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Congress is Writing the President a Blank Check for War

By Ron Paul | January 24, 2016

While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.

President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.

It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.

The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?

The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.

Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.

January 25, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mossad-linked Israeli law firm loses anti-BDS case in US labour tribunal

MEMO | January 24, 2016

An Israeli law firm with links to Mossad has lost a case it brought against the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), after the trade union endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement at its national convention in August 2015.

A report on the UE website states that, on January 12, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed an unfair labour practice charge brought by Shurat HaDin. UE, an independent union representing some 35,000 workers in a manufacturing, public sector and private non-profit sector jobs, was the first national US union to endorse BDS.

The Israeli law firm had filed the charge on October 13, alleging that UE’s resolution violated the prohibition in US labour law against ‘secondary boycotts’. UE, meanwhile, argued that “Shurat Hadin’s action was an attempt to interfere with the First Amendment rights of the union and its members to express opinions on political and international issues.”

Responding to the decision by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency of the US government, UE National President Peter Knowlton said that the union had “withstood attempts by the US government to silence us during the McCarthy era in the 1950s,” and was “unbowed by the latest attempt of a surrogate of the Israeli government to stifle our call for justice for Palestinian and Israeli workers.”

He added: “The NLRB’s decision is a victory for the growing BDS movement across the US, which faces increasing political attempts to silence and intimidate critics of the Israeli government. As Americans who have a constitutional right to criticize our own government, we certainly have a right to criticize and, if we choose, boycott a foreign government that is heavily subsidized by US taxpayers.”

Shurat HaDin, in the words of the UE report, “is an Israeli organization that uses legal cases to harass supporters of Palestinian rights and critics of Israel.” Its director has “privately admitted to taking direction from the Israeli government over which cases to pursue.”

According to one Israeli journalist, Shurat HaDin “files lawsuits at the behest of the Israeli government”, yet still “dares to define itself as a ‘human rights organisation’.” The firm’s track record of failure includes a lawsuit against Jimmy Carter, and an ‘anti-discrimination’ case brought against a pro-boycott Australian academic.

January 24, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Human Rights After Euromaidan

By Volodymyr Chemerys | CounterPunch | January 22, 2016

We have to admit: after winning ‘Euromaidan’, the human rights situation in Ukraine has deteriorated significantly.

This trend became apparent already in 2014, evidenced by a number of laws approved during the post-Maidan wave. In particular, we are talking about the law allowing preventive detention of citizens for thirty days, despite the fact that under the Constitution a person may be detained only for 72 hours. Also, changes have been made to the Criminal Code to enable cases to open against a Ukrainian citizen for making critical comments about the military draft of citizens in the “Anti-Terrorist Operation zone”.

In 2015, this trend continued. A law was passed on “de-communization” which is in conflict with a number of fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. These include freedom of assembly and association (Article 11 of the Convention), freedom of expression (Article 10) and freedom of speech.

As a consequence, in Ukraine there are a large number of political prisoners. In this regard, it should be emphasized that the people usually referred to as “political prisoners” in our media are typically representatives of right-wing organizations, arrested for the murder of a renowned journalist or involved in the grenade explosion near the Verkhovna Rada last August–in other words, people who are accused of committing serious criminal offenses.

The real political prisoners are journalists such as Ruslan Kotsaba, arrested and charged in early 2015 for expressing his views on the Internet, or communists such as Alexander Bondarchuk, who was distributing newspapers and leaflets containing oppositional texts. These are just two examples of many more that could be cited.

The situation of the right of peaceful assembly in Ukraine has also seriously deteriorated. On the one hand, courts in Ukraine do not make many decisions prohibiting public meetings. In some regions, including Kiev, local authorities generally do not make requests to the courts to restrict the freedom of peaceful assembly.

But on the other hand, the holding of peaceful assemblies on certain issues is today extremely dangerous. This is due to the threat of attack from the far right. Organizers often abandon planned assemblies due to the threats that they receive.

For these reasons, rallies against rising social service tariffs, the military draft or fascism, or rallies in favour of establishing civil peace, etc have been cancelled. On March 17, 2015 in Odessa, there was an attempt to organize a rally against tariff hikes in public transport, but the people who came out for it were surrounded by members of the right-wing groups, such as ‘Automaidan’ and ‘Oberig’ and only miraculously managed to avoid a serious clash.

And on January 19, the ultra-right disrupted a rally in Kyiv aimed to commemorate two Russian antifascists, the lawyers Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova who were killed in Russia in 2009.

It can be said that today in Ukraine, carrying out public actions advocating for social, political or economic rights is almost impossible. Actions in support of civil peace are immediately declared “separatist”. At the beginning of 2015 in Ukraine, there were large and frequent spontaneous demonstrations against military draft mobilizations. These were broad, grassroots initiatives by a dissatisfied population. But their organizers and participants have been hit with administrative penalties or, worse, have been tried in courts.

In general, it seems that the Parliament, the government and the president are able to offer the population nothing but usurious tariff increases, unemployment, anti-social reforms and further impoverishment. Dissatisfaction is increasingly punished by persecution. We are repeatedly told that that there is a war in our country, and the opposition should be imprisoned while “patriots” should be forgiven even for acts of murder because they kill so-called separatists. Never mind that members of the ‘Tornado’ and ‘Aidar’ battalions have tortured people – you must understand that they wanted to defend the rights and freedoms of Ukrainians!

Alas, this patriotic propaganda that dominates today in the Ukrainian society is, in fact, no different from the Russian variant. We have returned to the realities of the Soviet era, when it was impossible to freely express a point of view or watch this or that film. Ukraine has proscribed the Russian film ‘Irony of Fate’ and many other films. And the Institute of National Remembrance, a kind of ‘Ministry of Truth’, refused to give permission to register a newspaper called ‘Left March’ because the name is the same as the title of the well-known poem by the communist poet Vladimir Mayakovski.

So the human rights situation in Ukraine has deteriorated significantly and it is a real challenge for human rights activists to do their work. If similar things had happened during the regimes of Yanukovych (2010-14), Yushchenko (2005-09) and Kuchma (1994-2005), all human rights activists would unanimously have said that systemic violations of civil rights are taking place. If during the time of President Yanukovych, a journalist were placed on trial, an opposition political party were banned– as today the Communist Party is banned, or opposition parties were prevented from participating in local election, it would certainly have provoked a huge outcry among Ukrainian human rights activists.

Unfortunately, today, the powerful voices of human rights defenders are practically silent. This is due, first of all, to the fact that talking about such things is potentially dangerous. Critical voices run the risk of being labeled “agents of the Kremlin” or “separatists” by both the authorities and the members of ultra-right organizations.

Despite all this, there are human rights activists in Ukraine who are speaking out in favour of human rights, even if they face threats and harassment for doing so. Of note among such people is Tatiana Montyan.[1]

As a rule in such a situation, the loudest voices of human rights defenders are international human rights organizations, most notably, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. But in the case of the latter, its statements criticizing the Ukrainian government are coming mostly from the organization’s headquarters in London while its Ukrainian division maintains a certain politesse.

The Helsinki Union and Amnesty International in Ukraine issued statements in support of the aforementioned Ruslan Kotsaba. However, in comments to the published texts of the group, one reads many allegations that human rights defenders have “sold themselves to Putin” and so on, while in fact the same organizations – from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe –constantly report on systematic violations of civil rights in Russia, just the same as in Ukraine.

One cannot remain silent about what is going on now in our country.

Translator’s notes:
[1] See a July 2015 interview with Tatiana Montyan translated and published here on Fort Russ.

[2] All Ukrainian passports list names in their Ukrainian and Russian literations. Hence, ‘ Volodymyr (Vladimir) Chemerys’.

From Wikipedia:
Volodymyr Chemerys, b 1962, is a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, one of the first perestroika organizations in Ukraine advocating renaissance of national culture and independence. The Union is now a human rights advocacy group. Chemerys was a member of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of the second convocation (1994–1998), but he is mostly known as one of the informal leaders of the ‘Ukraine without Kuchma’ mass protest campaign of 2000-2001. He also took part in the legendary 1991 student protests in Kiev.

Beginning from a conservative outlook, Chemerys has moved to the political left since the disappointment of the Yushchenko presidency.

Original text in Ukrainian here, translated to English by Liva.com, Jan 21, 2016

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Paris state of emergency to remain till Daesh defeat: French PM

Press TV – January 22, 2016

France says the state of emergency put in place in Paris after last November’s deadly terror attacks by Daesh will be extended until the world could totally get rid of the Takfiri terror group.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in an interview with BBC Europe that France would seek to keep the state of emergency in place until the end of what he called the “global war” against Daesh terrorists.

“As long as the threat is there, we must use all the means,” he said, adding the state of emergency should stay in place “until we can get rid of Daesh.”

The French premier also called for a “total, global and ruthless” war against Daesh, which has swathes of land under control in Iraq and Syria since June 2014.

The state of emergency was imposed assailants struck at least six different venues in and around Paris on November 13, 2015. The terrorist attacks, claimed by Daesh, left 130 people dead and over 350 others wounded.

The exceptional measures adopted under the state of emergency empower the French police to keep people in their homes without trial, searching houses without judicial approval and blocking suspicious websites.

The new measures also include a ban on public demonstrations and allow authorities to dissolve groups inciting any acts that seriously affect public order in France.

UN rights specialists have called on the French government not to extend the state of emergency beyond February 2016 and instead ensure protection against any abuse of power while combating terror.

A number of French nationals are fighting alongside terror groups in Syria.

Refugee crisis in Europe

Valls warned that the European Union faces a grave danger from the ongoing refugee crisis.

He said the EU could not take all refugees fleeing the “terrible wars in Iraq or Syria. otherwise,” he added, “our societies will be totally destabilized.”

Europe has been facing an unprecedented inflow of refugees fleeing wars and violence in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria.

According to Valls, Europe needed to take urgent action to control its external borders, emphasizing that “if Europe is not capable of protecting its own borders, it’s the very idea of Europe that will be questioned.”

“We cannot say or accept that all refugees … can be welcomed in Europe, “ Valls noted, criticizing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called for her European partners to take on quotas of refugees.

He also said the EU needs to say in the strongest terms “that we will not welcome all the refugees in Europe.”

Last year, more than one million asylum seekers – the most since World War II – arrived in the European continent after making dangerous journeys by land and sea.

Everyday, about 2,000 refugees arrive in the European Union, according to official numbers.

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

A Drone Protestor Heads to Jail

Reporting by Gail Ablow and John Light | Moyers & company | January 20, 2016

Mary Anne Grady Flores

(Video still from Mary Anne Grady Flores’ press conference before reporting to jail. Via YouTube.)

Mary Anne Grady Flores is in jail today and American citizens everywhere can surely breathe a sigh of relief that we are safe from her criminal behavior at least for the next six months.

That’s the length of the sentence this 59-year-old peace activist in upstate New York began on Tuesday — one day after the United States honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. If he were here today, the martyred Dr. King would surely be shaking his head that America still has a problem with peaceful dissenters of conscience.

And what exactly did Grady Flores do to warrant spending the next six months in jail? She photographed a peaceful protest outside Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, New York. The base is where the US trains pilots to launch drone strikes in the Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. It wasn’t a crime for her to be taking pictures of the demonstration, but when she briefly and unintentionally — yes, unintentionally — stepped onto a road that belongs to the base, she violated what authorities called “an order of protection,” which had been issued in 2012 to forbid protesters from approaching the home or workplace of Col. Earl Evans, a commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. She had never met Evans, never threatened him, never showed any intention of harming him.

Nonetheless, a town justice, David Gideon, issued the order to “protect” the Colonel from the activists. That’s right — the commander of a major military operation, piloting drones on lethal missions half-way around the world, requested a court order of protection against a group of mostly gray-haired demonstrators whom he had never met. In stepping briefly on the roadway at the base, Grady Flores violated that order, despite the fact that, as she says, “We weren’t at the security gate. We were out at the roadway.”

Now get this: The order issued by Judge Gideon was of the sort commonly used against victims of sexual or domestic abuse. “The legal terms ‘victim’ and ‘witness’ have been expanded in this case in a way that’s new and unique in the state of New York,” said attorney Lance Salisbury at a press conference yesterday before Grady Flores was hauled off to jail.

Grady Flores had protested outside the base before. She belongs to The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, which has criticized the drone program since 2010, calling for a change in policy to uphold life and law.

President Obama and the Pentagon insist that using drones in pursuit of terrorists causes minimal civilian casualties and protects American troops, but Grady Flores takes issue with that justification. She told us she had been moved, in particular, by reports of the staggering numbers of civilians killed by US drones, and she says her fears were confirmed by documents recently leaked to journalists at The Intercept revealing that during one five-month stretch, 90 percent of those killed in one part of Northeastern Afghanistan were not the intended target.

Grady Flores says she was also shaken by the 2013 testimony before Congress of a family from Pakistan that had suffered a drone strike in North Waziristan. A grandmother of three herself, Grady Flores listened as Rafiq ur Rehman recounted his mother’s death in the presence of her grandchildren. “She was out in the fields picking okra with the kids around and a drone strike happened, and she was sent to four winds… now the kids live in terror,” Grady Flores recalls.

“That’s why citizens are at the gates of Hancock,” says Grady Flores. “That’s why we’re there.”

Grady Flores was arrested in 2012, when she and 16 others blocked the entrance to the base, prompting the request from the military for the order of protection. When she was arrested again a year later — not for protesting herself but for stepping on the road outside the base and taking pictures of others who were protesting — she was found to be in violation of that protection order. And the protestors she was photographing? They were acquitted.

Justice David Gideon threw the book at her. He sentenced her to a year, claiming in his five-page ruling that he didn’t buy her First Amendment argument. Instead, he thought she “was willing to ‘break the law’ to seek publicity for her cause.” After an appeal, her sentence was shortened to six months.

Before she went to jail yesterday she told us: “I asked my grandchildren, ‘Do you know where I’m going?’ and they said, ‘yeah, you’re going to jail, Nana.’” She told us that it is difficult to leave her 88-year-old mother who is ailing, but that her mother appreciates her carrying on in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King and the iconic Catholic activist Dorothy Day, with whom her mother once worked. Day famously said, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

Grady Flores says her mother’s good-bye shared that sentiment, “Mom said to me, ‘I’ll pray for you, I’ll be with you in that cell.’ She said it in a whisper, but she’s grateful that I’m continuing the work.”

January 21, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Cameron to mark Balfour Declaration centenary with UK Jewish community

MEMO | January 19, 2016

Prime Minister David Cameron has told representatives of the UK’s Jewish community that he intends to “mark” with them the centenary of the Balfour Declaration next year.

david-cameron-12Cameron met members of the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) on January 13, in what has become an annual meeting.

According to a Downing Street spokesperson, the PM “recognised how next year is a special year for the Jewish community with the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.”

In remarks quoted in the Jewish News, Cameron said of the anniversary: “I want to make sure we mark it together in most appropriate way.”

A statement issued by the JLC after the meeting said that topics covered also included “glorification of terrorists on campuses and student unions’ adoption of BDS policies”, and “the government’s approach to the Middle East conflict and the need to prepare people for peace rather than conflict.”

The JLC is an umbrella body made up of over 30 Jewish communal organisations.

January 19, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

UN rights experts warn France not to limit freedoms under anti-terror laws

Press TV – January 19, 2016

United Nations human rights experts have expressed concern about new counter-terrorism measures adopted in France against the backdrop of the deadly 2015 Paris attacks, calling on the French government to protect fundamental freedoms in its anti-terror battle.

In a statement released on Tuesday, a group of four UN rights specialists said the current state of emergency in France and surveillance laws impose “excessive and disproportionate restrictions” on the basic rights of people.

The statement said the main concerns center on “the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the … laws, related to the nature and scope of restrictions to the legitimate exercise of right to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association and the right to privacy.”

On November 13, 2015, assailants struck at least six different venues in and around Paris. The terrorist attacks left 130 people dead and over 350 others wounded. France introduced the state of emergency following the horrendous assaults, which were claimed by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

The exceptional measures adopted under the state of emergency empower the French police to keep people in their homes without trial, searching houses without judicial approval and blocking suspicious websites. The new measures also include a ban on public demonstrations and allow authorities to dissolve groups inciting any acts that seriously affect public order in France.

The UN rights specialists also called on the French government not to extend the state of emergency beyond February 2016 and ensure protection against any abuse of power while combating terror.

Yasser Louati, a spokesman for the Collective against Islamophobia in France, an anti-racist group, said last month that the state of emergency has unfairly targeted Muslims in France.

January 19, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Germany to Introduce Comfort Women

By Linh Dihn | Postcards from the End of America | January 17, 2016

The only way to solve a refugee problem is to stop generating refugees. Since arriving in Germany 3 ½ months ago, I’ve made this point over and over. Most Germans, though, are only focused on the issue of accepting or rejecting refugees, not on the root cause of it, which is America and Israel’s deliberate destabilization of much of the Middle East and parts of North Africa. Wrecking one Muslim country after another, this evil alliance is also sowing chaos in Europe. To save themselves, Europeans must decouple from these two rogue states.

Germany, though, merely does what it’s told by Uncle Sam, and the German left is too busy attacking “fascists”—that is, everyone they disagree with—to even notice that it is the United States that’s thrown their country into turmoil, but then again, being internationalist, most of these leftists don’t even recognize the concept of nationhood. They’re aiming for an uprising of a mythical international brotherhood.

There are thousands of tribes and hundreds of nations, with even people speaking the same language and sharing the same cultural heritage often disagreeing very violently with each other. Nations exist so nominally like-minded people can set up their society the way they see fit. Even an Austrian does not want to live a German, much less an Afghan. When people defend borders, then, they’re fighting for their way of life, and though men everywhere have done this throughout history, progressives think this imperative can somehow be outgrown by everyone on this earth, all but the evil 1%.

“No man is illegal,” chant progressives, and of course this is true, as well as meaningless. A man’s crossing into another nation’s territory without permission is equivalent to breaking into someone’s home. Desperate enough, millions are doing just that, but even those who aren’t will barge in if the doors are flung wide open, with welcome signs and streamers. A radical progressive might say, “I don’t believe in private property either,” but try to reach for his wallet and see if he’s not a hypocrite.

I just got back from three days in Poland, and though $3 plates of pierogi and $1 pints of beer appeal to me mightily, does that mean I can just move there tomorrow? Invaded by Germany and Russia not that long ago, Poles know the pains of having one’s borders violated. Most people around the world do.

Though you’ve no doubt read many commentaries on the sexual crimes on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, I offer you further insights from a German friend in Frankfurt:

“The incidents have had a considerable impact on the German psyche. What happened in Cologne (and several other cities like Hamburg or Bielefeld) on New Year’s Eve had a new character to them.

For the first time, rather huge groups of foreigners were sexually harassing young women and girls. Cologne alone has over 650 incidents—that is much more than usual. Also, the nature of these acts was new, in that women were treated as meat or toys. Not that this could not happen with German men, but—at least to my humble knowledge—this behavior has never been shown by large groups of German men. You could say that there is a normal cultural barrier and Germans would not step over it.

If, on the other hand, you see women as toys or infidel women as sluts, the behavior makes sense.

Yes, it is a big issue, but I suppose it will fade from focus soon. It will stay in the collective mind, however. As I write this, questions like ‘how to buy a gun illegally’ are flourishing on the German net as do the sale of pepper sprays and self-defense courses.

So the reaction of the German public is mostly disgust and anger, though the media and a large minority try to show these incidents as aberrations which should not be attached to the refugees. This, in turn, makes other Germans angry.

A funny side note: The official media and people who usually complain about women’s rights here have a rather hard time avoiding racism by denouncing these crimes. Therefore, really absurd explanations have been floated, as in Cologne was nothing special or that some of the harassed women must have been racists who used these incidents to make false accusations against immigrants.

The head of the police in Cologne had to resign, but the Minister of the Interior for the Federal Region Nordrhein-Westfalen stays—and he is the one who is really responsible.

So the political reactions are twofold—verbally, everybody condemns these acts, while practically nothing is done to stop the influx of refugees coming here.

It has to be added that, as usually in such cases, the Cologne incidents have been used as an excuse by state officials to call for stricter laws and for more surveillance (as if we didn’t have both already).

The official line could be still summed up as something like this: Immigration is good and necessary and criticism on migrants or refugees is a sign of hate and of being a Nazi. This is still the official mantra in the media. The media didn’t report on Cologne for three days, but then they had to bring it up because it was causing such a storm in the alternative media. Nothing much will change—though I am sure, the state will increase its control mechanisms on the population.

A rather intelligent conspiracy theory muses about the possibility that these acts were ‘staged’ (which I do not share as an explanation) and that they will be used together with similar incidents to one day declare a state of emergency and deprive us of our civil rights, so that in the face of financial armageddon (the big financial crisis looming in the background), the state may rob us of all our savings and our rights with as little resistance as possible (because we need to be protected from nasty migrants and terrorists).

Though I find this theory rather interesting, I don’t think these acts were staged. We do live in an age of ‘scripted reality,’ however, so I believe that—just like in France, where they had introduced a state of emergency after the Paris terrorist attacks, and it is still in place—our government already has the plans on what to do to achieve the goal of creating a police state in Germany, where we can be constantly surveilled 24/7 and have our rights taken away without us fighting against it.

Also, the alternative and official media have been awash since the start of the refugee crisis with reports about refugees who misbehaved in the public (squatting or urinating in gardens of Germans, sexually assaulting women in public swimming pools, starting fights in discotheques, rapes, etc.).

These incidents are somewhat expected because the majority of these refugees are young men without wives or women, and they come from backgrounds where the position of women in society is rather different than in ours.

So some of these young men will misbehave, and since they are not punished—for to send them back to their countries would be racist and, in some cases the country is not known, because quite a few refugees threw away their passports before entering Germany—they are encouraged to continue what they do.

I have personal knowledge from a policeman in Gießen (a town in the middle of Hesse), where there is a huge camp for refugees. He told me of frequent rapes in this camp among the refugees, even of children, but they are not prosecuted by the police (on order from above), because it might create fear in the local population. There were reports about these incidents from a German Women’s Protection Group (Landesfrauenrat Hessen) in August last year—they even wrote an official letter to the Hessian parliament to complain about prostitution and organized rapes in the camp—and guess what happened?

The letter (and the issue) just disappeared—because it might have fuelled anti-refugee sentiments and helped Nazis! THIS is the official German policy—it is ideologically driven and full of cowardice. While on a visit in Gießen, I spoke to some female students living in a student hostel near the camp. They told me that they don’t go out alone anymore, because they were always treated in a way which scared them by some of the refugees.

So Cologne was bound to happen sooner or later, and it will be the first of a long list of unpleasant and nasty and fear- and hate-inducing incidents.

I also expect the rift between migrants and Germans, already big, will increase in size, sadly enough.

It is sad, because it is divide and rule at its best. We are allowed to hate each other so that we may not unite against the real enemy—those who created the situation we are in.

I certainly don’t like my country being flooded with foreigners, but they are just tools in an inhuman and vicious plan, and I hope that more people will come to realize this in time.

So all in all, the signs for the near future are rather bleak. I would think that we will soon see further incidents like those in Cologne and then suddenly a backlash in parts of the German population, followed by (one day, after a terrorist attack) a declaration of a state of emergency—and from this it will only get worse.

The good thing—it will take us some years to get to the bottom.

And as we all know, the only way from the bottom is up.”

Yes, it’s getting grimmer by the second, but those who think Germany is spinning out of control underestimate the shrewdness of Angela Merkel. After all, one isn’t named TIME person of the year for being a dummy. Yes, there was another riot last week in Leipzig, with the right doing most of the vandalism this time. Bars and a kebab shop were trashed. Germans seem ready to kill each other, and the street violence promises to spread to other cities.

Her highness, however, has a solution. By diktat, Merkel has just instituted a draft, not of military-age males, but German females from 18 to 22. Those chosen through a weekly, nationally televised lottery will serve just six months as comfort women for war refugees and economic migrants. This will prevent all incidents of public groping or rape. Social harmony will be restored.

Merkel, “Just as the refugees have been maltreated by fate, us Germans will have a taste of that ourselves, though to a much lesser degree. The nation will forever be grateful to each comfort woman for her smallish sacrifice.”

Upon news of this, the German left celebrate by burning down every currywurst stand across Deutschland. Birthed during the American occupation, that yucky mess deserves its turbulent exit. Thanks to the always tactful mainstream media, the right’s response is unknown. TV news anchors calmly predict that a billion newcomers will arrive next year to be comforted. The left further exude by hurling Molotov cocktails at everyone in a uniform, including garbagemen and fast food wage slaves. Class traitors who have enriched multinational corporations, they deserve to be fried.

Forward!

January 19, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey’s Erdogan files $32k lawsuit against opposition leader who called him a ‘dictator’

RT | January 18, 2016

Attorneys for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan have filed a lawsuit against a major opposition leader for stating that Erdogan is a dictator, presidential sources and the opposition party told Reuters. The president is reportedly seeking $32,000 in damages.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu made the controversial comment on Saturday, just one day after Erdogan urged prosecutors to investigate academics who signed a declaration criticizing military action in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. Twenty-seven of the signatories were briefly detained.

“Academics who express their opinions have been detained one by one on instructions given by a so-called dictator,” he said during a speech to his party’s 35th General Congress in Ankara, referring to those who have signed petitions opposing the military crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and urging an end to curfews.

“You may not agree with the content of the declaration. We also have issues with it, we also have our disagreements. But why limit freedom of speech?” Kilicdaroglu added.

Erdogan’s lawyers are seeking 100,000 lira (US$32,000) in damages, according to Turkish media.

A petition presented to the public prosecutor’s office also asked for a civil lawsuit to be launched against the CHP, Turkey’s Anadolu agency reported. The biggest opposition party in Turkey, with 134 seats in the 550-member Turkish parliament, the CHP, has been led by Kilicdaroglu since May 2010.

In addition to the lawsuit, an attorney from the Ankara prosecutor’s office has also launched an investigation into Kilicdaroglu’s comments on charges of “openly insulting the president,” local media reported.

In Turkey, insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail. Although Kilicdaroglu has immunity from prosecution because he is a lawmaker, parliament could vote by a simple majority to remove that protection.

It’s not the first time that Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu have clashed. In June 2015, Erdogan filed a 100,000 lira ($32,000) lawsuit against the CHP leader for “mental anguish” following a public spat over claims that there were golden toilet seats installed in the presidential palace.

January 18, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Transparency is Expensive — NYPD Charges News Network $36,000 For Body Camera Footage

By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | January 18, 2016

New York, NY – In the wake of growing controversy surrounding police violence, more police departments are equipping their officers with body cameras. However, while police-worn body cameras can bring extra evidence into cases on both sides, they are far from a fix for police brutality. The main obstacle with these cameras is the fact that the footage is still entirely controlled by police departments.

The officer in the field has an opportunity to turn the camera on and off at their discretion. The cops in the office then have a second opportunity to edit the footage or redact parts that might make the officer look bad or incriminate them. Additionally, police departments are often guilty of withholding body camera footage from victim’s families and news organizations.

In one recent case, the NYPD charged a TV news network $36,000 for body camera footage, stating that it would cost them that much to prepare the footage for the network. The network is now suing the police department, stating that the high price undermines the transparency that body cameras have been promised to bring. Charging obnoxious prices for the release of body camera footage is just another trick that the police use to keep their activities from going public.

According to the lawsuit, filed by Time Warner Cable News NY1:

“[NYPD] denied NY1’s request for unedited footage without specifying what material it plans to redact, how much material will be excluded from disclosure, or how the redaction will be performed. Instead, Respondents suggested that they may provide NY1 with edited footage, but only on the condition that NY1 remit $36,000.00, the alleged cost to the NYPD of performing its unidentified redactions.”

The lawsuit also stated that the NYPD’s policy was “counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL (Freedom of Information Law), as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.”

The police department claims that their fee is “reasonable” considering the time and effort required to edit the footage.

In a response to NY1, the NYPD sent a letter explaining their costs.

The letter stated that:

“The RAO’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the BWC footage was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the BWC footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the BWC footage, for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the costs of compensating a police officer is $120 per hour. Multiplying $120 by 304 hours equals $34,480 which closely approximates the amount estimated by the RAO. This approximate cost does not include the time required to locate and collate the recordings, for which no charge is made, as that time is a part of the search for responsive records, and not a part of the time required for copying. In sum, the copying cost, as estimated by the RAO, is reasonable and commensurate with the breadth of the FOIL request.”

Even if their claims are true, which they most likely are not, having the police handle body camera footage “in house” is obviously not the best option for transparency or cost, considering the inflated budgets that police officers enjoy.

Many advocates for police accountability suggest that body camera footage should be open source, and in the hands of the people and not the police. This could likely be handled by teams of volunteers and donors who could keep the project running without a large budget.

When there is a project that has enough support, it will usually receive sufficient donations from individuals, businesses and charity organizations to keep the program operating. We saw this in the U.S. a few years back, when the government pulled the plug on funding for the SETI space program. This was a program that many people still wanted despite the government’s decision to cut funding. In fact, they wanted it around so badly that over 2,400 different donations were received in a single week, easily surpassing their goal of $200,000.

If put in the hands of the public, police body camera footage could work in the same way, but this option has been unanimously rejected by police departments across the country.

January 18, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

In 1979 Feds Violently Removed Black Protesters From Wildlife Refuge

By M. David |Counter Current News | January 15, 2016

It took decades of protests and petitioning the government, but after being continuously ignored, African American activists took over a federal wildlife refuge.

While sites are drawn up in the debate over who is right or wrong in the Bundy militia stand off in Oregon today, it is worth noting that this group of activists did the same thing, decades ago, in a protest against what they considered an unjust land grab by the U.S. government.

The armed protesters today occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns was not the first of its kind, but it has had a very different response from law enforcement when compared to the very similar standoff 39 years ago in Harris Neck, Georgia.

The Harris Neck protesters were mostly displaced descendants of West African slaves. The FBI described them as “squatters” – even though they stated from the outset that their intentions were very much political in nature.

The group was called the People Organized for Equal Rights. They set up camp much like the Occupy Wall Street movement later would.

The encampment was on a patch of land stolen by the federal government south of Savannah, back on April 30, 1979.

The group of prominent civil rights leaders, and other activists brought concrete blocks and bags of mortar to build new homes, but they were unarmed.

The Oregonian summarizes that “following the Civil War, a white plantation owner deeded the land on the Georgia coast to a former slave. In the decades that followed, the descendants of slaves moved to Harris Neck to build houses, factories and boats. They fished, hunted for oysters and grazed cattle.”

In time, “Harris Neck evolved into a thriving community. Its members were recognized as a culturally unique group of African Americans called Gullah.”

Finally, in 1942, the U.S. military told Harris Neck residents that they had only three weeks to vacate the land. They cited eminent domain laws, and ordered residents to leave their property so they “could construct an airbase for training pilots and conducting anti-submarine flights.”

African American residents were given an insulting $26.90 per acre. Caucasian residents were given $37.31 for the same amount of land.

“Residents were paid only for the unimproved value of their land, receiving nothing more for houses, barns, or crops in the field, all of which were bulldozed or burned,” The New American reported in 2010.

After World War II, the government held onto the land – never giving it back. They eventually turned it into the 2,762-acre Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge.

Federal law enforcement eventually got a court order to remove the Harris Neck protesters. They ignored their historical claims to the land, and after only a day of protests, they threatened to violently remove everyone if they did not leave of their own accord.
Edgar Timmons, Jr., Hercules Anderson, Christopher McIntosh and the Rev. Ted Clark stayed and faced the threat head on.

According to the Oregonian, on May 2, 1979, U.S. deputy marshals “forcibly removed” the men. “‘Their bodies taut and motionless,’ the men were dragged out of their tent, handcuffed and hoisted into a waiting van.”

The men were all sentenced to jail, and two years later, in 1981, “a fire destroyed county records with details on the original home sites.”

What do you think accounts for the difference between how both groups were treated when they took over federal wildlife sanctuaries? Is it racism? Or was the fact that the 1979 activists were unarmed the deciding factor law enforcement standing down?

January 17, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt builds more prisons

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MEMO | January 14, 2016

Instead of fulfilling his promises to improve the country’s deteriorating economy, provide new job opportunities for thousands of unemployed youth and build at least one million housing units to accommodate young couples, Egypt’s President, Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi has only managed to build more prisons and detention centres to accommodate the growing number of opposition activists.

Less than two months after his election in June 2013, Al-Sisi opened the first maximum security prison in the Dakahlia Governorate.

As many as five new prisons have been constructed since 2013.

Yesterday, the president issued a decree to allocate a plot of state-owned land that spreads over more 103.22 acres to construct a new central prison in Giza.

With the new prison, Egypt will have 42 prisons as well as 382 detention centres in police stations.

A report by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights revealed that the cost of building Gamasa prison was 750 million Egyptian pounds ($95.8 million), adding that the interior ministry did not publish the costs incurred during the construction of the other prisons because they probably cost billions of Egyptian pounds.

According to the organisation, Egypt does not need to build more detention centres to solve a capacity crisis; the problem is imprisoning tens of thousands of innocent people without justification.

Authorities have increased arbitrary arrests because of political opinion and the number of detainees has reached more than 41,000 prisoners, the human rights group said.

January 14, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment