FROM THE LEGENDARY CURVY CUCUMBER TO SERVING SEALED OIL!

JOSE BARROSO’S BRAIN SCREWS NEED SOME OIL NOW!

LAISSEZ-NOUS FAIRE, MONSIEUR JOSE!

Laissez-nous faire, Monsieur Barroso! Let us do!  Leave us alone!  Buzz off!

Laissez-nous faire, Jose!

Eurokleptocrats now impose strict new rules on how restaurants serve olive oil!  Restaurants are banned from serving oil to diners in small glass jugs or dipping bowls, and forced instead to use pre-sealed, non-refillable bottles that must be disposed of when empty.

 

 

 

The rules only add to the frustration felt towards a bloated Fourth Reich bureaucracy regarded out of touch with the concerns of all Europeans.  If Fourth Reich was logical and properly run, people wouldn't be so eurosceptics. But when Fourth Reich comes up with crazy things like this, it quite rightly calls into question its legitimacy and judgment.

 

 

The plan is the weirdest decision since the legendary curvy cucumber regulation, now-defunct EU rules on the shape of fruit and vegetables sold in supermarkets. The rules would prevent restauranteurs from buying their extra virgin olive oil direct from traditional suppliers.  This stupidity will increase costs for restauranteurs and their customers as well. In this time of crisis, surely they should be worrying about other things rather than stupid stuff like this.

 

 

 

Jose Barroso introduces new stupid regulations every single day.  The day will come when Barroso will dictate how we should bush-patrol, siphon our python, or drain our lizard!  At a meeting in 1680 between the French finance minister Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by Le Gendre, Colbert asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants and help promote their commerce. Le Gendre replied simply Laissez-nous faire, Let us do.  Laissez-faire is now a synonym of pure capitalism.

 

Friedrich Hayek attempted in his writings to spotlight the interlocking set of ideas - constructivist rationalism, scientism, socialism, the engineering mentality - that was leading the West down the road to serfdom and to propose in its place a return to a revitalized form of libertarianism. Kleptocrats do not have the necessary knowledge to intervene effectively in the economy, and the political process is such that, even if kleptocrats did, they still likely would get bad policy, coupled with an ever-growing government sector and political corruption.

Every time we cede more control to the government, we become more dependent on it. The better choice is not dependence on government to solve problems for us, but binding together in our community and solving problems together, voluntarily.

When a parliament wants to sidestep an issue rather than resolving it, it calls for a study! The studies can use up lots of resources and parliaments typically ignore them, making them a waste of money. The Wall Street reform bill of the U.S. Congress called for fifty studies, an impressive level of trying to look busy while dodging controversy.

 

 

The cost of government regulation is truly staggering, and it’s a barometer of how free we are to pursue our own interests and to determine the course of our own lives, independent of kleptocrats and the cancer of socialism. The cost of regulations is one trillion dollars in USA and two trillion euros in Fourth Reich (EU) every year. The global cost of regulation is six trillion euros every year. Financial costs are not the only burden.

Regulations result in a tremendous loss of one of our most valuable and limited resources, time. The private sector is spending over 10 billion hours a year just to meet government paperwork demands in USA, and 20 billion hours in Fourth Reich. It is no wonder that regulation discourages the creation of new businesses, new jobs, new products, and new services. Starve the beast by fighting taxes.

 

 

Any government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions in order to address the crises that are generated by the previous interventions. Ultimately the crises continue getting so bad that the government ends up taking over the entire sector. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan considered those nine words the most terrifying in the English language. And the government has been offering a lot of such help lately.

The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.

There is no magic bullet that will stop the excessive growth of regulation, but there are steps that parliament can take to increase scrutiny of new and existing rules to ensure that each is necessary and that costs are minimized.  First of all, it should require a cost analysis of all legislation imposing new regulatory burdens.  Although all proposed legislation must be scored by a parliamentary committee to determine likely fiscal costs, there is no similar requirement that regulatory costs be reported.

Members should not be asked to vote on proposals without the best possible estimate of their likely costs. All bills proposing new or expanded regulation should undergo a regulatory impact analysis analyzing and quantifying the likely costs and benefits. This regulatory scoring would ideally be performed by a new parliamentary regulation office. Such a step could be taken by a parliament on its own initiative and without presidential approval.

Parliaments should establish a sunset date for new regulations.  Once adopted, rules tend to be left in place, even if they have outlived their usefulness. Currently, rules that have a substantial effect on a significant number of small entities must be reviewed by the promulgating agency every 10 years. In practice, however, such review, if it occurs at all, is usually performed in a cursory manner. To ensure that substantive review occurs, regulations should automatically expire if not explicitly reaffirmed by regulators.  This requirement should be applied to all rules, not just those affecting small business. Such sunset dates should also be included in legislation imposing new regulation.

Parliaments have the ability to veto new regulations coming from agencies. To date, however, that authority has only been used successfully once.  The review process would be strengthened by requiring parliamentary approval before regulation takes effect. Such a system would ensure a parliamentary check on regulators, as well as ensure the accountability of a parliament itself.

Such reform should be seriously considered. In doing so, a parliament should be careful to avoid two dangers. First, the process should apply only to the imposition of new burdens on consumers or the economy.  It should not be required in order to lift such burdens. Second, it should be clear that parliamentary approval under this process is conditional upon a prior grant of regulatory authority to the agency by a parliament and that the parliamentary review process does not itself constitute a grant of authority.

While reforming the regulatory process is important, it is also important to note that such reforms will not by itself solve the problem of overregulation. No set of procedural reforms will be enough to stem the regulatory tide.  Ultimately, regulatory burdens will rise until policymakers fully appreciate the burdens that regulations impose on citizens, and exercise the political will necessary to limit and reduce those burdens.

England in 1803 created a new civil service position. It called for a man to stand on the cliffs of Dover with a spy glass and ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. They didn't eliminate that job until 1945. In USA, there are only two government programs that have been abolished. The government stopped making rum on the Virgin Islands, and it stopped breeding horses for the cavalry. Fourth Reich(EU) established the office of the President of the Council, in order to get rid of the Rotating Presidency, but Rotating Presidency is still around! Sunsetting government offices is hard to do.

Every person has two ways to become wealthier. One is to produce more, the other is to capture more of what others produce. Washington and Brussels look increasingly like a public-works jobs programs for lawyers and pullpeddlers, profit centers for professionals who are in business for themselves. Instead of encouraging the economy to invest in engineers, technology and new products, Washington and Brussels require firms to invest in lawyers and pullpeddlers just to stay alive. It will do nothing to help create new wealth or new net jobs in the economy, but will transfer more wealth to lobbying and law firms in Washington and Brussels.

There are many central planning czars who now bewilder citizens: Internet czar, Afghanistan czar, AIDS czar, auto-recovery czar, border czar, California-water czar, car czar, central-region czar (Middle East, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Asia), climate czar, domestic-violence czar, drug czar, economic czar (Paul Volcker), energy and environment czar, faith-based czar, government-performance czar, Great Lakes czar, green-jobs czar, Guantanamo-closure czar, health czar, information czar, intelligence czar, science czar, stimulus-accountability czar, pay czar, regulatory czar, Sudan czar, TARP czar, Technology czar, terrorism czar, urban-affairs czar, weapons czar, WMD-policy czar, war czar, oil czar, manufacturing czar, cybersecurity czar, safe-school czar, Iran czar, Mideast-peace czar. 




Correspondents of http://venitism.blogspot.com report that government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system.

 
 

THE GREEK VIRUS

The permanent political class enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us. Insider trading is illegal, yet it is routine among kleptocrats. Normal individuals cannot get in on IPOs at the asking price, but kleptocrats do so routinely. Kleptocrats also get many hot issues, bypassing all fair procedures of distribution.  By funneling hundreds of millions of dollars or euros to supporters, even more campaign donations are ensured. An entire class of investors now makes all of its profits based on influence and access to kleptocrats.

 

 

Kleptocrats have transformed politics to trade. They are traders who use their power, access, and privileged information to generate wealth. And at the same time well-connected financiers and corporate leaders have made a business of politics. They come together to form a kleptocratic caste.

 

 

Kleptocracy has clearly figured out how to extract wealth from the rest of us based solely on their position and proximity to power. If you have a seat at the table, you are in for a feast. If you don’t have a seat at the table, you are on the menu. Throw them all out!  Waiters are mad as hell, and they are not going to take this from kleptocrats anymore. That’s why they spit on the food of kleptocrats and put live worms on their plates!

The people in power, the people that are benefiting from the status quo, they have no incentive to change it and kleptocrats, of course, don’t want to rock the boat. Kleptocrats do not want to do anything that would bring out short term pain, even if it produces long term gain. Kleptocrats are not in it for the country. They are there to line their own pockets. They want to make as much money for themselves. Kleptocrats want to get re-elected and if that means they have to sacrifice the country in the process, well that is the sacrifice they’re willing to make.

The only thing that is going to change this, is a crash, a crisis which is going to come in the US currency and the US bonds market. Kleptocrats are only going to change, when theey have no alternative when the circumstances force them to change. Unfortunately by then, the problems would have gotten so much bigger, and the pain associated with correcting them would be so much greater.

Political intelligence consultants are hired guns who dig for closely held information to be used to trade stocks. Many work for hedge funds and securities firms, who just happen to be some of the biggest political campaign contributors.

MPs should be citizen-legislators. Those desiring to serve the public would do so for a short period of time and return to their businesses. Instead, what has developed is a permanent political mafia, massively enriched by cashing in on government experience. Citizens disdain kleptocrats, and this is a big part of it. The time has come to lock the revolving door between our public and private sectors. And if kleptocrats refuse to do what is right, voters should remove them.

There is an undeniable connection between how a government operates and whether its people flourish. When a government invites its people to participate, when it is open as to how it makes decisions and allocates resources, when it administers justice equally and transparently, and when it takes a firm stance against corruption of all kinds, that government is, in the modern world, far more likely to succeed in designing and implementing effective policies and services. It is also more likely to harness the talents of its own people and to benefit from their ideas and experiences, and it is also more likely to succeed investing its resources where they are most likely to have the best return.

When a government hides its work from public view, hands out jobs and money to political cronies, administers unequal justice, looks away as corrupt bureaucrats enrich themselves at the people’s expense, that government is failing its citizens. And it is failing to create an environment in which the best ideas are embraced and the most talented people have a chance to contribute. And it is also denying people often access to education, health care, electricity, or a justice system and a market economy that work for them.

And most importantly, that government is failing to earn and hold the trust of its people. And that lack of trust, in a world of instantaneous communication, means that the very fabric of society begins to fray and the foundation of governmental legitimacy begins to crumble. Throw them all out!

As we have seen with the protests that have broken out around our world this year, when people are kept away from participating in the work of their governments or the actions of their leaders, when they have no idea how decisions are made or tax revenues are spent, when they have no voice in the political process, eventually they will say, “Enough.” And it might have been possible for governments to just refuse to be transparent because there were monopolies on sources of information and channels to people. But that is no longer the case.

And we’ve also seen the correlation between openness in government and success in the economic sphere. Clinton asserts that countries committed to defending transparency and fighting corruption are often more attractive to entrepreneurs. And if you can create small and medium size businesses, you have a broader base for economic activity. At a time when global competition for trade and investment is fierce, openness is not just good for governance, it is also good for a sustainable growth in GDP.

Since democracy has been transformed to kleptocracy, we have to bypass the rotten system and deal in the underground economy.  We could barter, evade VAT and all kind of taxes, ignore all licenses, and become untraceable. 

Kleptocrats want to make illegal any words or symbols that can be interpreted as threatening a kleptocrat!  We’ve heard many kleptocrats and media parrots saying that calling a politician socialist is out of bounds. Or that saying a government policy is job-killing is incitement. Or that criticism of Big Government is responsible for any act of violence by a deranged individual who thinks his mind is controlled by the government. The logic of this argument suggests that they decide what in politics gets said and how it is said. Throw them all out!

Too many kleptocrats think that not only are they above the law, but above any criticism. Don’t be fooled by any calls for civility by kleptocrats. The Left thinks it is necessarily uncivil to challenge kleptocracy. Calls for civility are a polite way of saying critics of kleptocracy should shut up. Throw them all out!  And too many kleptocrats suggest that dissident bloggers to shut up or go to jail.  Dissident bloggers will not back down in the face of this intimidation. Nor should you. You can be sure bloggers and the Global Tax Revolt will monitor, expose, and fight attempts by kleptocrats  to use the levers of government to trample our free speech rights. 

The raging financial crisis made restoring trust an imperative. As a result of the lessons learned not being put into practice, the world has seen countless examples of trust abused. Trust continues to be eroded. Citizens realize that political corruption denies them a voice, well-being, and justice. Now more than ever we must bring political corruption fighters together to create a more focused effort against the abuse of entrusted power.

People know they can make a difference when they come together in sufficient numbers and with a clear goal. Citizens, acting in coordination, can more effectively challenge kleptocrats that neglect their duty towards them. By focusing on daily lives and concerns, efforts toward transparency and the fight against political corruption empower people. The fight against political corruption must mean more than the passing of new laws. It must mean the practice of transparency in day-by-day government activities; and its impact must be felt at every level of society and compel citizens to join forces.

The most vulnerable people in our society, often severely affected by corruption, must be able to hold kleptocrats to their word, and to expose those who go back on promises. To do so they need access to information through a free press, free blogosphere, unfettered internet, and other open pathways to inform the public and facilitate the fight against political corruption.

Communities must be given the means to hold kleptocrats accountable for their actions in between elections. We must develop ways to draw politicians into collective action against political corruption. Impunity of kleptocrats who abuse positions of power is the #1 problem of our times. If impunity of kleptocrats is not stopped, we risk the dissolution of the very fabric of society and the rule of law, our trust in our politics and our hope for social justice. Impunity of kleptocrats undermines integrity everywhere.

Whether we are investing collective efforts and resources in fighting poverty, human rights violations, or bailing out indebted economies, we need to give the people a reason to believe that impunity of kleptocrats will be stopped. To take this important struggle forward the international anticorruption community should promote greater people engagement and find ways to provide greater security for anticorruption activists. Reducing impunity also requires independent and well-resourced judiciaries that are accountable to the people they serve.

We call on leaders everywhere to embrace not only transparency in public life but a culture of transparency leading to a participatory society in which kleptocrats are accountable. We call on the anticorruption movement to support and protect the activists, whistleblowers, bloggers, and journalists who speak out against political corruption, often at great risk. It is up to all of us to embrace transparency so that it ensures full participation of all people, bringing us together to send a clear message that we are watching those kleptocrats who act with impunity and we will not let them get away with it.

Political corruption affects all countries, especially Greece.  Political corruption undermines democratic institutions, slows economic development and contributes to governmental instability. Political corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the soliciting of bribes. Economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the start-up costs required because of corruption.

Corruption and the lack of transparency eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government, at the potential for broad-based, sustainable, inclusive growth. Corruption stifles entrepreneurship and siphons funding away from critical services.  Poor fiscal transparency makes it impossible to hold governments accountable. And if these problems go on long enough, if they run deep enough, they literally can and have been shaking societies to the core.

Anyone who doubts the power of frustrated citizens to rise up need not only look at the Middle East and North Africa, but increasingly across the globe because social media has given every citizen a tool in order to report and literally post in the matter of seconds the kind of abuses that have been, up until now, just taken for granted. So this is an integral part of national security.

We also know that corrupt practices contribute to the spread of organized crime and terrorism. They underwrite trafficking in drugs and arms and human beings. And we have a major stake in building up partners who can work with us to take on these transnational threats and to promote stability, who will work with us to champion an international standard of behavior that gives more people in more places the opportunity to fulfill their own God-given potential.



Correspondents of http://venitism.blogspot.com report that government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system.


 

THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE OF PULLPEDDLERS

Correspondents of  http://venitism.blogspot.com  report there is a shadow world within Fourth Reich where decisions are made far away from plenary sessions and official conferences, a world ruled strictly by special interests, the parallel universe of pullpeddlers.  Libertarians now glimpse into the Brussels black box. They want to find out who really pulls the strings in Brussels, the democratically-elected governments and their representatives, or managers of the major corporations and think tanks?

Pullpeddlers in Brussels are very influential. Often enough, they are the people with the expertise. The European institutions, mainly the Commission and the muppets (MEPs) are very stupid. They do not have the brains to come up with their own expert opinions. There is a certain dependence on think tanks and political experts.  Ideas launched by pullpeddlers for the strategic direction of the EU end up appearing in official EU documents, word for word!

 

EC responsibility lies at the crossroads of all these interests. This indeed makes EU institutions sometimes a quick and easy target for criticism; often the criticism for a lack of transparency is nothing else but another way of criticizing the political substance of a decision.

The revolving door is the movement of personnel between roles as legislators and regulators and the industries affected by the legislation and regulation and within lobbying companies.  An unhealthy relationship can develop between the private sector and government, based on the granting of reciprocated privileges to the detriment of a nation and can lead to regulatory capture.

When a kleptocrat leaves parliament to become a pullpeddler, he must wait two years before calling on his former colleagues. But, when a kleptocrat calls himself a consultant, a strategic adviser or some other euphemism, the big bucks start rolling in immediately. Plus, there are no pullpeddling disclosures required of these consultants.

 

With thirty thousand pullpeddlers vying for a foot in the doors of power, Brussels has the second-highest density of pullpeddlers after Washington.  In the three to four- square kilometer area around Robert Schuman Square, the EU Commission, the EU Council and Parliament rub shoulders with pullpeddlers who work for major companies like Microsoft, Google, British Petroleum, Philip Morris, or BASF. Ten billion euros are spent on pullpeddling every year.

 

Five out of thirteen commissioners from the last Commission moved on to lucrative jobs in private business. Such revolving door allows well-heeled pullpeddlers insight into how the EU works and gives them direct access to senior officials in the system.

Pullpeddling is part of the democratic process.  Muppets need first-hand information to decide on the economic or social issues with which they are confronted. But there is huge corruption, as money passes hands and rules of fairness and transparency are no longer observed.

Government has far too much power and money at its disposal. The inevitable consequence is that businesses, organizations, and individuals will work very hard to guide that power and money in their own favor.  In fact, it often seems like rabblerousers intentionally create incentives for people to try to bribe them.

Businesses especially will fight for more corpfare, and also for regulations that stifle potential competitors. What choice do they have? If they don't fight for those special government favors, then someone else will, which will put them at an increasing disadvantage, and might drive them out of business.

Correspondents of  http://venitism.blogspot.com  report that over the last ten years, companies that lobbied heavily had a much bigger increase in stock value than those that didn't. Executives might conclude that if you're not lobbying, you're ripping off your shareholders!  And of course, these entities that stand to benefit from government favors will work hard and spend hard to get friendly politicians elected.

Some people feel that massive campaign finance regulations will stop this unholy bargaining. It won't. When the dust settles, campaign finance restrictions usually just make life easier for incumbents and harder for challengers. Libertarians know that only too well.

Lobbying isn't essentially a bad thing. It's an expression of our right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. It provides information to politicians. But when politicians get in the habit of handing out favors, you can bet everyone is going to run up to the trough.  Throw them all out!

The only way to reduce the power of pullpeddlers is to reduce the power of government. That choice rests with the voters. If voters keep electing kleptocrats, then the power of government and pullpeddlers will continue to grow. If voters start electing Libertarians, things will change.

Gingrich got two million dollars in fees from Freddie Mac. Gingrich said he gave strategic advice to the mortgage giant.  Gingrich also arranged meetings for companies to present their work to federal officials. Under federal law, those kinds of meetings are important because lobbying activity is defined as contacts with a government official and any advice or work connected with those contacts. But there are many exceptions, such as a request for a meeting, that do not trigger the law.  There are many people lobbying who should register but do not because of the stigma surrounding the profession or the administrative burden.

Foreign governments are paying for MPs to enjoy five-star accommodation on trips euphemistically called fact-finding missions. The same regimes hire MPs whom the electorate have booted out, on large salaries, to lobby their former colleagues. The six-figure salaries regularly used by lobbying firms to gain access to MPs across Occident are impossible to match. The degeneracy of pullpeddlers is often staggering.

The worse the client, the more fun it becomes. Lobbying is often dull work, dealing with the minutiae of lightbulb regulations. At least working for a foreign regime is intellectually challenging.  Pullpeddlers are prepared to take any regime as a client. But many times the go-betweens want a cut of the contract in cash, in a suitcase!

Whereas once authoritarian regimes would have used their foreign ministries to spin their message, these governments now want the best pullpeddlers money can buy. Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others are leading their lobbying operations from Washington, New York, London, Berlin, and Brussels. The opaque lobbying of MPs on behalf of foreign governments is corrupting our politics. The kleptocrats’ assertions that all parties are being treated equally is harder to swallow in light of the recent cash for access revelations and the myriad spins for despots.

Rights activists face terrorism charges!

The international community should urge the Syrian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release and drop all charges against a freedom of expression activist and two of his colleagues, 19 regional and international human rights organizations said today. Mazen Darwish and two of his colleagues from the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), Hussein Gharir and Hani Zaitani, are facing trial on terrorism charges for their peaceful activism, the groups said.

The three activists along with two of their other colleagues, Mansour Omari and Abdel Rahman Hamada, who were conditionally released on February 6, 2013, are scheduled to appear before the Anti-Terrorism Court in Damascus on May 19. During the trial, the judge will decide whether to pursue the charges brought against them by the Syrian Government’s Air Force Intelligence.

 

The Syrian justice minister recently told an international delegation that he would free 72 activists, including the three detained SCM members. Other countries, including allies of the Syrian government, should press the government to drop the charges and free them, the human rights organizations said.

 

Syria’s Air Force Intelligence detained the three men over a year ago, holding them in incommunicado detention for several months, on charges related to SCM´s work to promote and protect human rights in Syria. Air Force Intelligence officials subjected them to torture and other ill-treatment in detention according to former detainees who had been held with the men. The organizations said the charges violate freedom of expression by being solely based on the three men’s peaceful activism.

 

The organizations expressed serious concern for the physical and psychological well-being of the three activists, given the treatment they have apparently been subjected to in detention and the length of their arbitrary imprisonment.

 

The February 27 indictment against all five staff members accuses them of “publicizing terrorist acts” under Article 8 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, enacted by President Bashar al-Assad in 2012. If convicted the men may be imprisoned for up to 15 years.

 

The indictment states that these charges were brought against Darwish as the head of the SCM and the four other men for their activities as SCM staff members, including monitoring online news by the Syrian opposition, publishing studies on the human rights and media situation in Syria, and documenting names of the detained, disappeared, wanted and killed within the context of the Syrian conflict. The indictment further states that an investigative judge in Damascus considered these actions part of an attempt to “stir the internal situation in Syria and so provoke international organizations to condemn Syria in international forums.”

 

The trial of the activists illustrates the government’s repression against critical voices in Syria and fits in a wider pattern of systematic censorship and repression against professional journalists, media workers, citizen journalists (including bloggers) and media activists who defend freedom of expression in Syria, the groups said. An attorney working on behalf of political detainees in Damascus told the organizations that to his knowledge at least 35,000 political detainees were being tried before the terrorism court. He believed that the terrorism court was set up specifically to target the opposition in Syria.

 

The Syrian government should not use its overbroad terrorism law to punish peaceful activists for their legitimate work, the organizations said. Further, their trial should not be held in the Anti-Terrorism Court, which does not afford defendants basic due process rights according to international fair trial standards.

 

This court is responsible for prosecutions under the Anti-Terrorism Law, which defines an act of terrorism as “every act that aims at creating a state of panic among the people, destabilizing public security and damaging the basic infrastructure of the country by using weapons, ammunition, explosives, flammable materials, toxic products, epidemiological or bacteriological factors or any method fulfilling the same purposes.”

 

The law also stipulates that promoting “terrorism,” including by distributing literature, or other information, is punishable by imprisonment with hard labor. Financing terrorism includes supplying, directly or indirectly, money, weapons, ammunition, explosives, means of communication, information, or “other things” to be used in the implementation of a terrorist act.

 

Although the Syrian authorities technically lifted a state of emergency law on April 21, 2011, they enacted Legislative Decree 55 on the same day. The decree limits the time that a person may be lawfully held in detention without judicial review to 60 days for certain crimes, including terrorism offenses. A former detainee told Human Rights Watch that high-ranking officers explained to him while he was in detention that they were using this provision and the Anti-Terrorism Law to hold detainees legally for up to 60 days, pending judicial review.

 

This limit does not meet the requirement in international law that judicial review of detention should take place “promptly,” the groups said. Furthermore, several former detainees interviewed by the organizations said that they had been held without judicial review even longer than the 60 days permitted by Syrian law.

 

A source close to Darwish’s family told the organizations how challenging it has been for him to fight the charges against him under the terrorism law and before the terrorism court. He did not have access to a lawyer or any family members for nine months and 20 days before being sent to Damascus Central Prison, commonly known as ‘Adra prison. He was not informed that he would be tried before a terrorism court until November 30, the date an investigative judge in the terrorism court began interrogating him. Even then, he was not informed of the charges against him until an indictment was issued on February 27, over a year after he was detained.

 

On May 15, the United nations General Assembly passed a resolution, calling, among other things, for the Syrian government to release Mazen Darwish and the other imprisoned SCM staff. The resolution stressed the importance of ending impunity and holding to account all those responsible for serious violations or abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law.

 

The resolution requires UN member states to apply concrete pressure on the Syrian authorities and their allies to drop the charges against these men. The Syrian authorities should respect the UN resolution and drop the charges against Darwish and his colleagues in SCM, the organizations said. The Syria authorities should also drop all charges against tens of thousands of detainees charged merely for their peaceful activism and held in detention centers throughout Syria.

 

On May 9, an international peace delegation led by the Irish Nobel prizewinner Mairead Maguire, in conjunction with quasi-governmental Mussalaha, met with the Syrian justice minister, Dr. Najm al-Ahmad, and presented a petition for the release of 72 non-violent activists, including Darwish, Gharir and Zaitani. Dr. al-Ahmad announced in his meeting with the delegation that the government had in principle approved the release of all the prisoners on the list, pending review of their cases. The organizations urge the relevant authorities to follow through with this commitment and release the detainees.

 

 

 

Co-signing organizations in alphabetical order:

1. Alkarama Foundation

2. Amnesty International (AI)

3. Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)

4. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

5. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

6. Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN)

7. Free Press Unlimited

8. Front Line Defenders

9. Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)

10. Human Rights Watch (HRW)

11. Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos)

12. IKV Pax Christi

13. International Media Support (IMS)

14. Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)

15. PEN International

16. Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

17. SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom

18. Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

19. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT)

 

Correspondents of http://venitism.blogspot.com report that government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system.