Wednesday, January 04, 2023

Common Dreams:
"The legal team of human rights attorney Steven Donziger is challenging what he describes as the U.S. Department of Justice's 'disastrous decision to side with Chevron and back private corporate prosecutions.' ... In 2011, a Donziger-led legal team representing more than 30,000 farmworkers and Indigenous people harmed by over three decades of oil drilling in Ecuador won an $18 billion judgment against Chevron for deliberately dumping more than 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and other hazardous pollutants in the delicate Amazonian ecosystem—an act that caused a 'rainforest Chernobyl.' ...

Although the historic ruling against Chevron was upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, the oil giant moved its operations out of the country to avoid paying for cleanup, alleged that the $9.5 billion settlement had been fraudulently obtained, and launched what six House Democrats described last year as an 'unjust legal assault' on Donziger. In July 2019, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, a former corporate lawyer with investments in Chevron, held Donziger in contempt of court for refusing to turn over his computer and cellphone, a move that would have disclosed privileged client information. Soon after, Donziger began his 'completely unjust' 993-day detention on a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum sentence of six months.
 
Donziger has received support from United Nations human rights experts and nearly 70 Nobel Prize Laureates, including 1997 peace prize recipient Jody Williams, who argued in May 2021 that Donziger's house arrest and the criminal contempt case against him was a 'gross miscarriage of justice' meant to dissuade others from challenging corporations' human rights violations and ecological crimes."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/steven-donziger-chevron

-->The message to lawyers is don't mess with Big Oil, or our corrupt criminal justice system will throw you into jail. The fact that the US Dept. of Justice is now on Chevron's side is a complete sellout of the environmental movement. But you won't read this story in the NYT, which has been selling out to Big Oil for decades.

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Truthout:
"A human rights attorney raised alarm Monday over the expansion plans of Toka, an Israeli cyber firm that sells hacking technologies capable of finding, accessing, and manipulating security and smart camera footage.

Co-founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) cyber chief Yaron Rosen, Toka 'sells technologies that allow clients to locate security cameras or even webcams within a given perimeter, hack into them, watch their live feed, and even alter it—and past recordings,' Haaretz reported, citing internal documents it obtained and reviewed with a technical expert.

The company, whose activities are overseen by the Israeli Defense Ministry, 'was set up in 2018 and has offices in Tel Aviv and Washington,' Haaretz reported. 'It works solely with state clients in government, intelligence bodies, and law enforcement agencies, almost exclusively—but not just—in the West. According to the internal documents, as of 2021, the company had contracts with Israel valued at $6 million, and had also planned an 'expansion of existing deployment' in Israel."
https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-firm-plans-expanding-its-deployment-of-video-altering-tech/

-->Toka, an Israeli cyber firm, sells video altering technology to governments around the world. What does that say about our freedom of speech rights? Governments can now change video footage to falsely convict anyone they want to. But the NYT didn't cover this story, maybe because it makes apartheid Israel look too bad.

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The Guardian UK:
"A suggestion by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming ministers that Israeli doctors should be allowed to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients on religious grounds has heightened fears that the new government poses an unprecedented threat to gay rights. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has weighed in to condemn the growing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, saying: 'The racist pronouncements of recent days against the LGBTQ community and other sectors of the public make me extremely worried and concerned.' ...

In a radio interview on Sunday, the incoming national missions minister, Orit Strook, of the Religious Zionist party, was widely understood as implying that Israeli doctors would be able to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients. ... Strook specified that a doctor could refuse care to a patient if doing so violates his religious beliefs 'as long as there are enough other doctors who can give this service'. ...

Alon Shachar, executive director of Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, said: 'The changes the new government seeks to lead are liable to bring us to a situation in which LGBTQ people return to living in a reality of fear, violence and racism.' "
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/26/israeli-politician-suggests-doctors-could-refuse-to-treat-gay-patients

-->Much of the mainstream media including the NYT did not cover this story. These attacks on LJBTQ rights are deplorable. But so is the US media, which protects Israel's good name by hiding stories like this.