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A Video That Every Potential Juror Should See

By Jay Stanley – ACLU – March 11, 2016

Last year I wrote about “acting and directing with police body cameras” — how police officers are likely to increasingly learn to manipulate the photographic record that their cameras create. A stark case study in that kind of manipulation can be found in video of a 2014 arrest in Florida that was released in January and recently came to my attention. It’s the kind of video that everyone should watch in order to become sophisticated and properly skeptical consumers of video evidence.

There are two videos of the arrest: footage from a nearby surveillance camera, and footage from a body camera worn by one of the officers. I could describe the video but it’s short, so I suggest you just watch it before reading further. A local NBC affiliate produced this 70-second produced package with explanatory voiceover, and the raw surveillance camera and bodycam footage is also online.

It’s hard to imagine what more a suspect could do to avoid being beaten by the police. Derrick Price not only puts his hands high in the air, he then proceeds to lie spread-eagle on the pavement before any of the Marion County sheriff’s deputies reach him. And yet the deputies beat him. What appears to be taking place in this video (as in many others, including the granddaddy of them all, the Rodney King video) is that police officers, angry at a suspect for fleeing (and perhaps disobeying previous orders to stop), have taken it upon themselves to punish the suspect for that disobedience. Punishment for crimes, including fleeing arrest and failure to obey a lawful order, is something we leave to the criminal justice system, which for all its problems has more due process procedures than the whims of angry policemen. The fact that five officers fell upon Price without hesitation or question suggests that such beatings may be routine. As I’ve written elsewhere, one of the things the video revolution in policing may be doing is exposing a disconnect between what a significant number police officers appear to view as standard, acceptable practice in dealing with suspects, and what the larger public views as proper and acceptable.

But the main reason I think this is a video everyone should watch is that the view provided by the surveillance camera is strikingly different from — and clearer than — the view provided by the body camera. The surveillance camera is higher up and, unlike the bodycam, captures the wide-angle of the scene. This is an important reminder of the limitations of cameras worn on the body of officers who are in the thick of the action.

But the difference between the two videos is also a result of intentional manipulation by the officers beating Price, who repeatedly yell “stop resisting!” as they kick and punch his unmoving body. And the body camera never properly captures the beating of Price, actually facing fully away from the action at some points. It is hard to tell how intentional this was on the part of the officer wearing the camera, but it’s easy to imagine that the officer knew that what his colleagues were doing was not acceptable, and intentionally sought to avoid videotaping them.

This tactic of yelling “stop resisting” when assaulting people who are not resisting appears repeatedly in videos from all across the country, which makes one suspect that the tactic is openly discussed and shared among police officers—and that this kind of abuse is disturbingly widespread.

Two other notes on the situation: first, while this video was finally released in compliance with Florida’s open-records law, it was kept secret for 16 months, an unjustifiably long time. Second, I would note that the camera was turned on very late into the incident, and turned off too early. Since this arrest followed a SWAT raid and a chase, under any good policy the officer’s camera should have been turned on long before the beating of Price began, and should have continued (as I discuss here and as we recommend) until “the encounter has fully concluded and the law enforcement officer leaves the scene.”

In our model policy we recommend strong action against officers who intentionally obstruct or interfere with their body cameras’ ability to accurately capture video, including a) appropriate departmental disciplinary action, b) a rebuttable evidentiary presumption in favor of defendants who reasonably claim that exculpatory evidence was destroyed or not captured, and c) a similar presumption in favor of plaintiffs suing over police misconduct.

Price was very lucky, and the officers unlucky, that the arrest took place in clear view of a surveillance camera. If the bodycam footage was the only evidence, the deputies’ subsequent lies about Price’s alleged violent resistance to his arrest would almost certainly have been believed.

At the same time, for those skeptical of body cameras it’s worth noting that he would likely have been no worse off with only the bodycamera video than he would have been with no video at all. Or, if every officer at the scene wore a camera, the situation would likely have also been clear — or, with the deputies knowing they were being recorded, wouldn’t have happened at all.

But it did, and the divergence between the two video streams that captured the arrest serves as an important lesson and reminder of the limits of video evidence, as well as the need for skepticism toward police accounts of what such videos portray.

March 12, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Hillary’s Double-Standard on Protests

ray-mcgovern-injuries-arrest-clinton-speech-feb-2011-300x290

Ray McGovern displaying the aftermath of his arrest during a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on February 15, 2011
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 11, 2106

Hillary Clinton has excoriated Donald Trump for failing to stop a supporter from roughing up a protester during a speech, saying “This kind of behavior is repugnant. We set the tone for our campaigns — we should encourage respect, not violence.” Yet, in 2011, she did nothing to stop security personnel from brutalizing a 71-year-old veteran who stood silently with his back to her during a speech.

The protester, Ray McGovern, a retired Army officer and CIA analyst, was wearing a black “Veterans for Peace” T-shirt, when he was set upon within sight of Secretary of State Clinton, who ironically was delivering a speech about the importance of foreign leaders respecting dissent. The assault on McGovern left him bruised and bloodied but it didn’t cause Clinton to pause as she coolly continued on, not missing a beat.

The Feb. 15, 2011 incident at George Washington University in Washington prompted an email from Clinton’s personal adviser Sidney Blumenthal who noted that “something bad happened” and suggested that Clinton have someone reach out and apologize to McGovern. Clinton, however, chose not to do so, although criminal charges against McGovern were dropped.

Subsequently, McGovern was placed on the State Department’s “Be On the Look-out” or BOLO alert list, instructing police to “USE CAUTION, stop” and question him and also contact the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Command Center.

After learning of the BOLO alert, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), which is representing McGovern in connection with the 2011 incident, interceded to have the warning lifted. But McGovern wondered if the warning played a role in 2014 when he was aggressively arrested by New York City police at the entrance to the 92nd Street Y where he had hoped to pose a question to a speaker there, one of Clinton’s friendly colleagues, former CIA Director and retired General David Petraeus.

After that arrest on Oct. 30, 2014, McGovern wrote, “God only knows (and then only if God has the proper clearances) what other organs of state security had entered the ‘derogatory’ information about the danger of my ‘political activism’ into their data bases. Had my ‘derog’ been shared, perhaps, with the ever-proliferating number of ‘fusion centers’ that were so effective in sharing information to track and thwart the activists of Occupy including subversives like Quakers and Catholic Workers?”

On Feb. 15, 2011, McGovern attended Clinton’s GWU speech, deciding on the spur of the moment after feeling revulsion at the “enthusiastic applause” that welcomed the Secretary of State “to dissociate myself from the obsequious adulation of a person responsible for so much death, suffering and destruction.

“The fulsome praise for Clinton from GW’s president and the loud, sustained applause also brought to mind a phrase that as a former Soviet analyst at CIA I often read in Pravda. When reprinting the text of speeches by high Soviet officials, the Communist Party newspaper would regularly insert, in italicized parentheses: ‘Burniye applaudismenti; vce stoyat’ ,  Stormy applause; all rise.

“With the others at Clinton’s talk, I stood. I even clapped politely. But as the applause dragged on, I began to feel like a real phony. So, when the others finally sat down, I remained standing silently, motionless, wearing my ‘Veterans for Peace’ T-shirt, with my eyes fixed narrowly on the rear of the auditorium and my back to the Secretary.

“I did not expect what followed: a violent assault in full view of Madam Secretary by what we Soviet analysts used to call the ‘organs of state security.’ The rest is history, as they say. A short account of the incident can be found here.

“As the video of the event shows, Secretary Clinton did not miss a beat in her speech as she called for authoritarian governments to show respect for dissent and to refrain from violence. She spoke with what seemed to be an especially chilly sang froid, as she ignored my silent protest and the violent assault which took place right in front of her.

“The experience gave me personal confirmation of the impression that I reluctantly had drawn from watching her behavior and its consequences over the past decade. The incident was a kind of metaphor of the much worse violence that Secretary Clinton has coolly countenanced against others.

“Again and again, Hillary Clinton both as a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State has demonstrated a nonchalant readiness to unleash the vast destructiveness of American military power. The charitable explanation, I suppose, is that she knows nothing of war from direct personal experience.” [For more of McGovern’s account of his arrest, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Standing Up to War and Hillary Clinton.”]

Proposed Apology

In the email exchange, Blumenthal suggested that Clinton “have someone apologize to Ray McGovern,” but referred to the incident and McGovern in condescending terms, noting that McGovern’s mistreatment has “become a minor cause célèbre on the Internet among lefties.” As for McGovern, Blumenthal said the former CIA analyst who was a presidential briefer to George H.W. Bush has “become a Christian antiwar leftist who goes around bearing witness. Whatever his views, he’s harmless.”

Clinton responded, “I appreciate your sending thgis [sic] to me. Neither State nor my staff had anything to do w this. The man stood up just as I was starting and GW – which claims their quick actions were part of their standard operating procedures to remove anyone who stands up and starts speaking while an invited guest is talking – moved to remove him. GW claims he was not in any way injured.”

However, McGovern was not speaking, simply standing quietly until he was attacked by the police. As for Clinton, no apology was forthcoming, nor any further explanation of why she failed to stop police from roughing up a peaceful protester in her presence. She now has chosen to lecture Donald Trump on the need to demonstrate respect toward protesters.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

March 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Justice for the Women of Sepur Zarco

Indigenous women win precedent-setting case against former soldiers in sex slavery trial in Guatemala

The women of Sepur Zarco, forced into sex slavery at the hands of the Guatemalan military in 1982, listen to trial proceedings at the Guatemalan Supreme Court (Photo by Quimy de Leon)

Women of Sepur Zarco, forced into sex slavery at the hands of the Guatemalan military in 1982, listen to trial proceedings at the Guatemalan Supreme Court (Photo by Quimy de Leon)
By Jeff Abbott and Julia Hartviksen – NACLA – 03/11/2016

Nearly 20 years since the signing of Guatemala’s 1996 Peace Accords, justice has finally been served for 15 Indigenous Q’eqchi’ Mayan women of Sepur Zarco, who were forced to become sex slaves for members of Guatemala’s military during the country’s long civil war.

On February 26, Guatemala’s Supreme Court sentenced two former military members, former Lieutenant Coronel Esteelmer Reyes and former Military Commissioner Heriberto Valdez Asij, to prison terms of 120 and 240 years, respectively, for crimes against humanity. Reyes was also found guilty of three assassinations, while Asij was deemed guilty for the forced disappearances of seven men. (Despite the significance of the guilty verdict, prosecutors from the Guatemalan Public Ministry had initially requested that Reyes and Asij be sentenced with 1290 years in prison for war crimes, plus 50 years in prison for each assassination charge.)

On March 2, the perpetrators were also ordered to pay reparations to the victims. Reyes will owe 500,000 Quetzales (about US $65,000) to each of the victim-survivors, and Asij has been ordered to pay 250,000 Quetzales (about US $32,500) for each of the seven forcibly disappeared men.

Judge Yassmín Barrios of the Guatemalan Supreme court made the historic decision following a short, emotional trial, which began February 1 in the Guatemalan Supreme Court in Guatemala City.  The case, the first time in the world where a case of wartime sexual violence was tried in the national courts of the country where the violence occurred, represents a landmark legal decision in Guatemala and a major victory against the impunity for war crimes in the country.

The charges against Reyes and Asij relate to crimes committed in the year 1982, a time when both men were stationed at the Sepur Zarco military base in Alta Verapaz. During this period, the soldiers murdered men in the community, and forced women in the area to work as domestic servants and sexual slaves, subjecting them to degradation, abuse, and rape. In 2010, 12 of those women, all of Mayan Q’eqchi’ descent, brought the case before a mock tribunal meant to address sexual violence during Guatemala’s 36-year-long war. In 2011, the case was brought before a criminal court. Grassroots organizations and international NGOs alike fought to bring the case to the Guatemalan Supreme Court, amidst repeated attempts to derail their efforts.

Lily Muñoz, a sociologist who worked as an independent consultant assisting the legal organization, Mujeres Transformando el Mundo (MTM) on the case, explained the significance of the historic ruling. “It represents justice for war crimes that were committed against women,” she said.

Though the case represents a landmark legal decision for Guatemala, Sepur Zarco is not an exceptional case of sexual violence perpetrated by the military during the war. “This case serves as a precedent not only here in Guatemala, but also on the global scale,” said Lily Muñoz, a sociologist who worked as an independent consultant assisting the legal organization, Mujeres Transformando el Mundo (MTM) on the case.

The case’s success has led to more than 30 Achi’ women from the community of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, who also suffered from sexual violence at the hands of the military, to begin mobilizing for legal justice for crimes of sexual violence as a tactic of war.

Survivors of the Sepur Zarco sex slavery case at the Supreme Court trial (Photo by Quimy de Leon)

Survivors of the Sepur Zarco sex slavery case at the Supreme Court trial (Photo by Quimy de Leon)

This case also illustrates the gendered dimensions of such brutality – a brutality that preyed upon the vulnerability of indigenous women in rural Guatemala at the height of the internal armed conflict. “It is particularly interesting that sexual violence against women was a part of the sentence, and in the context of an armed conflict. This marks such violence as a war crime, as a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime, but it is a specifically gendered crime, that was tried in the national court of the country where the crimes were committed,” Muñoz said.

She continued: “The military men created conditions of extreme vulnerability for the women of Sepur Zarco. They took their husbands away from them, and they robbed them of their lands and livelihoods – in short, everything they required for social reproduction – and then later, of their sexuality and their ownership over their own bodies.”

As Muñoz explained, Judge Barrios drew on the testimony of a Brazilian anthropologist, Dr. Rita Laura Segato in coming to a decision in the case. Dr. Segato had argued in her testimony that “In the context of the Guatemalan internal armed conflict, women’s bodies were converted into military objects.”

The anthropologist argued that, in this way, that women’s bodies came to represent the “social body,” and for that reason, “the soldiers violated and ‘profaned’ women’s bodies.”

Following Dr. Segato, Muñoz explained that the military sought to “break the community, physically and morally” and did so through sexual violence against women. In this sense, the violence perpetrated against women carried lasting physical, emotional and psychological aspects, and also symbolic meaning for the victim-survivors and other community members. In reading the sentence, Judge Barrios recognized these long-term, destructive impacts the violence of the Sepur Zarco base had on the women who brought the case forward.

The case itself represents a historic shift for the Guatemalan courts, whereby claims of violence brought forth by indigenous women have been recognized by the mainstream justice system, a system that has consistently silenced their voices.  “This case has shown that we can trust the testimonies of the (indigenous) women,” said Ada Valenzuela, the director of the Union Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG). “Even 30 years later, the testimonies of the women were supported through other testimonies, and evidence.”

Despite the fact that the women’s faces were covered during the trial for the purposes of anonymity, it was the women themselves who pushed for the case to move forward, despite being told that it would likely not win. “The women from Sepur Zarco said that if this case were to go to court, then they wanted to go,'” Valnezuela said.  “And we decided that we were going to accompany these women in this process. This was a very valiant decision.”

The women were also accompanied by a coalition of Guatemalan feminist organizations in Guatemala, known as the Alliance to End Silence and Impunity, which includes UNAMG, MTM and the Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial (ECAP). UNAMG and ECAP have worked to provide psychological support for the victims of the internal armed conflict and the women of Sepur Zarco since 2004.

The case also complicates the characterization of the simplified but still all too common narrative of Guatemala’s civil war in which Marxist guerrillas are presented as fighting against state. In fact, in many cases, it was poor rural campesinos, organizing to gain ownership of their own land who suffered the most intense brutality of the conflict.

According to Muñoz, all of the women’s husbands were involved in negotiations with the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA) to gain legal ownership over land they had lived on for centuries. Many of these lands have since been transformed into fincas for the production of sugar cane and oil palm.

“The conditions that began the war have been maintained today,” said Valenzuela. “The inequality, the question of land, the question of opportunity, (among others), are continuing today. According to Valenzuela, Sepur Zarco “has woken up the women of Guatemala. [It] represents hope for justice for other women who suffered violence during the war.”

Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. He has covered human rights and social moments in Central America and Mexico. His work has appeared at VICE News, Truthout, and the Upside Down World. Follow him on twitter @palabrasdeabajo.

Julia Hartviksen is a PhD Candidate at the Gender Institute, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the materiality of violences against women, and the gendered impacts of oil palm in Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip. Follow her on twitter @_yulinka_.

March 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Muslim student reported to UK terror police for pro Palestine activism

Rahmaan Mohammadi, a 17 year old student from Luton, explains how he was reported to the counter terrorism police for his pro Palestine activism. Mohammadi was speaking at a Stop the War Coalition event in London on March 10.

March 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Zionist Desperation and the Coming Societal Pivot

Israel’s Attempt to Put Up a ‘Firewall’ Around Itself…

By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | March 10, 2016

We are approaching a pivotal time in America. With the aging of the older generation–that is to say those who grew up prior to the age of the Internet–the percentage of the population relying mainly upon mainstream media for its news will slowly diminish. A younger generation, consisting of those accustomed to getting most of their news and information off the Internet, will gradually begin to outnumber them.

What this means in practical terms is that Israel and its supporters will find it increasingly harder to dominate mainstream political discourse.

If we take 1990 as the base year or starting point of the information age, those who today are 26 years of age or younger will have grown up in households where computers, for the most part, are/were as commonplace as were TV sets in the 1960s.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America’s population at the time of the last census, in 2010, stood at 308,745,538. Those aged 29 or younger comprised 125,955,404, or roughly 40.8% of the population. And that was in 2010. Today the US population is estimated at some 323,000,000–meaning those in the post-1990 age group are likely to make up an even higher percentage of the population. At some point in the near future, their numbers are going to top the 50% mark. That this has been discussed with a sense of gravity by Israeli lobbyists and strategists is almost certain.

Certainly we have seen a proliferation of disinformation websites, but truth has a way of resonating in a way that lies do not–and even when people don’t immediately recognize it as truth per se, the resonance is still there. What the Internet offers, then, is a means by which truth can be viewed on an equal footing with lies, much as it once was in the centuries before mass media began to play such a dominant role in society. And this is obviously having its impact upon the public.

According to a poll conducted last year, 70 percent of Americans disagree with the statement that the media “tries to report the news without bias.” The poll was conducted by the Newseum Institute, which found that trust in the media had dropped by 17 percentage points from a similar poll conducted just the year previous, and by 22 points since 2013. “In fact, the 24% who now say the media try to report news without bias is the lowest since we began asking this question in 2004,” the study states. Perhaps most significant of all, confidence in the media was lowest among those ages 18 to 29–only 7 percent.

A sense of desperation clearly is overtaking Israel and its supporters in the West these days. This is most visible in the multitude of attacks we have seen recently on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS movement. And there are indications now that the Jewish state may be about to carry these attacks to a higher level.

According to a report here, Israel will pour $26 million this year into covert cyber operations aimed at combating BDS, with Israeli tech companies planning to introduce, among other things, “sly algorithms to restrict these online activists circle of influence.” The initiative will be accompanied simultaneously with distribution of a flood of “content that puts a positive face on Israel,” a nonprofit called Firewall Israel being the main spearhead of this latter. Presumably Israel’s already-considerable force of paid Internet trolls is about to be increased–perhaps substantially. Firewall Israel, by the way, is sponsored by the Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute.

“The delegitimization challenge and the BDS Movement are global and require a global response,” Reut asserts on its website. The site goes on to add:

Victory will be achieved when there is a political firewall around Israel and the right of the Jewish People to self-determination, meaning that delegitimization of Israel brings with it a heavy political, societal, and personal price due to its being seen and framed as an act of prejudice and anti-Semitism. Because of its anti-Semitic foundations, delegitimization cannot be eliminated, but it can be contained and kept at bay. As mentioned, because of the network architecture of the BDS Movement, there is no silver bullet against it, and victory will be achieved incrementally through countless of small wins.

In other words, BDS will be “framed” as anti-Semitic, a tour de force that will be achieved through cyber attacks as well as mainstream media power, with BDS supporters paying a heavy “personal price” by result. The final victory, Reut believes, will be achieved not all at once but through “countless small wins” racked up by the Zionists, wins that will erect a “political firewall” around the apartheid paradise, making it immune or insulated from global criticism.

That’s the theory at any rate. How it all plays out in reality remains to be seen, but clearly new BDS battles are cropping up virtually everyday. One of these is a movement at Vassar College, whose student body association, the VSA, just this past Sunday voted to approve a resolution expressing support for the BDS movement. The resolution was accompanied by an amendment that would also have prohibited purchases from 11 companies that profit from or explicitly support the occupation. While the resolution itself passed by a wide majority, 15 to 7, the amendment, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, failed by a vote of 12 in favor to 10 opposed. Were you to take a wild guess that the amendment’s failure was due to pressure by the college administration, you would be right.

“The VSA could stand to lose all funding if the student body votes to pass the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Amendment, the center of an ongoing campus-wide debate,” the student newspaper reported on March 5, one day before the scheduled vote.

The article reports on a meeting between the college president and the VSA’s Executive Board, with members of the latter being specifically warned of the cutoff in funding. After the meeting, the president and one of the college deans issued a joint statement clarifying their position on the matter.

“All along, we have said that the VSA has the right to endorse the BDS proposal, given our commitment to free speech.  But the college cannot use its resources in support of a boycott of companies,” they wrote. “Were the VSA to adopt the amendment currently proposing such a policy, the college would have to intervene in some way.”

Vassar College is located in Poughkeepsie, New York. Last year in June, the New York State Legislature passed an anti-BDS measure, and then in November a second measure, creating in effect a blacklist of BDS supporters, was also introduced and is now in committee. The language of the measure passed in June is Orwellian, citing BDS– rather than Israel’s occupation–as being “damaging to the causes of peace, justice, equality, democracy, and human rights for all peoples in the Middle East.” And similar measures are making their way through legislatures in other states as well.

Obviously, the Vassar College administration has seen the writing on the wall, but at the same time, Vassar faculty members are summoning the courage to push back in a show of support for the BDS movement and the vote taken by the VSA. Forty-one of them have signed onto a statement of support that reads in part, “We emphatically condemn any form of intimidation tactics from all individuals or parties who have threatened students supporting BDS or any other form of conscientious objection.”

While BDS quite obviously is high on the Zionist list of priorities, what’s also emerging now is a drive to clamp down on any criticism at all of Israel or voicing of support for Palestinian rights–and colleges and universities dependent upon wealthy private donors seem especially vulnerable to this.

A case in point is Harvard Law School, which recently saw $250,000 yanked by a funder who took exception to a panel discussion entitled “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack,” sponsored by the campus Justice for Palestine group. The program reportedly began with a “3-minute video of students and professors discussing how they were censored, punished or falsely accused of anti-Semitism for taking a principled stance for Palestinian rights.”

But it isn’t only speech that can arouse Zionist ire. The public display of a piece of art can also result in loss of funding. Such happened at York University in Toronto when Canadian TV and film  industry executive Paul Bronfman took exception to a painting hanging in the university’s student center. The painting depicts a Palestinian holding rocks in his hand as an Israeli bulldozer is about to destroy an olive tree.

The text at the bottom of the painting features the words “justice” and “peace” written in various languages. Bronfman complained about the artwork to the university’s president, and, after failing to win a commitment to have it removed, accused the school of “allowing hate propaganda to be displayed” and pulled all assistance to its Cinema and Media Arts department.

“The upshot is that if that poster is not gone by the end of day today,” fumed the media mogul, “then William F. White (Bronfman’s film company) is out of York. York is going to lose thousands of dollars of television production equipment used for emerging student filmmakers…”

But much like at Vassar, the faculty at York has come out in favor of freedom of expression, noting–in a statement signed by 91 full-time faculty and nine retired faculty–that the painting depicts “one artist’s response to the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and the feeling that there is no end in sight.”

Roger Waters has also waded into the controversy with an open letter sent to the York University Graduate Students Association in which the musician accuses Bronfman of “trying to use his economic muscle” to have the painting removed. He also observes:

 The figure in the foreground appears to be a protester considering throwing a stone or stones at a bulldozer about to destroy an olive tree. The protester may be Palestinian. If the scene depicted is anywhere in the territories occupied since 1967, this person has a legal and moral right, under the terms of article 4 of the Geneva conventions to resist the occupation of his homeland.

As may be expected, a concerted effort appears underway in some media outlets to exact the aforementioned “heavy political, societal, and personal price” upon York, with the Toronto Sun, for one, publishing charges that the university “has  been infiltrated with anti-Semitism” and has become one of the “most hostile campuses” in North America.

But in the attack on academic freedom, universities aren’t the only entities being hit with smear campaigns. Individual professors are also being singled out. Attacks on professors who criticize Israel of course are not new. Steven Salaita lost his job at the University of Illinois after posting tweets against Israel’s Gaza onslaught in the summer of 2014, and other professors have faced similar repercussions over the years. But what seems to be emerging now is an intensification of the character assaults, with Jewish and mainstream media ganging up en masse on targeted academics.

One such academic is Oberlin College Professor Joy Karega, who, like Salaita, has taken heat over social media postings. But the hostilities directed at Karega have incorporated a level of volume and viciousness not formerly seen in the Salaita case. This in part is because Karega’s criticisms of Israel have been stronger. She has accused the Zionist state of being behind 9/11. She has also discussed the Rothschild banking empire, depicted ISIS as a CIA/Mossad front group, suggested the Charlie Hebdo attack was a false flag, and she has even, courageously, taken on the issue of Zionist control of the mainstream media.

But her comments on 9/11 are probably the ones that have set off the most alarm bells, or at least seem to be among the most consistently cited. Accusations that her views are “anti-Semitic and abhorrent” have been aired by the New York Times, while Fox News posted an article referring to her, in the headline no less, as a “crackpot prof.” The Washington Post, Slate Magazine, the Times of Israel, and others have also piled on.

Karega has her defenders, however, and one of them is Kevin Barrett, author of the book We Are Not Charlie Hebdo. In two articles published at Veterans Today (see here and here ) Barrett accused the Oberlin professor’s detractors of hurling ad hominem insults at her rather than “using logic and evidence.” In one article he particularly took to task the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, which published a singularly virulent attack piece entitled, “Inside the Twisted Anti-Semitic Mind of Oberlin Professor Joy Karega.” The piece quotes an Oberlin alumna who says, patronizingly, that she thought Karega had perhaps expressed her views out of “ignorance” and that maybe she was “not educated on the history of anti-Semitism.” Barrett’s response was that The Forward article itself “drips” with a certain amount of  “implicitly racist condescension toward proud African-American intellectual Joy Karega.”

The piece also accuses Karega of spreading “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” which leads us to wonder: Is it really possible The Forward’s writers haven’t heard of the 5 dancing Israelis or that their virgin eyes never saw a controlled demolition video on the Internet? Is it conceivable their suspicions were not aroused in the slightest by Larry Silverstein’s $4.5 billion pay-out bonanza on a property filled with asbestos and worth not nearly what it was insured for? If so, then the editorial staff at The Forward must surely be among the most credulously uninformed in the province of professional journalism.

Barrett also sent an email to a number of recipients at Oberlin, including the president and key faculty and administrators, defending Karega and offering to meet any one or more of her slanderers in an on-campus debate on “these critically important issues.” The email was sent February 29. Barrett says he still has not received a response. His defense of the embattled professor has, however, led to an attack–on both him and Veterans Today–in a Jewish media outlet, The Tower Magazine.

“Kevin Barrett, a writer for Veterans Today, a website that prominently features anti-Israel conspiracy theories, offered his support for Karega and her 9/11 theories last week,” Tower said in an article that makes no mention of Barrett’s debate challenge but which attempts to link him to “the neo-Nazi website Stormfront.”

And so the ad hominem attacks flow like lava down the side of a spewing volcano while the Zionist defamers and detractors don surgical masks to avoid any and all dangerous contact with “logic and evidence.” Meanwhile the societal pivot draws closer.

Creating a “firewall” around Israel in effect means a concerted assault upon free speech, or at least upon the freedom to speak freely, if we might phrase it that way. It means making sure a “heavy personal price” is paid by anyone who criticizes Israel.  As Voltaire said, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you’re not allowed to criticize,” and as more and more Americans learn who they’re not allowed to criticize (many of course already know), the inevitable result will be an increasing spread of “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” about Jewish power.  Has the Reut Institute thought of this? Or was that maybe the general ideal all along?

At any rate, by publicly aligning themselves with politicians widely viewed as corrupt, Israel is probably speeding up the process of its own “delegitimization.” What after all is the net effect when Americans watch their Congress members routinely expressing their fervent support for Israel, extolling its putative “shared democratic values”–the same Congress members who day after day go on capitulating to Wall Street and other big-moneyed interests? Does this result in Israel’s gaining support among the public… or losing it? I would say probably more of the latter. And the fact that the very same state–which people like Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton voice their adoration for–engages in relentless war crimes and extrajudicial executions while spitting on international law with impunity only serves to aggravate the situation even further.

Yet in spite of all this, Israeli strategists somehow believe, or at least are hoping against hope, they can put a “firewall” around the Jewish state by attacking BDS, flooding the Internet with “content that puts a positive face on Israel,” and exacting a “heavy personal price” from outspoken critics like Karega. It is either, a) a naive hope, or, b) a vastly overblown confidence in the extent and reach of their own power.

Or maybe it’s a little of both. Yes, they may achieve some “small wins” in the short term. But one fact cannot be hidden, no matter how much hasbara you try to bury it under, and that is that Israel stole the land upon which its state was founded in 1948. And not only did it not pay reparations to the land’s rightful owners, but it has gone on stealing more and more from them, bit by bit, piece by piece, settlement by settlement, up until this very day. And if support for Palestine is growing, it probably, at least in part, has to do with the fact that most of us have little trouble imagining a scenario in which we, ourselves, could be forced out of our homes and end up in the streets homeless.

As for the allegations about 9/11, the evidence that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, and that one of them never was even hit by an airplane, is irrefutable, and the more people become aware of this (which is happening because of the Internet), the harder it’s going to be for Israel to keep the lid on everything. And the more stridently and vociferously the media gang up to attack scholars and academics for simply talking about the matter, the more  it’s ultimately going to serve only to raise public consciousness even further.

Perhaps it’s time for Israel’s supporters to take some anti-anxiety medication and to start looking at reality. And maybe, too, they should keep in mind the words of P.T. Barnum: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.”

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Britain sets ‘bad example’ on surveillance, says UN privacy rapporteur

RT | March 10, 2016

Britain is setting a bad example by legitimizing rather than outlawing mass surveillance, according to the UN’s privacy rapporteur, Joseph Cannataci.

The criticism comes in a report to the UN Human Rights Council examining mass surveillance around the world.

Britain is singled out as setting a bad example because of the government’s attempt to bring into law a number of new spying measures.

Cannataci claims the Investigatory Powers Bill, which will be debated for a second time in parliament next week, legitimizes mass surveillance when bulk collection should in fact be outlawed.

He argues the British security state should stop “setting a bad example to other states” by pursuing measures like “bulk interception and bulk hacking.”

He said that enshrining such surveillance into law undermined “the spirit of the very right to privacy.”

Cannataci has been an outspoken critic of UK surveillance measures for some time. In 2015 he called for a Geneva Convention for the internet, while arguing UK oversight was “a joke.”

On the lack of proper scrutiny on intelligence agencies, he told the Guardian: “That is precisely one of the problems we have to tackle. That if your oversight mechanism’s a joke, and a rather bad joke at its citizens’ expense, for how long can you laugh it off as a joke?”

The Investigatory Powers Bill was partially informed by the revelations of mass surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In his 2015 interview, Cannataci put aside the hero/traitor debate on the former contractor, telling the paper “his revelations confirmed to many of us who have been working in this field for a long time what has been going on, and the extent to which it has gone out of control.”

Cannataci’s concerns are shared by some civil liberties groups.
Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, said the report showed that the “bill does not comply with recent human rights rulings” and that the negative impact of the legislation would “be felt around the world, and copied by other countries.”

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Docs reveal Obama regime tried to ‘kill transparency’ – advocacy group

RT | March 10, 2016

President Barack Obama has touted his administration as the “most transparent ever,” but the Freedom of the Press Foundation says documents released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show an effort to “kill transparency.”

The non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) for documents detailing its correspondence with Congress regarding the reform of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that failed to pass Congress last year despite strong support from legislators. The lawsuit itself was filed in compliance with the FOIA, a law enacted to improve openness in government.

In 2014, the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act (FOIA Act) sought to make receiving information faster and easier. The FOIA Act breezed through the House of Representatives with unanimous support, and a similar bill, The Freedom of Information Improvements Act, was passed by the Senate. However, the legislation failed in Congress after members failed to reconcile the differences between the two bills.

With both bills receiving bipartisan support, it seemed odd for them to die on the vine. The Senate version was modeled after the DOJ’s own policy of transparency set in 2009 by a memo from Attorney General Eric Holder.

“[T]he Department of Justice will defend a denial of a FOIA request only if (1) the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions, or (2) disclosure is prohibited by law,” the 2009 Holder memo read.

However, the Freedom of the Press Foundation published a memo from the DOJ showing that it had lobbied against almost all aspects of the bills – despite the fact that its own guidelines were the basis for one. The DOJ, speaking on behalf of the entire Obama administration, wrote “The Administration strongly opposes passage of [the FOIA Act].”

Specifically, the DOJ’s talking points against similar provisions in the FOIA reform bills run counter to the part of Holder’s 2009 memo stating that when “disclosure would [do] harm,” the DOJ would defend its decision to deny a FOIA request in court.

In the 2014 memo from the DOJ, the first major concern surrounds “foreseeable harm,” but the concern this time was that the language had been included in the legislation at all, because it opened up the DOJ to more potential lawsuits, in which the “foreseeable harm” case would have to be made to a judge.

“This addition would vastly increase FOIA litigation and would undermine the policy behind each of the existing exemptions,” the 2014 memo read.

Ironically, this memo was only released following three months of lawsuits from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The 2014 memo goes on to say that including foreseeable harm would “require judges to determine, on a document-by-document basis, whether disclosure of a record protected by an exemption would cause ‘identifiable harm,’” meaning, a judge would determine whether or not the administration’s claims of foreseeable harm were true – much like what a judge does in any other case.

Efforts to expedite requests through a singular website were also met with resistance from the DOJ, despite the fact that “the Administration believes that it is beneficial to study the feasibility of establishing a single website for the making of FOIA requests… and has already committed to doing so.”

Despite the administration’s stated intention to create such a site, the memo concluded that it “would be counterproductive to mandate establishment of a pilot program, with required participation by multiple agencies.”

Obama started off his presidency by instructing all federal agencies to operate under the “presumption of openness,” but five years later, his administration lobbied to keep the public in the dark.

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Gulf states to take legal action against Hezbollah affiliated TV channels

MEMO | March 9, 2016

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) information ministers agreed on Tuesday to take legal action against TV channels affiliated to Hezbollah, Anadolu reported.

This decision came as part of the conclusion statement of the 24th meeting of the GCC information ministers, which was held in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

“The legal measures stipulated in the decision will apply to all production companies, producers and all matters related to media,” the statement said.

“They are based on the GCC laws and on international laws related to the fight against terrorism,” it said, noting that Hezbollah is considered a terrorist entity.

According to the statement, the GCC described Hezbollah as a group that “incited hatred, chaos and violence” in “blatant violation of the sovereignty, security and stability of GCC and Arab countries”.

On 2 March, the GCC and the council of Arab interior ministers designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.

March 9, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Warrant for Location Tracking? DOJ Says No Need

By Nathaniel Turner | ACLU | March 8, 2016

The government needs a warrant based on probable cause to enter your house and search your cell phone, but what about when they collect 6 months of historical location data from your cell phone company? According to the Department of Justice: No warrant necessary.

During a March 3 House Oversight Committee hearing, the DOJ doubled down on this position and even refused to publicly release more information about how it’s interpreting a Supreme Court ruling on cell phone location tracking. ACLU Legislative Counsel Neema Guliani testified before the committee and made it clear that DOJ is out of touch with reality—and with the Supreme Court—calling on the committee to pass legislation requiring a probable cause warrant to obtain location information.

In U.S. v. Jones, the Court ruled that placing a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car and monitoring him for 28 days was a search under the Fourth Amendment. A majority of the justices said that long-term GPS monitoring of a car “impinges on expectations of privacy.”

But DOJ’s policy requires a probable cause warrant only when collecting cell phone location information in real-time, not historical data (even though in a least two instances revealed by an ACLU FOIA, real-time GPS data from a phone was collected without a warrant). The DOJ witness explained that, while historical data could contain private information, a lower standard to obtain it was acceptable under the department’s current policy—even when pressed by committee members who were understandably unable to see why one type of data was less invasive than the other. In her testimony Guliani argued that real-time and historical location data should be treated the same under the law, as both can reveal intimate details about a person’s daily life.

Throughout the hearing, DOJ also refused to commit to publicly releasing information on how it’s interpreting Jones. After a FOIA request by the ACLU, DOJ released two of its Jones memos, but they were almost entirely redacted. Even the Oversight Committee itself called on DOJ at least four times to see the memos. During the hearing, Chairman Chaffetz announced that he and Ranking Member Cummings would finally be given access to read the memos — but would not even be permitted to take notes. Meanwhile the public and others members of Congress would continue to be left in the dark on this crucial question of how our government is applying the law.

DOJ’s position doesn’t match up with the reality of historical location tracking. Guliani’s testimony explained just why the government’s position is so problematic for privacy:

  1. Location information is precise. Cell phones regularly communicate with cell towers in the area, and as tower technology advances and more towers are built, the ability to triangulate or otherwise log where a phone is over time is becoming increasingly precise — often at the level of a single block or house.
  2. Location information is incredibly revealing. Over 90% of Americans have a cell phone, and about three-quarters are within about 5 feet of those phones most of time (and a little over 10% admit to even using them in the shower). This means that almost every American is generating data about their movements. Data that could reveal how many nights a person sleeps at their home each night, how often they visit a bar, HIV clinic, church, or AA meeting.
  3. Location information is being routinely collected. In just 2015, AT&T received around 58,000 requests for historical cell phone location data from law enforcement. For example, there have been cases in Baltimore and Michigan where police collected over 6 months of location data without a probable cause warrant.

Some jurisdictions have recognized just how invasive historical location information can be, but there is little uniformity. Several states have passed laws requiring a probable cause warrant for all cell phone location information, and others have laws protecting real-time but not historical location information. But, the majority of states have no protections in place, and court rulings are inconsistent across jurisdictions.

And as if this all weren’t enough, DOJ’s guidance on Stingrays—devices that can trick all cell phones within range into connecting to them, allowing police to track movements in real-time—has significant gaps, as we have explained here.

It’s time for Congress to step in and protect location data. They can start by passing the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act (H.R. 491), which would require probable cause warrants for all cell location data. In the meantime, DOJ must release a policy requiring a probable cause warrant for all location data and publicly release its Jones memos.

Cellphones are an integral part of American’s lives and can reveal incredibly intimate details about our daily lives. Our laws must reflect the importance of keeping that information private.

March 9, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Israeli court rules to displace Um al-Hiran Bedouins

Ma’an – March 7, 2016

NEGEV – An Israeli court on Sunday ruled that the Bedouin community of Um al-Hiran in the Negev in southern Israel is illegal, on the grounds that the community settled on state lands, Israeli media reported.

“The state is the owner of the lands in dispute,” Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein as writing. “The residents have acquired no rights to the land but have settled them [without any authorization], which the state cancelled legally.”

Israeli planning authorities intend to build a “new town for Jewish residents in its place,” Haaretz reported.

On Monday, Israeli authorities reportedly entered farm lands used by Um al-Hiran residents with the intentions of destroying crops, but residents were able to prevent forces from beginning the demolition.

Raed Abu al-Qian, a well-known activist in the area, said the move “came to increase pressure on the residents and to make home demolitions easy in the village,” following the Israeli court ruling.

Said al-Khroumi, a member of the Higher Guidance Committee of Arab Residents of Negev, said Israeli forces’ presence at the village was “a heinous and barbarian aggression against the village and its residents.”

He also called for anyone able to travel to Um al-Hiran to visit the village “show solidarity.”

Bedouin member of the Israeli Knesset Talab Abu Arar accused Israeli Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel of creating “a secret government committee” aimed at destroying the crops of Palestinian villages in Israel.

According to Abu Arar, the “secret committee” recommended that Palestinian villages in the Negev be emptied, and residents removed.

“This is a special Israeli form of ethnic cleansing,” Abu Arar continued.

Abu Arar highlighted that Israeli authorities destroyed crops in the villages of Attir, Hurah and Saawah during the past several days.

Residents of Um al-Hiran and nearby villages are among tens of thousands of Bedouins living in the Negev face ongoing displacement.

While a plan to forcibly resettle the area’s Bedouin population — the Prawer Plan — was shelved in 2014, Israel’s Habayit Hayehudi party joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau’s coalition last year on the condition the plan was reinstated.

The Um al-Hiran community — around 700 strong — was never recognized by the Israeli government and residents’ lands were claimed by the state in 2013 in order to make way for the expansion of the Beersheba metropolitan area.

March 8, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Human rights abusers’ invited to ‘non-lethal’ weapons show, condemned by activists

RT | March 7, 2016

Activists have denounced a Home Office sponsored security fair, warning that Britain is selling tear gas and other crowd control tools to some of the world’s most oppressive regimes.

Among the governments invited to take part in the fair in Farnborough, Hampshire, 30 miles southwest of London, are Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Turkey, the Guardian reported on Saturday.

Police and security officials from 79 countries are expected to participate in the fair later this week, according to the list, which was released under a Freedom of Information request.

Since Prime Minister David Cameron took office in 2010, the UK has approved 126 licenses connected with the sale of tear gas and other irritants, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).

Also approved were 75 licenses for crowd control ammunition such as rubber bullets, 79 for “acoustic” crowd control – known as sound grenades – and 259 licenses for riot shields.

CAAT spokesman Andrew Smith told the paper: “There are serious questions to be asked about the impact of the so-called ‘non-lethal’ arms industry. These risks become even more important when these weapons are being sold to human rights abusers and dictatorships.”

“A number of the countries in attendance routinely practice torture, arbitrary detention and other appalling acts of violence. The UK should not be arming these regimes and selling them the means to oppress and kill.”

“[The event] undermines the UK’s claims to be promoting human rights while strengthening the position of repressive regimes.”

Defending the trade show, the Home Office said: “A thriving security industry is vital to help cut crime and protect the public and so it is important these products and services can be showcased and expertise shared.”

Described by organizers as “the perfect place to see the latest security equipment and technology in a secure environment,” the Security and Policy fair will be held behind closed doors, with all visitors “pre vetted to strict Home Office criteria.”

March 7, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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