Human Rights Watch is accusing Israel and its backers of waging a campaign of misinformation in an effort to discredit the group. HRW has been a leading voice in condemning alleged Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The Guardian:

America’s leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an “organised campaign” of false allegations and misinformation, including “extremely personal attacks” on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) ties the campaign – which has included accusations that the group’s reports on the Jewish state are written by “anti-Israel ideologues” and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia – to a statement by a senior official in the Israeli prime minister’s office in June pledging to “dedicate time and manpower to combating” human rights organisations.

The criticism began with Israeli pressure groups and rightwing blogs, but in recent weeks it has drawn the support of influential individuals such as Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace prize winner, and HRW’s own founder, Robert Bernstein, who said the organisation’s reports were “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state”. He called on HRW to focus more on abuses by Arab governments.

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Amid continuing protests by Japanese civilians on Okinawa, President Obama has announced he will create a “high-level working group” to discuss the future of a U.S. Marine Corps air base on the island, a move that appears to be aimed at mending relations with Japan.

The New York Times:

President Obama, seeking to mend fences with Japan, America’s most important Asian ally, announced Friday that he would establish a high-level working group on the contentious issue of the continuing presence of a Marine base on Okinawa.

The decision, announced at a news conference with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama just hours after he touched down in Tokyo to begin his first presidential trip to Asia, appears to represent a concession by the Obama administration to at least consider Japan’s concerns about the base, which is unpopular on Okinawa and which the new Japanese government had promised to try to move off the island.

Less than a month ago, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seemed to shut the door on renegotiating a deal reached in 2006 to relocate the United States Marine air station in Futenma to a less populated part of Okinawa.

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The British Defense Ministry is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse of Iraqi civilians by its soldiers. Many of the allegations, which include sexual attacks and torture, reflect U.S. soldiers’ acts depicted in photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

The Guardian:

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture, of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. The lawyer representing the alleged victims, Phil Shiner, said there could be hundreds of uninvestigated claims of abuse.

One claimant alleges that soldiers based the abuse they allegedly subjected him to on photographs of the abuse at the notorious US detention centre at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, the Independent reported. In one case, British soldiers are accused of piling up Iraqi prisoners on top of one another before subjecting them to electric shocks.

Shiner served a pre-action protocol letter on the Ministry of Defence last week and is asking for a judicial review of the cases. In the letter, it was reported, Shiner said the allegations raised questions of collusion between Britain and the US over the ill-treatment of Iraqis.

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I’m “the heavy-handed UFW press relations chief who had to quietly resign,” the one to whom Marc Cooper refers in his latest attack on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (“Marc Cooper on the Fate of Cesar Chavez’s Dream,” Truthdig, Nov. 13). Like most of the rest of his article, this claim is false.

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Feliz cumpleaños, Gitmo: Eight years ago Friday, then-president George W. Bush signed what we now refer to as Military Order No. 1, thus paving the way for the creation of the Guantanamo Bay prison and for the creative adaptations of international justice codes that supported it.  —KA

ProPublica:

On Nov. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush signed what has become known as Military Order No. 1 in what he termed a Global War on Terrorism. Without informing his national security adviser, his secretary of state, his chief of staff or his communications director, Bush approved what would appear three days later in the Federal Register as: “Military Order of November 13, 2001: Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism.”

The few people inside the former administration who knew about the order were instrumental in its creation, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, his lawyer David Addington, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and a young, and then unknown, lawyer inside the Justice Department named John Yoo.

The order created a separate track of justice for any foreign citizen picked up on a global battlefield with the Pentagon serving as jailer, prosecutor and judge.

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Does the planned trial of the five alleged 9/11 plotters (including oft-referenced “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) represent a partisan issue? “Left, Right & Center” mainstay Tony Blankley thinks so, but his left-leaning counterpart, Robert Scheer, begs to differ on this week’s show. Also: What’s with all the deliberation about Afghanistan?

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Having caught wind that Fox Newser Sean Hannity was going to take a moment on his show to issue an apology to Jon Stewart for using older tea-party rally footage in a recent story, the host of “The Daily Show” was looking forward to hearing an admission of how the Fox folks subscribe to the network’s methodology, aka “the subtle altering of reality to sell a preconceived narrative.” That didn’t quite happen.

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News flash: Adding caffeine to alcoholic drinks may lead consumers to underestimate how drunk they are. The Food and Drug Administration is getting to the bottom of this potential health issue by ordering close to 30 manufacturers of caffeinated adult beverages to prove that their drinks are safe—or else.  —KA

The New York Times:

In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration said it told nearly 30 manufacturers of the drinks that unless they could provide clear evidence of safety, the agency would “take appropriate action to ensure that the products are removed from the marketplace.” Officials did not say how long such a determination might take.

The drinks, which combine malt liquor or other spirits with caffeine and fruit juices at alcohol concentrations up to about 10 percent, have become increasingly popular among college students. In a news conference, Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the agency’s principal deputy commissioner, said consumption was associated with increased risk of serious injury, drunken driving, sexual assault and other dangerous behavior.

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Upsetting many Republicans and some family members of victims, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 plotters will be tried in federal court in New York City, not far from Ground Zero, and that death penalties are likely to be sought.

Some believe bringing the alleged terrorists to New York City constitutes a security risk, while others see it as a “major victory for due process and the rule of law,” as the ACLU put it. —JCL

The BBC:

Four men—the two Yemenis, a Saudi and a Pakistani-born Kuwaiti—will face trial alongside Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of helping finance and plan the attacks of 11 September 2001 in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Responsibility for the case will go to the Southern District of New York, with proceedings taking place at a court not far from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell.

No date was given for a trial, but US media reports say Congress needs at least 45 days’ notice before the detainees can be transferred to the US.

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Following through on a pledge made by President Obama earlier this year, the White House has announced it will insist on measures that give legal status to an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in a push for overhaul of the existing immigration system beginning early next year.

The New York Times:

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in legislation to overhaul the immigration system that it will begin to push early next year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

In an address at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano sought to dispel any notion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — might postpone the most contentious piece of an immigration overhaul until after midterm elections next November.

Laying out the administration’s bottom line, she said it will argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”

With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress wrestling with health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had started to doubt that President Obama would keep to his pledge to take on the divisive issue of illegal immigration in the first months of 2010.

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