July, 17 2017, 01:00pm EDT
CREW to get Mar-a-Lago Visitor Records
As part of ongoing litigation brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Security Archive (NSA) and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will turn over visitor logs for President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. CREW will publicly release the visitor logs upon receiving them by September 8th.
WASHINGTON
As part of ongoing litigation brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Security Archive (NSA) and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will turn over visitor logs for President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. CREW will publicly release the visitor logs upon receiving them by September 8th.
"The public deserves to know who is coming to meet with the president and his staff," CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. "We are glad that as a result of this case, this information will become public for meetings at his his personal residences--but it needs to be public for meetings at the White House as well."
CREW, NSA and Knight sued for the release of visitor logs from the White House, Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. DHS claims to have no records of visitors at Trump Tower. The lawsuit is ongoing for the White House.
The Obama administration began releasing White House visitor logs in September 2009 to settle four lawsuits brought by CREW.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials -- regardless of party affiliation -- who sacrifice the common good to special interests. CREW advances its mission using a combination of research, litigation and media outreach.
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Israel's War on Gaza Has Helped Fuel 'Near Breakdown of International Law': Amnesty
"What we saw in 2023 confirms that many powerful states are abandoning the founding values of humanity and universality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Amnesty's secretary-general said.
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Government aggression and the rise of Big Tech are threatening the rules-based international order and global human rights, Amnesty International warned in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report, released Wednesday.
The organization expressed particular alarm over Israel's war on Gaza and the inability or unwillingness of its allies to rein in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing civilian populations, displacing more than 1.9 million people, and restricting the flow of aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. This and other conflicts, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, had led to a "near breakdown of international law," Amnesty said.
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"One country, one government is allowed to annihilate international law, to put its middle finger in the eye of international law."
Amnesty wrote that Israel had made a "mockery" of some of the key tenants of international humanitarian law such as proportionality and distinction by targeting civilization populations and infrastructure such as refugee camps, hospitals, bakeries, and United Nations schools. As of the end of 2023, Israel had killed 21,600 Palestinians, a third of them children. At present, the death toll has surpassed 34,200, though that is likely an undercount as many remain buried beneath rubble.
Amnesty International researcher Budour Hassan toldDeutsche Welle that it was "utterly disappointing" that "one country, one government is allowed to annihilate international law, to put its middle finger in the eye of international law, and go on as if nothing has happened, normalizing the abnormal, normalizing the atrocities that have been happening, so that the crime that was an atrocity two days ago would become normal."
Hassan said there were things that the international community could do to try to stop the violence, such as cutting off weapons sales to Israel and Palestinian armed groups.
"It's just that the international community has proven desperately unwilling and incapable of upholding these norms," Hassan added, saying that, by failing to act, it could be "signing a death sentence to the whole international order."
In particular, Amnesty criticized the U.S. for spending months vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, as well as European Union countries like Germany and the U.K. that called out their opponents' human rights abuses but continued to back Israel.
"What we saw in 2023 confirms that many powerful states are abandoning the founding values of humanity and universality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Callamard said.
In addition to Israel and its Western allies, Amnesty also pointed to Russia and its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, as well as China's human rights abuses against the Uyghur and financial backing of the Myanmar military, which killed at least 1,000 civilians in 2023.
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In addition to state actors, Amnesty International sounded the alarm about the growing power of large technology companies, and, in particular, the rollout of artificial intelligence. The human rights group said that both new and existing technologies were making it easier for governments to target vulnerable groups like women, minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community. For example, the New York City Police Department informed Amnesty that it used facial recognition technology to keep tabs on Black Lives Matter activists, while Israel used it in the West Bank to help control Palestinian movement. The organization warned of how under-regulated technologies could exacerbate the scapegoating of marginalized groups as many countries hold elections in 2024.
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Callarmard called for reforms to the U.N. Security Council so that no country could use its veto power to obstruct action and for better governmental regulation of developing technologies.
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The Chamber, the largest corporate lobbying organization in the United States, signaled its intent to sue the FTC immediately after the agency finalized its new rule on Tuesday.
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