Abbas Seeks International Recognition, Israel Responds By Canceling Prisoner Release

From Al Jazeera English

Israel will not release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners because of renewed Palestinian efforts to join international organisations.

A spokesman for Tzipi Livni, Israel's justice minister and the government's chief negotiator, said on Thursday that the Israeli government had been working to finalise an agreement to free the prisoners when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed letters of accession to 15 international conventions. Abbas said it was a response to Israel's failure to release prisoners as promised, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Livni said the prisoner release was tied to the Palestinians avoiding unilateral moves, adding that the "new conditions were established and Israel cannot release the fourth batch of prisoners".

Israel had promised to free 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners in four tranches, and in exchange, Ramallah pledged to freeze all moves to seek membership in UN organisations until April 2014.

But a crisis erupted at the weekend when Israel refused to release the final 26 prisoners, enraging the Palestinians who on Tuesday responded by resuming their approach to international agencies.

Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Jerusalem, said: "It's almost like watching a game of ping-pong. Lipni said they [Israel] would apply sanctions if they [Palestinians] went to the UN. "The Palestinians said, if you do that we will sue you for war crimes. The language is not conducive to talks. We have not had official confirmation that the talks are over, but things are not going well. "We have seen peace talks come and go. All of these are just talks about talks, talking about a framework. No-one has sat down and discussed the future of Jerusalem. It is very difficult to see how this will ever be solved."

Lieberman's visit

The stalemate comes as Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, prepares to fly to the US on Friday to meet with his US counterpart, John Kerry, who earlier this week rushed to the Middle East in a surprise visit to rescue the peace talks. Lieberman's office said in a statement on Thursday he would be in New York on Friday to meet Mayor Bill de Blasio and American Jewish leaders, reported the Associated Press news agency.

On Sunday he is due to speak on Israel-US relations and the peace talks at a conference in New York. In Washington he will meet congressional leaders at Capitol Hill on April 8 and have talks with Kerry the following day, it said.

Kerry has been conducting more than a year of intensive shuttle diplomacy trying to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace.

However, talks hit crisis this week after Israel announced a fresh wave of settlement tenders and the Palestinians resumed moves to seek international recognition for their promised state.

In February, Lieberman - head of the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party - defended Kerry after he came under fire from other Israeli ministers for warning that the Jewish state faced growing delegitimisation if negotiations with the Palestinians collapsed and referring to "talk of boycotts".

"We don't agree with Kerry over everything, but he is a true friend of Israel," Lieberman said at an economic forum.

Lieberman, a harsh critic of the Palestinian leadership and campaigner for Israeli Arabs to take an oath of allegiance or be stripped of their citizenship, has in the past been a less than welcome visitor in Washington, the AP reported.

But his February remarks were welcomed by State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki.

"It certainly is a powerful statement and a powerful message given his history and his background on these issues and where his view was," she said at the time. 

Corrupt Bankers Sentenced to Death By Firing Squad

By Patrick Winn
From Globalpost

BANGKOK — For the most part, American bankers whose rash pursuit of profit brought on the 2008 global financial collapse didn’t get indicted. They got bonuses.

Odds are that scandal would have played out differently in Vietnam, another nation struggling with misbehaving bankers.

The authoritarian Southeast Asian state doesn’t just send unscrupulous financiers to jail. Sometimes, it sends them to death row.

Amid a sweeping cleanup of its financial sector, Vietnam has sentenced three bankers to death in the past six months.

One duo now on death row embezzled roughly $25 million from the state-owned Vietnam Agribank. Their co-conspirators caught decade-plus prison sentences.

In March, a 57-year-old former regional boss from Vietnam Development Bank, another government-run bank, wassentenced to death over a $93-million swindling job.

According to Vietnam’s Tuoi Tre news outlet, several of his colluders were sentenced to life imprisonment after they confessed to securing bogus loans with a diamond ring and a BMW coupe. And last week, in an unrelated case, charges against senior employees from the same bank allege $47 million in losses from dubious loans.

None of this would impress Bernie Madoff, mastermind of America’s largest ever financial fraud scheme. The combined amount from all three Vietnamese cases adds up to less than 1 percent of his purported $18-billion haul.

But these death sentences nevertheless are high profile scandals in Vietnam.

That’s the point. Human rights watchdogs contend that splashy trials in Vietnam are acts of political theater with predetermined conclusions. The audience: a Vietnamese public weary of state corruption. But these sentences also sound loud alarm bells to dodgy bankers who are currently running scams.

“It’s a message to those in this game to be less greedy and that business as usual is getting out of hand,” said Adam McCarty, chief economist with the Hanoi-based consulting firm Mekong Economics.

“The message to people in the system is this: Your chances of getting caught are increasing,” McCarty said. “Don’t just rely on big people above you. Because some of these [perpetrators] would’ve had big people above them. And it didn’t help them.”

Like most nations that crush dissent and operate with little transparency, Vietnam is highly corrupt.

According to a World Bank study, half of all businesses operating within the communist state expect that gift giving toward officials is required “to get things done.” Transparency International, which publishes the world’s leading corruption gauge, contends Vietnam is more corrupt than Mexico but not quite as bad as Russia.

Unlike in America, where judges can’t sentence white-collar criminals to death, Vietnam can execute its citizens for a range of corporate crimes.

Amnesty International reports that death sentences in Vietnam have been handed down to criminals for running shady investment schemes, counterfeiting cash and even defaulting on loans. This is unusual: United Nations officials have condemned death for “economic crimes” yet Vietnam persists with these sentences — as does neighboring China.

Though statistics on Vietnam’s opaque justice system are scarce, a state official conceded thatmore than 675 people sit on death row for a range of crimes, according to the Associated Press.

It’s still unclear how the bankers will be killed. Vietnam’s traditional means of execution involves binding perpetrators to a wooden post, stuffing their mouths with lemons and calling in a firing squad. The nation wants to transition to lethal injections. But European nations refuse to export chemicals used in executions (namely sodium thiopental) to governments practicing capital punishment.

Fraudulent bankers are receiving heavy sentences at a moment when Vietnam is enacting major financial reforms.

For decades, Vietnam has been slowly transforming its communist-style, state-run market into a more open and competitive arena. In the post-reunification era, the government owned every bank in Vietnam. Today, state-run banks control only 40 percent of all assets.

This push to bank in a more Western style has ushered in improvements as well as temptations to swindle. According to the UN economist Vu Quang Viet, Vietnamese credit laws passed in 2010 “simply copied the lax US law now widely believed to be at least partially responsible for the financial debacle in 2008.”

Campaigns to root out corruption are promoted as a way to entice foreign investment, which could help prop up Vietnamese banks whose growth has slowed from a sprint to a jog.

But the recent death sentences aren’t really intended to prove the reformers’ sincerity to the outside world, according to McCarty.

“They don’t care about foreigners. It’s all internal politics,” McCarty said. Foreign banking honchos wouldn’t be impressed by a few executions anyway. “If you really want to want to resolve the problem, you can’t just arrest people,” he said. “You’ve got to improve accountability and transparency in the entire system.”

A leading Vietnamese newspaper, Thanh Nien, is also pushing for system-wide cleanup in lieu of showcase trials against a few corporate criminals.

An op-ed in the paper recently compared death sentences for corruption to fighting fire with fire. The preferred approach would be dousing corruption before it burns through public funds. “It is better to prevent corruption,” the paper opined, “than deal with it after the fact.”

CBN Claims Sweden Will Soon Be North Korea

By Elias Isquith 

From Salon 

Imagine a brutal, totalitarian nightmare regime that commits unspeakably sadistic acts of cruelty on an industrial scale and destroys its citizens’ hopes, families and lives without a second thought.

A decent description of North Korea today? Yes.

A chilling vision of Sweden’s dismal future? According to the Christian Broadcasting Network, also yes.

In a remarkable report broadcast on Wednesday, televangelist Pat Robertson’s CBN informed its audience that Sweden, long believed to be a healthy liberal democracy, was well on its way to becoming the Orwellian hellscape that is North Korea. And, as is so often the case (at least on CBN) it’s the p.c. police who are to blame — specifically, those p.c. police who are assigned to the Islamophobia and xenophobia precincts.

CBN reporter Dale Hurd had the big scoop. “Sweden has been compared to a couple of nations which also tried to build perfect societies,” he explains, “[like] North Korea and the Soviet Union.”

While Hurd was sure to note that, unlike in North Korea, in Sweden, the government is not able to seize you in the middle of the night and send you to a concentration camp and/or murder you on the spot, he also warned that if you have the wrong kind of opinions in Sweden, “your life could become very unpleasant.”

Iran Appoints U.S. Hostage Taker as UN Envoy

From BBC News

The Obama administration says Iran's nomination of a former hostage-taker as its ambassador to the United Nations is "extremely troubling".

US senators have also balked at Iran's pick of Hamid Aboutalebi, who was part of a Muslim student group which seized the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

The 52 Americans were held for 444 days during the crisis.

Senator Ted Cruz says he will introduce legislation to block Iran's application for a US visa for Mr Aboutalebi.

'In your face'

Department of State spokeswoman Marie Harf said at Wednesday's daily briefing: "I will say that we think this nomination would be extremely troubling.

"We're taking a close look at the case now, and we've raised our serious concerns about this possible nomination with the government of Iran."

Mr Aboutalebi has reportedly said he had minimal involvement in the hostage-taking group, named the Students Following the Imam's Line.

Officials for Iran's Mission to the United Nations have so far declined to comment.

Mr Cruz, a Texas Republican, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: "It is unconscionable that in the name of international diplomatic protocol, the United States would be forced to host a foreign national who showed a brutal disregard of the status of diplomats when they were stationed in his country."

"This person is an acknowledged terrorist," he added.

His legislation would require US President Barack Obama to deny a visa to any UN applicant determined to have engaged in terrorist activity.

Fellow Republican Senator John McCain called Mr Aboutalebi's appointment "a really kind of an in-your-face action by the Iranian government", the Associated Press news agency reports.

Nigerian Islamic Court Acquits Men Charged With Gay Acts

Scene Inside the Court Room. Picture from AFP.

From BBC News

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria has acquitted two men accused of having gay sex and belonging to a homosexual club.

There was a lack of evidence to convict the young men, the judge ruled.

These are the first acquittals since Islamic courts in Bauchi city began trying a group arrested late last year for alleged homosexual offences. Homosexual acts are illegal in Nigeria under Islamic and secular law - the latter was tightened in January. Same-sex marriages, gay groups and shows of same-sex public affection are now banned throughout Nigeria.

'Wearing shorts'

Court clerk Abdul Mohammed told Reuters news agency that the men were acquitted because no-one saw them having sex. "He [the judge] said sodomy is punishable with death and requires the testimony of four witnesses to the act and in the case of the two men, no-one saw them committing sodomy," Mr Mohammed is quoted as saying.

The men were arrested after residents raided a home in Bauchi, finding one of them wearing shorts while the other was fully clothed, Reuters reports. Five people have been convicted of homosexual offences by Bauchi's Islamic courts since January.

They were sentenced to 20 lashes each. The cases of five other suspects are pending, including that of a Christian who is expected to be tried in a secular court.

Most states in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria have adopted Islamic law, known as Sharia, since the end of military rule in 1999. Nigeria is a deeply conservative country, where the majority of people - Christian and Muslim - are opposed to homosexuality.

Chinese Environmental Protest Clashes With Authorities

From BBC News

Authorities have condemned an environmental protest in southern China that turned violent, calling it "serious criminal behaviour". Residents in Maoming, Guangdong province, on Sunday protested against the construction of a petrochemical plant that manufactures paraxylene.

Violence broke out, with reports of several injured protesters. On Tuesday, the protests spread to Guangzhou. Protests are rare in China, where it is illegal to protest without a permit. Hundreds of Maoming residents marched on the streets on Sunday, protesting against the proposed plant. Some protesters said turnout was more than 1,000.

Clashes with police broke out, with reports of tear gas being fired at protesters. Photos and videos posted on Chinese social media appeared to show injured protesters, police chasing demonstrators with batons, and burning cars. Smaller protests appeared to continue, spreading to Guangzhou, the provincial capital, on Tuesday. 'Chaos'

A Maoming Daily article, carried on the Maoming government website, said: "On [Sunday] afternoon, a small number of protesters disrupted traffic, before gradually dispersing.  "But after 22:30, a small group of trouble-makers on motorcycles threw stones and water bottles, damaging public facilities."

The Maoming government has called the unauthorised protest "a serious offence" and urged residents to "trust the government and not give illegal elements the opportunity to cause chaos". Officials later said that no timetable had been given for the plant's construction, and that the authorities would not proceed without consulting the public.

 

The government said no one was killed in the protests, but did not say if any were injured.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said: "Accounts and photographs suggest that police may have used disproportionate force against demonstrators in Maoming. Authorities should move swiftly to investigate these claims, and hold those responsible to account."

Paraxylene (PX) is used in plastic bottles and polyesters. However, many in China have expressed health concerns over PX plants.



Environmental protests are growing in number in China, and once again, fuelled by the power of the internet, one such protest has caught the authorities by surprise, the BBC's John Sudworth in Shanghai reports. In recent years paraxylene has become a focus of environmental protest in China, forcing the delay or cancellation of plants in other cities much to the dismay of the national government, our correspondent adds.

CIA Lied About Torture Methods

From BBC News

The CIA repeatedly misled the US government over the severity and effectiveness of its interrogation methods, the Washington Post reports.

A long-awaited US Senate report said that the CIA used secret "black sites" to interrogate prisoners using techniques not previously acknowledged.

These included dunking suspects in icy water and smashing a prisoner's head against a wall.

The findings stem from the time of former President George W Bush.

Officials familiar with the secret document said that the CIA's interrogation programme yielded little useful intelligence.

They also said that this intelligence had then been exaggerated so that the interrogation programme looked more effective than it actually was.

The report is the result of a wide-ranging investigation by the Senate intelligence committee into CIA activities which began in 2009.

The committee will meet on Thursday to decide on whether to send a summarised version to President Barack Obama for eventual public release.

Internal divisions

Officials at the CIA's headquarters ordered officers to continue with harsh interrogations even after they were convinced that the prisoners had no more information to give, the Washington Post said.

One official said that almost all the valuable intelligence from al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaida was gained before he was waterboarded 83 times.

The report also spoke of divisions within the CIA in protest at the conditions prisoners were forced to endure.

A CIA spokesman told the Post the agency had not yet seen a final version of the report and so could not officially comment on its contents.

However, current and former officials told the paper privately that the 6,300 page study contained factual errors and misguided conclusions.

Earlier in March the head of the Senate intelligence committee accused the CIA of improperly accessing Senate computers during the investigation.

Senator Dianne Feinstein said that the alleged hacking "may have undermined the constitutional framework" of government oversight.