Free Republic

The PA will turn to Switzerland to request that PA prisoners in Israel be recognized as prisoners of war, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday as he celebrated Prisoners’ Day. Switzerland is the depository state of the Geneva Convention. Recognition of PA prisoners as prisoners of war would mean better conditions, ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thcy2xDGmQc&feature=related

A solar energy plane made the world's first international flight powered by the sun on Friday to show the potential for pollution-free air travel. The Solar Impulse took off from an airfield at Payerne in western Switzerland on Friday morning and landed at Brussels airport after a 13-hour flight. "The objective is to demonstrate what we can do with existing technology in terms of renewable energy and energy savings," project co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg told Reuters by telephone during the flight. Borschberg believes such solar-harnessing technology can be used to power cars and homes. "It is symbolic to be...

A foreign policy adviser to President Obama said this evening that the Administration has "rehabilitated" the concept of human rights, tarnished by the Iraq war, in a way that laid the groundwork for international collaboration. Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council best known for her human rights advocacy before she entered the White House, spoke at Columbia University in New York City two hours before the president's planned speech in Libya tonight. Obama "has used his pulpit and a number of speeches ... to kind of clear the brush that had gathered around the norms in...

Former US President George W. Bush cancelled a trip to Geneva over the risk of legal action against him for the alleged torture of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, rights groups said Saturday. He was scheduled to address a Jewish charity gala.

Geneva was a church-city-state of 15,000 people, and the church constitution now recognized "pastors, doctors, elders and deacons," but the supreme power was given to the magistrate, John Calvin. In November 1552, the Council declared Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion to be a "holy doctrine which no man might speak against." Thus the State issued dogmatic decrees, the force of which had been anticipated earlier, as when Jacques Gruet, a known opponent of Calvin, was arrested, tortured for a month and beheaded on July 26, 1547, for placing a letter in Calvin's pulpit calling him a hypocrite. Gruet's book...

Swiss hold 8 over Saudi suicide bombs Alison Langley in Zurich, and Brian Whitaker Saturday January 10, 2004 The Guardian The Swiss authorities have arrested eight people in connection with suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. The arrests on Thursday were part of a national operation by 100 police officers who raided homes in Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Vaud and Aargau and questioned about 20 suspects. Those arrested are suspected of providing logistical support for a series of attacks by Islamic militants on housing compounds in Riyadh last May which killed 35 people, including nine assailants. Officials said all the suspects were...

Five years after being barred from the U.S. for making charitable contributions to a group that sent those contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas, internationally renowned Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, often dubbed “the Muslim Martin Luther,” will make his first public appearance in America this April after being permitted to enter the country. The turnabout comes not because Ramadan has been cleared of these charges, but because Secretary of State Clinton has, in the words of State spokesman Darby Holladay, “chosen to exercise her exemption authority for the benefit of Tariq Ramadan.” Holladay disingenuously suggested that the Bush Administration...

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest; foreword by Denis MacShane (Encounter Books, 262 pp., $23.95) In the 1990s, Western liberals, alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst, turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or “modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West, including the British government, which asked him to serve on its task force for...

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter...

US Welcomes Iran Inspection Offer Mrs Clinton is in New York for the annual UN General Assembly US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given a cautious welcome to Iran's announcement that it will open a newly revealed nuclear plant to inspection. Speaking in New York, Mrs Clinton said it was always welcome when Iran decided to comply with international rules. The US, France and UK accused Tehran of deception after it admitted to the existence of the facility on Monday. Iran says the uranium enrichment plant, near the city of Qom, is in line with UN regulations. It maintains...

magine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn't marry. That might generate the odd headline, no? Or if Don Cherry claimed suddenly to like European hockey players who wear visors and float around the ice, never bodychecking opponents. Or Jack Layton insisted that unions are ruining the economy by distorting wages and protecting unproductive workers. Or Stephen Harper began arguing that it makes good economic sense for Ottawa to own a car company. (Oh, wait, that one happened.) But at least, the Tories-buy-GM aberration...

(1) Vienna (2) Zurich (3) Geneva (4) Vancouver and Auckland (tie) (6) Dusseldorf (7) Munich (8) Frankfurt (9) Bern (10) Sydney

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have shot himself in the foot. Ahmadinejad gave a vitriolic anti-American and anti-Israeli speech at the "Durban II" anti-racism conference in Geneva April 20 as part of an effort to launch his re-election campaign with a big bang and to bolster the claim that he is the global standard-bearer of anti-Western movements. The speech was designed to shock and provoke, and it did that -- but it also highlighted the Islamic Republic's increasing diplomatic isolation. Ban Ki Moon, who briefly pulled off his earpiece so as not to hear the translation of Ahmadinejad's incendiary claims,...

At first you may think, “That sounds reasonable. After all, who can really predict the future?” But then read DOJ’s next sentence: “This position is limited to the authority upon which the Government is relying to detain the persons now being held at Guantanamo Bay.” Turns out it’s not about the future at all. It’s about the people about whom we’ve had the better part of eight years to develop a position on what “substantial” assistance is and which “associated forces” are eligible for indefinite detention. Obama doesn’t want to say he is relying on Article II — even though...

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush is seeking asylum in Switzerland, Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports. Muntadar al-Zaidi has been in custody in Iraq awaiting trial since the incident during a visit by Mr Bush to the country in mid-December. He fears for his safety in his Baghdad prison, the paper says, quoting his lawyer, Mauro Poggia. The lawyer argues his client likewise cannot resume his old job in Iraq. Since his arrest, the Iraqi has reportedly been beaten in custody, suffering a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding, his older...

<p>GENEVA (AP) - Islamic proposals to ban criticism of religion, which have gathered strength since the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad two years ago, threaten to derail an already troubled U.N. anti-racism conference planned for next year. The European Union rejects suggestions by Algeria—backed by other Muslim and African countries—that limits on free speech are needed to stop the publication of offensive articles and images.</p>

GENEVA (Reuters) - George Clooney has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama by headlining an exclusive event for Americans in Geneva, one of the world's most affluent cities. The Hollywood actor and director, fresh from the world premiere of the Coen brothers' comedy "Burn After Reading" in Venice, slipped without fanfare into the Swiss city on Tuesday for his first appearance on behalf of the Democratic nominee. Some 170 contributors have paid $1,000 a head to attend a cocktail party with Clooney at a museum in Geneva's Old Town on Tuesday evening. And 75...

IT'S A LONG WAY from Geneva, Switzerland, to Orlando, Florida -- but not if you are pioneers in classical Christian education. In 16th-century Geneva, John Calvin started a religious and educational revolution in his city's schools. Its key ingredients were Reformation theology, the sovereignty of Scripture, the teaching of Latin, and an emphasis on dialogue, dialectic, and rhetoric. Calvin's strategic purpose was to encourage young minds to grow beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge. He wanted to produce students who could use their intellects to reason, question, and challenge their contemporary world in the cause of Christian idealism. If you...

"I think it’s bad enough that Obama is campaigning and fund raising so much on foreign soil. The trip through Europe? Now an elitist-of-the-elite gathering in Switzerland? But refusing to call off, or even just delay, the event while your political colleagues are focused on what could have been another major disaster in the gulf coast region just takes the cake."

Why is it, that the impression the media leaves me with, is that Hamdan is "just a driver" and a victim of circumstances? Just another tragic pawn and casualty in the illegal and immoral war instigated by the imperialistic, oil-grubbing, human-rights/U.S. Constitution-violating Bush regime? Well, he's been found guilty of supporting terrorism, but acquitted on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terror. Anyway... Jonathan Mahler writing last Sunday for the NYTimes Magazine: The men in the dock might very well be war criminals, the argument goes, but what about the policy makers and interrogators who violated their rights...

Geneva — So, how many BMWs does it take to make one United Nations Human Rights Council?

Nazi Eichmann's passport found in ArgentinaThe passport used by notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950 has been found by accident in an archive in Buenos Aires. The passport, still in good condition, was issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Eichmann was one of the main executors of Adolf Hitler's 'final solution', the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II. A judge, Maria Servini de Cubria, stumbled upon the document in court archives. The passport has been handed over to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, which confirmed the discovery....

The sixteenth century was a period of tumultuous change in Western Europe. The need for some kind of moral and intellectual shake–up within the church had been obvious for some time. Many religious and political writers of the fifteenth century had been aware of the weaknesses of the medieval church and the society in which it was embedded. However, there are good reasons for thinking that few were really prepared for the radical events of the sixteenth century, which are generally referred to collectively as "the Reformation." The Reformation remains of central importance for Christian theology and the life...

Source: http://truehardfacts.blogspot.com _________ Monday, October 23, 2006 Muslim "Youth": Just before having the feast-meal at the end of Ramadan, why don't we halt "infidels" a pregnant woman on the escalator of the subway? Muslim "Youth": Just before having the feast-meal at the end of Ramadan, why don't we halt the "infidels" including pregnant woman on the escalator of the subway?Oct, 23, 2006 Noon time Two French Jews are using the escalator of the Metro in Marseille, three Arab Muslim youth all ready to join the meal at the end of their "holy" Ramadan.But hey, they are not yet ready, they...

GENEVA - The Muslim world and the West have a big communication problem. While most Americans tune into the news and scratch their heads over Muslims rioting in the streets about cartoons, Muslims across the globe learn much of what they know about our culture from one of the most popular shows in the world - "Jerry Springer." American students can come to an understanding of the faith if they know the similarities between Islam, Christianity and Judaism and can distinguish between historic Islam and the relatively recent rise of violent fundamentalism, said Audrey Shabbas, an Islamic scholar and director...

Is Ted Kennedy going to hold the entire city of Fallujah accountable for violating the Geneva Conventions when they killed four non-military American contractors, burnt and beat their bodies and hung them from a bridge? How are democrats going prosecute the masked terrorists when they beheaded Nick Berg, Paul Johnson and others? Will the democrats voting Geneva Convention and Habeas Corpus rights to terrorists stipulate that when video taping a beheading, terrorists not wear masks, clearly identify themselves and where they can be reached? How would we process Osama Bin Laden if we caught him alive? Would we treat...

The Pledge I’d Like to See Every Political Candidate Take I, ________________________________________, upon signing this document, do hereby swear and affirm under penalty of forfeiture of office and wages, that I shall: 1.) Make no public statement which demeans, denigrates, or defames any active member, unit, or branch of the U.S. armed services, or the military as a whole, except in cases where an individual soldier or group of soldiers has been tried and convicted of committing a criminal offense or offenses.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in a feat of tortuous logic and ignoring the Political Question Doctrine, has created Geneva Convention protections for international terrorists, something few students of international humanitarian law anticipated, certainly few in uniform ever contemplated. This has detrimental and broad implication for the specific applicability of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the two “Protocols Additional of 1977” as they relate not only to the protection of combatants and terrorists, as appears to be the focus of current national debate, but more importantly to the protection and safeguarding of civilians, indeed to the...

McCain, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John Warner – or, as the Times now calls him, the "courtly Virginian" ("fag-hag by proxy to Elizabeth Taylor" being beneath his dignity these days) – want terrorists treated like Americans accused of crimes, with full access to classified information against them and a list of the undercover agents involved in their capture. Leftists's interest in protecting classified information started and ended with Valerie Plame. As Graham explained, he doesn't want procedures used against terrorists at Guantanamo "to become clubs to be used against our people." Actually, clubs would be a step...

Seeking a deal with Senate Republicans on the rules governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects, the White House has dropped its insistence on redefining the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions, members of Congress and aides said Tuesday. The new White House position, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday night, set off intensified negotiations between administration officials and a small group of Republican senators. The senators have blocked President Bush’s original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody. The two...

The Senate is stalling another Bush Administration proposal to effectively fight the war on terror. After the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year that the President does not have inherent authority to try captured terrorists using military tribunals, President Bush asked Congress to grant him that authority in law. The Senate is balking at the President’s proposal, though, claiming that it runs afoul of a portion of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3. But Heritage national security expert James Carafano notes that the administration’s proposal as it exists now would “satisfy[y] U.S. obligations under the Conventions.” In fact,...

For some politicians, it is tough under the best of circumstances to do the right thing when it comes to national security. Posturing about "peace dividends" chronically results in defense budgets and end-strengths insufficient to deter future acts of aggression -- and fight the ensuing wars. Intelligence programs are compromised by self-serving leaks and press-driven legislative responses. Pentagon leaders are savaged in public by legislators who thereby underscore their lack of understanding of the threats besetting our country, and the fact they have no better answers to the challenges thus posed. Unfortunately, a congressional byelection season in the second term...

NEWSWEEK “Isikoffed” the Gonzales Memo Since Christopher Hitchens is correcting old Dowdified quotes, I thought I’d correct one myself. This one, from a 2004 NEWSWEEK article, is a major Dowdification — in my view, every bit as egregious as Dowd’s original. What’s more, it’s still influencing lefties even today. Worse, unlike Dowd’s alteration of a Bush quote, the NEWSWEEK story didn’t even use an ellipsis to indicate what was missing. By altering an Alberto Gonzales quote in this way, NEWSWEEK managed to make Gonzales and the Bush Administration appear unreasonably dismissive of the Geneva Convention. The story was co-authored by...

Does John McCain favor the CIA interrogations or not? The media are concentrating on the politics of the intra-Republican fight over military tribunals and detainee treatment, which last week saw the Senate Armed Services Committee move a bill substantially different from what the White House wants. But the stakes here are far more serious: To wit, if Senators John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins get their way, aggressive interrogation as an antiterror intelligence tool will effectively end. Thanks to last year's McCain Amendment, the Defense Department is already required to give detainees in its custody better treatment...

If the Rep and Dem Senators leading the fight to gut our interrogation options in the face of a vaguely worded clause in the Geneva Conventions just stopped talking and thought about what they were saying, they would be surprised to find out they were interpretting the conventions in such a way as to violate the purpose for the conventions to exist in the first place. The Geneva Conventions were developed to assure soldiers and civilians were treated humanely during the inhumane times of war. Therefore, any act by the terrorists should be no more allowed than acts of misguided...

My father was a machine gunner with the Army's 28th Infantry Division, which was among the first units to march down the Champs-Elysées after the Allied liberation of Paris . In December 1944, having landed at Normandy and fought across France and Belgium, he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, and sent hundreds of miles through northern Germany in an unheated boxcar in the dead of winter to a prison camp at Muhlberg in the east. My father survived the war not because of the generosity of the Nazis to Jewish soldiers. The Germans must have been tempted...

I am searching for the article posted that was about the US WW-II secret group that were interrogating scientists or whomever against the Geneva Convention. I would be very grateful if someone can provide me the link.

U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton Will spend much of the next several days in the Finger Lakes region. Clinton will be in Penn Yan Wednesday morning to announce the expansion of a small business initiative in Yates County. From there, she'll head to Canandaigua for a Farmer's Day celebration at the Wine and Culinary Center. Wednesday night, Senator Clinton will deliver the keynote address at a reception at the Ventosa Winery in Geneva with Democrats from Ontario, Seneca, Yates, and Wayne Counties. Thursday, Clinton will discuss enhancing economic development opportunities along the Erie Canal at a stop in Palmyra before heading...

For more than 60 years, they kept their military secrets locked deep inside and lived quiet lives as account executives, college professors, business consultants and the like. The brotherhood of P.O. Box 1142 enjoyed no homecoming parades, no VFW reunions, no embroidered ball caps and no regaling of wartime stories to grandchildren sitting on their knees. Almost no one, not even their wives, in many cases, knew the place in history held by the men of Fort Hunt, alluded to during World War II only by a mailing address that was its code name.

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts. Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. In light...

When I visited Israel nearly five years ago, I heard much about the perversity of suicide bombings, the treachery of Yasser Arafat and the threats of terrorism from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. But one Western diplomat turned my attention in another direction. The Israel-Lebanon border, he told me, "could be a more serious flash point than the West Bank or Gaza Strip. What happens if Hezbollah, Syria, Iran or all three decide to stir the pot?" A few days later as I toured the border region with its Israeli army outposts, Hezbollah encampments, electronic fences and barbed wire,...

There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable." The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be "proportional" to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action. This is all well and good...

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2006 – Extremists in Afghanistan attacked coalition forces from a religious site yesterday, and targeted several civilian areas this week, including a bridge, a school and a wedding party, military officials in Afghanistan reported. Extremists began firing on coalition forces in the village of Nowzad in Helmand province yesterday. The sniper fire came from the direction of a religious shrine. There were no reported injuries to coalition forces or damage to equipment. In a separate incident in Kandahar province, a supply convoy received small-arms fire from a nearby mosque. While there were no casualties in this incident,...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Tuesday it will grant the 450 terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison protection under the Geneva Conventions, a dramatic policy shift for the Bush administration after the Supreme Court recently rejected its plan to use military tribunals to try the detainees. The White House had previously promised the detainees humane treatment, but had also insisted that they were not covered by the conventions because they were not considered prisoners of war. Most of the Guantanamo inmates were detained during fighting in Afghanistan, although several of them were also arrested in anti-terrorism operations in other...

Preamble The undersigned Plenipotentiaries of the Governments represented at the Diplomatic Conference held at Geneva from April 21 to August 12, 1949, for the purpose of revising the Convention concluded at Geneva on July 27, 1929, relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, have agreed as follows: Part I. General Provisions Art 1. The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances. Art 2. In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any...

Since the 1970s, a coalition of international human rights types and romantic supporters of Third World insurgencies has argued that guerillas ought to be covered by the Geneva Conventions even if they themselves are not bound by it. But every US administration since Jimmy Carter's has rejected this point of view. If I read Hamdan aright, the US Supreme Court has just accepted it, or sort of accepted it.

The Jazeeragate battle against Islamofascists Al-Jazeera plans on launching an English language network aimed at the West, but some believe the people should take action to stop it. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has referred to Al-Jazeera's reporting as "vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable," while Dr. Walid Phares, professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University refers to Al-Jazeera as "Jihad TV". The Al-Jazeera network has blatantly violated the Geneva Conventions time and again by broadcasting images of dead coalition soldiers and prisoners of war, a violation of Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention that protects POWs against acts...

Reid calls for Geneva Convention to be rewritten By Thomas Harding Defence Correspondent (Filed: 04/04/2006) John Reid, the Defence Secretary, called for sweeping changes to international law, including the Geneva Convention, to counter the threat of global terrorism. The legal grounds for conducting pre-emptive strikes were inadequate in the current climate of suicidal terrorists, as were the laws to prevent genocide and internal repression, he said. Unless changes were made to international law, countries would be hamstrung in countering threats from terrorists intent on killing on a huge scale with weapons of mass destruction. Mr Reid also called for a...

Call to bring the President of Iran to trial before the International Criminal Court 27 January, 2006 IHEU and two other NGOs have issued a press release at the UN in Geneva, demanding that the Iranian President be prosecuted under the Genocide Convention, following his call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". GENEVA, 27 January 2006 -- The call by the Iranian President for the destruction of the State of Israel in defiance of article 2:4 of the United Nations Charter demands a firm reaction from the international community. On this, the first International Day of Commemoration of...