gubashev who was detained while he was driving from the village of Voznesenovskaya towards the city of Magas. Gubashev had reportedly visited his mother in Voznesenovskaya. Albert Barakhayev did not identify the other detainee by name but said that he is one of Gubashev’s brothers. On Saturday the Chief of the Russian security service FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, announced the arrest of two suspects who were detained for suspicions of having been involved in the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Bortnikov noted that the investigation is ongoing and that the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Investigative Committee are investigating the possible involvement of other, additional persons. The FSB Chief identified the two suspects as Anzor Gubachev and Zaur Dadayev. The head of the Security Council of Ingushetia noted that members of the suspects’ families originated from Chechnya but moved to the village of Voznesenovskaya in Ingushetia during the 1960s. Albert Barakhayev added that both Gubashev and Dadayev had housing in the Chechen capital Grozny and were living there. Dadayev had served in the North Chechen police for ten years. The spokesman of Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee, Vladimir Mirkhin was earlier quoted by the Russian Tass news agency as saying that the investigation continues to focus on the identification of additional suspects.

Investigative authorities secured images from a rooftop camera which had captured the murder of Boris Nemtsov during the night from February 27 to 28. A detailed analysis of the video, reportedly, enabled the investigative authorities to identify the license plate number of the vehicle. The murder took place within a 500 meter radius of the Kremlin, and area which is under heavy camera surveillance. The escape car was reportedly secured along with DNA evidence. Additional information was reportedly attained by analyzing mobile phone traffic near the crime scene.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday that, if reelected, he will build thousands of settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to Palestinians. Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, the PM vowed that he would never allow Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.

“I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, according to AFP, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes. “We will continue to build in Jerusalem, we will add thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the (international) pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital,” he added. During the 2013 negotiations, Israeli officials announced, and, eventually, carried out in full force, plans to build thousands of additional homes in illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, while continuing to further seize lands, demolish homes and agricultural resources and, thus, leaving scores of Palestinian families severely disenfranchised and without so much as a roof over their heads to shelter them from inclement weather. Gazans were already surviving on a mere 8 hours per day of electricity when the Palestinian negotiating team finally resigned in protest, in mid-November. Israel, soon after, made quite clear its position on securing peace with Palestinians when Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, during a meeting with young Likud Party supporters, boasted: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of settlement construction] … after five years, we built a little more than one brick…”

Asked about “peace talks with the Palestinians”, the PM reportedly replied, according to +972 online Israeli magazine: “about the – what?” to which his audience responded with a round of chuckling. Critics of Israel’s aggressively right-wing regime assert that such peace negotiations are simply used as a front for continued settlement expansion and military occupation, noting that settlement activity clearly increases during negotiations, while daily acts of violence against Palestinians, by both Israeli civilians and soldiers alike, remains as of yet unchallenged by the powers that be. Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community. Israel refers to both halves of the city as its “united, undivided capital” and does not see construction in the eastern sector as settlement building. Successive Israeli leaders have vowed that Jerusalem will never again be divided — in war or peace.

Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network. Over the past weekend, former FBI Assistant Director and current CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes told viewers that “the FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation.” He said he had received this information from “senior officials” at the FBI, “several of them, in and out of the Bureau.” (See video clip from CNN below.) That information was further supported by an in-depth article last evening in the Wall Street Journal by Devlin Barrett. According to Barrett, the “probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.” Barrett’s article suggests that the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, has attempted to circumvent the investigation. The new revelations lead to the appearance of wrongdoing on the part of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for secretly meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane on the tarmac of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on the evening of June 28 of this year. Not only was Bill Clinton’s wife under an FBI investigation at the time over her use of a private email server in the basement of her New York home over which Top Secret material was transmitted while she was Secretary of State but his own charitable foundation was also under investigation, a fact that was unknown at the time to the public and the media.

The reports leaking out of the FBI over the weekend came on the heels of FBI Director James Comey sending a letter to members of Congress on Friday acknowledging that the investigation into the Hillary Clinton email server was not closed as he had previously testified to Congress, but had been reopened as a result of “pertinent” emails turning up. According to multiple media sources, those emails were found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, Huma Abedin. Weiner was forced to resign from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal with more sexting scandals to follow. Early this month, on October 3, the FBI raided Weiner’s apartment in New York with a search warrant in hand and seized multiple electronic devices. At least one of those devices had been used by both Weiner and Abedin to send email messages. The search warrant had been obtained following a detailed report that had appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper in the U.K. in September, showing sordid, sexual emails that Weiner had allegedly sent to a 15-year old girl in North Carolina. According to the content of the published emails, Weiner was aware that the girl was underage. While examining the hard drive of a laptop seized from Weiner, the FBI found metadata showing that thousands of the emails were exchanged between the private server located in Hillary Clinton’s basement in Chappaqua, New York. Since the FBI had only a search warrant to examine emails and documents related to the Weiner matter, it was not able to read the other emails but simply tallied up the metadata linked to the private server in Chappaqua to show how many potentially new emails might be in the trove on the laptop. (It is also possible that the FBI agents could have used a program to compare subject headings against those emails previously turned over by Abedin to make their case that Abedin had perjured herself when she testified to them that she had turned over all of her work-related emails from her time as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations when Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State.)

The FBI officials briefed FBI Director James Comey last Thursday on the new trove of emails and he went public with his letter to Congress the next day – leading the Clinton camp to immediately launch a media assault on his motives. As if all of this wasn’t enough for the public to digest over the weekend, yesterday morning James Kallstrom, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Division and 25-year veteran of the FBI, went on the John Catsimatidis radio program to call the Clintons a “crime family.” (You can hear the full program here.) Kallstrom’s comments were further amplified when the New York Daily News reported on his criticisms that the FBI had been hamstrung from conducting a real investigation. The Daily News quoted Kallstrom from the radio program as follows: “ ‘This investigation was never a real investigation, they never had grand jury empaneled…This investigation was without the ability to serve subpoenas, serve search warrants, and obtain evidence … It was just ludicrous.’ ” On Wednesday of last week, just two days before FBI Director Comey issued his public letter to Congress, WikiLeaks released a devastating memo from Douglas Band, at the time a key figure at the Clinton Foundation and President of his own corporate consulting firm, Teneo. The memo was rife with suggestions of pay-to-play and personal enrichment schemes at the Clinton Foundation. The same day, Washington Post reporters Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger reported the story, including the following details: