Five Reasons Armed Domestic Drones Are a Terrible Idea
By Jay Stanley – ACLU – August 27, 2015
The Daily Beast has reported that North Dakota has enacted a drone bill that permits law enforcement drones to be equipped with weapons such as Tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas, and sound cannons. This is a terrible idea.
Having attended numerous drone meetings and conferences in the past several years attended by a broad array of industry, law enforcement, and other government representatives, I can confidently say that there is a broad consensus that armed domestic drones are beyond the pale. With the exception of one sheriff in Texas who mused about arming drones several years ago, the concept is never even seriously discussed in the drone community. Several states have already enacted flat bans on weaponized drones (examples include Oregon , Virginia, and Wisconsin).
Although there are plenty of states that have not passed drone legislation at all, and some states have enacted legislation that makes no mention of the arming of drones (such as Florida, Tennessee, and Utah), the North Dakota bill is different. While it does explicitly ban the arming of police drones with “lethal weapons,” it remains silent on so-called “less-than-lethal weapons.”
Here’s why arming drones, even with less-frequently-lethal weapons, is a such a bad idea:
- Drones make it too easy to use force. When domestic law enforcement officers can use force from a distance, it may become too easy for them to do so, and the inevitable result will be that these weapons are over-used—just as surveillance tools, having become so cheap and easy, are widely overused. Tasers were originally sold as an alternative to guns—and who could dispute that getting an electric shock is better than getting a bullet? Yet we know that Tasers are routinely used by police officers not as a last-resort use of force, as guns are supposed to be, but as a torture device to get truculent suspects to comply with police commands through the application of pain—and all-too-often, as a way of punishing citizens for the crime of “dissing a cop.”
- “Nonlethal” weapons aren’t actually nonlethal. So-called “nonlethal” or “less-than-lethal” weapons should be called “less lethal” weapons because they do kill. Tasers regularly kill Americans—39 people so far in 2015, according to the Guardian, and comparable numbers each year going back to 2001 according to an Amnesty International report on the technology, which also found that 90% of those killed with Tasers were unarmed.
- Distance=inaccuracy. Even when officers are physically present, fully immersed in a situation—with 360-degree vision and all of their other senses in play—we know that force is often over-used. When officers are not physically present, their perception of a situation and their judgment about when to apply force is more likely to be flawed, non-targets are more likely to be injured, and excessive amounts of force are more likely to be applied. And the drones themselves may be inaccurate due to wind, communications and control problems, or other factors.
- This will open the door to increasing weaponization. If we allow less-lethal weapons to be deployed on drones, how long will it be before the door is opened to fully lethal weapons. Already the Pentagon has developed a small (under 6-pound) lethal “kamikaze” drone called the “Switchblade,” which functions as a pint-sized guided missile. The Army is reportedly considering spending $100 million on such drones under a program called the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System.
- It will only increase the militarization of police. The heavily militarized response to the protests in Ferguson and so many other places around the country have been bad enough; imagine if the police there were permitted to fill the skies with drones raining beanbag bullets, Tasers, tear gas, and sound cannons down on protesters.
This bill does impose restrictions on police use of drones for surveillance, which is a good thing, and initially, it banned all weapons on drones. The ACLU supported the initial version of the bill. But the weaponization provision was altered through last-minute lobbying by the state’s police association.
Just because police departments in North Dakota have been given permission by their legislature to fly armed drones does not mean that they need to do so, or will. Indeed the strong national consensus against doing so may hold them back until hopefully this anomalous legislation can be reversed.
Virginia teen with pro-ISIS Twitter account sentenced to 11 years in prison
RT | August 28, 2015
A high school honor student who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State through social media has been sentenced to 136 months in prison. The teen aided his friend in traveling to Syria to join the jihadist group in January.
In June, Ali Shukri Amin, 17, of Manassas, Virginia, pleaded guilty in a federal court to one count of providing material support and resources to Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL), which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States government.
On Thursday, Amin was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. After serving his sentence, Amin will face a “lifetime of supervised release and monitoring of his internet activities,” according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Earlier this month, Amin said his thinking had become “distorted,” and that he had perverted the teachings of Islam to justify violence and death.
“I am deeply ashamed for becoming so lost and adrift from what I know in my heart is right,” Amin wrote to the judge tasked with sentencing him, the Washington Post reported last week. Prosecutors had originally sought a 15-year prison sentence. Amin asked for just a little over six years.
Amin was responsible for the Twitter handle @Amreekiwitness, an account with more than 4,000 followers that posted more than 7,000 messages since June 2014, according to a plea agreement. The account was openly pro-Islamic State, offering advice and encouragement to IS supporters, including how to use Bitcoin to send funding to IS. Amin’s @Amreekiwitness also sparred with the US State Department’s anti-radicalization Twittter account, @ThinkAgain_DOS.
Amin, identified as a Muslim by his attorney, facilitated travel to Syria for Reza Niknejad, 18, also of Prince William County, Virginia, according to the DOJ. Both attended Prince William County’s Osbourn Park High School, where Niknejad graduated in June 2014. Amin, an honor student who had been accepted to college before withdrawing, left the school in February.
In January, Amin and another teenager took Niknejad to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC so that he could catch a flight to Greece. Niknejad met up with Amin’s contacts in Istanbul, Turkey during a layover. Niknejad is now believed to be a member of the Islamic State in Syria.
Niknejad, a naturalized citizen originally from Iran, was charged in June with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to provide material support to IS, and conspiring to kill and injure people abroad.
Amin, a naturalized citizen from Sudan, is one of around 50 people charged by federal prosecutors in the US for trying to aid IS, the Washington Post reported in June. He is the youngest person to be charged for such activity, according to MSNBC.
The DOJ said Amin’s sentencing “demonstrates that those who use social media as a tool to provide support and resources to ISIL will be identified and prosecuted with no less vigilance than those who travel to take up arms with ISIL.”
“Ali Shukri Amin is a young American who used social media to provide material support to ISIL,” said Assistant US Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin in a DOJ press release.
“ISIL continues to use social media to send their violent and hateful message around the world in an attempt to radicalize, recruit and incite youth and others to support their cause. More and more, their propaganda is seeping into our communities and reaching those who are most vulnerable.”
In the press release, Prince William County Police Department Chief Stephan Hudson said Amin was reported by “school staff” to law enforcement, which notified federal authorities through a Joint Terrorism Task Force partnership.
“Observations made by school staff and subsequent follow-up by the School Resource Officer were some of the earlier indicators of suspicious behavior regarding this individual,” Hudson said. “Those observations were quickly relayed to our partners with the JTTF who acted upon this information very quickly. We greatly appreciate that these observations were observed and reported to the proper authorities proved to be instrumental in the overall investigation in stopping a dangerous network such as ISIL from further infiltrating our community.”
The DOJ did not offer details as to the extent of Amin’s “suspicious behavior” reported by school staff that triggered an FBI investigation of a teenager. The FBI was first informed of Amin’s support in November 2014, according to reports.
“Amin’s case serves as a reminder of how persistent and pervasive online radicalization has become,” said assistant director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Andrew McCabe, adding that the sentencing “marks a personal tragedy for the Amin family and the community as we have lost yet another young person to the allure of extremist ideology focused on hatred.”
Amin’s attorney, Joseph Flood, told the Post in June that his client was most angry at the Syrian regime, which Amin believed was tacitly supported by the United States. Amin’s actions “are a reflection of his deeply held religious beliefs, but also his immaturity, social isolation and frustration at the ineffectiveness of nonviolent means for opposing a criminal regime,” Flood said.
“In every regard, the activity that resulted in his conviction was an anomaly and at odds with the hard-working values he learned in his family,” Flood added. “Mr. Amin’s greatest hope is that others might learn from his errors and find pro-social, nonviolent ways of working for change.”
Amin also ran an ask.fm page under the name AmreekiWitness, according to his plea agreement. The account was “dedicated to raising awareness about the upcoming conquest of the Americas, and the benefits it has upon the American people.”
The FBI received clearance to search Amin’s phone in November, the Post reported. The agency seized a package from him on January 7 that contained a smartphone, thumb drive, and handwritten note in English and Arabic.
An FBI affidavit said Niknejad’s family checked his bank account on January 18 and discovered that he had bought a plane ticket to Turkey. He had told them he was going on a camping trip. The family also found an envelope in their mailbox that same day containg a thumb drive on which were family photos and a note from Niknejad saying he loved his family but he “had traveled to Medina, Saudi Arabia, to further study Islam.”
Whistleblowers sue DOJ, FBI, and NSA for malicious prosecution, civil rights violations
RT | August 28, 2015
Five whistleblowers are suing the Justice Department, National Security Agency, FBI and their former directors for violating their constitutional and civil rights after they complained about government waste and fraud through proper channels.
According to the complaint, filed in Washington, DC’s federal district court, all five were subjected to illegal searches and seizures, raids on their homes and places of business, false imprisonment, and cancellation of their security clearances after they complained about government waste and fraud at the NSA.
Four of the five whistleblowers worked at the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, Ed Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe and William Binney. The fifth, Diane Roark, worked at the Department of Energy. They are seeking some $100 million in damages.
The plaintiffs blew the whistle on the wasteful abandonment of a short-lived surveillance program called THINTHREAD which was being built by the NSA, but was then scuttled in favor of a more expensive program less protective of Americans’ communications.
The plaintiffs had worked on developing the THINTHREAD program, which was capable of effectively performing the technical work required by the NSA at the low cost of $4 million. The program was dumped at the direction of Lt. General Michael Hayden in favor of an outside contract for an expensive program called TRAILBLAZER, which ended up costing the government $4 billion. The TRAILBLAZER program never worked properly and was abandoned in 2006.
The plaintiffs filed a complaint with the Department of Defense arguing that, in using an outside contractor, the agency was committing fraud and wastefully misusing taxpayer dollars. The Department of Defense inspector general issued a scathing report on the abuse.
In response, the complaint argues, the NSA concocted a story claiming the whistleblowers were responsible for leaking information on the NSA’s surveillance of Americans to The New York Times. As a result, the Department of Justice conducted a series of raids that disrupted the plaintiffs’ lives and livelihoods.
The plaintiffs argue that the raids were retaliatory as the government had already determined that they had had nothing to do with the disclosures to the New York Times. The real leaker was a former lawyer who worked at DOJ with the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Among the six named defendants are two former NSA directors, Michael Hayden and Keith Alexander, and former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
The complaint alleges that the FBI, NSA and DOJ’s actions violated the plaintiffs’ protections under the 1998 Whistleblower Protection Act, and violated their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights.
The whistleblowers are seeking punitive damages in excess of $100 million in compensation for the loss of wages and employment they incurred as a result of the defendants’ alleged callous and reckless indifference.
While the raids and harassment took place in 2006 and 2007, the suit is only being brought now because the plaintiffs were only able to access all of the details concerning their case in 2013, after court documents were unsealed.
No Longer a Conspiracy Theory, First State Legalizes Weaponized Drones for Cops
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | August 26, 2015
North Dakota — Nothing says “police state” quite like unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the sky ready to deploy 80,000 volts to the nearest protester or dose entire crowds with chemical weapons.
The idea of weaponized drones has long been a dystopian, yet fictional idea. However, thanks to House Bill 1328, in North Dakota, this police state hell from above is now a horrid reality.
Thanks to a police union lobbyist, the idea of police using drones for “less than lethal” weapons is now written into North Dakota law.
According to the Daily Beast,
The bill’s stated intent was to require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge in order to use a drone to search for criminal evidence. In fact, the original draft of Rep. Rick Becker’s bill would have banned all weapons on police drones.
Then Bruce Burkett of North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328 and limit the prohibition only to lethal weapons. “Less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are therefore permitted on police drones.
The term “less than lethal” is thrown around to make tasers, which have been responsible for hundreds of deaths since 2001, seem like they are okay to be deployed on infants.
The reality is that “less than lethal” weapons are only slightly less lethal than the real thing. Now that these weapons will be put on drones, entire new safety concerns arise, such as accuracy and the simple issue of a drone falling into a crowd.
After being duped by the police lobby into passing a bill allowing cops to equip drones with weapons, Rep Becker is worried. He spoke up about police deploying these weapons when they aren’t near the intended target.
“When you’re not on the ground, and you’re making decisions, you’re sort of separate,” Becker said. “Depersonalized.”
One need only look at the Middle East and the thousands of innocent women and children who’ve been slaughtered by US drones to imagine the grim reality of such legislation.
Law enforcement and their union lobbyists are assuring lawmakers that drones would only be used in non-criminal situations, like a missing person case or for photographing crime scenes. This begs the question of why they would need such ominous legislation if they say they’ll never use it?
According to Keith Lund of the Grand Forks Regional Economic Development Corporation, laws like this one are to combat restrictions in drone development to create jobs.
North Dakota has been hit hard by the oil bust, and more drones equal more jobs.
“It’s really all about the commercial development, which is where all of this is heading,” Lund replied. “If [a law] is somehow limiting commercial, law enforcement development… that is a negative in terms of companies looking and investing in opportunities in the state of North Dakota,” Lund said, according to the Daily Beast.
It’s not only weapons attached to drones that are raising issues in the state either. Police and their lobbyists are putting up a big fight to allow the use of drones for spying without a warrant.
“Requiring a search warrant for surveillance is ‘restricting development?’” asked Rep. Gary Paur, a Republican, at a hearing.
It seems that corporate and state collusion, at the expense of the people’s liberties, doesn’t even have to happen behind closed doors anymore.
Get ready, because if we know anything about the military-industrial complex, it’s that it spreads like a virus. It is only a matter of time before other slimeball politicians sell out civil liberties to prop up “Big Drone.”
Ukrainian State Oppression Against Protests Triples After Coup – Monitor
Sputnik | August 26, 2015
According to a group which monitors protests in Ukraine, repressions against protests in Ukraine more than tripled compared to the time period before the protests which led to Ukraine’s 2014 coup.
State repressions against protests in Ukraine more than tripled compared to the period before Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests and the February 2014 coup, a Ukrainian protest monitor said in a release.
According to the Kiev-based Center for Social and Labor Research (CLSR), the number of violent protests in the 11 months prior to the 2013 Euromaidan and the 11 months after August 2014 more than tripled. The monitor found that the peak of government repressions against protests peaked between April and June 2015, with 57 out of every 100 protest facing government violence.
“Worrying is the high frequency of repressions against protests with government critics and demand for lustration, against protests with socio-economic and political demands,” the release said.
The percentage of violent protests also more than doubled in the compared time periods, according to the monitor. At the same time, oppression against what the monitor called “anti-communist” protests decrease while violence at the protests more than doubled. The monitor also found that even without protests that it labeled “separatist,” the number of negative government reactions to protests more than doubled in 2015.
Hawaii Sees 10 Fold Increase in Birth Defects After Becoming GM Corn Testing Grounds
By Jay Syrmopoulos | The Free Thought Project | August 24, 2015
Waimea, HI – Doctors are sounding the alarm after noticing a disturbing trend happening in Waimea, on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Over the past five years, the number of severe heart malformations has risen to more than ten times the national rate, according to an analysis by local physicians.
Pediatrician Carla Nelson, after seeing four of these defects in three years, is extremely concerned with the severe health anomalies manifesting in the local population.
Nelson, as well as a number of other local doctors, find themselves at the center of a growing controversy about whether the substantial increase in severe illness and birth defects in Waimea stem from the main cash crop on four of the six islands, genetically modified corn, which has been altered to resist pesticide.
Hawaii has historically been used as a testing ground for almost all GMO corn grown in the United States. Over 90% of GMO corn grown in the mainland U.S. was first developed in Hawaii, with the island of Kauai having the largest area used.
According to a report in The Guardian :
In Kauai, chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre (mostly herbicides, along with insecticides and fungicides) than on ordinary cornfields in the US mainland, according to the most detailed study of the sector, by the Center for Food Safety.
That’s because they are precisely testing the strain’s resistance to herbicides that kill other plants. About a fourth of the total are called Restricted Use Pesticides because of their harmfulness. Just in Kauai, 18 tons – mostly atrazine, paraquat (both banned in Europe) and chlorpyrifos – were applied in 2012. The World Health Organization this year announced that glyphosate, sold as Roundup, the most common of the non-restricted herbicides, is “probably carcinogenic in humans”.
Waimea is a small town that lies directly downhill from the 12,000 acres of GMO test fields leased mainly from the state. Spraying takes place often, sometimes every couple of days. Residents have complained that when the wind blows downhill from the fields, the chemicals have caused headaches, vomiting, and stinging eyes.
“Your eyes and lungs hurt, you feel dizzy and nauseous. It’s awful,” local middle school special education teacher Howard Hurst told the Guardian. “Here, 10% of the students get special-ed services, but the state average is 6.3%,” he says. “It’s hard to think the pesticides don’t play a role.”
To add insult to injury, Dow AgraSciences’ main lobbyist in Honolulu, until recently, actually ran the main hospital in town. Although only 1,700ft away from a Syngenta field, the hospital has never done any research into the effects of pesticides on its patients.
Hawaiians have attempted to reign in the industrial chemical/farming machine on four separate occasions over the past two years. On August 9 an estimated 10,000 people marched through Honolulu’s main tourist district to protest the collusion of big business and state putting profits over citizens’ health.
“The turnout and the number of groups marching showed how many people are very frustrated with the situation,” native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte said.
Hawaiians have also attempted to use a ballot initiative to force a moratorium on the planting of GMO crops, according to The Guardian:
In Maui County, which includes the islands of Maui and Molokai, both with large GMO corn fields, a group of residents calling themselves the Shaka Movement sidestepped the company-friendly council and launched a ballot initiative that called for a moratorium on all GMO farming until a full environmental impact statement is completed there.
The companies, primarily Monsanto, spent $7.2m on the campaign ($327.95 per “no” vote, reported to be the most expensive political campaign in Hawaii history) and still lost.
Again, they sued in federal court, and, a judge found that the Maui County initiative was preempted by federal law. Those rulings are also being appealed.
Even amidst strong public pressure, the chemical companies that grow the GMO corn have continued to refuse to disclose the chemicals they are using, as well as the specific amounts of each chemical being used. The industry and its political cronies have continually insisted that pesticides are safe.
“We have not seen any credible source of statistical health information to support the claims,” said Bennette Misalucha, executive director of Hawaii Crop Improvement Association in a written statement distributed by a publicist.
Nelson pointed out that American Academy of Pediatrics’ report, Pesticide Exposure in Children, found “an association between pesticides and adverse birth outcomes, including physical birth defects,” going on to note that local schools have twice been evacuated and kids sent to the hospital due to pesticide drift. “It’s hard to treat a child when you don’t know which chemical he’s been exposed to.”
Sidney Johnson, a pediatric surgeon at the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children who oversees all children born in Hawaii with major birth defects says he’s noticed that the number of babies born here with their abdominal organs outside. This is a rare condition known as gastroschisis and has grown from three a year in the 1980s to about a dozen now, according to The Guardian.
Johnson and a team of medical students have been studying hospital records to determine if any of the parents of the infants with gastroschisis were residing near fields that were undergoing spraying during conception and early pregnancy.
“We have cleanest water and air in the world,” Johnson said. “You kind of wonder why this wasn’t done before,” he says. “Data from other states show there might be a link, and Hawaii might be the best place to prove it.”
It was recently revealed that these chemical companies, unlike farmers, are allowed to operate under an antiquated decades-old Environmental Protection Agency permit. This permit was grandfathered in from the days of sugar plantations when the amounts and toxicities were significantly lower, and which allowed for toxic chemicals to be discharged into water. Tellingly the state of Hawaii has asked for a federal exemption to allow these companies to continue to not comply with modern standards.
The ominous reality of collusion between these mega-corporations and the political class in Hawaii has seemingly left the citizens of the state with virtually no ability to safeguard their children’s health. We tread dangerously close to corporate fascism when profits are put above the health of the people.
Aussie cop charged for leaking footage of fellow officers beating detainee
RT | August 24, 2015
Gold Coast police officer Sergeant Rick Flori may spend up to seven years behind bars for leaking CCTV footage showing his fellow officers brutalizing a young chef, Noa Begic, while he was handcuffed in the Surfers Paradise Police Station basement.
Flori, who leaked the footage of the dramatic incident to the Brisbane Courier-Mail, was formally charged with misconduct in public office after being summoned to police headquarters in Brisbane last week, the newspaper reported. The footage taken in 2012 shows police officers slamming Begic’s face into the concrete floor before the 21-year-old is shoved into the back of a van and brutally punched a number of times by one cop while another holds him.
The video then shows Begic’s blood being routinely washed away by a senior-sergeant who would later quit the force before any adverse findings were made by internal investigators. The senior-constable who threw the punches was only given a suspended dismissal, according to the Courier-Mail. The other two officers involved were reportedly not disciplined at all.
According to Sydney Criminal Lawyers, police allege that Flori, who had spent a quarter of a century in the Queensland Police Force until he was suspended earlier this year, committed the offence by ‘inappropriately obtain[ing]’ confidential surveillance footage from the police CCTV room.
Section 91A of the Queensland Criminal Code 1899 makes it an offence for a public officer, including a police officer, to release information gained as a result of their office. The prosecution must now prove that the act was done with the intention of dishonestly gaining a benefit for Flori or another person, or dishonestly causing a detriment to another person, Sydney Criminal Lawyers report.
The victim of the bashing, Begic, was arrested and charged with ‘public nuisance’ and ‘obstructing police’. The charges against him were later dropped and he won a confidential settlement from the Queensland Police Service, the newspaper reported. After his charges were dropped in June 2012, Begic said it would be “a disgrace” if the officer who leaked the video was punished.
A complaint has been made by Council of Civil Liberties (a voluntary organization concerned with the protection of individual rights and civil liberties) to the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) which, according to Sydney Criminal Lawyers, is the same body that made the decision not to prosecute the officers involved in the bashing.
“How is it that the police who were shown on the video as belting the crap out of this particular person have not been charged and yet the person who has leaked it is now being charged with an offence which could put him in jail?” Deputy President Terry O’Gorman told the team of lawyers.
The acting chair of the CCC said she had asked staff involved in the incident to compile details about the matter.
“I accept that needs to be looked at and we agree that police excessive use of force is one of the top five problems with police and we will be looking at that,” she told ABC radio.
Last month supporters of Flori gathered outside the Southport Magistrates Court to praise the officer and show outrage over the four involved in the incident.
Aussie cop charged for leaking footage of fellow officers beating detainee
RT | August 24, 2015
Gold Coast police officer Sergeant Rick Flori may spend up to seven years behind bars for leaking CCTV footage showing his fellow officers brutalizing a young chef, Noa Begic, while he was handcuffed in the Surfers Paradise Police Station basement.
Flori, who leaked the footage of the dramatic incident to the Brisbane Courier-Mail, was formally charged with misconduct in public office after being summoned to police headquarters in Brisbane last week, the newspaper reported. The footage taken in 2012 shows police officers slamming Begic’s face into the concrete floor before the 21-year-old is shoved into the back of a van and brutally punched a number of times by one cop while another holds him.
The video then shows Begic’s blood being routinely washed away by a senior-sergeant who would later quit the force before any adverse findings were made by internal investigators. The senior-constable who threw the punches was only given a suspended dismissal, according to the Courier-Mail. The other two officers involved were reportedly not disciplined at all.
According to Sydney Criminal Lawyers, police allege that Flori, who had spent a quarter of a century in the Queensland Police Force until he was suspended earlier this year, committed the offence by ‘inappropriately obtain[ing]’ confidential surveillance footage from the police CCTV room.
Section 91A of the Queensland Criminal Code 1899 makes it an offence for a public officer, including a police officer, to release information gained as a result of their office. The prosecution must now prove that the act was done with the intention of dishonestly gaining a benefit for Flori or another person, or dishonestly causing a detriment to another person, Sydney Criminal Lawyers report.
The victim of the bashing, Begic, was arrested and charged with ‘public nuisance’ and ‘obstructing police’. The charges against him were later dropped and he won a confidential settlement from the Queensland Police Service, the newspaper reported. After his charges were dropped in June 2012, Begic said it would be “a disgrace” if the officer who leaked the video was punished.
A complaint has been made by Council of Civil Liberties (a voluntary organization concerned with the protection of individual rights and civil liberties) to the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) which, according to Sydney Criminal Lawyers, is the same body that made the decision not to prosecute the officers involved in the bashing.
“How is it that the police who were shown on the video as belting the crap out of this particular person have not been charged and yet the person who has leaked it is now being charged with an offence which could put him in jail?” Deputy President Terry O’Gorman told the team of lawyers.
The acting chair of the CCC said she had asked staff involved in the incident to compile details about the matter.
“I accept that needs to be looked at and we agree that police excessive use of force is one of the top five problems with police and we will be looking at that,” she told ABC radio.
Last month supporters of Flori gathered outside the Southport Magistrates Court to praise the officer and show outrage over the four involved in the incident.
“Human Rights” in the Arab World: the Instruments of War, a Test Case for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
By Lana Habash | CounterPunch | August 21, 2015
Sometimes I love Republicans. They lay bare with such clarity what underlies and drives US foreign policy– the bottom line strategic interests without the pretense that more adept politicians use to justify US military aggression: the US government’s “concerns” about “human rights” for instance.
Take Syria.
John McCain laid it all out in his interview on CNN’s Situation Room in 2013:
“Look, the Middle East is about to erupt. This is turning into a regional conflict: Lebanon is destabilized, Jordan can’t — the king of Jordan can’t last, the conflict is spreading throughout the region, Hezbollah is all in. This is becoming a Sunni-Shia conflict . . . and it’s an unfair fight!” While arguing for more US military intervention in Syria, he goes on to say, “It’s a great blow to Iran — the greatest in twenty-five years, and they’re cut off from Hezbollah, which would mean that Hezbollah would die on the vine.”
It is strange to hear American politicians wring their hands about the instability of the Jordanian monarchy and its regime while pontificating about US intentions to “bring democracy to the Middle East.”
Over the past two decades, we have witnessed the increasing use of the human rights discourse by the United States as justification for US military aggression. In some cases, these human rights abuses (as in the case of Iraq) proved nothing more than Department of Defense propaganda that was later proved false. More recently, the Assad regime in Syria has been accused of such violations as torture and arbitrary arrest and detention, though the US hasn’t been above using these alleged services themselves. (US former CIA agent Robert Baer once said of US held prisoners, “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria.”) The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has echoed these allegations about the Syrian regime. These alleged human rights abuses, the same ones that Jordan continues to perpetrate against its own citizens with impunity, have been used as justification for US military intervention in Syria, including the arming and training of rebel forces in Jordan by US troops, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 220,000 people and over 3 million refugees. These interventions have done nothing to advance the human rights of the Syrian people, but have achieved some strategic goals for the US and Israel: Hezbollah, the only player that poses a serious threat to American and Israeli strategic interests regionally, is now embroiled in a Syrian civil war, and as McCain stated, a “great blow” has been served to both Iran and Hezbollah.
Last year, at his confirmation as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights by the General Assembly, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein spoke of his commitment to push forward human rights on the Asian continent. It has been hard to take seriously this pronouncement when the High Commissioner has used his office to support concrete measures that, not coincidentally, mesh with US strategic interests, while he remains silent about the human rights abuses in his own country, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, yet has one of the most abysmal human rights records in the world. The recent case of Amer Jubran reveals the entire spectrum of repression to which Jordanians are subjected.
Amer Jubran is an internationally known Palestinian activist, speaker and writer on the rights of Palestinians and against US and Israeli policies in the Arab world. He has also distributed information about US involvement in destabilizing Syria.
Jubran was arrested in Jordan on May 5, 2014, when 20 men in black military uniforms broke into his home in the middle of the night. He was held incommunicado by Jordan’s secret police, the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) for 2 months at an undisclosed location, in violation of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A petition against arbitrary detention was filed on his behalf with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Nothing came of this.
Jubran was finally charged in August, 2014 under a new law that makes “harming the relationship with a foreign government” a crime of “terrorism.” The wording of this law is so vague that it criminalizes a broad range of political activities including journalism, in violation of Article 19 of the ICCPR, guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression.
This same law was enacted one month after Amer Jubran’s arrest, also constituting a violation of Article 15 of the ICCPR, which stipulates, “No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offense … which did not constitute a criminal offense…at the time when it was committed.”
Jubran was tried before Jordan’s State Security Court (SSC), a military tribunal that fails to meet even minimum standards of judicial independence, violating Article 14 of the ICCPR, which guarantees the right to a fair trial by a “competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.” Jubran’s defense team effectively proved the “terrorism” charges against him false, but the verdict of the SSC was reached without regard for evidence. The only evidence presented in Jubran’s trial was the coerced testimony of other defendants, also arrested in May, 2014, subjected to interrogation, and all of whom received reduced sentences of two to three years. Robert Baer also said: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan.” While Jubran was being detained incommunicado and “interrogated” he was threatened not only with imprisonment, but with being disappeared when he refused to infiltrate Hezbollah and act as an informant for the GID. He was recently sentenced to ten years of hard labor by Jordan’s State Security Court (see statement by Amer Jubran on his sentencing.)
The human rights abuses perpetrated against Amer Jubran are the rule in Jordan, rather than the exception. Jordan’s long history of the use of arbitrary detention and torture have been well documented by the UN. In 2013, the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a report on Jordan, detailing a series of cases like that of Jubran in which basic political freedoms had been trampled. The report had a special section on the State Security Court:
“The Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee have repeatedly recommended that Jordan abolish special courts such as the State Security Court… The Committee reiterates its 1994 recommendation that the State party consider abolishing the State Security Court.” (Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, November 2013).
What has the UN High Commissioner done thus far to respond to these recommendations and push forward the issue of human rights in his own country? When asked during a press conference as to whether it was illegal to criticize the king in the press in Jordan, the Human Rights Chief replied, “Essentially, we believe we are still a family,” while plugging the king’s new book (USA Today August 13, 2014). The UN High Commissioner failed to mention Jordan’s long history of criminalizing speech and imprisoning journalists like Jamal Ayyoub.
Interestingly, Jubran has written nothing about the Jordanian regime. His writing has consistently concerned itself with the policies of the US and Israel in the region. This speaks to the new law of “harming relationships with foreign governments.” Mr. Jubran has stated that he was told directly by his GID interrogators that any decision made about him would involve “our American and Israeli friends.”
Recent revelations about NSA cooperation with Jordanian intelligence agencies underline the central role Jordan plays in the US and Israeli “security” regime for the region. Spying on Palestinians and providing intelligence about “high security targets” is perhaps the least of the services Jordan provides. The abuses of fundamental freedoms in Jordan are consistently carried out, as in Amer Jubran’s case, in the interests of protecting US and Israeli power.
Institutions like the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights are supposed to exist to guarantee the protection of human and political rights globally. The real test of the UN High Commissioner’s commitment to push forward the issue of human rights in Asia must begin in his home country of Jordan and will involve a confrontation not only with that regime, but with the nation states calling the shots. Will the UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein use the powers of his office to advocate for human rights, when those powers come in conflict with the US, Israel, and their regional allies? If not, then the term “human rights” has become nothing more than Orwellian doublespeak, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is just one more weapon in the military arsenal of US regional dominance.
More details about the case of Amer Jubran can be found at freeamer.wordpress.com.
Lana Habash is a Palestinian physician living in Boston, MA. She can be reached at defense@amerjubrandefense.org.
Another Egyptian prisoner dies, 3rd in 48 hours
A file photo of Ahmed Hamed, an Egyptian political prisoner who died while in custody on August 21, 2015.
Press TV – August 22, 2015
Another Egyptian political prisoner has died while in custody, the third death in 48 hours and the 13th of the month of August.
Thirty-seven-year-old Ahmed Hamed, father of three children, was pronounced dead on Friday evening in a police station in the city of Faiyum, 100 kilometers southwest of the Egyptian capital Cairo.
Hamed, a supporter of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, lost his life just four days after being “kidnapped” by security forces in civilian clothes from the premises of his residence in Faiyum.
According to Hamed’s family and human rights activists in the city, he died of torture. No further details on his death have been released yet.
This is the third similar case in just 48 hours in Egypt. A 40-year-old man passed away in custody on Wednesday in a hospital in Matariya district in northeastern Cairo. He was detained 15 days before his death on charges of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Human rights activists in the Egyptian capital had said the man was only transferred to hospital when he was already in a very critical condition also due to torture.
Also on Wednesday, a 72-year-old inmate, serving a three-year prison term on similar charges, died in the Borg El Arab prison in Egypt’s city of Alexandria in the north.
The victim, who was suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, lost his life due to purported medical negligence upon his return from a court session a day earlier, where he had appeared in a wheelchair.
At least 13 political detainees are now known to have lost their lives inside detention facilities in August alone.
Human rights activists emphasize that “deliberate and systematic medical negligence” on the part of prison authorities, torture, overcrowded prisons, and overall “unhealthy and inhumane” conditions imposed on more than 40,000 political prisoners in Egypt’s detention facilities are the causes behind the deaths.
Nearly 300 political prisoners have died in Egyptian detention facilities since then army chief and current President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi ousted Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013 in a coup.
Sisi then launched brutal crackdown on pro-Morsi protesters and brotherhood members, leading to the killing of hundreds and the arrest and imprisonment of tens of thousands, many of whom have been sentenced to death and long prison terms in mass trials.
Florida Man Arrested in FBI/ISIS-Inspired Plot to Bomb a Beach
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | August 21, 2015
So you be the judge: which organization, the FBI or ISIS, had more to do with this supposed “threat” to the “Homeland”?
The FBI has arrested a man who allegedly wanted to detonate a bomb in what authorities describe as an ISIS-inspired terror attack, officials said.
Harlem Suarez, 23, of Key West, Florida, (pictured, and do note the Batman T-shirt) has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the United States.
So Terrorist Suarez first came onto the FBI’s radar in April, after he posted whatever “extremist rhetoric” and pro-ISIS messages are on Facebook, according to the Justice Department. Facebook, yep, everything people post on Facebook is serious sh*t, man, no boasting or false bravado online, ever. Everybody always means exactly what they say.
Anyway, after creeping Suarez on Facebook, the FBI then sent in an FBI-employed “confidential source” who for months allegedly talked with Suarez online and in person about plans to attack the United States. Not that any of that would have encouraged or emboldened someone whose previous plans would have otherwise never left his bedroom.
In May, according to the FBI, Suarez recorded his own video, declaring: “We will destroy America and divide it into two. We will raise our black flag on top of your White House and any president on duty.”
Nice touch– “any president on duty.” Man, Suarez was obviously well-informed.
The FBI said that in subsequent meetings with the FBI informant, Suarez discussed plans for an attack around the July 4 holiday and said he would “cook American in cages” — an apparent reference to the ISIS video of a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive while in a cage.
Last week, Suarez allegedly gave the informant two boxes of nails, a cell phone, a backpack and $100 to build a bomb. In the most recent discussions, Suarez talked about bombing a public beach in Key West and placing explosive devices under police cars, according to charging documents filed by the FBI.
Note that without some actual explosive material and the knowledge to build a bomb without first blowing yourself up (yeah, yeah, it’s all online, but so is a lot of stuff. Reading stuff online and actually safely handling explosives and ensuring they work remotely is a whole ‘nother story.)
And seriously, a backpack bomb, is that really a weapon of mass destruction?
Also note that at no point was anyone in America in danger in any way whatsoever.
“There is no room for failure when it comes to investigating the potential use of a weapon of mass destruction,” said Special Agent in Charge George Piro, head of the FBI’s Miami Field Office.
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