text:
E/CN.4/2006/53/Add.1
ENGLISH/FRENCH/SPANISH
Sixty-second session
Item 11 (b) of the provisional agenda
CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING THE QUESTION OF DISAPPEARANCES AND SUMMARY EXECUTIONS
Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Report of the Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston
Summary of cases transmitted to Governments and replies received* **
* The present document is being circulated as received, in the languages of submission only, as it greatly exceeds the word limitations currently imposed by the relevant General Assembly resolutions.
** The report was submitted late in order to reflect the most recent information.
1.	This report contains a comprehensive account of communications sent to Governments up to 1 December 2005, along with replies received up to the end of January 2006. It also contains two additional categories of communication: (1) those sent after 1 December 2005 to which responses were received in time for inclusion, and (2) responses received to communications that were sent in earlier years.
II.	TABULATION OF COMMUNICATIONS AND REPLIES
... Communications sent Government responses received No. and category of individuals concerned Alleged violations of the right to life upon which the Special Rapporteur intervened Character of replies received
... 2 (2 AL) 1 (AL) 38 males (13 members of ethnic minority) Impunity (1)
Attacks or killings (1) Cooperative but incomplete response (1)
No response (recent communication) (1)
... 1 (UA) 0 General Death penalty safeguards (1) No response (1)
Israel: Impunity for Deaths During October 2000 Riots
Violation alleged: Impunity
Subject(s) of appeal: 13 males (members of ethnic minority)
Character of reply: Cooperative but incomplete response
Observations of the Special Rapporteur
The Special Rapporteur appreciates the information provided by the Government of Israel. The SR regrets that this information is responsive to only one of the five questions posed but appreciates the Government's commitment to transmit the results of the appeal from the decision not to prosecute any of the implicated police officers.
Allegation letter sent on 27 September 2005
Allegation letter sent regarding the recent decision by your Ministry of Justice to close all investigations into the killing of 13 men by police forces during riots in October 2000.
In this respect, I would like to recall that at the outbreak of these disturbances, on 3 October 2000, my predecessor as Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions addressed an urgent appeal to your Excellency's Government, urging your Government "to ensure that government forces are immediately ordered to act with restraint and to respect international human rights standards when carrying out their duties" and reminding your Government that "under international human rights standards police and security forces may only resort to firearms and lethal force in extreme situations, when lives are in danger and other means prove ineffective". Finally, the then Special Rapporteur urged that "[a]ll incidents of alleged killings by government forces must be investigated without delay and the persons responsible … be brought to justice". In its reply dated 10 October 2000, your Excellency's Government assured the then Special Rapporteur that "[u]tmost restraint exemplifies the conduct of the Israeli forces throughout these incidents, in conformity with international standards and even far beyond".
As mentioned above, my purpose in writing to you today, however, is to bring to the attention of your Excellency's Government concerns regarding the investigation of 13 instances of lethal police shooting that did occur during those days, and to receive information from the Government in this respect. On the basis of the information I have received, the relevant facts regarding investigations into the death of the 13 men may be summarised as follows:
On 2 October 2000, protests broke out in numerous locations in Galilee. These disturbances saw young men, Arab Israelis and Palestinians, hurling stones at the security forces. On several occasions, the police opened fire on the protestors, using both rubber bullets and live ammunition. The police killed 13 men, 12 Arab Israeli citizens and a Palestinian.
During the months from October 2000 to May 2001, the Police Investigations Department (PID) of the Ministry of Justice took some initial steps to investigate the deaths. Due also to the ongoing disturbances, the investigators did not go to the scene of several of the incidents before the evidence was destroyed, autopsies were carried out only in some of the cases, and many of the police officers involved in the clashes that had resulted in lethal shootings were not heard. This investigation came to a halt in May 2001, when the state prosecutor ordered the PID not to carry out a separate investigation during the hearings of the commission on inquiry that had in the meantime been set up by the Government.
On 8 November 2000, the Government had decided to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate what occurred during the riots. The commission, headed by a member of the Supreme Court, justice Theodor Or, submitted its report in September 2003. It found that the police had repeatedly had recourse to excessive force in order to quell the riots. Among other findings, the commission concluded that the commander of the police's Northern District at the time and the former Amakim District police chief had issued directives to snipers to open fire on stone-throwing protesters in several instances. The commission also found that the Misgav police station commander could have prevented clashes with the rioters and that he used live fire without justification, causing the death of two civilians and the wounding of others. The commission recommended that the PID open criminal investigations into ten separate instances of shooting deaths during the riots.
After the publication of the commission report, the PID restarted its investigation. During this probe, hundreds of policemen and civilians who were present at the scene of the incidents were questioned. After close to two years of investigation, in September 2005 the PID has concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to indict anyone for the killings. In some of the cases identified as unjustified use of lethal force by the commission of inquiry, the PID concludes that in fact the use of lethal force was justified (e.g. on the ground of a different assessment of the risks faced by the police officers at the time of the shooting). In other instances, the PID concludes that the firing was illegal, but is unable to identify those responsible. The PID adduces numerous reasons for its inability to gather sufficient evidence to raise criminal charges, among them:
-	Investigation teams did not reach the scenes soon enough after the incident and did not attempt to collect evidence shortly thereafter as the fierce violence during the riots would have endangered the investigators had they tried to do so.
-	In some cases, investigators were unable to locate the police officers involved in the riots. In other instances, they were unable to determine which police officer was responsible for the gunfire that killed the rioters.
-	The families of those killed did not cooperate with the investigation, in particular they did not agree to the PID's requests (made at the end of the year 2003) to disinter the victims to allow an autopsy.
-	In reply to some of these arguments, it has been pointed out that:
-	it was the state prosecutor who ordered the PID to stop all investigations in May 2001, and allowed their resumption only in September 2003, three years after the killings;
-	the exhumation of the victims and the autopsies, while offensive to the feelings of piety of the victims' families, were unlikely to yield any results significant to the investigation. Some of those killed in October 2000 were hit by rubber bullets, which cannot be matched up with a specific gun. All were buried without coffins, and contact with the earth is liable to make also metal bullets useless for the purpose of laboratory tests. The PID itself admitted in court that any information obtained from the bodies was liable to be partial.
-	where an autopsy had been carried out immediately after the killing and the commission of inquiry concluded that charges should be raised, the PID decided nonetheless not to initiate criminal proceedings. The autopsy report on Musalah Abu Jarad of Umm al-Fahm, for instance, determines that he was killed on 2 October 2000 by a sniper's bullet. The commission of inquiry report identifies the source of the firing, noting that the commander of the Police's Northern District took responsibility for deploying snipers during the incident in which Musalah was killed. It also finds that the deployment of snipers and the orders to open fire were excessive. The PID, however, concludes that it is impossible to determine, with the level of certainty needed for a criminal proceeding, that the deployment of snipers and orders for opening fire were improper.
-	in other cases, exhumation was requested although it would appear that the available evidence is sufficient to raise charges. In the case of the shooting of Asil Asala, for instance, the Commission report notes that at the time of his death he was surrounded by three uniformed policemen, indicating their names. (My predecessor as Special Rapporteur sought clarification from your Government on this specific case in a letter dated 23 October 2000, which has remained without a reply to date).
To sum up, five years after the fatal shooting of 13 Arab men by Israeli police forces, and after a commission of inquiry set up by your Excellency's Government concluded that the use of force in these cases had been excessive, a decision has been taken by the Government not to hold anyone accountable for their deaths.
In this connection, I would like to refer Your Excellency's Government to the fundamental principles applicable to such an incident under international law. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. As the Human Rights Committee has clarified, "arbitrarily" means in a manner "disproportionate to the requirements of law enforcement in the circumstances of the case" (Views of the Committee in the case Suárez de Guerrero v. Colombia, Communication no. 45/1979, § 13.3). In order to assess whether the use of lethal force was proportionate to the requirements of law enforcement, there must be a "thorough, prompt and impartial investigation" (Principle 9 of the Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions). This obligation, affirmed also in the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee (see, e.g. the Committee's views in Arhuacos v. Colombia, Communication no. 612/1995, § 8.8.), is indeed part and parcel of the obligation to respect and protect the right to life enshrined in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In the present case, it is undisputed that your Government has investigated at length whether the use of lethal force was proportionate to the requirements of law enforcement. However, one of the reasons adduced for the loss of evidence that would have been essential to issuing indictments is that the PID investigations were on hold from May 2001 to September 2003. The decision of the state prosecutor to order a halt to the investigations in May 2001 was reportedly intended to allow the various witnesses to share all the information at their disposal with the commission of inquiry without fearing a criminal investigation. The conclusion of the commission of inquiry that in some instances the use of lethal force was not justified, based on three years of inquiry and a report of more than 800 pages, is now disavowed by the PDI on the ground that it is no longer possible to determine whether the use of lethal force was disproportionate and, if so, who is responsible for that disproportionate use of lethal force. This outcome – and particularly the way in which the interplay of commission inquiry and PDI investigation have produced it – would appear to fall short of the international standards referred to above.
I therefore urge your Government to subject the decision of the Police Investigations Department to stringent review and to examine requests of or on behalf of the victims' families to reconsider this decision with the greatest attention and an open mind.
Moreover, it is my responsibility under the mandate provided to me by the Commission on Human Rights to seek to clarify all cases brought to my attention. Since I am expected to report on this case to the Commission, I would be grateful for your cooperation and your observations on the following matters:
1.	Are the facts alleged in the above summary accurate?
2.	Is the Report of the commission of inquiry presided by justice Orr available in Arabic? Is it available in English? If so, please provide a copy thereof.
3.	Observers of the case have noted that although the Police Investigations Department is part of the Ministry of Justice and thus institutionally independent of the Ministry of Security, it is composed of police officers and therefore does not offer the appearance of full impartiality in such a matter. Another report I have received states that the Minister of Internal Security and the Minister of Justice share ministerial responsibility over the Police Investigations Department. Please clarify the institutional location of the PID and the responsibility for this unit, as well as any further information relevant to its independence and impartiality.
4.	Please explain the grounds on which the PID came to different conclusions from the commission of inquiry with regard to the proportionality of the use of lethal force and to the possibility to identify those responsible, commenting also on the criticism of the PID investigation summarized above.
5.	Most importantly, please state whether your Excellency's Government now intends to take any steps to re-open the decision of the PID and how it will react to challenges to that decision by relatives of the victims or other interested parties.
Response of the Government of Israel dated 18 January 2005
The Government of Israel responded that on September 18, 2005 the head of the Department for Investigation of police officers decisions concerning the October 2000 incidents were released. The investigations resulted in lack of evidence and unknown offenders (and in regard to one injury, the finding of "no Offence". Following several requests for re-examination of the decisions, and based on the abovementioned and due to the high sensitivity of the issue, which deserves further examination, the Attorney General, the State Attorney and the director of the department reached the conclusion that it would be advisable to initiate an appeal process, which will be carried out by the deputy state attorney (special functions). This appeal is intended to re-consider a previous decision to close this file. I would like to underline that the appeal procedure is applied as an exercise of the right to criticism and reconsideration of the decisions of legal authorities. The results of this procedure will be transmitted to the Special Rapporteur when they are published.
Israel: Targeted Killings in the West Bank
Violation alleged: Death due to attacks or killings by security forces
Subject(s) of appeal: 25 males
Character of reply: No response (recent communication)
The Special Rapporteur looks forward to receiving a response concerning these allegations.
Allegation letter sent on 28 November 2005
Since assuming this mandate, I have received numerous reports concerning the killing of suspected terrorists by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). In the annex to this letter you will find summaries of the information regarding ten such incidents, between 10 June 2004 and 25 January 2005. These summaries are based on affidavits signed by eye witnesses of the killings, as well as, in some cases, medical records of the deceased.
The eye witnesses and the organization presenting the affidavits to me allege that in all cases fire was opened by the Israeli forces without any warning and without any threat against them by the persons fired at. The description of the incidents and of the injuries suffered by the victims strongly suggests that the lethal outcome of the use of force was intended in all cases. In some of the cases, your Excellency's Government appears to claim that there was in fact an armed confrontation, while in others the source's version appears to be undisputed in this respect. The members of the Israeli special forces carrying out the killings were dressed in civilian clothes and traveling on civilian vehicles, while military vehicles mostly appeared on the scene once the killing had been completed. The victims of the killings described in the annex include both persons sought by the Israeli security forces because of a suspicion that they were engaged in terrorist acts and persons who would not appear to have been under such suspicion. Nonetheless, most of the persons falling in the latter group appear to have been killed intentionally, and not as unintended casualties.
The concern raised by the summarised reports (as well as in numerous other recent reports of analogous incidents) is heightened by information according to which your Excellency's Government, in the persons of the Prime Minister and the IDF Chief of Staff, recently (on 8 November 2005) confirmed its intention to continue carrying out such killings.
In drawing the attention of your Excellency's Government to this information and seeking clarification thereof, I am aware of the stance taken by your Government in proceedings in domestic and international fora with regard to targeted killings. I would therefore take your Government's statement to the Human Rights Committee of 25 July 2003 on this matter (CCPR/C/SR.2118, at para. 40) as basis for my queries.
1.	As a preliminary matter, please state whether the attached summaries are accurate. If not so, please refer to the results of any investigation disproving their accuracy.
2.	Your Excellency's Government insisted before the Human Rights Committe that the legal basis for such operations was to be found in the laws on armed conflict. It also stated that "Israel operate[s] only against legitimate targets, using legitimate methods of warfare while abiding by the rule of proportionality in accordance with international law." Please describe which rules of international humanitarian law, i.e. which treaties or rules of customary law, are taken as guidance to define legitimate targets and legitimate methods of warfare (inter alia concerning the identification of Israeli combatants as such), as well as to assess the proportionality of attacks. Please explain on what basis the applicability of human rights law, in particular Article 6 of the ICCPR, is ruled out.
3.	Your Excellency's Government stated that "[e]ven persons known to be terrorists were legitimate targets only if there was reliable evidence linking them directly to a hostile act. … [Israel's] security forces were instructed by the Attorney-General, however, to attack unlawful combatants only when there was an urgent military necessity and when no less harmful alternative was available to avert the danger posed by the terrorists." Please describe the decision-making process and the procedural safeguards in place to ensure that the principles stated by your Government as a policy find application in each individual case. Your Excellency's Government stated that "[i]t would, of course, be preferable to arrest such persons [known to be terrorists], but in areas like the Gaza Strip, over which Israel had no control, his Government did not have that option." Please elaborate on why, in the cases summarized in the annex, arresting the suspected terrorists was not an option, considering that in several of the incidents your Government did in fact arrest several persons after killing others (e.g. on 8 August 2004 in Palestine Street, Jericho).
4.	Your Excellency's Government stated that "under the rule of proportionality, which formed part of the laws of armed conflict and was integral to Israel's accepted values, [the security forces] were instructed to carry out such attacks only if they did not cause disproportionate harm to civilians. Consequently, at all stages of intelligence-gathering, operational planning and attacks on unlawful combatants, they always did their utmost to avoid injuring innocent persons." In at least one incident (not among those summarised in the annex), an inquiry of your Government found "shortcomings in the information available, and the evaluation of that information, concerning the presence of innocent civilians". (I refer to the 2 August 2002 communication of the IDF spokesperson regarding the findings of the inquiry into the death of Salah Shehadeh). These findings of an inquiry by the IDF and the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) refer to an incident on 22 July 2002 in which 16 persons, including nine children, were killed in addition to the targeted terrorism suspect when an IDF plane dropped a one ton bomb on a house in a densely populated area of Gaza. Please explain whether the findings of the inquiry were followed by any disciplinary or criminal proceedings, and, if not so, the reasons therefore. Please explain whether IDF inquiries were initiated into any other targeted killing cases with the aim to assess the proportionality of the force used, and what the outcome was.
Without prejudging your Government's replies to my queries, I would reiterate my concern that empowering Governments to identify and kill "known terrorists" places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists, or to demonstrate that every other alternative has been exhausted. (See E/CN.4/2005/7, at par. 41). In expressing this concern, I am cognizant of the fact that in the course of the last five years hundreds of Israeli civilians have been killed in attacks carried out by terrorists using the Gaza strip and the West Bank as basis. I wish to stress that I fully acknowledge the responsibility of your Excellency's Government to protect its citizens against such attacks. Efforts to eradicate terrorism must, however, be undertaken within a framework clearly governed by international human rights law as well as by international humanitarian law.
1)	10 June 2004, 'Ein Nina, Jenin Governorate
Mr. Ma'moun Yousef Abu-al-Hasan was a militant of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a fugitive wanted by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). On 10 June 2004, at around 1:30 a.m. he entered the house of his father, Mr. Husein Yousef Abu-al-Hasan, located in 'Ein-Nina of Jenin City. At 2 a.m. members of the IDF, who apparently had laid siege to the location, knocked at the door of the home and demanded that it be opened. Ma'moun Abu-al-Hasan shouted that he was coming to open the door, but instead attempted to escape from the back door of the house and managed to climb over a wall into the garden of the neighbouring house. There, however, he was spotted by IDF soldiers, who without warning opened fire and hit him with four bullets in the back of the head, top of the back and the feet (according to the medical report issued by Jenin Governmental Hospital). Ma'moun Abu-al-Hasan was not armed. The IDF acknowledged responsibility for the killing of Ma'moun Abu-al-Hasan.
2)	14 June 2004, Balata Refugee Camp
On 14 June 2004, at 9:40 p.m., Mr. 'Awad Abu-Zeid was driving a taxi on the main street in the north part of Balata Refugee Camp in the Nablus Governorate, opposite Jacob's Well, with Messrs. Khalil 'Araysha and Muhammad Safwat as passengers. An IDF Apache helicopter fired two rockets at the car, one of them hitting the target. Mr. 'Araysha and 'Awad died on the spot, their bodies incinerated and Mr. 'Araysha's leg and hand amputated. Mr. Safwat sustained minor injuries and burns. Reportedly Mr. 'Araysha had recently become a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Mr. Abu-Zeid reportedly was his right hand man and often drove him in his taxi. The IDF acknowledged responsibility for the attack.
3)	25 July 2005, Toulkarem
On 25 July 2004, at 7:00 pm, a white Volkswagen bus carrying a yellow (Israeli) registration plate entered a Southern neighbourhood of Toulkarem, where a group of young Palestinian men, some of them wanted by the IDF, was standing opposite of the Abu Nidal Restaurant for Popular Foods. When the van was at a distance of five metres from the young men it stopped and five men got out of the car. They were wearing civilian clothing and carrying machine guns. The five men immediately opened heavy fire towards six of the Palestinian men, aiming at the heads and abdomen and killing them on the spot. The six victims were:
1. Mr. Hani Yousef Muhammad 'Weida, a militant of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wanted by the IDF. He was armed at the time of the incident.
2. Mr. 'Abd-al-Rahman Hasan Mustafa Shadid, a militant of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wanted by the IDF. He was armed at the time of the incident.
3. Mr. Mahdi Rateb Na'im Tanbouz, a militant of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wanted by the IDF. He was armed at the time of the incident.
4. Mr. Said Jamal Nasser. It is not clear whether he was a militant of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well, but he was not a fugitive (he used to sleep at home) and did not carry weapons.
5. Mr. Muhammad 'Adnan Shantir, a bystander who was not a member of any militant group and not wanted by the IDF.
6. Mr. Ahmad Nabil Barouq, a bystander who was not a member of any militant group and not wanted by the IDF.
The shooting also injured some passers-by, including Messrs. Muhammad 'Adnan Fathi Samaha, Khalil Zidan, and Ibrahim al-Jayyousi. Immediately after the shooting IDF support units arrived to the scene and stayed for at least an hour. Muhammad 'Adnan Fathi Samaha was arrested after the shooting and questioned about the identity of the targeted men. Thereafter he received medical treatment in an Israeli hospital.
The IDF acknowledged carrying out the operation, claiming that all the six men killed were militants of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
4)	8 August 2004, Palestine Street, Jericho
On 8 August 2004, at about 9:30 pm, a number of young men from Ramallah living in Jericho had gathered in front of the Sara Net Café located on Palestine Street behind the Jericho football stadium. Several of the young men were wanted by the IDF, among them Mr. 'Amer 'Aydiyya, an activist of the al-Aqsa Martyres Brigades from the Al-Am'ari Refugee Camp, south of Ramallah, his brother Mr. Jaber 'Aydiyya, Mr. Hatem Abu-Halima from Ramallah, and Mr. Hamza Muhammad 'Abdallah al-Sheikh. At about 9:45 p.m., a white Volkswagen Caravelle stopped nearby. Without any notice or warning, the car's doors opened and a number of men in civilian dress got out of the car, aimed their automatic guns at the group of young men and without any warning fired at them (aiming at Mr. 'Amer 'Aydiyya) with live ammunition. Mr. 'Amer 'Aydiyya received several bullets in the chest and abdomen and died on the spot, while others were wounded, Mr. Hatem Abu-Halima and Mr. Jaber 'Aydiyya seriously. Immediately thereafter, Israeli soldiers came to the scene. They hand-cuffed those who had not been wounded, forced them to lie down on the ground, and subsequently led them inside the Net Café. Those wounded remained outside and received first-aid from the Israeli soldiers. After half an hour, the Israeli soldiers blindfolded the men, both those wounded and those unwounded, and took them in their cars to Benjamin Detention Camp in Bitouniya, northwest Ramallah. Mr. Hamza Muhammad 'Abdallah al-Sheikh was released after 13 days of detention. Mr. Jaber 'Aydiyya was transferred to Hadassa Hospital in East Jerusalem and then released (he continued his medical treatment at al-Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Ramallah).
5)	13 September 2004, Jenin, on the Jenin-Nablus road
On 13 September 2004 at 5:15 p.m., Mr. Mahmoud Asa'd Abu-Khalifa (22 years), Mr. Yamen Feisal Ayyoub (18 years), and Mr. Amjad Husni Ayyoub (23 years), three activists of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wanted by the IDF, were travelling in a civilian Mazda car near the Jenin Municipality on Jenin-Nablus road when a powerful explosion completely burned and destroyed the car. The three passengers were killed, their bodies dismembered and body parts strewn all over the site of the incident. The Israeli army admitted its responsibility for the operation through the Yediot Ahranot website in Arabic (ArabNet), attributing the explosion to an air-to-ground rocket fired on the car from a helicopter. The families of the victims and other residents of Jenin doubt the veracity of this account. They point out that there was no helicopter in the sky above Jenin at the relevant time that day. These persons rather believe that a bomb had been planted on the car and was set off by a reconnaissance plane of the Israeli armed forces that was soaring in the sky above Jenin that day.
6)	15 September 2004, Jenin industrial area
On 15 September 2004, at around 12:30 pm, an IDF Special Squad entered the industrial area of Jenin in two cars which bore no signs identifying them as being in use of Israeli security forces. The two cars parked in front of a car repair shop owned by Messrs. Fawwaz Zakarna and Abu Al-Abed Saba'na. Mr. Fawwaz Zakarna, Mr. Fadi Fakhri Zakarna, an activist of the Islamic Jihad Movement wanted by the Israeli army, and other young men were standing in front of the car repair shop. Fadi Zakarna was carrying a weapon. Without prior notice or warning, approximately eight persons in civilian clothes, two of them wearing masks covering their faces, got out the two cars and opened fire on the young men standing in front of the car repair shop with guns known "M-16 short". Firing continued for five to seven minutes, mostly directed at the group of young men, but also in other directions. Fadi Fakhri Zakarna received 20 bullets in his head, chest and different parts of his body. Fawwaz Fakhri Zakarna, neither an activist nor wanted, was killed with seven bullets in the chest and right foot. Mr. Mu'ath Muhammad Qatit, known for trading in stolen cars, neither an activist nor wanted, was killed inside Mr. Fawwaz's shop by four bullets in the chest. Mr. Shuja' Nathmi, an activist in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wanted by the Israeli army, escaped from the place of the incident with two members of the special forces running after him and firing at him. Three members of the Special Squad dragged Mr. Ibrahim 'Ata Mahmoud (a/k/a) Ibrahim "al-Sirisi"), who was neither an activist nor wanted by the IDF, into the car repair shop run by 'Arafat al-Sa'di, threw him on the ground, and opened fire on him from a distance of less than two metres. Three or four bullets hit his head and chest. After firing stopped, the IDF arrived at the scene to protect the members of the special forces, which departed from the area. The IDF left ten minutes later. According to an Israeli radio broadcast in Arabic, the Special Squad was fired at during the liquidation of a terrorist in Jenin and had to respond, resulting in the killing of three Palestinian young men.
7)	28 October 2004, Kufr-Saba neighborhood, Qalqiliya
Mr. Ibrahim Muhammad Fayed (a/k/a "Sheikh Ibrahim"), aged 48, was wanted by the Israeli security forces, who broke into his family's home several times in an attempt to find him. Israeli security forces had also on several occasions distributed statements to the citizenry warning against offering shelter to and otherwise assisting Sheikh Ibrahim. On 28 October 2004, at around 7.20 p.m., Sheikh Ibrahim was having coffee with a friend nearby his home in the Kufr-Saba quarter in Qalqiliya, when he was shot at from a white Ford car standing at about 70 metres distance. Apparently, the weapon used was a silenced pistol with a laser aiming device. The gun shots were fired without any warning and the bystanders realised that Sheikh Ibrahim had been shot by seeing him fall over backwards. Sheikh Ibrahim's friend, who was armed, returned the fire when he realised what was happening, and the white car left. Sheikh Ibrahim was immediately taken to the Emergency Hospital in Qalqiliya city, where he died of the wounds in the chest and the head at around 8 p.m. the same evening.
8)	1 November 2004, al-Yasmina Quarter in the Old City of Nablus, Nablus Governorate
On 1 November 2004, around 9 p.m., Mr. Majdi Mir'i and Mr. Fadi Sarwan were talking in front of Mr. Sarwan's home in the al-Yasmina Quarter in the Old City of Nablus. Mr. Majdi Mir'i had been wanted by the Israeli security forces for two years and had escaped an assassination attempt on 15 September 2004. Mr. Fadi Sarwan had received a call on his cellular from an Israeli officer calling himself "Ghazal" a week before the present incident, telling him that he would soon be assassinated. At ten to fifteen metres from them another group of several young men was standing, among them Mr. Amjad Ghafri and Mr. Karim Ghazi 'Abd-al-Rahman Abu-'Isa. Three persons arrived on the scene, two of them in male civilian dress, the third dressed like a woman. Once they were close to the two groups of men, these three persons took off some of the clothes they were wearing, revealing that they were in fact three men armed with guns. Without any previous questions or warning, they opened fire on Mr. Mir'i and Mr. Sarwan, as well as on the other group of men.
Mr. Sarwan first fell to the ground. The men continued to shoot at him also when he was lying on the ground. Mr. Mir'i tried to escape, but interrupted his flight and lifted his hands after a few metres when IDF soldiers cut his way. He was approached my one of the men in civilian clothes who shot at him from a close range, and continued to fire at him also after he had fallen to the ground. Mr. Sarwan and Mr. Mir'i died on the spot of the wounds suffered. Karim Abu-'Isa was injured, while Amjad Ghafri was arrested.
9)	7 November 2004, Jenin-Nablus Road outside Jenin
On 7 November 2004 around 5:45 p.m., the following four men wanted by the Israeli security forces were killed:
1. Mr. Amin Jamal Muhammad Husein, an activist with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
2. Mr. Fadi Khader Tawfiq Ighbariyya, an activist with Saraya al-Quds of the Islamic Jihad.
3. Mr. Muhammad Khaled Ahmad Masharqa, an activist with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
4. Mr. Mahmoud Fahmi Salah-al-Din, an activist with al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
The four Palestinian men where driving in a black jeep. They had filled the car at the 'Abd-al-'Afou Gas Station located on the Jenin-Nablus Road to the south towards Jenin City. As the jeep was about to take the road again, a grey Volkswagen, which had appeared at high speed, came to stop immediately in front of it, at a distance not exceeding a metre and a half. Without prior notice or warning, the persons in that bus opened heavy fire towards the jeep from a distance not exceeding one metre from the front side. Then five men in blue jeans, shouting in Hebrew, got out of the Volkswagen bus and continued to fire at the jeep The fire continued for around one minute and was directed at the upper part of the Palestinian men's bodies. All four men sustained wounds in their heads and died on the spot. Subsequent examination of the jeep revealed that hundreds of bullets had been fired at the jeep.
The special forces soldiers gathered the weapons of the four Palestinian men in the jeep, which they had not been able to use due to the unexpected and sudden nature of the attack. Ten minutes after the attack, IDF support units arrived in eight to ten military jeeps and provided protection for the departure of the special forces in the Volkswagen bus. After the departure of the Israeli forces, the four Palestinian men were carried in Red Crescent Society ambulances to the Jenin Governmental Hospital, where their death was confirmed.
10)	26 January 2005, Qalqiliya
On 26 January 2005, around 3 p.m., Messrs. Maher Harb and Muhammad Khamis, two men wanted by the Israeli security forces because of their affiliation with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Mr. Yihiya Nazzal were slowly driving in a private car through the central part of the Kufr Saba Quarter in Qalqiliya. Their car was surrounded by three members of Israeli security forces in civilian clothes. These three men started firing into the car with M-16 guns while shouting, in both Hebrew and Arabic, "Stop the car and bring the weapons". One member of the security forces shot Mr. Harb in the neck from a distance of approximately two meters, possibly killing him immediately. Although the car slowed down as a result of the driver losing control, the three special forces soldiers continued to shoot at the passengers of the car. Eventually, the car crashed into a tree. The soldier on the right side of the car opened one of the car doors and fired two bullets at the driver and the person sitting next to him (Mr. Khamis). The third soldier shot Mr. Nazzal in the leg from a distance of about a metre and a half. Then the soldiers pulled out the driver, the man in the passenger seat, and the third man who was sitting in the back of the car, and dragged them for a distance of 12 metres inside a shop. The soldiers were then attacked by persons throwing stones at them, but kept the attackers at bay by firing their weapons (apparently without any casualties). After few minutes, several Israeli patrol cars arrived at the scene. Mr. Harb, Mr. Khamis and Mr. Nazzal were put into patrol cars and driven to an Israeli Liaison Office on the eastern side of Qalqiliya. There, a doctor examined them and established that Mr. Harb was dead. Mr. Muhammad Khamis had sustained serious injuries, and Mr. Yihiya Nazzal medium injuries. Mr. Khamis and Mr. Nazzal were taken by ambulance to the Belinson Hospital in Israel. Mr. Nazzal was transferred to the Emergency Hospital in Qalqiliya after five days.
Palestinian Authority: Death Sentences
Violation alleged: Non-respect of international standards relating to the imposition of capital punishment
Subject(s) of appeal: General
Character of reply: No response
The Special Rapporteur regrets that the Palestinian Authority has failed to cooperate with the mandate he has been given by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Urgent appeal sent on 28 February 2005
On 17 February 2005, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, ratified several death sentences of Palestinians found guilty of "collaborating" with Israel or of other criminal charges. Fears have been expressed that these people could be at risk of imminent execution. It is my understanding that the Palestinian Penal Code applying in the West Bank enables imposition of capital punishment for seventeen offenses, while in the Gaza Strip, fifteen offenses warrant the death penalty. Reports indicate that both penal laws are implemented by ordinary civil courts. The Palestinian Authority also reportedly imposes the death penalty pursuant to the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code, of 1979, which provides for capital punishment for forty-two offenses and is applied by military courts and state security courts operated by the Palestinian Authority. Reports indicate that these special courts are in fact responsible for the vast majority of death sentences imposed by the Palestinian Authority. Concerns have been expressed that the number of offenses for which the death penalty may be imposed is extremely wide and thus inconsistent with the requirement that the list be limited to the internationally recognized category of the most serious crimes. Fears have been expressed that the above-mentioned persons were sentenced to death after trials that may have fallen short of international fair trial standards. Indeed, it is alleged that the trials before the special courts deny the accused the basic rules of due process. It has been suggested that the trials could in effect be characterized as "field trials" held before military judges often summarily and in which the defendants are not given any significant opportunity to present a defense. Moreover, the defendants are denied the right to appeal against their sentences to a higher court, in violation of international human rights standards. The death sentences are reportedly only subject to ratification by the President and may be carried out within hours or days of the trial. In view of what would appear to be several major flaws in the procedures followed I would respectfully urge your Excellency to stay the execution of all pending or future death penalty sentences, to review all previous cases resulting in death sentences and to release or retry those individuals found to have been unfairly convicted, taking all necessary measures to ensure that the trials comply with internationally recognised fair trial standards. I would greatly appreciate receiving any clarification on these trials, on the sentencing and the review process.


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The new battleground for tech companies: Your car
Published Mon, Mar 10 20148:45 AM EDT
We always talk about desktop and mobile usage when it comes to technology, but there is a third place: the car. Cars are the battleground for the tech companies.
Cars are a place where Americans spend an enormous amount of time in need of information and entertainment yet are unable to interact with a computer or mobile through traditional interfaces. Last year, 76 percent of working Americans commuted alone by car. Any many of these commutes are long due to congestion and traffic on highways and in cities. And so for 76 percent of Americans, they are unable to access information in a convenient or safe manner for a significant part of their days, often when they want it the most necessary times — the beginning or the end of the day.
Source: General Motors
This explains why Google bought Waze, Pandora continues to focus on in-car integrations, and we learned just last week that Microsoft is building a voice agent called "Cortana" into the new version of it's mobile OS and Apple is building an in-car version of iOS called "Carplay."
(Read more: WhatsApp? Google executive disses Facebook deal)
These integrations will by and large take two flavors: complete car integrations like Apple just announced and easier voice interfaces on mobile phones. Siri and Cortana fall into this secondary category. Voice interfaces may be useful in many places, but to my mind, in cars, they are far and away the most useful. How can you safely send a Whatsapp message or a tweet in a car? These are lost opportunities to engage users for Facebook and Twitter.
And so, if you combine voice interfaces with services people want in cars, such as traffic information and music, you start to get a vision of what the next platform battle could look like. The next platform has four wheels.
(Read more: The next thing you'll pay for online: Your privacy)
Microsoft Cortana to go after Siri
These services will get in your car via new sales, which run at roughly 15 million a year, but more importantly via the aftermarket and mobile phones with suction cups. Remember GPS units? Everyone bought stand-alone units, then they were built into cars, then people just started using their phones because Google Maps and Waze were better and more frequently updated.
The one surprise could be Nest and competitors like Nest. There's nothing to say that a new generation of cheap simple hardware devices, likely built on Android, couldn't come with a suction cup and lighter power cord for under $100. Look, for reference, at how Google just solved the TV problem with a $29 Chromecast stick.
(Read more: Your apps may be spying on you)
Either way, we should start thinking about cars like we think about mobile. The major online service players already are! And just like investors asked, "Is this company prepared for the big shift to mobile," to a lesser extent they could now ask "what's their car strategy?"
—By Jon Steinberg
Jon Steinberg is the president & chief operating officer of BuzzFeed and is responsible for all business management, company operations, finance, and social advertising operations. Follow him on Twitter @jonsteinberg.
Disclosure: Google, Facebook, and Twitter are BuzzFeed business partners. Microsoft is a BuzzFeed advertiser.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


FW|MADE is an acronym for Fearfully Wonderfully Made and was created in April 2016. It is a blog site to encourage and empower women in their walk with Christ and to help develop their purpose, values, self-worth and establish a deeper relationship with God.
FW|MADE seeks to remind you that God created you so beautifully with a purpose and your value is in Him alone. My prayer is that this blog site blesses and encourages you as you go through this journey of faith.


A few things make this organization unique, not least of which is that membership (and attendance at the WINiT Summit) is free—to everyone.
WINiT's strategic goals include forming cooperative relationships with other meeting and travel organizations, specifically, IMEX Group, Professional Convention Management Association, International Association of Exhibitions and Events, Society of Independent Show Organizers, and SITE: Society for Incentive Travel Excellence.
WINiT marked some milestones in 2015: approval as a 501(c)(3) charitable and educational organization; a 77 percent increase in membership to more than 1,800 members; the creation of a pilot Mentor Program that officially launches this fall; and a new Central Career Board at the WINiT Web site.
Networking at WINiT (from left): Jessica Walkoski, Tzell Travel Group; Allison O'Sullivan, ChainIQ; and Leslie Bauer, Airlines Reporting Corp.
For all of the inspiration of the day—and there was plenty—there were doses of reality from some straight-talking panelists and speakers. During the fascinating C-suite panel (three women, two men), Claudia Sender, CEO of TAM Airlines, cut right through a comment about a lack of female talent as a reason for the dearth of women at the top (4.2 percent of CEOs and 15.7 percent of board members at Fortune 500 companies are women).
On the other hand, Sender was the C-suite panelist who pointed to a particular advantage for women in business today. "Female leadership style is extremely important and highly valued in modern corporations," she said. "Women are more inclusive than men, and they listen more." And because this is an era where companies only succeed by considering a diversity of perspectives, these qualities are critical.
• John Snyder, global president & CEO, BCD Travel, credited his rise to the corner office to hiring and surrounding himself with the best people he could find. "It can be scary to hire someone smarter than you," he said. But it can also be a canny strategy.


You think the Mets bringing in Rod Barajas, bringing up Ike Davis and blotting out Frank Catalanotto with Chris Carter were winning moves? Sure they were. But if this organization really wanted to do nothing but win, they would bring somebody else to the ballpark every single game.


A stiff-upper-lipped British Army officer engages in a spot of larceny to aid the war effort. Ordered to Amsterdam, he joins forces with two cunning Dutchmen and steals a secret cache of diamonds from a bank vault, thus preventing the gems falling into Nazi hands. Second World War adventure, starring Peter Finch, Tony Britton and Eva Bartok.


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My talent is business plans - original, custom, designed for small business owners trying to "do it all".
Figuring out delegation, job descriptions, financials, Quickbooks and invoicing... every step along the way.
Where, How & With Who?
With a degree from UC Berkeley in Resources, what else to do but open a restaurant in a Northern California town? Turned into a 20 year adventure. Finished a MBA when I sold the restaurant to work in Silicon Valley. Traveled to Wisconsin to learn about co-ops and decided I had a pretty wide view to help others figure out their way.
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A road map for the journey to simplify goals and choices for the coming year.
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Kimberly and Ian Wilder will be reading Edgar Allan Poe's poetry on Sunday, October 30, 2016 from 2pm to 4pm at Vines & Hops, 127 E Main St, Riverhead, NY 11901.
Other local writers who are part of the Riverhead Free Library Writers' Cove will also be reading the short stories and poetry of Poe as part of the weekend Halloween celebration.
Why come out to hear Poe's work?
If the judgment Day were fixed for the centenary of Poe's birth, there are among the dead only two men born since the Declaration of Independence whose plea for mercy could avert a prompt sentence of damnation on the entire nation; and it is extremely doubtful whether those two could be persuaded to pervert eternal justice by uttering it. The two are, of course, Poe and Whitman; and there is between them the remarkable difference that Whitman is still credibly an American, whereas even the Americans themselves, though rather short of men of genius, omit Poe's name from their Pantheon, either from a sense that it is hopeless for them to claim so foreign a figure, or from simple Monroeism. One asks, has the America of Poe's day passed away, or did it ever exist?
Poe was not "a fault of nature," "a find for French eyes," ripe but unaccountable, as through our woollyheadedness we've sought to designate him, but a genius intimately shaped by his locale and his time. It is to save out faces that we've given him a crazy reputation, a writer from whose classical accuracies we have not known how else to escape.


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9 Times Big Machine Interfered With Taylor Swift's Artistry
So, last month Taylor Swift released another surprise album titled evermore, bringing her studio album count to nine, and reaffirming that she is living through the most prolific writing period of her career (so far). She held a YouTube Q&A before the 'Willow' music video dropped (the song being evermore's lead single), and she revealed that she has more "creative bandwidth" for making music due to her tour being shelved. And in light of that fact, I can't stop thinking about all the bullsh*t that she endured while part of the Big Machine Label Group and how that might have affected her creativity.
For context, Scott Borchetta founded Big Machine Records in 2005 and signed a then-teenaged Swift as one of his first artists. Big Machine Records would later be the main fixture under the Big Machine Label Group (BMLG). To be blunt, Swift carried that label during her thirteen-year stint, and her music still helped to keep the lights on even after she left. In November 2018, Billboard published some pertinent stats on Swift's value to Big Machine, as Swift had just left the label and signed with Universal Music Group under Republic Records:
"Depending on the year, Swift's portion of Big Machine's U.S. sales and streaming activity ranges from the 21.2% of the labels total in 2016 to the 56.6% she had in 2015. In 2017, she comprised 41.2% and so far this year, her sales and streaming account for 34.1%, according to Billboard calculations using Nielsen Music data.
Vanity Fair similarly noted that, "in 2018, Variety reported that the label "derived as much [as] 80% of its revenue from Swift's music in recent years." And this July HITS Daily Double, the online version of an American trade publication on the music industry, reported its year-to-date (YTD) data on BMLG. For its "album activity," Swift came in second with Reputation Stadium Tour after Thomas Rhett's Center Point Road (2019). The kicker here is that Reputation Stadium Tour isn't an actual album, it's merely a playlist of studio-version songs that Swift played while on tour. (When touring, Swift includes her older material through surprise acoustic performances.) So a fake digital album of years-old music came in second to an album barely a year old.
Scott and Borchetta at the 2006 CMT Awards
Essentially being responsible for an entire label's success would put a huge strain on any one artist and her ability to imagine and to feel deeply. Republic Records belongs to Universal Music Group, the largest music conglomerate in the world, and has several major artists under its roof besides Swift including Stevie Wonder and Ariana Grande. But the pressure for Swift to succeed as an artist at Big Machine extended beyond a financial anvil over her head. Since the beginning of her career, Swift has had to fight restrictions on her music and campaign for her own creative dignity.
For the readers familiar with my work, I have tracked Swift's battles with Big Machine, Scott Borchetta, and Scooter Braun, the music mogul to whom Borchetta sold BMLG. Swift saw Borchetta as a second father, and as I outlined in my article on streaming and sexism, Borchetta exerted toxic control and tried to manipulate her during her time at Big Machine. Last year, Swift even implied that Borchetta told her, "I'm not sure you deserve what you want," for more than a decade. These problems existed between the business partners for a long time.
That being said, these problems began to harden in Swift's early twenties as she grew into a formidable, successful woman and began to experiment more with pop. Swift has admitted that she began to notice sexism during the RED era, and the time leading up to releasing RED in 2012 also saw her contending with Borchetta and his label over her decisions regarding genre. Borchetta worried about her transitioning into pop and the financial stakes; he also disregarded her business acumen as a young woman after promising her artistic license when he signed her.
Fans know about nine instances where Borchetta and Big Machine stepped in when Swift made certain artistic decisions, and for better or for worse, that impacted Swift's view of herself and her music.
I assembled each known case into a list with proper context to get a more developed perspective on her time at Big Machine Records. Overall, Big Machine relayed contradictory messaging about Swift's creative freedom, and these contradictions make sense when considering the intersections of capitalism and misogyny.
Nathan Chapman As Her Producer:
While many mainstream critics are framing Swift's most recent projects as her taking creative leaps, Swift has always been experimental and willing to buck business convention in service of her art. When she was fourteen, she met Nathan Chapman, and he began to produce her demos. Chapman was working out of a "shack," as he and Swift have called it, and had no professional experience making albums. Understandably, Scott Borchetta and his fledgling business were hesitant to recruit a newcomer, but Swift still wanted him to produce her debut album, and she got her way regardless. Her self-titled debut album came out on October 24th, 2006.
In autumn 2015 she hosted a Grammy Listening Session for the Recording Academy, and in "Part 1" she explained her musical journey so listeners could understand the forces that propelled her to making 1989. When reflecting on making her first album, Swift said, "[A]fter a lot of begging and pleading, I got my label to agree to let Nathan Chapman produce my entire first album." A few months after that appearance Swift would win the Grammy for 'Album of the Year' a second time, and like Fearless (2008), it included work she co-produced with Chapman.
But no matter how successful Swift became, the "begging and pleading" from the beginning of her career never stopped, instead becoming what appeared to be semi-reoccurring. Swift pretty much confirmed that in her new song 'it's time to go' as she sings about "begging 'til [her] knees bled" when describing her relationship to Borchetta.
Recording 'Our Song':
If you are a Swiftie who adores her early country music and who would argue for her debut album's legitimacy, then you are a yeehaw Swiftie. And no song in her early discography galvanizes yeehaw Swifties quite like 'Our Song', a banjo-driven number that she wrote solo for her high school talent show. Surprisingly, the catchy song almost didn't make the record. In 2007, the then-seventeen-year-old songstress explained, "When we were picking songs for the album, I stood by this one and made sure it got recorded. I just knew there was something about it." That wasn't the whole story though: she had airbrushed the struggle when she was a teenager and with her career still nascent.
To promote the RED album, Swift held a small concert for Harvey Mudd College on October 15th, 2012. Before each song, she talked about its meaning to her, and she had this to say about 'Our Song':
"So I went to my record label, and I said to the guy at the record label, 'I really think we should put this song on the record because my friends at high school love it.' And he was like, 'Now, you can't just make all of your decisions about a very serious thing like an album based on if your high school friends like it or not.' And it ended up being our first number one at country radio so I guess you can!"
Interestingly, Swift revealed this dispute at the beginning of the RED era (2012-2014), a period that saw her in even more conflict with her label and with Scott Borchetta about the direction of her music.
Nathan Chapman, as far as we know, supported whatever material she brought him, and was not tied to Big Machine. It's fair to assume that the 'guy at the record label' she was referring to was Borchetta because through 1989 she brought him songs as she made her albums. The man's comments reek of misogyny reserved for teenage girls who can't be 'serious' about their own dreams, assuming frivolity from a feminine girl. ~Unrelatedly~, Borchetta compared Swift to a "trophy signing" after she left his label and stated that he refused to be "subservient" to anyone at Big Machine, implying he refused to take business directives from her. And last year when Swift revealed that Borchetta was trying to stop her from performing her old music, she wrote, "The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up."
Making 'You Belong With Me':
In the same Grammy Listening Session, Swift said, "I got to make my next record [Fearless], and I had a little bit more say. And so I got to use Nathan again without any conversations being had." But the conversations being had had changed topics for her second album, and in hindsight Swift having "a little bit more say" takes on a new edge.
Co-producer Nathan Chapman attended 'Anatomy of a Hit Song' circa 2010, before Swift announced Speak Now, to discuss making 'You Belong With Me' (YBWM). He discussed how Big Machine had differing expectations for Swift's sophomore sound and how that conflicted with the producers' work ethic. Over two-and-a-half-hours, Swift and Chapman had recorded most of the song, and later that day, a Big Machine employee told them, "It's not cool to take that much time for one song." Swift and Chapman had bucked the label's expectations regarding genre, as Big Machine was used to a simple, three-piece band. In response, Swift recorded four more songs that afternoon, leaving her "worn out" to the point that her management called Chapman the next day (t. 31:53-32:43).
Besides these pressures on her productivity, Swift contended with Big Machine's disapproval of the song's intro. Chapman revealed that the iconic opening with its banjo and instrumental loop were Swift's idea, which she asked him to execute. Chapman had to "remake [the intro] four or five different ways" after Big Machine shut it down, and he described Swift's subsequent discussion with her label as a "back-and-forth" (t. 16:39-16:54). Big Machine thought the intro was "really electronic" and didn't like that. Chapman expressed exhaustion from the whole debacle:
"The first version of Taylor asking for that and me sending her something on email is what ended up making the record. But it's amazing the little battles you can end up fighting with the label and different people over little parts like that. That was about two weeks on-and-off of my life spent on that intro." (t. 34:38-36:20)
Swift got what she originally wanted, but it must have come after a draining exercise in self-advocacy. In terms of her creative bandwidth, I would not be surprised if experiences like this — having to fight two-and-a-half weeks just for a song's intro — took up a significant portion of her mental energy. The anxiety of possible rejection and the mental preparations for possible conflict.
Titling Speak Now:
In order to address critics' skepticism regarding her songwriting, Swift wrote her third album Speak Now alone, her sole collaborator being Nathan Chapman as her co-producer. Speak Now (2010) as a project foreshadowed Swift's directness, passion, and righteousness that manifested on later albums like reputation, in her political letters, and her call-outs of the music industry's exploitative practices. But 'Speak Now' was not the original title or overarching theme.
At the beginning of the Speak Now era, Scott Borchetta revealed that Swift intended to title her third album "Enchanted." The two had met for lunch late into the album process, and Swift played him several new songs. He said, "I looked at her and I'm like, 'Taylor, this record isn't about fairy tales and high school anymore. That's not where you're at. I don't think the record should be called 'Enchanted.'" Almost immediately after this conversation, she came back with "Speak Now."
In this instance, I agree with Borchetta's input.
He never, as far as we know, made this issue into a fight. He gave her the room to process his critique and then to decide for herself how she wanted to address her art, and he did so without overstepping her creative boundaries. And his critique was not to box her into the country mold. The way he approached the title difference reveals his priorities with this particular critique in comparison to restrictions with her other albums. In a separate interview for E!Entertainment Special: Taylor Swift, Borchetta focused on Swift as a person and as an artist:
"And I said, 'We need a much stronger definition for this great work that you've done. And she takes a little walk, and she comes back. She said 'Speak Now.' And I'm like, 'Touch down! That's it. It's exactly what you're doing, you're talking about who you are right now. Perfect! Done.'"
Rather than restricting her in order to make her more palatable to country traditionalists, Borchetta encouraged Swift to consider what message she wanted to convey so she could express her art more authentically.
Notably, this meeting took place a few months after Swift had won 'Album of the Year' for Fearless at the Grammy's and had accumulated several radio hits. (The second edition of Swift's Lover diary entries places this meeting in early April 2010.) Speak Now would be her first album to sell over a million copies in the U.S. in its first week, but it never had the radio or award success like its predecessor. Speak Now is the album for the diehard fans, not for general listeners. Swift was already moving away from the mold of America's country-music-playing Sweetheart with an experimental, genre-blurring album, and that likely fed into Borchetta's financial anxiety as she went on to make RED.
When looking at his accreditation on her albums, his anxiety is clear enough. Scott Borchetta served as executive producer on Fearless; he then stepped back and let Swift and Chapman produce Speak Now without oversight. But Borchetta returned as an executive producer for RED.
Swedish Pop on RED:
Album eras tend to overlap because of the recording process and because of Swift's gradual personal and artistic changes. The Speak Now era lasted from approximately summer 2010 to summer 2012, and RED dropped on October 22nd, 2012, with the subsequent era lasting to about spring 2014. It was during the Speak Now era that she and Borchetta's differences in genre experimentation worsened, before fully diverging during the RED era as she made 1989.
On her 22nd birthday, Swift teased fans with one of her original Easter eggs: red shoes as a nod to the title of her upcoming album, and this photo has haunted fans ever since.
Swift started making the RED album as she had made Speak Now: writing alone and then bringing songs to Nathan Chapman to record and to co-produce them. But things began to shift as Swift noticed that the melodies she was writing were becoming poppier than ever before, and this shift eventually turned a full music-making corner with the titular song. (The first Lover journal indicates that Swift wrote 'Red' on September 7th, 2011 and recorded the demo the next day.) In one Billboard interview, Swift explained this shift as rooted in education:
""Red" the song was a real turning point for "Red" the album. When I wrote that song my mind started wandering to all the places we could go. If I were to think outside the box enough, go in with different people, I could learn from and have what they do rub off on me as well as have what I do rub off on them."
Arguably, her biggest leaps in music came when she incorporated Swedish-engineered pop into her repertoire with the three songs 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together', 'I Knew You Were Trouble', and '22', all three of which became highly successful radio singles.
Swift wrote these three songs with producers Max Martin and Karl Johan 'Shellback' Schuster. The two Swedish creators are responsible for some of the biggest pop singles this century, and Swift's tutelage under them helped her mature into the seasoned pop queen she is today.
Before RED dropped, Billboard interviewed Swift and Borchetta about the album-making process. The article revealed that Swift and Martin/Shellback "completed four songs" and "the process instilled a confidence in [her] to reach out to other producers" (p. 14). RED would thus become a country album with deeply woven threads of pop and rock, a three-way sonic exploration of genre as emotion, as Swift aimed to capture the emotional turmoil of her early twenties.
Tellingly, during the Grammy Listening Session, Swift said, "We went and we did three songs, two of which were 'I Knew You Were Trouble' and 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together', and that was as much as I was kind of allowed to work with Max on that project." The key word here is "allowed." Big Machine restricting these collaborations is confusing because Scott Borchetta suggested Max Martin in the first place. It makes me wonder how Borchetta and the label affected RED's overall sound and which songs made the tracklist.
Big Machine tried to change YBWM's opening because it sounded too "electronic" years earlier. In this case, it may have been a similar distrust about her musical choices and her ability to succeed if she ventured too far from country music, particularly (male-defined) traditional acoustic country. I also wouldn't be surprised if she had to fight for several songs, as Swift had to fight to include 'Our Song' on her first album. She must have lost some battles over the years, so there may be songs that she wanted to release which never saw the light of day.
In order to gain full ownership of the music she recorded while at Big Machine, Swift has started to re-record her first five albums. I've theorized for a while that she might add previously unreleased songs to the re-recorded albums, as Swift promised surprises for fans, so that fourth Martin/Shellback song might appear on the new version of RED.
Frustratingly, in that same Billboard interview Borchetta took credit for Swift collaborating with Max Martin, citing 'Red' the song as the impetus. He noted that Swift and Chapman had recorded early, unsatisfactory versions of 'Red', and Borchetta considered that it needed a Max-Martinesque "lift". Borchetta eventually called Martin after Swift agreed she needed a different producer (p. 14). In 2018, he reiterated his involvement in Swift working with Martin and Shellback (t. 12:44-13:37).
But during the Grammy Listening Session, Swift contradicted him, mentioning that she called Max Martin herself and hosted him at her house, telling him about her fears and hopes in regards to collaborating. Martin also has no production credit on 'Red'. For that song, Swift brought on longtime country producer Dann Huff, who got co-producing credit on that song alongside her and Chapman. She released the original demo for 'Red' that she made with Chapman, and it shares many similarities with the later version that included Dann Huff. And Swift likely contacted Huff herself too, since she directly contacted her other RED producers and because she knew Dann Huff, having worked with him before she chose Chapman to produce her debut album.
This contradiction reminds me of when Swift took her music off Spotify in late 2014 and how Borchetta repeatedly claimed that it was his idea. That same year, Bloomberg reported on Swift withdrawing from Spotify, writing, "A source familiar with Swift's thinking says it was the singer's idea to pull her songs from Spotify, not Borchetta's, and that the Big Machine CEO is exaggerating his involvement because he's currently looking to sell the company for $200 million."
Even if Borchetta made the original call to Martin, or gave his number to Swift, it was Swift's creative decisions that made RED such a masterpiece. It was her business acumen that built her career, and instead of welcoming her input, acknowledging that she understood her audience better than anyone else, Big Machine instead tried to further restrict her as she moved deeper into pop.
Releasing Music in 2013:
On October 23rd, 2013, Taylor Swift released 'Sweeter Than Fiction', a song she wrote specifically for the British biopic One Chance. The bubblegum pop song centered around unconditional love from the viewpoint of a steadfast partner reveling in their lover's success. 'Sweeter Than Fiction' marked her first (released) collaboration with Jack Antonoff. He has since become one of her main collaborators. After the song dropped, Swift revealed that Big Machine attempted to restrict her music releases:
"I had to fight to do this because I try to take a break in between albums and try to give people a minute to not hear me on the radio. I had to go around and ask people, 'Can I please, please put something out?' even though we're supposed to be going quiet. My management, my label were like, 'No new music until the next album comes out'. Then I saw the movie and I was like, 'I have to be a part of this'."
The label's reasoning is, again, contradictory as Big Machine never appeared to restrict Swift's non-album music before this release. During the Fearless era, she released two soundtrack singles — 'Crazier' on March 28th, 2009 and 'Today Was a Fairytale' on January 19th, 2010. She similarly contributed two songs to The Hunger Games soundtrack during the Speak Now era. She also featured on other musicians' albums throughout the years. In my opinion, the label's excuse was nothing more than that, an excuse, and possibly preemptive restrictions on Swift's musical projects because she was shifting into pop. Again, this happened during the RED era, a period that centered around Swift growing apart from Scott Borchetta as a creative consultant and becoming more private in the album-making process, cutting out her label's input.
Even though 'Sweeter Than Fiction' broke the dormancy 'rule', the song earned Swift a Golden Globe nomination and appeared to have no negative effect on her sales, as her then-upcoming album 1989 proceeded to smash records.
Transitioning Into Full Pop:
With her fifth studio album, Swift finished her transition into pop and released 1989 on October 27th, 2014. She had aimed to make a "sonically cohesive" record, co-executive producing the album with Max Martin, and had subsequently cut out Borchetta. The 1989 era included several interviews where Swift voiced her frustration towards Big Machine, asserting how her determination and creative instincts paid off. For example, Swift graced the cover of ELLE's June 2015 issue, as part of its annual 'Women in Music' issue, and she described condescending meetings led by out-of-touch business people trying to explain the success of her music to her:
"A lot of me making this album was me going in the studio, making something I loved, and showing it to the label and getting a principle's-office discussion. Like, "Young lady, you know you're not going to sell as many albums if you're not labeled as country." I wasn't kicking and screaming, but I was very firm about the fact that to call this album a country album would be the biggest mistake. Because when you're trying to fool people, you insinuating that you think they're stupid. And insinuating that people aren't going to see through your transparent motives is the one worst mistake you can make as an artist who is supposed to respect their fans. That was my argument." (p. 224)
That 'young lady' makes my skin crawl as it assumes a difference in power due to age and gender. It infantilizes a legal adult who had proven her worth, her skill, and her grasp of the industry for the past four albums. It also reminds of her comment about pitching 'Our Song' to Big Machine and its response: "Now, you can't just make all of your decisions about a very serious thing like an album based on if your high school friends like it or not."
Overall, this interview reveals two major themes of conflict that shaped the making of 1989 and its subsequent era: the theme of artistic intuition against marketing know-it-alls, and implicitly, the theme of dismissing a woman because of her gender and youth; dismissing her love for a genre associated with women, feminine expression, and with being beloved by teenage girls.
In other interviews, Swift referenced conflict with Big Machine because Borchetta disagreed on her goal for 'sonic cohesiveness' and because the label had differing views on how to market the album. Rolling Stone reported, "When she first turned in the record, she says the head of her label, Scott Borchetta, told her, 'This is extraordinary – it's the best album you've ever done. Can you just give me three country songs?'" The label wanted a pop album with country window dressings so they could promote 1989 to Swift's two primary genres.
Borchetta's request for three country songs is reminiscent of restricting Swift to three songs with Martin, that is to say restricting her to only three pure pop songs, except in the reverse direction. From an outsider's perspective, these obsessions with song count in terms of genre come across as cheap attempts to appeal to the country community, ignoring the fact that country purists had issues with Swift since she released her debut album and that Swift's core audience always accepted her musical experiments. Borchetta was willing to sacrifice an album's body for tracklist scoring, ignoring that RED saw some of its biggest radio and cultural success with its pop singles.
Swift subsequently denounced these ideas as inauthentic and hollow. For example, she told Billboard in late 2014: "[I]t felt disingenuous to try to exploit two genres when your album falls in only one. I never want to pull the wool over people's eyes, because people are so much smarter than a lot of marketing professionals give them credit for." Authenticity between Swift and her fans remains a core part of that relationship in her life, and it has come up repeatedly the past year-and-a-half as Swift has publicly fought Big Machine, Borchetta, and Scooter Braun over their distortions of her legacy.
Unsurprisingly, in 2014, Swift also took on Spotify and the dangers of streaming multiple times, and the following year, she called out Apple Music for its potential harm to creators with its new subscription plan. Swift may be a good businesswoman, who knows how to market her work, but at the end of the day, she is a creator who strives to better her industry for those less privileged than her. Because of Big Machine, she knew all too well the importance of ensuring protections for creators from the greed of business heads.
In addition, misogyny permeates both the communities of country and pop music, though in different ways. With country music, critics questioned Swift's value to the genre because she had pop and rock elements from her debut album and because she wrote from a teenager's perspective, even downplaying her skills as a songwriter to the point that she wrote Speak Now alone to prove she didn't just twiddle her thumbs in songwriting sessions. People often dismiss pop music for being silly, lacking depth, and for its glitziness as if glitter equals shallow. In terms of the gender politics at Big Machine, it's hard to rule out the associations with pop music, its historic derision because of its predominantly female fan bases and female artists. But Swift still found herself resonating with pop music, as she spent more than a year working on making 1989 without fully realizing that she had been making '80s synth-pop music.
In her 2015 ELLE interview, she cites the night that she lost the Grammy for 'Album of the Year' for RED as the turning point in making 1989. That night in early 2014 included four of her friends checking in on Swift and Swift then requesting them to come over as she needed the company. These friends also happened to be her backup singers, a female quarter known as The Starlights, who have continued to tour and perform with Swift until the pandemic. Swift played for them one of her new songs, and The Starlights pointed out the "'80s sounds" on the song. That input helped Swift to realize the direction of her music and hardened her resolve to keep running with this genre she had been simmering in throughout 2013 (p. 196). As she recounted in the Grammy Listening Sessions: "I went to bed and I woke up at four in the morning like, 'It's called 1989. I've been making '80s pop, I'm just gonna do that. I'm calling it a pop record. I am not listening to anyone at my record label. I'm starting tomorrow."
In the same breath, Swift also mentioned that, "I got not a few, I got like a dozen sit-downs over the music that I made for this album[.]"
With all of that in mind, the 1989 era saw Swift embracing the feminist label, explaining feminism when asked about it on talk shows, and uplifting various women in her industry, reveling in the profound love she had discovered when she found sisterhood. Swift asserted how important women were to her making 1989 when she accepted 'Female Artist of the Year' at the 2016 iHeartRadio Awards:
"And the decision to make a pop album was not made in a conference room at a record label. Those decisions were made in my kitchen, with my girlfriends, and the women in my life. And so, I want to thank my friends, you guys were always there when I had questions, 'Do you like this song? Is this the right direction to go in?' They were the ones who reinforced me and said, 'You're doing the right thing, always follow that.'"
From this statement, it's fair to infer that one reason Swift felt so assured in her instincts and so assured to stand up to Big Machine and its dozen sit-downs was because of her supportive friendships. Swift has described this period in her life as the first time she had many close female friends, having finally broken away from that awkward, bullied girl she had been in childhood.
1989 as an album, when considering the circumstances of its birth, marks Swift's first deliberate steps into the politics of labor rights and feminist empowerment. And that step partially came from her putting her foot down on three country songs.
Shake It Off's Genre Purity:
Relatedly, Borchetta wanted Swift to alter the sound for work she already completed when she showed him 1989. In a different interview where she mentioned that Borchetta requested three country songs, she added that he said, "Can we put a fiddle on 'Shake it Off'?". So not only did Borchetta want her to diversify her genres in order to appeal to two markets, he wanted to dilute the genre of her pop songs. Knowing this, I wonder if his focus on appealing to country listeners might have affected the instrumentation on her RED pop songs. 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' and '22' both had country twang in her vocalizations and were driven by acoustic guitar. Did Swift have to limit her exploration of pop music not only with individual songs but also with specific instruments while making RED? We can't know as of right now, but it's something that journalists should consider after Swift releases her re-recorded material. Journalists need to start reviewing Swift's history with Big Machine now since Swifties like me don't have the in to ask her these questions from deep in her history.
Framing 1989's Cover As Ambiguous:
Finally, instead of talking about her music, here I will talk about the time Swift and Big Machine fought over the visual presentation of her pop music. For the most part, the visuals of the 1989 era included a specific aesthetic of red lipstick, crop tops, skirts, and high heels and a carefully curated bob, the whole presentation reminiscent of Madonna's 'Like a Virgin' music video. But the album cover instead has Swift in a sweater covered in seagulls, the upper half of her face cut off, and nothing visible below the shirt. Her then-new haircut can barely be seen as she tied it back. The framing prevents people from seeing Swift's body and almost androgynizes her, besides the lipstick and slight appearance of her breasts beneath the shirt. Overall, this album cover dissuades people from pressing a male gaze on Swift, who had been struggling with slutshaming over the preceding two years as well as scrutiny over her body her entire career. She also refrained from putting her name on the cover, instead using handwritten initials, almost refuting the celebrity persona that had been forced onto her. Everyone knew 'Taylor Swift' via headlines so with this cover Swift went back to basics: her initials and her birth year, written in her hand and not by a judgemental person with a keyboard.
Because Swift sidestepped the trappings of celebrity image and female objectification for this cover, Big Machine assumed a parental role, with Swift recounting being 'lectured' to for ELLE in that same 2015 interview:
"I got really, really lectured about not putting my name on the title on the front of the album cover—that was fun. And then it was suggested to me that we use a different picture for the album cover because, they kept saying, "We need eyes, lips, hair on an album cover. You know no one's going to know who this is." And I was like, "That's the point. We're starting over." Also, the reason I didn't put my full face on the cover is because I didn't want people to be able to diagnose the emotional DNA of this album before it came out. If I'm smiling, it's a happy record; if I'm frowning, it's a sad record. I wanted people to be able to detect no emotion on my face. It was just taken on this '80s Polaroid camera that I have."
Glimmers of Swift's reasoning for this design appear throughout several of her album covers before and after 1989. With RED she looks downward, her face shadowed, obscuring her expression. That album explores the numerous emotions she felt as a young woman having gotten out of a toxic relationship. Similarly, 1989 deals with Swift processing an unstable relationship while in the public eye. The echoes between these two album covers further make sense as Swift used photographer Sarah Barlow for both RED and 1989.
And none of her albums since Lover have included her name on the front, and starting with folklore, she has abandoned putting a title on the cover altogether. Swift has been redefining and re-understanding herself with each album, and with Lover, she has decided that love and writing define her. For the folklore cover, she practically hides amongst the trees in the backdrop, and for the evermore cover, Swift can only be seen from the back, facing towards the folklorian woods. Swift has given up the pop spectacle and her attempts to win the public's adoration like she tried during the 1989 era.
With the benefit of hindsight, Swift clearly shattered Big Machine's expectations, as 1989 went on to become one of the most significant albums of the past decade. And the album cover's mystique made it ideal for the Internet's memetic nature. In 2015, Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy even attributed some of the camera's rise in sales and popularity to Swift's album cover and subsequent marketing, as deluxe versions of the album included Polaroid pictures.
It turns out an artist doesn't always need to sell her image — compressed into a face and a body — in order to capture the public's interest.
An Unfortunate Possible Addition?:
I promised nine examples of Big Machine interfering with Swift's artistry, but I am including this tenth case, as I believe that it falls into the same category as everything else. I just don't have confirmation via a direct reference to Scott Borchetta or to Big Machine.
While doing research for a separate Swiftian idea, I discovered a reference to Swift struggling to release 'Love Story'. That tidbit jolted me into a deep dive, as I had no memory of such a thing being discussed in the fandom. Some Googling led me to an interview she did for 60 Minutes in late November 2011:
"Taylor Swift: I had to fight for that song. Because when I first played it for, you know, my family, and a few people — they were just sort of like, ['Hmmm'].
[Interviewer]: But you believed in it. You trust yourself.
Taylor Swift: Yeah, it's almost more fun that way when — when you have something to prove."
Swift never alludes directly to her label, but I believe that those "few people" include Scott Borchetta. As I mentioned earlier, Swift tended to play new material for him throughout the album-making process. There also exists a long gap between when she wrote 'Love Story' and when she recorded it that seems contradictory when considering her recording timeline. While Swift has sometimes put songs on hold, leaving some unrecorded for years, as a rule she tends to record not long after finishing a song. And this rule applies doubly so to songs that strike her as especially important, as 'Love Story' did.
In a 2009 interview with Country Weekly, Swift mentioned that she wrote 'Love Story' a few weeks before she wrote 'White Horse' (p. 21). The second edition of the Lover diaries revealed that Swift wrote 'White Horse' sometime in December 2006, so she likely wrote 'Love Story' in mid-autumn that same year. She would not record 'Love Story' until March 2008, something that she characterized as being "very, very last minute" in the album-making process. From what we know about Swift's release history, especially regarding her lead singles and her assuredness in her instincts for choosing them, her comment from 60 Minutes indicates that the "fight" for 'Love Story' included professional hurdles. And that even being possible just boggles my mind because 'Love Story', like its predecessor 'Our Song', breathed life into the storytelling element of country music. I still remember how I felt when I first listened to that song, the exhilaration and adoration for Swift's creative spin on the Shakespeare tragedy. The song encapsulates in so many ways why Swift is the successful musician that she is today and had the potential to be since she released her debut single.
The trajectory of Swift's career cannot be understood without 'Love Story' as that song propelled her onto the international stage. Since its release in 2008, the song has gone to become number one in country and pop radio, as well as becoming one of the best-selling singles of all time. It is one of the definitive songs of the late 2000s. If we almost missed out on it, then I wonder what other potentially great songs never left the Big Machine vault.
With all of that in mind, I am even more excited and intrigued to hear Swift's re-record albums, preparing myself for surprises that will have me reevaluating music I've known by heart for years. It's time for Taylor Swift's first six albums to begin again!
Images courtesy of Taylor Swift, Big Machine Records, and Film Magic
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Taylor is a writer who will always jump at the chance to blur genres. So obviously she can't pick just one to fangirl over. Though if she had to choose, she would narrow it down to science fiction and fantasy. Currently, she is most interested in women-centric stories and the depiction of trauma in media. She is also an aspiring YA novelist and aspiring Taylor Swift scholar.
In this article:big machine records,Featured,Music,Taylor Swift
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List of illustrations; 1. Record of the eleventh conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, at Arizona State University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 4-9 August 2003; 2. London and Droitwich, c. 650-750: trade, industry and the rise of Mercia J. R. Maddicott; 3. The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent Joanna Story; 4. Bede's uera lex historiae explained Walter Goffart; 5. Orientalist fantasy in the poetic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn Kathryn Powell; 6. Verses quite like cwen to gebeddan in The Metres of Boethius M. S. Griffith; 7. Fragments of Boethius: the reconstruction of the Cotton manuscript of the Alfredian text Susan Irvine; 8. A reassessment of the efficacy of Anglo-Saxon medicine Barbara Brennessel, Michael D. C. Drout and Robyn Gravel; 9. Virgin spouses as model Christians: the legend of Julian and Basilissa in 'lfric's Lives of Saints Robert K. Upchurch; 10. Frithegod of Canterbury's Maundy Thursday hymn Rosalind C. Love; 11. Squawk talk: commentary by the birds in the Bayeux Tapestry? Gale R. Owen-Crocker; 12. The Bury Psalter and the descendants of Edward the Exile Rebecca Rushforth; 13. Bibliography for 2004 Paul G. Remley, Carole P. Biggam, Debby Banham, Mark Blackburn, Carole Hough, Simon Keynes and Rebecca Rushforth.


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