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Third Federal Court Blocks Anti-BDS Law as Unconstitutional

ACLU | April 25, 2019

AUSTIN — A federal court in Texas today blocked a state law requiring government contractors to certify that they are not engaged in boycotts of Israel or companies that do business in Israel or territories controlled by Israel, ruling that the law violates the First Amendment. The ruling came in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Texas on behalf of four Texans, as well as a separate case brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“This is now the third time a federal court has blocked an anti-BDS law on First Amendment grounds,” said Brian Hauss, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Whatever their views on the BDS movement, members of Congress and state legislators should heed this strong message from the courts: The right to boycott is alive and well in the United States and any attempt to suppress it puts you squarely on the wrong side of the Constitution.”

The ACLU’s lawsuit was brought on behalf of four people who were forced under the law to choose between signing the certification or forgoing professional opportunities and losing income: John Pluecker, a freelance writer who lost two service contracts from the University of Houston; George Hale, a reporter for KETR who was forced to sign the certification against his conscience in order to keep his job; Obinna Dennar, a Ph.D. candidate at Rice University, who was forced to forfeit payment for judging at a debate tournament; and Zachary Abdelhadi, a student at Texas State University, who has had to forego opportunities to judge high school debate tournaments.

In his ruling, United States District Judge Robert Pitman stated that the law “threatens ‘to suppress unpopular ideas’ and ‘manipulate the public debate through coercion rather than persuasion’” and that “no amount of narrowing its application will cure its constitutional infirmity.”

Federal courts in Arizona and Kansas also blocked similar state anti-boycott laws in First Amendment challenges brought by the ACLU and ACLU affiliates in the respective states. In January 2018, a federal district court preliminarily enjoined an anti-boycott law in Kansas, holding that the First Amendment protects citizens’ right to “band together” and “express collectively their dissatisfaction with the injustice and violence they perceive, as experienced both by Palestinians and Israeli citizens.” In September, a district court enjoined a similar anti-boycott law in Arizona.

The ACLU takes no position on boycotts of Israel or of any other foreign country, but it has long defended the right to boycott, which is protected under the First Amendment.

The court’s opinion can be found here: https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/4-25-19_bds_order.pdf.

April 27, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

As US Government Strangles Iran’s Economy, Google ‘Suffocates’ Iranian Media

Sputnik – April 25, 2019

The recent shutdown of PressTV and HispanTV’s YouTube and Gmail accounts are more examples of the continued effort by the US government to silence Iranian media outlets, Alex Rubinstein, a journalist for MintPress News, told Sputnik.

“I think that this is part of a larger trend of cracking down on Iranian media,” Rubinstein told Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary on Wednesday. “Just as this was happening, the United States was saying that we want to bring down Iranian oil exports to zero. Well, it seems like they’re also trying to bring down Iranian expression down to zero through these kinds of moves.”

“It’s a message which both strangles their economy and also suffocates their voice,” he added.

​Google barred PressTV and HispanTV, an Iranian Spanish-language outlet, from accessing their respective YouTube and Gmail accounts without notice and without an explanation detailing what Google policies were violated, the outlets recently reported.

Although content from both outlets is still viewable, the organizations are unable to upload new content.

Israeli media outlets have speculated that the order was handed down by Google after HispanTV issued a report claiming imprisoned Palestinians were being used for medical experiments.

“On its face, that sounds like that could be questionable,” Rubinstein said of the speculation. “But there have been a number of other outlets to carry this report, and it wasn’t like they were pulling this information out of thin air — it came from a Palestinian politician in Israel… he made this allegation, and they were citing him properly.”

The journalist told hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon that while it’s unclear what initiated Google’s action, it seems in line with the behavior of tech companies vying to “stifle Iranian media” at the behest of the US government.

“These tech companies are basically extensions of the US empire. You look at all that’s going on with NATO and the US government trying to push back on Chinese 5G — well, the point of that is that [the US] can’t spy so well if [the 5G grid is] Chinese,” Rubinstein said.

“The American government has a dominance over these companies, and we see that with the ban on PressTV, and we see that with the other countries that have been targeted, which are primarily Russia and Venezuela.”

“It’s hard to imagine that this is just a coincidence,” he added.

Earlier this month, after the US formally designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, popular photo and video-sharing platform Instagram began banning pages belonging to various Iranian military officials. The site later explained that the move was in line with the US’ designation.

“I understand to have a policy against spreading terrorist messages on a social media platform… but we didn’t see these crackdowns for terrorist organizations like the Free Syrian Army, or any of the other supposedly moderate rebels in Syria,” Rubinstein told Blackmon.

“We see them [crackdowns] for the supposed terrorist that are enemies of the United States… It seems like the tech companies are all too happy to follow in lockstep.”

See also:

Google’s Campaign Against Iranian Media Outlets Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent’

Facebook Takes Down Iranian Media Pages in Continued War on Alternative News

April 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

France seeks source of damaging leak on Yemen war

Press TV – April 25, 2019

French authorities have been searching for a government employee who they believe has leaked damaging information about France’s role in the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the media, a report says.

In mid-April, the new investigative media outlet Disclose published a report that contained a classified 15-page note from the French military intelligence service (DRM) revealing that the two Arab countries had deployed French weaponry in their aggression against Yemeni.

The leaked note, which was provided to the government in October 2018, contained lists of French-manufactured tanks, armored vehicles, fighter jets, helicopters, howitzers, ammunition, and radar systems sold to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The use of French weapons in Yemen contradicts previous public statements from Paris, which has repeatedly asserted that these weapons are used only in a limited manner and in “defensive” operations only. Back in January, French Armed Forces Minister Francoise Parly said during an interview on the France Inter radio station that she was “not aware that any (French) arms are being used in this conflict.”

Citing unnamed informed sources on Wednesday, AFP reported that an investigation into the “compromise of national defense secrecy” had been opened by prosecutors on December 13 last year after a complaint by the ministry of the armed forces.

The AFP report did not say when the note was leaked.

The sources also said that France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, was leading the probe, which concerned the compromise of information involving a government employee and a third party.

Disclose disagrees

Disclose argued that the note was “of major public interest.”

“The confidential documents revealed by Disclose and its partners are of major public interest, that bring to the attention of citizens and their representatives what the government wanted to conceal,” AFP quoted an editorial for Disclose and its partners as saying.

Additionally, Geoffrey Livolsi, the founder of Disclose, said at least three journalists who had taken part in the preparation of the website’s investigative report had been called in for a hearing to be conducted by the DGSI in May.

“This judicial investigation has only one objective: to know the sources that allowed us to do our job. It is an attack on the freedom of the press and the protection of the sources of journalists,” he said.

The French weapons in action

The report revealed that Leclerc tanks, a main battle tank built by the Nexter, and Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets sold in the 1990s to the UAE were being used in the war on Yemen.

Furthermore, 48 CAESAR artillery guns, manufactured by the Nexter group, were being used along the Saudi-Yemen border by the Saudi-led coalition.

Nexter Systems is a French state-owned manufacturer of weapons, based in Roanne, Loire.

According to the DRM document, French-made Cougar transport helicopters and the A330 MRTT refueling plane have been seen in action, and two French ships are serving in the crippling blockade of Yemeni ports which has led to unprecedented food and medical shortages in impoverished Yemen.

The classified note also contained a map estimating that over 430,000 Yemenis live within the range of French artillery weapons on the Saudi-Yemeni border. It further estimated that French weapons have resulted in civilian casualties.

France, the third-biggest arms exporter in the world, is a large provider of various kinds of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The French government has so far resisted pressure from rights groups to stop the lucrative arms trade with the two Persian Gulf countries, denying that the weapons were being used against the Yemenis.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, most notably the UAE, launched the devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the war has so far claimed the lives of about 56,000 Yemenis.

Apart from France, the United States, Britain, and other Western countries have faced criticism over arms sales to the Saudi regime and its partners.

April 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Gitmo Destroyed Our Constitutional Order

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 23, 2019

Sunday’s Washington Post carried an article about the suicide of former Peruvian President Alan García, who Peruvian officials had charged with official corruption while he was in office. The article posited the possibility that García committed suicide because under Peru’s judicial system, he would have faced up to three years in pretrial detention without actually being indicted, which the Post said was “a term unthinkable in many democracies, even for suspects facing overwhelming evidence of the most heinous crimes.”

What the Post did not point out is that indefinite detention without a trial is not unthinkable in the United States. Instead, thanks to the Pentagon and the CIA, indefinite detention has now become a core feature of America’s criminal-justice system. As the Post implies, it is also a hallmark of tyranny.

Among the potential acts of tyranny with which our American ancestors were most concerned was the power of the federal government to keep people in jail indefinitely without a trial. That was why the Constitution, which called into existence a government of limited powers, did not delegate such a power to federal officials. It’s also why the American people enacted the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, which expressly guaranty the rights of trial by jury, a speedy and public trial, bail, and protection from cruel and unusual punishments.

The Pentagon and the CIA destroyed those rights with the establishment of their prison, torture program, and “judicial” center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, there are people at Gitmo who have been languishing for more than a decade, denied the benefits of trial by jury, a speedy and public trial, and bail.

This shouldn’t surprise us. In the long sordid history of the U.S. national-security establishment and its infamous regime-change operations in foreign countries, it has always stood for installing dictatorships into power, preferably military ones. By their very nature, military establishments almost always lean conservative, viewing procedural protections as nothing more than “technicalities” that permit guilty people to go free. Thus, the last thing that military regimes are going to do is honor and respect the principles enunciated in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

An example was the U.S.-inspired coup in Chile in 1973, where the regime of military Gen. Augusto Pinochet had his national-security state forces round up some 50,000 people, incarcerate them, rape them, torture them, and murder or disappear around 3,000 of them. No trial by jury. No bail. Fearful of the power of the Chilean national security establishment, the Chilean federal courts went silent, as did the Chilean legislature.

The same thing happened in the CIA’s coup in Guatemala some 20 years before that. The CIA succeeded in ousting the democratically elected president of the country, Jacobo Arbenz, and installed a brutal military general in his stead, who proceeded to round up, torture, and kill people without a trial.

We saw it with Iran, when a CIA coup in 1953 ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and restored the brutal tyranny of the Shah. While the Shah wasn’t a military general, his U.S.-supported rule was every bit as tyrannical as that of any military general. Indefinite detention and torture, without the benefit of a trial, were hallmarks of his brutal rule, which came to an end in 1979 when the Iranian people revolted against it.

We see it today in the military dictatorship in Egypt. Indefinite detention and torture, without trial. All fully supported by the Pentagon, the CIA, and most of the rest of the federal government.

Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that the Pentagon and the CIA established this same type of system in Cuba, where the ruling leftist communist regime, ironically enough, engages in indefinite detention and torture without trial as well. In fact, don’t forget that that is why our ancestors demanded that the Bill of Rights be enacted — they were certain that federal officials would do the tyrannical acts proscribed by the Amendments. What the Pentagon and the CIA have done in Cuba is a confirmation of the concerns that motivated Americans to enact the Bill of Rights.

One irony in all this, of course, is that U.S. military officials and CIA officials take an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. But it’s obvious that the oath is nothing more than a lie. After all, the reason that the Pentagon and the CIA established their prison and torture center in Cuba was precisely to avoid the provisions of the Constitution. Their very aim was to establish a Constitution-free zone, one in which they could keep people jailed forever and torture them to their heart’s content and never have to bring them to trial.

It’s a sad and pathetic legacy of the decision after World War II to convert the U.S. government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, a type of governmental structure that is inherent to totalitarian regimes, one in which government officials wield tyrannical powers. That’s why it’s not enough to close the Pentagon’s and CIA’s imperialist prison and torture center in Cuba. To restore freedom and justice to our land, it’s also necessary to restore a limited-government republic to ensure that this type of dark tyranny never afflicts our nation again.

April 23, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

British Think Tank Reportedly Offered to Spy on Right-Wing Swedish Politicians

Sputnik – April 23, 2019

Not only has the Institute for Strategic Dialogue smeared a senior Sweden Democrat as a “far-right extremist”, it also offered the Swedish authorities its help in gathering data on him and his associates abroad through “investigative work”.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a British think tank which had previously called for financial sanctions against Sweden’s alternative media, also offered the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) the ability to spy on Sweden’s right-wing politicians, the news outlet Samhällsnytt reported.

Samhällsnytt has gained access to an e-mail from the organisation’s researcher Chloe Colliver, who claimed to have “uncovered links” between the Swedish right-wingers, influencers she labelled “far right” and Hungary, naming anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat Kent Ekeroth as “the most obvious example”.

“To uncover more about these links, we would have had to engage in more offline, investigative journalism work. <…> I believe there would be lots more to uncover in terms of offline links, support and financial backing connecting Hungarian and Swedish far right movements. It was not something we were able to cover ourselves in any detail, but many journalists have started to see a real infrastructure of support built in Hungary to support these kind of international movements, both in elections and outside of elections. Let me know if I can provide any more information on that,” Chloe Colliver wrote, as quoted by Samhällsnytt.

This e-mail, the news outlet claims, is part of a longer correspondence between Colliver and a Swedish MSB official. A few days later, MSB published a report by ISD which proposed sanctions against alternative media outlets which offer substantiated criticism of immigration, such as Samhällsnytt, Fria Tider and Nyheter Idag.

Kent Ekeroth represented the Sweden Democrats in the Swedish parliament between 2010 and 2018, and profiled himself as a staunch opponent of Islam and immigration. During his time as an MP, Ekeroth supported the deportation of criminal immigrants, an idea that has since been adopted by the more radical Alternative for Sweden, which openly markets itself as a “repatriation party”. Ekeroth has since moved to the Hungarian capital Budapest.

“It is extremely serious when authorities receive offers to spy on Swedish politicians abroad. Colliver mentions ‘investigative journalism’ in her email, but she is not a journalist and her organisation is not part of the press. Therefore, it is crystal clear what this is about, political espionage against the opposition under the auspices of MSB. The fact that she repeatedly refers to Swedish politicians as ‘extreme right’ in the e-mail shows that this is an accepted way of communicating with MSB” Kent Ekeroth told Samhällsnytt.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue is a London-based organisation which bills itself as a “think and do tank” poised to tackle the “rising challenges of violent extremism, inter-communal conflict and polarisation” and “empower grassroots networks against hate and extremism”.

MSB is a Swedish state authority that belongs to the Justice Ministry with responsibility for emergency preparedness and civil defence.

The Sweden Democrats are the country’s largest right-wing party, which despite its substantial electoral successes hasn’t been able to elevate any of its MPs to a cabinet-level post due to other parties collaborating to edge it out by forming a “cordon sanitaire”.

READ MORE:

70% of Swedes Lose Confidence in Politicians Amid Weakest Gov’t in Decades

Outrage as Swedish Greens Blame Swedes for Migrants’ Crime, Failure to Integrate

April 23, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | Leave a comment

Facebook hires ‘co-writer’ of the pro-surveillance Patriot Act amid growing concerns over privacy

RT | April 23, 2019

As Facebook is facing more pressure over its handling of user data, the embattled social media giant has hired Jennifer Newstead, widely regarded as a co-author of the Patriot Act, to deal with its legal woes.

Facebook announced on Monday that Newstead would be replacing Colin Stretch as the company’s general counsel. COO Sheryl Sandberg touted Newstead as a “seasoned leader whose global perspective and experience” would help the company “fulfill its mission.” While Newstead might boast vast experience in the legal field, having worked in both private and public sectors, her government record is not without controversy.

Before taking the job with Facebook, Newstead served as a legal adviser to the State Department for two years. If tapping a Trump official for the job is a move not striking enough, Newstead’s reputation as the co-author and passionate advocate of the 2001 Patriot Act that has widened the government’s surveillance and detention powers is bound to raise a few eyebrows about Facebook’s choice of its new top lawyer.

While there is little official information about Newstead’s role in drafting the legislation, she is reported to be the driving force behind its adoption by the Congress and is said to have penned portions of the Act. In a 2002 press release issued by then head of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy, Newstead was hailed for “her excellent service on a range of issues – including helping craft the new U.S.A. Patriot Act to protect the United States against terror.”

The Act was ostensibly aimed at protecting American citizens from terrorism and was passed on the back of the 9/11 attacks with hardly any debate. In the years that followed, it has drawn widespread criticism for granting the government broad powers to spy on its own citizens which many believe to be incompatible with protection of privacy.

The Act allowed law enforcement to collect and store the phone and Internet records of millions of Americans on a daily basis. The practice was confirmed by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, which have reignited the debate about sweeping surveillance powers exercised by the state. The resulting outrage eventually led to the portion of the Act that allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct its mass phone data collection to be amended in 2015.

In a statement on Monday, Newstead said that she was “excited to be joining Facebook at an important time and working with such a fantastic team.”

“I am looking forward to working with the team and outside experts and regulators on a range of legal issues as we seek to uphold our responsibilities and shared values,” she stated.

Facebook has been under fire for its hands-off approach to handling the sensitive personal data its millions of users share with the platform. The tech giant has recently been caught asking new users to give their private email passwords, an immediate red flag for every privacy-concerned individual.

Last month it was revealed that Facebook stored over half a billion users’ passwords on its servers for years, that could be accessed by the company’s employees.

April 22, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Google ‘disables’ Press TV’s YouTube account without prior warning

Press TV – April 19, 2019

Google has blocked Press TV and Hispan TV’s access to their official accounts on the technology company’s platforms, including YouTube and Gmail, without prior notice, citing “violation of policies”.

“Your Google Account was disabled and can’t be restored because it was used in a way that violates Google’s policies,” Google said in a message that appears after Press TV tries to log into its account.

The YouTube channels are open to public view for now, but the administrators cannot publish any new content.

Google has so far refused to provide any explanation for disabling Press TV’s account.

This is not the first time that Google is blocking Press TV’s YouTube channels.

The original YouTube channel was established in December 2009, and closed in September 2013. A new channel was then opened, but it was shut almost two months later.

Another channel was opened, but it suffered the same fate after five months.

The fourth channel, however, remained active with over 270,000 subscribers until it was closed today without any prior notice for what Google calls “violation” of its terms and policies.

Google Support says it may not provide any prior notice “in some urgent or extreme cases”. However, it has yet to explain for what “urgent” case it has “disabled” Press TV’s account.

Google has also deprived Press TV of its News service.

US pressure

The Google ban seems to be in line with the US government’s stepped-up pressure on Iran and an all-out propaganda campaign against the country, which includes targeting Iranian media.

In January, Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri.

The journalist, a 59-year-old American-born Muslim convert who has lived in Iran for years, was jailed in the US for days and later released on January 23 after some 10 days of detention without charge.

A US federal court failed to indict the journalist, who was arrested as a material witness in an unspecified criminal proceeding, of any crime.

Hashemi’s detention prompted condemnation in the US and abroad, sparking rallies in several countries, including the United States.

While in detention, she was forced to remove her hijab and was only offered non-halal food.

April 19, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

On Jews Being United

By Gilad Atzmon | April 18, 2019

In his Times of Israel article “What All Anti-Semites Have In Common,” Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, tells us everything we shouldn’t know about the current state of the Jew/Goy divide.

“Today,” Spokoiny complains, “many Jews are willing to overlook and even excuse anti-Semitism when the bigots hate a certain type of Jews.” In the good old days, anti-Semitism was a uniting force. “Anti-Semitism used to be the big Jewish unifier. Jews were always fractious and quarrelsome, but when it came to anti-Semitism, everybody agreed. Anti-Semites hated us without distinction, so in the face of a common threat, we would recognize the danger and unite.” Spokoiny is nostalgic, he wants to see the Jews reunited into a fist of resistance against anti-Semitism.

In the eyes of Spokoiny, the three types of contemporary anti-Semitism, be it Left, Right or Islamic (“which is not only fascistic but outright genocidal,” according to Spokoiny) are in fact one by nature: “there’s just one type of anti-Semitism that simply dresses its ugly persona in different ideological garments.” So it isn’t just the Jews that should be reunited; the Goyim, or shall we say the rest humanity, aren’t diverse either, their oppositions to Jewish politics, Israel or Zionism are only a matter of “different ideological garments.”

In Spokoiny’s universe, the Jews are hated for being Jews. It is not that some oppose Israel for being racist, expansionist and genocidal. It is not because some may be upset that the Israeli Lobby dominates Western foreign affairs in the open. It is not because American and British boys and girls are sent to fight and die in Zio-con wars, it is not because some have noticed that it was a bunch of prominent Jewish intellectuals who have managed to reshape the Western ethos by means of so-called progressive ideologies. It is not because the media seems to be biased in favour of a criminal state, which happens to be a Jewish one. In Spokoiny, reasoning and self-reflection are pushed aside. In his universe some just hate Jews blindly, irrationally and for no reason.

But Spokoiny may as well be right. There is a common element in the Left-wing, Right-wing, Christian and Islamic opposition to Jewish politics, culture and ideology: opposition to choseness is how Bernard Lazare described it in his 1894 Zionist text Antisemitism: Its History and Causes. There is a shared common ground that unites all those so-called ‘anti-Semites.’ The alleged ‘enemies of the Jews’ are people who want the Jewish past to be subject to scrutiny like all other historical chapters, Israeli barbarism to be curtailed, Wall Street to be restricted, Palestine to be free. They want globalisation to be halted, immoral interventionism to die out. The so-called ‘anti-Semites’ actually follow the Zionist promise, they want Jews to finally assimilate and become ‘people like all other people.’ The so-called ‘enemies of the Jews’ are upholding the most enlightened rational universalist ethical positions. They treat Jews as ordinary people and expect their state and institutions to subscribe to ethical standards.

Spokoiny hates Alain Soral, the French intellectual who was sentenced this week to one year in prison by a French court for “negationisme” (history revisionism).

In the eyes of French Jewish institutes and Spokoiny, Soral is the ultimate enemy. He has managed to present a unifying message that appeals to the Left, the Right and Muslim immigrants. Soral calls for a universal reconciliation, between them all under a French nationalist egalitarian ethos. The French Jewish institutions see Soral’s call as a vile anti-Semitic message as it doesn’t seem to accommodate Jewish exceptionalism. However, some Jews have joined Soral’s movement. But they clearly demoted themselves to French patriots. They left chosenism behind, they see themselves primarily as French.

“We in the Jewish community need to believe him (Soral).” Spokoiny writes, “We need to stop participating in the divide-and-conquer game of those who hate us.” In other words, Spokoiny wants to see Jews as one monolithic identity. One that sticks together and exercises its power. If Spokoiny or anyone else thinks that such politics may eradicate anti-Semitism, he or she must be either naïve or just stupid. What Jews need to do is to self-reflect, to ask themselves why anti-Semitism is rising again. Jews must identify their own role in this emerging reality. Rather than constantly blaming their so called ‘haters,’ Jews may want to repeat the early Zionist exercise and ask what is exactly in Jewish culture, identity and politics that makes Jewish history into a chain of disasters.

April 19, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook bans British anti-immigrant groups including EDL, BNP and Britain First

RT | April 18, 2019

Facebook has banned 12 high-profile, anti-immigrant British organizations and individuals including the English Defence League, the British National Party, Britain First and Jayda Fransen.

The silicon valley company said it took the decision because it bans users who “proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence.”

“Individuals and organisations who spread hate, or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are, have no place on Facebook,” it said in a statement.

The following organizations and people are now prohibited from the site: The British National Party and Nick Griffin, Britain First and Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, English Defence League and Paul Ray, Knights Templar International and Jim Dowson, National Front and Tony Martin, and Jack Renshaw.

They were all outlawed under Facebook’s ‘Dangerous Individuals & Organisations policy’. They will no longer be allowed a presence on Facebook or Instagram and posts and other content which expresses praise or support for them will also be banned.

“Our work against organised hate is ongoing and we will continue to review individuals, organisations, pages, groups and content against our Community Standards,” the statement added.

The Knights Templar International said it was “horrified” by the ban, and that it was investigating legal options. “Facebook has deemed our Christian organisation as dangerous and de-platformed us despite never being charged, let alone found guilty of any crime whatsoever,” it said in a statement. “This is a development that would have made the Soviets blush.”

In February the social media giant banned EDL founder Tommy Robinson from its platforms saying the prominent anti-immigration activist repeatedly breached its policies on Hate speech.

April 18, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Australia’s electoral officials ‘work with social media to tackle misinformation

RT | April 18, 2019

Australian electoral authorities have for the first time set up a cybersecurity task force, an official said on Thursday.

They are also working with social media companies to tackle misinformation in the run up to general elections on May 18.

Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said safeguarding the election’s integrity gained priority “due to experiences in other countries,” AP reported.

Rogers is having daily briefings with the Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force, which comprises the nation’s major security agencies and government departments. He declined to detail the task force’s functions, saying they included dealing with disinformation spread through social media.

April 18, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

CIA Docs Shows UK, France and West Germany Wanted to Bring “Operation Condor” To Europe

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | April 17, 2019

SANTIAGO, CHILE — A recently declassified CIA document has revealed that members of the intelligence agencies of France, the United Kingdom and West Germany discussed how to establish “an anti-subversive organization similar to [the CIA’s Operation] Condor” in their own countries. Described by the CIA as “a cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion,” Operation Condor was a campaign of state terrorism originally planned by the CIA that targeted leftists, suspected leftists and their “sympathizers” and resulted in the forced disappearances, torture and brutal murders of an estimated 60,000 people, as well as the political imprisonment of around half a million people. Around half of the estimated murders occurred in Argentina.

The document, released last Friday as part of a release of newly declassified U.S. government documents related to the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, states that:

Representatives of West German, French and British intelligence services had visited the Condor organization secretariat in Buenos Aires during the month of September 1977 in order to discuss methods for establishment of an anti-subversion organization similar to Condor” due to their view that “the terrorist/subversive threat had reached such dangerous levels in Europe.”

The representatives from the three countries then stated that they felt that pooling “their intelligence resources in a cooperative organization such as Condor” would be an important way of combating the “subversive threat.” Notably, England at the time was already involved in an international “intelligence sharing” program known as ECHELON, a program between the “Five Eyes” intelligence pact between the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand that continues in a different form today.

The document, which was written in 1978, came two years after Operation Condor targeted left-wing Latin American exiles living in Europe. Several other documents in the recent release discuss a decision made by Condor member countries in May 1976 to train and send a military unit to “conduct physical attacks” against left-wing Latin American exiles and their supporters in France, in what was codenamed “Teseo.” Several Condor countries, aside from Brazil and Bolivia, were eager to participate and the training of the “Teseo” unit did occur, though the CIA was apparently unaware whether the unit was actually sent to France.

Operation Condor: Made in the West

European interest in bringing home a state-sponsored terror campaign may seem shocking, given Europe’s publicly stated concerns at the time regarding Condor member countries’ mind-boggling human rights abuses and state-sponsored murders. But it will hardly surprise those who have studied Operation Condor, as the operation itself was a Western invention that was imposed on Latin America through a series of military coups, which again were backed by Western governments.

Operation Condor officially began in 1975, though CIA documents in this recent release suggest that the inter-country intelligence-sharing aspect had likely begun a year earlier in 1974. The countries involved — Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia — were all backed and supported by the U.S., which was also incidentally the largest weapons dealer to these government over this same time frame. During the latter portion of Operation Condor, one of the recently declassified documents claims that Israel took over key roles played by the U.S. in Operation Condor, including the “training of local personnel and sales of certain types of advanced military equipment,” despite the many innocent Jews murdered by several of the Condor dictatorships.

Several of the Condor countries had seen their military dictatorships installed with U.S. government involvement, as was the case in Chile and Brazil, with the U.S. government suspected in other coups that preceded Operation Condor by only a few years, such as the 1971 coup in Bolivia and the 1973 coup in Uruguay. After the 1976 coup in Argentina — Argentina’s sixth and final coup of the 20th century — it too joined Operation Condor.

The U.S. provided planning, training, funding and arms for Operation Condor, and European nations also provided a significant number of weapons. France — one of the countries interested in creating a Condor-style program for Europe — was noted in one of the recently declassified documents for its “excellent prospects for sales of jet aircraft and air defense systems” to Condor dictatorships; while West Germany, another country interested in a European Condor, “should be able to market missiles, ground force equipment and submarines.”

U.S. and European intelligence agencies were well aware of what Condor dictatorships were doing with those weapons, as indicated by past and recent document releases that detail horrific descriptions of the torture and murder of those suspected of being left-wing and those suspected of sympathizing with the left, as well as those who opposed the neoliberal economic policies imposed by all of the U.S.-backed Condor dictatorships.

Some of the more infamous tactics used by Condor nations had also been inspired by past European and U.S. war crimes. This includes the “death flights,” where victims were drugged, bound and placed in plastic body bags, and/or had their stomachs cut open before being thrown out of a plane or helicopter over the ocean. This tactic was said to have been inspired by the actions of French armed forces during the Algerian war and, according to the 2003 documentary The Death Squads: The French School, French intelligence had taught these and other methods to Argentine military officials during the dictatorship.

Whitewashing away the full horror of Condor

Notably, much of the recent coverage of Operation Condor and the CIA releases has sought to whitewash the program’s horrific legacy, with The Guardian describing Operation Condor as “a secret programme in which the dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador conspired to kidnap and assassinate members of leftwing guerrilla groups in each other’s territories.” This, of course, implies that those targeted were guerilla members and thus combatants.

However, many — and one could convincingly argue the majority — of those killed, tortured and imprisoned were not members of guerilla groups, as there are thousands of documented cases of college students, musicians, writers, journalists, priests and nuns, pregnant women, teachers, indigenous leaders, union members and others who were subject to the extreme prejudice of Operation Condor despite not being combatants in any capacity. The Guardian also dramatically downplayed the program’s death toll, claiming that “the conspiracy led to the deaths of at least 100 people in Argentina,” while the actual figure is around 30,000. The Guardian also failed to mention the intimate role of the U.S. and other Western nations in facilitating and arming the program.

Such poor reporting is offensive to those who lost their lives and to their families, many of which have never stopped looking for their lost loved ones. Many of those families, such as Argentina’s “Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo,” have spent the last several decades looking for the estimated 500 children and babies separated from their disappeared and murdered parents and given to dictatorship-supporting families.

In a clear testament to how the effects of Operation Condor are still felt today, one of those babies — now over 40 years old — was identified on April 9 and is set to be reunited with her father, who survived the dictatorship and has spent the last several decades looking for his lost daughter. The mother was kidnapped while pregnant, allowed to give birth to the baby and killed immediately afterwards.

The very idea that European countries wanted to bring such a horrific terror campaign to their continent to target “subversives” should serve as a cautionary tale to Europeans who trust their government’s professed interest in promoting democracy and human rights, all while exporting terror overseas.

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.

April 17, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel is holding 22 Palestinian journalists behind bars: NGO

Press TV – April 16, 2019

A non-profit organization representing journalists, writers and broadcasters says nearly two dozen Palestinian journalists are currently being held in harsh conditions in Israeli jails contrary to various treaties and international law.

The Journalists Support Committee (JSC), in a statement released on the eve of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – which is marked on April 17 every year, highlighted that four journalists are being incarcerated under the so-called administrative detention, a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge.

“The Israeli occupation arrests [Palestinian] journalists for their opinions and then hauls them before military courts using racist laws,” the statement read.

The JSC further noted that the practice violates international rights conventions guaranteeing freedom of the press.

The NGO then condemned Israel’s practice of arresting journalists or banning them from entering certain areas.

Palestinian journalists Ahmad Abu Hussein and Yaser Murtaja succumbed to Israeli-inflicted gunshot wounds last year, while covering anti-occupation protests along the border between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied land.

The Tel Aviv regime has thus been seeking a media blackout on the criminal acts of its soldiers, with Israeli cabinet ministers authorizing a contentious bill in mid-June 2018 that would criminalize the filming of certain military activities.

Under the proposed legislation, those found photographing, recording or filming Israeli troops “with the intention of undermining the spirit” of the army “shall be liable to five years imprisonment” and those “intending to harm” Israel’s security could be given 10 years in jail.

The bill, which has been widely censured as an attack on media freedom, needs several parliamentary votes to become law.

In recent months, Israeli troops have on numerous occasions been caught on camera brutally killing Palestinians, with the videos going viral online and sparking condemnations of the regime’s military.

April 16, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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