By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, July
9 -- From the
Edward Snowden
leaks, the
hits just keep
on coming. Now
First Look's "The
Intercept" has
revealed
that the US
National
Security
Agency and FBI
spied on at
least five
Americans, all
Muslims, and
used
place-holder
code names
like "Raghead,"
click here for
that.
Those spied on
included a
Republican
candidate for
the Virginia
legislature,
Faisal Gill;
Hooshang
Amirahmadi, an
Iranian-American
professor;
lawyer Asim
Ghafoor; Nihad
Awad of CAIR;
and "Agha
Saeed, a
former
political
science
professor at
California
State
University who
champions
Muslim civil
liberties and
Palestinian
rights."
It's
shameful, but
who can stand
up to the
United States?
The United
Nations'
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon has
already said
he thinks
Snowden
"misused"
information,
as Inner City
Press reported
here.
Back on March
14 when the US
delegation to
the UN Human
Rights
Committee in
Geneva took
the floor, it
was a full
court press.
Of the
elephant in
the room, NSA
spying, the
speaker from
the Civil
Rights
Division of
the US
Department of
Justice used a
single line:
DOJ is
"monitoring" a
number of
private
actions. You
don't say.
The
head of the US
delegation,
Mary McLeod,
said but did
not explain
why the US
Administration
has "no
current
expectation to
become a party
to the
optional
protocol" to
the
International
Covenant on
Civil and
Political
Rights --
which the US
says does not
apply to its
actions
outside of its
borders.
The
session closed
with a slew of
questions:
Walter Kalin
asked why the
US deports
people to
Haiti even
amid the
cholera
epidemic --
for which,
Inner City
Press notes, the
US has said
the UN should
be immune.
The US
repeated that
argument on
July 7, which
Inner City
Press has
covered here. Watch
this site.
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