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Will Censorship Prevail Over The First Amendment?

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | February 18, 2020

I remember when censorship in America was a limited phemonenon. It applied during war time—“loose lips sink ships.” It applied to pornography. It applied to curse words on the public airwaves and in movies.  It applied to violence in movies. There could be violence, but not the level that has become common.

Today censorship is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. In the United States censorship is both imposed from above and flows from the bottom up. Censorship is imposed from above by, for example, TV and print media, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and by laws in 28 states prohibiting criticism and participation in boycotts of Israel and by President Trump’s executive order preventing federal funding of educational institutions that permit criticisms of Israel. Censorship flows from the bottom up by, for example, people of protected races, genders, and sexual preference claiming to be offended.

The ubiquitous censorship that today is characteristic of the United States has shut down comedians. It has shut down criticism of non-whites, homosexuals, transgendered, feminists, and Israel. Official explanations are shielded by labeling skeptics “conspiracy theorists.” The ubiquitous censorship in the United States is an extraordinary development as the US Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and a free press.

We owe journalist Abby Martin appreciation for reminding us of our right to free speech. Abby is suing the state of Georgia, one of 28 states that have violated the Constitutional protection of free speech.

Abby was scheduleded to give the keynote speech at a conference at Georgia Southern Univeristy. She discovered that in order to speak publicly at a Georgia college she had to sign a pledge of allegiance not to criticize Israel. Her refusal to sign resulted in the conference being cancelled.

Here we have the state of Georgia blocking free speech because it will not support the Israeli position on Palestine. See: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/no_author/journalist-abby-martin-sues-state-of-georgia-over-law-requiring-pledge-of-allegiance-to-israel/ .  Also:  https://www.timesofisrael.com/filmmaker-who-wouldnt-sign-georgias-oath-not-to-boycott-israel-sues-us-state/

Think about this for a moment. More than half of the 50 states that comprise the United States have passed laws that are clear violations of the US Constitution. Moreover, these 28 states have imposed censorship in behalf of a foreign country. Americans have gags stuck in their mouths because 28 state governments put the interest of Israel higher than the First Amendment of the US Constitution. When government itself is opposed to free speech, what becomes of democracy and accountable government?

Why would 28 states legislate against the US Constitution? One explanation is that the state governments were bought by the Israel Lobby with money under the table, by promises of political campaign donations, or by threats of financing rival candidates. How else do we explain 28 state governments imposing censorship in behalf of a foreign country?

Abby Martin is one person who will not stand for it. She has brought a lawsuit that—if the US Supreme Court is still a protector of the First Amendment—will result in the 28 state laws and Trump’s executive order being overturned. The protection of Israel against boycotts parallels state laws passed in the 1950s that prevented Martin Luther King’s movement from boycotting businesses that practiced racial segregation. These laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.

The outcome of Abby Martin’s suit will tell us whether the US Constitution is still a living document.

February 19, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Compliance 101: Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | February 18, 2020

Just when you thought the government couldn’t get any more tone-deaf about civil liberties and the growing need to protect “we the people” against an overreaching, overbearing police state, the Trump Administration ushers in even more strident zero tolerance policies that treat children like suspects and criminals, greater numbers of school cops, and all the trappings of a prison complex (unsurmountable fences, entrapment areas, no windows or trees, etc.).

The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

For example, in Florida, a cop assigned to River Ridge High School as a school resource officer, threatened to shoot a student attempting to leave school for a morning orthodontist appointment.

In Pennsylvania, school officials called in the cops after a 6-year-old with Down syndrome pointed a finger gun at her teacher.

In Kentucky, a school resource officer with the sheriff’s office handcuffed two elementary school children with disabilities, ages 8 and 9. A federal judge made the sheriff’s office pay more than $300,000 (of taxpayer money) to the families, ruling that the handcuffing of  the students “was an unconstitutional seizure and excessive force.”

Welcome to Compliance 101: the police state’s primer in how to churn out compliant citizens and transform the nation’s school’s into quasi-prisons through the use of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

If you were wondering, these police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

Rather, they’ve turned the schools into authoritarian microcosms of the police state, containing almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

Two years after President Trump announced his intention to “harden” the schools, our nation’s children are reaping the ill effects of gun-toting, taser-wielding cops in government-run schools that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to prisons.

America’s schools are about as authoritarian as they come.

Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

In my day, if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school.

That is no longer the case.

Nowadays, students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Increasing the number of cops in the schools only adds to the problem.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SRO) have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

The horror stories are legion.

One SRO was accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line.

That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury.

In Pennsylvania, a student was tasered after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

When 13-year-old Kevens Jean Baptiste failed to follow a school bus driver’s direction to keep the bus windows closed (Kevens, who suffers from asthma, opened the window after a fellow student sprayed perfume, causing him to cough and wheeze), he was handcuffed by police, removed from the bus, and while still handcuffed, had his legs swept out from under him by an officer, causing him to crash to the ground.

Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

For starters, parents need to be vocal, visible and organized and demand that school officials 1) adopt a policy of positive reinforcement in dealing with behavior issues; 2) minimize the presence in the schools of police officers and cease involving them in student discipline; and 3) insist that all behavioral issues be addressed first and foremost with a child’s parents, before any other disciplinary tactics are attempted.

If you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state penitentiary.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.

February 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

The Death Of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On “What Discourse Should Be Allowed”

By Jonathon Turley | February 17, 2020

I have written for years on the effort of European countries to expand their crackdown on free speech globally through restrictions on social media and Internet speech. It appears that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has relented in what may prove the death knell for free speech in the West. Zuckerberg seems to relent in asking governments for regulations stipulating what speech will be permitted on Facebook and other platforms. It is the ultimate victory of France, Germany, and England in their continuing attack on free expression though hate speech laws and speech regulation.

Zuckerberg told an assembly of Western leaders Saturday at the Munich Security Conference that “There should be more guidance and regulation from the states on basically — take political advertising as an example — what discourse should be allowed?” He did add: “Or, on the balance of free expression and some things that people call harmful expression, where do you draw the line?” The problem is that his comments were received as accepting that government will now dictate the range of free speech. What is missing is the bright line rule long maintained by the free speech community.

As tragically demonstrated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, speech regulations inevitably expand with time. The desire to silence one’s critics becomes insatiable for both governments and individuals.

Zuckerberg is facing great pressure, including from Democratic leaders in the United States, to regulate political speech and he seems to be moving away from the bright-line position against such regulation as a principle. Instead, he is accepting the fluid concept of “balanced” regulations that has always preceded expanding speech codes and criminalization:

“There are a lot of decisions in these areas that are really just balances between different social values. It’s about coming up with an answer that society feels is legitimate and that they can get behind and understand that you drew the line here on the balance of free expression and safety. It’s not just that there’s one right answer. People need to feel like, ‘OK, enough people weighed in, and that’s why the answer should be this, and we can get behind that.’”

 

February 17, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Repeat of Iowa caucus looms in Nevada as problems are illuminated (& ignored)

By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 17, 2020

The same issues that led to the Democratic debacle in Iowa earlier this month are poised to make next week’s vote in Nevada equally hellish – yet party leaders seem unwilling to connect the dots or recognize the problem.

Early voters in Nevada have already faced long lines, technical difficulties, and monumental uncertainty about the voting process with voting underway since Saturday due to close Tuesday before the general caucus this coming Saturday.

We’ve seen this movie before

The slow-motion car-crash caucus volunteers have sketched out in their heads bears a strong resemblance to the events of Iowa. They’re willing to discuss it in interviews with the media, but always anonymously, for fear of angering what is apparently a vengeful party. But the Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez and his state-level minions insist all is well.

The off-the-shelf Google forms that were quickly substituted for the buggy app that killed the Iowa caucus have already malfunctioned at some early voting sites, leaving some Nevadans waiting for three or four hours trying to vote. Meanwhile, no one seems to be on the same page regarding how the results from 80 early voting sites will be distributed among the 2,000 precincts where caucuses are to be held. Local politician Dan Rolle discovered the paper ballots used for early voting lacked precinct numbers, seemingly guaranteeing the party would be unable to count those votes and distribute them to the proper precinct by Saturday.

Some volunteers have reportedly received no training in using their DNC-purchased iPads, which they are supposed to use to scan the paper ballots marked up by early voters. A web-based Google app that has been dubbed the “Caucus Calculator” is supposed to divvy these up and send them around to the precincts for caucus day – wrinkles pointed out by Rolle notwithstanding. Caucus site leader Seth Morrison warned that volunteers were using an “untested software tool,” advising CNN viewers in Nevada to vote early because the volunteers had “never seen or handled” the tool being prepared for Saturday’s caucus. Perez seemed more concerned that a CNN reporter had called the “online tool” an “app” than he was to learn that volunteers didn’t know how to use it. At the same time, Rolle observed that the tool wasn’t being used at all.

One presidential aide suggested to the Washington Post that Nevada Democrats were “making it up as they go along” in their belated rush to conjure up a technological solution to replace the Shadow app. As an added wrinkle, Nevada was supposed to use two versions of the app, which was notoriously built by former Hillary Clinton staffers with money from the Pete Buttigieg campaign – one to tabulate the early votes, and another for the caucus.

Keeping everyone in the loop regarding replacement processes has proved difficult, with multiple campaigns’ aides complaining that notice of a critical conference call nearly passed them by. One aide was unable to join in at all because he was in the middle of a training session. Another update on process reportedly made it to journalists before the party distributed it to all the campaigns.

‘Trust us, we’re experts’

The party has reportedly brought in “security experts” to troubleshoot early voting issues, though this is hardly encouraging given the prevalence of DNC insiders among these so-called experts. The replacement process for the Shadow app was reportedly designed with input from the Department of Homeland Security, the DNC, and Google, and Nevada Democratic Party executive director Alana Mounce insisted the party was “confident in our backup plans and redundancies” in a memo to the campaigns on Thursday.

Nevada Democrats have done their best to squelch rumors that the contest is rigged, explaining that former Buttigieg staffer Emily Goldman, hired earlier this month as “voter protection director” for the party, will not have the ability to affect the caucus outcome. And the progressive watchdogs have moved on to Utah, where the state party chair has a history of virulently attacking Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders leads the pack of Democratic contenders in Nevada, according to RealClearPolitics, with former vice president Joe Biden trailing by three points. Buttigieg, the beneficiary of the Iowa mess, lags behind even billionaire Tom Steyer. Sanders emerged the victor from the New Hampshire primary, though media coverage mystifyingly focused on the second-place finish of Buttigieg and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar – even talking up New York plutocrat Michael Bloomberg, who wasn’t on the ballot in that state, rather than discuss the democratic socialist’s triumph.

February 17, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Bolivia: An election in the midst of an ongoing coup

By Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter | February 12, 2020

On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more. They return there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 2019. Morales had just won a presidential election in October for a term that would have begun in January 2020. Based on a preliminary investigation by the Organization of American States (OAS) that claimed that there was fraud in the election, Morales was prematurely removed from office; the term for his 2014 presidential election victory did not end until January. Yet, he was told by the military to leave office. An interim president—Jeanine Áñez—appointed herself. She said she was taking this office only on an interim basis and would not run for election when Bolivia held another election. She is a candidate for the May 3 election. (For more information on what is happening in Bolivia, see this overview from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.)

Meanwhile, Morales has been in exile in Argentina. His party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—has candidates for the presidency and the vice presidency, but their party cadres and followers are facing a difficult time making their case to the people. Their radio stations have been blocked, their leaders arrested or exiled (or sitting in foreign embassies waiting for asylum), their cadre beaten up and intimidated.

The United Nations secretary-general’s personal envoy Jean Arnault released a statement on February 3 that expressed caution about the elections. The situation in Bolivia, Arnault said, is “characterized by an exacerbated polarization and mixed feelings of hope, but also of uncertainty, restlessness and resentment after the serious political and social crisis of last year.” This careful language of the UN needs to be looked at closely. When Arnault says there is “exacerbated polarization,” he means that the situation is extremely tense. When he asks that the interim government “outlaw hate speech and direct or indirect incitement to violence or discrimination,” he means that the government and its far-right followers need to be very careful about what they say and how much violence they use in this election.

On February 6, Morales spoke in Buenos Aires, where he urged an end to the violence so that the election could bring the fractured country together. He called for a national agreement between all sides to end the dangerous situation. In a pointed way, Morales called upon the government to respect diversity, noting that people wearing distinct clothes and wearing the signs of a certain political party were facing intimidation and violence. He meant the indigenous population of Bolivia, and the supporters of MAS; it is widely accepted that the violence has been coming from the far right’s paramilitary shock troops, and the intimidation has been coming from the government.

For instance, the Bolivian authorities have been routinely charging MAS leaders with sedition, terrorism, and incitement to violence. Morales faced these charges, along with dozens of important MAS leaders, most recently Gustavo Torrico who has been arrested. Matters are so bad that the UN’s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Diego García-Sayán, took to Twitter to express his concern at the “use of judicial and fiscal institutions for the purpose of political persecution. The number of illegal detentions grows.” This has not stopped Áñez, who says she will move her government to investigate at least 592 people who held high office in Morales’ 14 years in government. This means that the entirety of the MAS leadership will likely face harassment between now and the May 3 election.

U.S. Interference

In 2013, Morales expelled the U.S. government agency USAID; he accused USAID of working to undermine his elected government. Before that, Morales, as is his constitutional right, informed Salvador Romero—the head of the election agency (TSE)—that when his term ended in 2008, he would not be retained. This is a normal practice.

Romero went to the U.S. Embassy to complain. He met with U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg to complain about this and urged the U.S. to do something. It was clear that Romero and Goldberg knew each other well. When Romero left his post at the TSE, the U.S. establishment took care of him. He went to work at the National Democratic Institute in Honduras. The National Democratic Institute, based in Washington, is loosely affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party, and is part of the universe that includes the National Endowment for Democracy. These are all U.S. government-funded agencies that operate overseas to “oversee” what is known as “democracy promotion,” including elections.

Romero essentially worked for the U.S. government in Honduras during the first election after the U.S.-instigated coup of 2009. During this election in 2013, violence against the supporters of Xiomara Castro, the candidate of the left-wing Libre Party, was routine. The day before the election, for instance, two leaders of the National Center of Farmworkers (CNTC)—María Amparo Pineda Duarte and Julio Ramón Maradiaga—were killed as they returned home from a training for Libre election workers. This was the atmosphere of this very tight election, which returned to power the U.S.-backed conservative candidate Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party. Romero, at that time, was quite pleased with the results. He told the New York Times then that “despite ‘the general perception of fraud,’” the election was just fine.

Right after the coup in November, Áñez brought Romero back to La Paz as the head of the election court, the TSE. He has his old job back. This would have made Bruce Williamson, the U.S. charge d’affaires to Bolivia, very happy. The U.S. has its man at the helm of the May 3 election in Bolivia.

And then Trump said he is sending USAID to Bolivia to help prepare the ground for the election. On January 9, the USAID team arrived to “give technical aid to the electoral process in Bolivia.” Technical aid. The phrase should give a reasonable person pause.

Ten days later, Trump’s legal adviser Mauricio Claver-Carone arrived in La Paz and gave a series of interviews in which he accused Morales of terrorism and creating instability. This was a direct attack at MAS and interference with Bolivia’s electoral process.

If the U.S. intervenes in Bolivia, that is just “democracy promotion.”

But even with the violence from the government and its fascistic paramilitaries, even with Romero at the helm of the TSE, even with USAID on the ground, and even with the shenanigans of Claver-Carone, MAS is fighting to win. The candidates for MAS are Luis Arce Catacora (president) and David Choquehuanca Céspedes (vice president). Catacora was the minister of economy and public finance under Morales and the architect of the administration’s economic success. Céspedes was the foreign minister in that government. He managed Bolivia’s policy of international sovereignty and is an important person to Bolivia’s indigenous and peasant movements. Early polls show that the MAS ticket is in first place.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet and BirGün.

February 16, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Andrew McCabe’s case shows hypocrisy of Democrats claiming ‘No one is above the law’

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 15, 2020

After months of hearing that President Donald Trump must be impeached because “no one is above the law,” America found out that this talking point doesn’t actually apply to Democrats such as ex-FBI deputy director Andy McCabe.

As his lawyers triumphantly announced on Friday, the Department of Justice decided not to press criminal charges against McCabe “after careful consideration” of the inspector-general’s report that said he lied to investigators and leaked to the media.

“Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed,” said the DOJ letter. It sent waves of glee through the ‘Resistance’ establishment, which set up and propagated for years the ‘Russiagate’ hysteria aimed at removing Trump from office.

One of the people who cheered “Andy” was Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer who famously discussed an “insurance policy” in case Trump gets elected in McCabe’s office with agent Peter Strzok, with whom she was carrying on an extramarital affair. Strzok, Page and McCabe’s fingerprints are all over the FISA scandal – in which the FBI spied on Trump’s campaign, fishing for dirt to tie him to Russia.

Though he was fired from the FBI, McCabe was hired by CNN back in August, joining former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – two other ‘Russiagate’ pushers – in the lucrative land of political punditry.

In fact, precisely zero people involved with setting up and conducting the three-year “witch hunt” of Trump – unprecedented in the history of the American republic, by any measure – have suffered any adverse consequences for it. Even Michael Avenatti – the sleazy lawyer who has apparently defrauded and embezzled multiple clients in pursuit of political ambition – has only been convicted of attempting to extort Nike, rather than, say, lying to the Senate during the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh.

Compare that to how anyone even remotely associated with Trump has been treated by the long arm of the law. Former campaign manager Paul Manafort was imprisoned over matters entirely unrelated to the 2016 election. Trump’s first national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, was fired after just two weeks on the job and bullied into pleading guilty for “lying to FBI agents” (one of whom turned out to be Strzok) – which he is now contesting. Campaign aide George Papadopoulos went to jail because he made a remark about Hillary Clinton’s private email server that was used to claim Trump was “colluding” with Russia. Political operative Roger Stone is currently facing the possibility of dying in prison for tripping into a perjury trap.

Trump has done little or nothing to help any of his former staff or associates. Admittedly, Democrats and the media both shrieked “abuse of power” when he merely tweeted about Stone’s proposed sentence being too harsh – showing once again that it’s never about the what, only about the who/whom.

Having come to Washington on a promise to “drain the swamp,” Trump has instead meekly submitted to the very same swamp’s endless lawfare. Yet that kind of restraint has not stopped his critics from declaring him a fascist, tyrant and dictator. In fact, the more he let them off the hook, the more they shrieked about how he seeks to subvert justice!

The case of Andrew McCabe – and his boss Jim Comey before him – is the perfect illustration that there are people effectively above the law. That there are in fact two sets of laws in America: one for Trump’s enemies, who have gotten away with a coup, and another for the “deplorables” who got punished for supporting him.

Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. There is a point at which restraint turns into stupid magnanimity.

On more than one occasion, Trump has used ‘Game of Thrones’ memes. If he actually watched the show from the beginning, he might remember that Ned Stark’s naivete about the impartiality of King’s Landing law enforcement ended with his head on a pike outside the Red Keep.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

February 15, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia launches new campaign of arrests against Palestinian expats

MEMO | February 14, 2020

Saudi Arabia has launched a new campaign of arbitrary arrests against several Palestinian expatriates living in the kingdom for supporting the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas.

The Prisoners of Conscience Twitter account which monitors the conditions of prisoners in Saudi Arabia said it has received “confirmed information” that the Saudi authorities have launched a new campaign of arbitrary arrests against Palestinian ex-pats. It adds that a number of the Palestinians targeted in the new campaign are relatives or sons of Palestinians who had been arrested during the first campaign in April, last year for the same reason.

In April, last year the Saudi authorities launched a campaign of arrests against Palestinian ex-pats including a senior leader in Hamas movement, Muhammad al-Khudari, 81, and his eldest son Hani.

The Twitter account defended the Palestinian detainees saying that supporting the (Palestinian) resistance is not a crime that requires arrests and demanded the Saudi authorities “to immediately release all detainees from the last campaign, and stop the trials of those detained last year which will begin early next month”.

Earlier this month, the Twitter account said the Saudi prosecution accuses the Palestinian detainees of illegally transferring funds (to the Palestinian resistance factions) and establishing unlicensed organisations to defend Palestinian and Jordanian detainees in the kingdom.

The Palestinian detainees will be tried before the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court on March 8.

On September 6, 2019, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Saudi Arabia is forcibly hiding 60 Palestinians.

February 14, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel prosecutes leaders from Golan for opposing wind turbines

MEMO | February 13, 2020

The Israeli Magistrates Court in Nazareth held trial Tuesday evening of well-respected leaders from the occupied Golan, who opposed the Israeli project to install wind turbines to produce energy over large areas, estimated at thousands of dunums of the Golan lands.

Hundreds of people from the villages of the occupied Golan headed to the Israeli Magistrate Court to support the prosecuted leaders.

Sheikh Fouad Qassem Al-Shaer, from Majdal Shams village, said: “There are foul intentions behind the trial of the Sheikhs and leaders, who opposed a project that is going to affect more than 300 farmers in the villages of Golan. The project is going seize about 4,500 dunums of agricultural land.”

Al-Shaer stressed that “countering the project will be possible through raising awareness of the risks of this settlement project, which claims the implementation of green energy production, and its impact on the lives of people.”

In this context, Emil Masoud, coordinator of the solidarity campaign with Sheikh Salman Ahmed Awad and Tawfiq Kinj Abu Saleh, said that they were brought to trial without committing any violation, except for opposing to the wind power project.

Masoud, from Masade village, asserted: “The aim of this trial is to intimidate and scare people, so that the company can implement 25 turbines, to be built on an area of 4,316 dunums as a first stage.”

After hearing the allegations of the parties, the court asked them to sit together to reach a settlement or an agreement.

February 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Are DNC insiders weaponizing ‘election security’ to seize control of 2020 primaries?

By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 12, 2020

Google and a dodgy “election security” nonprofit are reaching out to Democratic campaigns with free security tools, even offering to activate them. After the Iowa debacle, campaigns should be wary of DNC insiders bearing gifts.

Election security nonprofit Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) has partnered with Google to offer free Titan security keys to Democratic presidential campaigns. Not only will these benevolent guardians of the democratic process let the candidates have the keys, part of Google’s Advanced Protection security program, free of charge – they’ll even install and activate the new security systems themselves! What could go wrong?

Candidates would be wise to think twice about accepting the seemingly-generous offer, or any other “free election security” bait, especially after the disaster of the Iowa caucuses. That vote collapsed not because of a foreign hack, but because Shadow Inc., an organization staffed almost entirely by former Hillary Clinton operatives, sold Iowa Democrats a difficult-to-use app that mangled vote counts. While Shadow was supposedly “vetted for cybersecurity and technical considerations” by “third-party experts,” many of the security “experts” peddling their services to the Democrats are veterans of the same Clinton and Obama campaigns as Shadow’s staff. And of course the 2020 Democratic National Committee, which insisted Iowa use an app to report results instead of calling them in by phone for security reasons, is positively bristling with insiders left over from 2016.

Defending Digital Democracy, the “security experts” Iowa Democrats were already paying to train volunteers in electoral “worst case scenarios,” is – unsurprisingly, given the name – run by the same Clinton and Romney staffers who sit on Defending Digital Campaigns’ board, Robby Mook and Matt Rhoades. Founded by former Obama Pentagon Chief of Staff Eric Rosenbach and advised by top Clinton lawyer Marc Elias, DDD has been “protecting” elections with the help of CrowdStrike founder (and Russiagate Patient Zero) Dmitri Alperovich since 2017. The Fear of Russian Meddling industry appears to be one big happy family, none of whom, it seems, have ever heard of paper ballots – one sure-fire way to avoid outside interference in an election.

The links between the various groups are extensive and complex enough to fill several articles, but looking at their financial backers is instructive. Shadow and DDC were both bankrolled by LinkedIn co-founders – Reid Hoffman provided the startup capital for Shadow’s parent corporation Acronym, while DDC’s treasurer and largest donor is Allen Blue. Hoffman also provided the financing for “disinformation experts” New Knowledge’s phony Russian bot operation in Alabama in 2017, which – if its own numbers are to be believed – handed the traditionally-red state’s open Senate seat to Democrat Doug Jones by weaponizing fear of Russian meddling.

There’s no stronger proof that all this “election security” talk is mere pageantry than in the DNC’s appointment of former Clinton campaign director John Podesta to the 2020 convention’s Rules Committee. Podesta has no business being anywhere near election security – it was his inability to recognize “phishing” that led to the Clinton campaign’s emails being spread all over the internet by Wikileaks in the runup to the 2016 election. Podesta, like Mook, has been aggressively pushing the threat of Russian election interference ever since, absent a shred of proof that the dreaded “meddling” is coming from anywhere but inside the country.

Some naive individuals might question whether party insiders would really try to steal another primary after the catastrophe of 2016 handed Trump his victory. But those responsible for that trainwreck were never punished, defending themselves in court with the rationale that party bylaws allowed them to pick candidates in smoke-filled rooms should they so desire. Moreover, nothing has come of the revelation former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign paid $40,000 to Shadow before the company’s app nearly handed him victory in Iowa, or that parent company Acronym’s CEO is happily married to a Buttigieg staffer. Worse, last week it emerged that Buttigieg staffer Emily Goldman has signed on to the Nevada Democratic Party as “voter protection director” – a full-time position – now that Nevada has dropped the Shadow app for its own caucus.

Yet calls for DNC chair Tom Perez to resign, motivated by all these scandals and more, have fallen on deaf ears. Knowledge of the metastasizing conflicts of interest within the party has merely circulated on social media to the point where few in its progressive wing believe a fair election is possible. Inviting Google – which was 100 percent in the bag for Clinton in 2016, according to whistleblowers and researchers alike – and yet another Russia-obsessed, insider-heavy “election security” group to install free “protection” in one’s campaign infrastructure is inviting the local foxes to install security for one’s shiny new henhouse. Unless a candidate is secure in being the establishment’s pick, they would be wise to leave this Trojan horse outside the gates.

February 12, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

UK Will Make Facebook Responsible for Harmful Content as Ofcom is Set to Have More Powers – Report

Sputnik – February 12, 2020

Facebook and some other social media companies have recently come under fire for failing to remove allegedly misleading and harmful content from their platforms. Now, British regulatory authority Ofcom is reportedly set to be given a role in policing social media companies.

Britain’s media watchdog Ofcom will have more power in regulating social media companies in the UK, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Snapchat, and will make them accountable for harmful content, the BBC reported citing Digital Secretary Baroness Nicky Morgan.

Social media companies have long defended their rights to control unacceptable content on their platforms related to violence, terrorism or child abuse, but according to reports, this is now going to change in the UK.

“There are many platforms who ideally would not have wanted regulation, but I think that’s changing”, Nicky Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes, was quoted as saying. “I think they understand now that actually regulation is coming”.

The information has not been confirmed by the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport but it was reported that on Wednesday the government will present a draft of the new legislation related to online harm and will announce Ofcom’s new powers. So far, the authority has only been entitled to regulate British media, not social media platforms or internet safety. The news could cause some concerns among the public about potential censorship over online content.

Facebook has long been criticised for failing to take responsibility for content on its platform, including its refusal to remove political ads that may contain misinformation, citing its monitoring, rather than regulatory role.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has maintained that the company was still accountable for removing harmful content related to child exploitation, terrorism, or violence from the its platform. However, in relation to political ads, he cited the policy of free speech and insisted that social media users were still able to make up their own minds about the political agenda.

February 12, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Despite Iowa Caucus Fiasco, Nevada Democrats Plan to Use New Software “Tool”

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | February 10, 2020

Even while the chaos of the recent Iowa Caucus remains fresh in voters’ minds, the Nevada State Democratic Party is setting itself up for more of the same by using a new software application for reporting results that is set to be coded and tested in less than a month. The application, still currently under development, will come preloaded onto iPads that will be distributed to precinct chairs during Nevada’s upcoming caucus, scheduled for February 22.

The scramble to create this new application followed revelations that the same company that had developed the software largely blamed for the Iowa debacle – known as Shadow Inc. – had also developed the two applications that Nevada Democrats had planned to use both for early voting and for Caucus Day.

Volunteers for Nevada’s upcoming caucus were told at a recent training session about the software’s existence and the rough details of how it will operate, but very little other information according to a report in the Nevada Independent. Notably, volunteers were urged not to refer to the application as an “app” but instead as a “tool,” likely due to the fact that Nevada Democrats said they would not use any apps for their upcoming caucus in light of what happened in Iowa. CBS News previously reported on the existence of this “tool” last Friday but was also short on specifics.

During the volunteer training session, a party staffer told participants the following:

What we’ve done after Iowa is consult with a group of tech and security folks who are helping us through this process and making sure that we’re doing this in a way that is simple and efficient and secure for all of you so that we’re giving you the best tools we can possible on Caucus Day. (emphasis added)”

Then the staffer, whose comments were recorded and were first reported by the Nevada Independent, described the function of this “tool” as “flow[ing] your precinct early vote data, so that you can have the information for your precinct caucus, so that when you do your viability calculations, you’re able to get the number of people who voted early and then when you see the results of your first alignment, you’re able to key in that early vote information so that you have every piece of information you need to run your precinct caucus.”

When a volunteer asked the staffer how the software “tool” would transmit results from one place to another, the staffer did not provide details but instead stated that “… We’re still working out some of the details around those so I’ll make sure that everyone has more information as we’re able to share it.”

Shadowy connections

Nevada’s decision to use a software program to be developed in less than a month is jarring considering that the failure of Iowa’s caucus was blamed on the rushed development of the Shadow Inc.-created app that resulted in only partial results of the caucus being reported. Yet, the Shadow Inc. app was reported to have been developed over a period of roughly two months, though the company’s CEO, Gerard Niemira, has since claimed that the app’s creation began last August. In contrast, Nevada Democrats are now slated to use a software application developed in less than half that time, thereby raising the likelihood of undiscovered coding errors and other functionality issues of this app significantly.

Another issue is the fact that Nevada Democrats decided to go this route after consulting “a group of tech and security folks” whose names and affiliations were not provided. As previously mentioned, after the Iowa debacle, several media reports quoted technology and cybersecurity experts as well as software developers who had cited the rushed development of the Shadow Inc. app as having largely led to the app’s failure and the resulting chaos in Iowa. It thus seems odd that a group of “tech and security folks” are urging Nevada Democrats to pay for the development of a new program in an even shorter time frame as a way to prevent Nevada’s caucus from repeating Iowa’s failures.

Though the identity of this group remains unknown, concerns have been raised that some may have links to the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, given that the Shadow Inc.-developed app used in Iowa was found to have ties to the Buttigieg campaign and the Iowa caucus chaos clearly benefited the Buttigieg campaign.

Concerns about possible connections between these tech and security consultants and the Buttigieg campaign have only grown since it was revealed that Nevada Democrats recently hired an organizer for Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, Emily Goldman, as the Caucus’ Voter Protection Director, just weeks before the caucus is set to take place. Goldman also previously interned at the Brookings Institute, whose chair recently authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Stop Bernie Sanders Now.” After Goldman’s connections to the Buttigieg were revealed, she deleted her work history on LinkedIn and locked her Twitter account.

Goldman’s new position at the Nevada State Democratic Party tasks her with “ensur[ing] that all eligible Nevadans are able to cast their ballot.”

Given the rushed development of a new app, the lack of transparency regarding the Nevada Democrats’ technology consultants and Emily Goldman’s recent hire, concerns that Nevada’s upcoming caucus will repeat the chaos seen in Iowa have hardly been assuaged.

Worse still, the very volunteers who attended the recent caucus training workshop described the sentiment in the room as “frustration and confusion”, with one caucus site leader telling the Nevada Independent that “there was ‘not a bit of proof’ at the training that Nevada wouldn’t be another Iowa.” Another volunteer told the Nevada Independent that “the people participating in the training didn’t even seem to understand the basic details of how to carry out the caucus process and didn’t know that precinct chairs can’t also be precinct captains on behalf of a campaign,” while other volunteers said they were not told how to properly realign early voters’ preferences on Caucus Day should the new tool fail.

Though the fallout from the Iowa Caucus is still fresh, it appears that the technology-driven chaos and corruption seen in Iowa has not served as a warning to some in the Democratic Party, but instead a roadmap.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

February 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Israel hands Sheikh Raed Salah 28-month jail term

MEMO | February 10, 2020

An Israeli court today sentenced Palestinian resistance icon Sheikh Raed Salah to 28 months in prison, stoking strong condemnation of the country’s legal system and the suppression of free speech.

Salah received a 28-month prison sentence from the Haifa Magistrate’s Court for remarks he had made at a funeral in 2017. The 61-year-old has already served 11 months in detention as part of his sentence and is therefore expected to remain in prison for 17 months.

Israeli police arrested Salah nearly three years ago, accusing the former mayor of Umm Al-Fahm of praising three Arab Israelis who shot dead two police officers in a July 2017 attack. In November, he was convicted of “incitement” and engaging in “anti-Israel activities” for remarks he had made during the funeral of the three assailants.

According to the indictment, Salah praised the attackers saying: “At these moments [we need to stand together] as one house, as one family. We take leave of our martyrs … and express the wish that they join the prophets, the righteous ones and the martyrs. At these moments, may we pray that God increases their value in the heavens in paradise.”

In his defence Salah argued that his views were religious opinions rooted in the Quran, and did not constitute a direct call to violence. Salah’s lawyer also explained that the remarks were made within the context of a religious sermon and urged Israel “to not prosecute him for his faith and beliefs”.

Haifa Magistrate’s Court Judge Shlomo Benjo conceded that some of Salah’s remarks at the funeral had been mistranslated but still ruled that the translation errors did not alter the general meaning of his comments.

“Despite the attempts to give the defendant’s statements a religious character, the conclusion is that the accused expressed praise, sympathy and support for the attacks,” the judge said in delivering his verdict.

Joint List MK Yousef Jabareen criticised the decision by pointing to the normalisation of incitement to hate and violence in Israeli society.

“In a country where the prime minister, senior ministers and main religious figures incite against the Arab public and its leaders from morning till night, Raed Salah’s conviction marks another step in the political persecution of the Arab,” Jabareen wrote on Twitter. He explained that the verdict marked “a dangerous erosion of freedom of expression for the leadership and delegitimisation of political and religious activity”.

Muhammad Baraka, the head of the Higher Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel, also dismissed the verdict. The “ruling was prepared in advance, and was based on racist foundations and incitement against Arabs,” Baraka was quoted as saying in a Turkish news source.

In an interview, Salah’s lawyer, Khaled Zabarqa, said that Israel’s endless efforts to silence the Palestinian leader was intended to pave the way for the controversial peace plan known as the “deal of the century”.

According to Zabarqa, Israel has been planning for the past two years to ban any appearance by Sheikh Salah due to his ability to mobilise Palestinians to reject any Israeli plan intending to terminate Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.

See also:

Palestinians in Israel are the next target for the deal of the century

February 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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