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Israeli soldiers violently break into two houses in Nablus, Kidnapping one person

International Solidarity Movement | January 15, 2013

Occupied Palestine – Last night more than forty Israeli soldiers invaded the city of Nablus and raided two homes looking for two young men. One of them was arrested Emad’s Motherduring the raid and the other one avoided arrest as he was working at the time of the raid.

At 2.30 am, dozens of Israeli soldiers with several dogs broke into Mead Nijad’s house breaking the door with a hammer and violently interrupting the family’s sleep. As the soldiers entered the house, they ordered everyone to have their hands up; they asked for Emad, blindfolded, handcuffed and arrested him. Immediately after, they took the ID’s of all family members and locked them outside the house on a cold winters night. In the meantime, the soldiers ransacked the whole house causing widespread destruction. They also took with them the young boy’s working tools. As Emad’s mother explains, “if they come with dogs, why do they have to destroy everything? If there is something in the house, the dogs would find it”. Furthermore, no reasons for why they arrested Emad were given; the commander just said “your son has caused problems to the Israelis, if you want to know where your son is, come to Huwwara”. The family still does not know the fate of their son.

In the case of Moaz Darduk (19), dozens of only Hebrew speaking soldiers arrived in his house at 3 am while he was at work and woke his parents up. As they asked for him and his father told the soldiers he was not at home but working, they locked his mother in a room and took his father to his other son’s house just in the next building. The commander, who was the only one speaking Arabic, kept saying to his father “do you know who I am? I am Haroun and I came here to kill your son”. When the commander went back to Moaz’s house he told to his parents “I want you to remember who I am, I am Haroun and I am here to kill your son. If you do not bring your son to Huwwara tomorrow morning at 9.30, we will kill him and return him to you in a coffin”.

Night raids and home searching are common tools used by the Israeli Occupation Forces to arrest Palestinian youth for no reason and as a collective punishment to scare Palestinian families.

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January 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán

Weekly News Update on the Americas | January 13, 2013

Two campesinos were shot dead on Jan. 11 in the Lower Aguán Valley in the northern Honduran department of Colón as they were walking out of an estate which they and other campesinos had been occupying for two months. A long-standing conflict between campesino groups and large landowners in the area has resulted in the deaths of some 80 campesinos since the groups began occupying estates in December 2009 to dramatize their demands for land [see Update #1154]. According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, spokesperson for the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán, the victims were José Luis Reyes and Antonio Manuel Pérez. He said unidentified people shot them at close range from a moving automobile.

The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of the main campesino groups in the region, identified the campesinos as Luis Antonio Ramos Reyes, originally from the Tepusteca de Olanchito Yoro community, and Manuel Antonio Pérez, originally from Remolino on the Aguán river’s left bank. MUCA said the two men were members of another group, the Campesino Movement for the Recovery of the Aguán (MOCRA), whose 600 families began occupying estates on July 20, 2012. According to Paz, the campesinos had been occupying land claimed by the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH); MUCA said the land was owned by UNAH’s Atlantic Coast Regional University Center (CURLA), which had abandoned it. (AFP 1/12/13 via Terra.com; Anncol (Colombia) 1/13/13 via Rebelión (Spain))

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January 15, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Uses Portable Device to Track Cell Phone Users

By Matt Bewig | AllGov | January 14, 2013

Even on dry land, Americans should fear the stingray. Not the flat cartilaginous fishes related to sharks, but the secret government surveillance device that not only tracks suspected criminals but also intercepts the private information of law-abiding citizens who happen to be nearby. Now, because of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) against the FBI, the government is slowly releasing thousands of relevant documents that are already raising alarms among privacy and civil liberties advocates.

The stingray came to public notice in 2011 when the FBI used a “cell-site simulator” to track down a suspect. This portable device, also called an “IMSI catcher” or a “stingray,” sends out a signal that fools nearby wireless phones into connecting with a fake network. It can then capture all sorts of personal data from all of those phones, including location data that can then be used to track a person’s movements in real time. A stingray can be handheld or mounted on a motor vehicle or an unmanned surveillance drone.

As the FBI has admitted to EPIC, because the stingray fools all nearby wireless phones into connecting with its bogus network and uploading private data to it, its use would constitute a “search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and thus require a warrant. However, because the FBI argues that wireless phone users have no reasonable expectation to privacy, the agency says it does not need a warrant. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the privacy of cell phone calls.

In addition to (probably) violating the constitution, the use of stingrays is also prohibited by federal law. Although heavily redacted, the files reluctantly released by the FBI reveal snippets of internal Justice Department discussions of how to justify use of the stingray as compliant with the provisions of the Communications Act that prohibit “interference” with communication signals like those of wireless phones.

These documents demonstrate, according to EPIC attorney Alan Butler, that “there are clearly concerns, even within the agency, that the use of Stingray technology might be inconsistent with current regulations. I don’t know how the DOJ justifies the use of Stingrays given the limitations of the Communications Act prohibition.”

Nor is it just the FBI. According to a recent report, local police are “quietly” using stingrays in Los Angeles, Miami, Fort Worth, and Gilbert, Arizona. And likely other places, as well.

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January 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US justice system rife with intimidation: Dead activist’s family

Press TV – January 14, 2013

The US justice system is “rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,” says the family of American activist Aaron Swartz, who was an outspoken critic of the US government and was recently found dead in his apartment.

“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach,” said Swartz’s family in a statement.

Since Friday, when the activist and computer prodigy was found dead in his New York apartment, internet activists have also blamed the US Attorney’s office.

Before his death, Swartz openly criticized the US and the Israeli regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran.

The blogger was also vocal in criticizing Obama’s “kill list,” a list of individuals who are suspected of terrorism by the US and are listed for targeted killing after final approval by the US president himself.

Swartz was also critical of the monopoly of information and believed that information should be available to everyone for the benefit of the society.

The US Attorney’s office in Massachusetts accused the 26-year-old of downloading millions of academic journal articles from the online service JSTOR by using Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s computer network in 2010, to make such articles available to the public.

Even though, Swartz handed over his hard drives and the charges against him were dropped by the JSTOR, US Attorneys Carmen Ortiz and Steve Heymann, with the support of MIT, continued to pursue the activist’s prosecution.

According to the statement by the activist’s family, officials were demanding heavy penalties of more than 30 years in prison and up to USD 1.0 million in fines for Swartz, “to punish an alleged crime that had no victims.”

The activist’s death comes weeks before he was due in court.

A petition presented to the White House “for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz” has been set up to remove US Attorney Ortiz and it has already gained almost 10,000 signatures.

January 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

TSA Once Again Considering Using Commercial Data To Profile Passengers

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | January 11, 2013

The TSA has issued a “Market Research Announcement” in which the agency expresses a desire to expand its Pre-Check whitelist program by allowing private companies to carry out risk analysis of Americans that would determine whether they are “trusted” enough to participate in the trusted traveler program. This would be a major step toward turning the agency’s Pre-Check whitelist into the insidious kind of passenger profiling system that was proposed under the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11, and a confirmation of our longstanding warnings that the logic of the risk-assessment approach to security will drive the government toward the use of more and more data on individuals. It would be the most significant of the new initiatives the TSA is looking at this year.

Currently, under Pre-Check, travelers who have attained a certain level within the frequent flier programs of six airlines can apply for the program by providing the government with certain information and, if they are accepted, receive access to expedited security lines. Department of Defense personnel and those with certain security clearances may now also join—and future expansions are inevitable. Although it is currently limited in scope, we have been warning that this kind of program points us down the road of engaging in background checks and discriminatory profiling of passengers. The concept raises knotty questions about fairness; we don’t know who is approved for this program and who is rejected, and based on what data, or what criteria for evaluating that data.

Defenders of Pre-Check point out that it is voluntary. However, as the agency explicitly states in this new document, “TSA desires to maximize appropriate participation in expedited screening initiatives.” In short, it hopes to lighten the screening load as much as possible by enrolling as many people as it can in Pre-Check. That means that ultimately, we face the prospect of a two-class airline security system, or even a system in which simply everyone has a Pre-Check ID, and the hapless group who can’t get one become a security underclass. Then the Pre-Check is adopted for all kinds of other purposes by piggybacking organizations, and like a “voluntary” credit card, it becomes impossible to fully participate in American life without one, and those who are shut out—and they won’t know why—face all kinds of obstacles and disadvantages.

As I discussed in this post, the Bush program, called CAPPS II, would have tapped into commercial data sources to perform background checks on every air passenger, and crunched that data to produce a profile of each traveler’s “risk to aviation.” The initial vision seemed to be to measure individuals’ “rootedness in their community,” measuring such things as how long a person has lived at their current address, held their current job, held a credit rating, etc. Among the numerous problems with this concept, it would have been enormously discriminatory in its impact (African-Americans, for example, tend to move more often than whites), and would have been grossly ineffective in spotting terrorists. (As Bruce Schneier has long pointed out, the danger is that to the extent you exempt some groups from security measures, you open up a pathway for terrorists to join or recruit their way into the program.)

We and others fought this terrible idea, and over several years of battles in Congress and the media, it was renamed “Secure Flight” and basically reduced to watch list checks. A victory of sorts—although the watch list system underpinning Secure Flight continues to be a mess.

Now it is clear that our concerns about Pre-Check sliding back towards some kind of CAPPS II-like profiling system have been warranted. In particular, the agency appears never to have lost its fixation with partnering with private-sector data aggregators to evaluate American citizens. The TSA writes:

TSA is particularly interested in techniques that … use non-governmental data elements to generate an assessment of the risk to the aviation transportation system that may be posed by a specific individual, and to communicate the identity of persons who have successfully passed this risk based assessment to TSA’s Secure Flight.

As I understand it, the concept here is that a company such as a data broker would sift through the enormous volumes of data they store on Americans and come up with a proposed algorithm for judging “the risk to the aviation transportation system” of any given individual. TSA would examine that algorithm, and upon the agency’s approval, the company would be authorized to sell Pre-Check memberships using that algorithm applied to its own data.

For now, the TSA says it “is seeking white papers that successfully demonstrate sound, well-reasoned concepts … to identify ‘known travelers’ pre-screened to a high degree of confidence.” The agency says it wants to allow “entities latitude to do what makes the most sense for them”:

TSA will specify a few common core requirements for process and algorithm content, while encouraging innovation by allowing participating entities to include additional elements in their algorithms as they see fit (as long as they are legal). These hybrid algorithms would have to meet certain performance criteria, described below.

Those criteria include:

  • An enrollment process that is convenient and user friendly
  • A proposal that “presents an effective process for gathering required personal information from potentially large numbers of prospective enrollees”
  • Handling travelers’ personal information with various security and privacy safeguards
  • “Has identified and obtained access to specific sources of current, accurate, and complete non-Governmental data that can be used to support effective screening of prospective travelers”
  • An algorithm “that produces dependable results”

The agency outlines a three-phase process for turning these white papers into functioning part of our security system. Phase 1 (30 days) is selection of promising submissions, phase 2 (45-60 days) is prototype implementation, and phase 3 (4-6 months) will be live prototyping on actual passengers at an actual airport.

Major problems

Aside from the fundamental effectiveness questions of this concept, there are a number of major problems with it from a civil-liberties point of view:

  • Unfair effects. It is likely to have an unfair impact on the American public. As I mentioned above it could easily be discriminatory in its application, or otherwise unfair depending on the data sources used. For example, see this story about a man having problems with his credit score precisely because he had always been careful not to go into debt. The data aggregators are subject to no rules regarding data quality, and their databases are rife with errors, as are the credit ratings agencies’ (despite their being subject to some regulations).
  • Secrecy. We probably won’t even know about such unfair effects because the system will be wrapped in secrecy. The TSA’s document specifies that “The specific sources and types of information employed for pre-screening purposes under this initiative may not be publicly disclosed.” It also contains a long section specifying that any private partners of the TSA will be subject to the agency’s Sensitive Security Information (SSI) rules.
  • Private-sector delegation. Delegating security assessments to a private company raises significant issues. We have always believed that it’s a foolish idea to start building an algorithm-based system for “rating” Americans on their security “trustworthiness,” which is then used to curb people’s rights (such as the right to travel). If we must have such ratings performed, that would at least be an inherent law enforcement function. We shouldn’t have private, profit-oriented companies making those designations, any more than such companies should be deciding who to prosecute. Having private companies make the ratings, and the government acting upon them, may be pretty close to the worst of all worlds. In addition, much of the corporate world operates on relationships and favors—not to mention money; it’s not clear how the TSA would regulate these companies to ensure they won’t engage in corruption or abuse or systematic bias when deciding who can get a Pre-Check pass. Especially given that the TSA won’t routinely have access to the underlying data.
  • Access to data. However, the agency does state that while it won’t “generally” access the personal information about an individual used by a company, it may do so during audits. Also, the “results of the pre-screening process” will be shared with the TSA “upon request”; it’s not clear to me what the agency means by “results” here.

Ultimately, the core problem with Pre-Check remains: it is (as I said here) caught between two possibilities: collecting so little information that it’s useless as a security measure, or so much that it is scarily intrusive. The TSA wants to take a long stride toward the latter. True, by outsourcing the data-crunching function to a private company, the agency won’t be collecting the information itself. That certainly ameliorates some of the privacy problems with the concept—but if anything worsens the other concerns, such as fairness, accuracy, due process, and the role of for-profit companies in providing what are essential government functions. Thwarted in its efforts to tap private databases a decade ago, the agency seems to be edging back toward that concept via a classic Surveillance-Industrial Complex strategy.

January 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Soldiers Attack, Evict, Bab Al-Shams, Arrest Dozens

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | January 13, 2013

On Saturday at dawn thousands of Israeli soldiers and policemen attacked the Bab Al-Shams Palestinian village, installed east of in occupied East Jerusalem, and forcibly removed dozens of activists loading them into buses.

The soldiers dragged several activists onto the ground, attacked reporters and journalists and declared the area a closed military zone, several injuries were reported.

The Israeli decision to evacuate the village came, on Saturday, through a direct order issued by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his right-wing fundamentalist cabinet.

Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that by midnight Saturday, the order was signed by Osnat Mandel, head of the Israeli High Court division of the Justice Ministry, under the claim that “the people and the tents must be removed due to security considerations”.

The Israeli Police said that the eviction order, issued by the court, prohibits the army from removing the tents, but orders the removal of the people staying there.

Also, the so-called Israeli Civil Administration Office, run by the occupation in the West bank, claimed that the Palestinian tent village “was installed on state land”.

But four Bedouin families living in the area confirmed that they own the land, and even showed deeds proving ownership.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, who was also at the Palestinian village, stated that hundreds of Israeli soldiers invaded the village after surrounding it, and attacked the nonviolent activists camped there, and started kidnapping them.

The soldiers violently attacked the residents, including journalists, elderly and women, and dragged several residents onto the ground.

The soldiers repeatedly interrupted the work of local reporters, flashing their lights onto the camera, and pushing the reporters away, and dragged dozens of activists into buses that were brought by the army to the area.

On Saturday evening, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the army “to remove the Palestinians and their supporters from the Palestinian outpost” that was installed on privately-owned Palestinian lands to send a message to Israel and the entire world that this land is the land of Palestine, and the Palestinian people have the right to inhabit it.

The army installed dozens of roadblocks around the area to prevent Palestinian traffic and surrounded the Bab Al-Shams camp where around 200 activists installed around 20 tents declaring the Bab Al-Shams Palestinian village, in the area where Israel illegally declared it intends to build thousands of homes for Jewish settlers, east of occupied east Jerusalem.

The Israeli decision to build the illegal settlements in the occupied state of Palestine came after the Palestinians managed to obtain an observer state status at the UN – General Assembly.

The Israeli decision was met with international condemnation, but the settler-led government of Benjamin Netanyahu, approved the illegal settlement project.

The so-called E1 settlement project aims at linking the Maale Adumim illegal settlement, where 35,000 reside, with occupied East Jerusalem, thus illegally confiscating Palestinian lands and blocking geographical continuity in the occupied West Bank.

This illegal Israeli project would divide the West Bank into two parts, and would completely isolate it from occupied East Jerusalem, an issue that would prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Abdullah Abu Rahma, a Palestinian nonviolent activist from the West Bank village on Bil’in, who was also detained when the army attacked and evicted Bab Al-Shams, stated that this village is on private Palestinian land, and that the Palestinians are not invading anybody’s property, as they are establishing a village in the land of Palestine.

“We tied our hands, chained ourselves with each other to prevent the soldiers from removing us”, Abu Rahma said, “The Soldiers violently attacked us, beat us, and injured at least 10”

He added that there will be more nonviolent activities, and that the struggle for Bab Al-Shams, the nonviolent struggle for the liberation of Palestine will continue as the Palestinians are practicing their internationally-guaranteed right.

It is worth mentioning that the Palestine TV was live streaming from Bab Al-Shams, and the army repeatedly tried to interrupt the stream, pushing the reporters, and using large flashlight, pointing them against the camera to disrupt the images.

Wounded Journalist Hafeth Ibrahim

Wounded Journalist Hafeth Ibrahim
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January 13, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Night Terror in El Salvador

U.S.-Funded Fight against ‘Gangs’

By ALEXANDRA EARLY | CounterPunch | January 11, 2013

San Salvador – On December 12, 2012, 12 young people were arrested  in the poor community of El Progreso 3, in the northeastern part of San Salvador. Dressed all in black with their faces covered, police from the much-feared Anti-Gang Unit stormed the community in the middle of night, going home to home trampling down doors and pulling young people from a community center. The police claimed that the goal of the raid was to arrest suspected gang members, but several young community leaders were also apprehended, while their terrified families and neighbors looked on. The students were taken directly to jail, charged with illicit association, and thrown into crowded cells already filled with accused criminals awaiting trial.

Now, nearly a month after the raid, neighbors and members of the Movement of Popular Resistance-October 12 (the MPR-12), a national alliance of community organizations and unions, are demanding that the six youth leaders arrested be released from the overcrowded temporary jail where they are being held in inhumane conditions. Community members gathered in front of the downtown office of the Ombudsman of Human Right to show support for these falsely accused youth leaders and demand that the national police and specialized anti-gang units stop terrorizing the communities in and around the areas where the students were arrested.

About 50 people, including family members and neighbors of the arrested youth, addressed the Salvadoran press and held signs declaring, “Organizing to Improve our Communities is not a Crime” and, “Stop the Criminalization of Protest.” Ana Gladis Rivera, spoke about her twenty-five -year old son, Emerson Rivera, who, along with a friend and fellow youth organizer, Giovanni Aguirre, has been in hiding since the raid, fearing that to turn himself over to the authorities would land him in another overcrowded jail cell.

Like the others, Emerson’s mother was indignant at the charges of illicit association brought against her son, who has organized popular education schools, soccer tournaments and health campaigns in the community, and has worked with his neighbors on infrastructure projects in which the municipal government declined to invest. The MPR-12 alliance awarded Emerson and Giovanni scholarships in recognition of their local and national youth organizing work, and the two were expecting to start their university studies this month.  Rivera believes that her son and fellow youth organizers are being targeted because of their involvement with the leftist FMLN party and their outspoken criticism of the administration of Mayor Norman Quijano of the right-wing ARENA party. Quijano, who is also ARENA’s candidate for the 2014 presidential elections, has been widely criticized for his disregard for the poorer sectors of San Salvador. In November, Quijano ordered the violent eviction of thousands of street vendors, the majority of whom are single mothers with no other source of income.

Since the young men are charged with being tied to gang or organized crime, their cases are part of a specialized court system made up of police judges trained by the U.S. run International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA). Under this specialized system, it seems that the police need very little, or even no, evidence to charge suspects with illicit association. In their first hearing in December, neither the youths nor their lawyers were able to present evidence in their defense. In 2007, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) reported on the increase in instances of police violence against young people and activists since the opening of the ILEA in 2005. These and other reports about the valuable lessons being imparted at the ILEA seem to contradict its stated goal of creating “a regional community of law enforcement professionals capable of effectively and efficiently fighting transnational crime, through the use of modern techniques and tools, with the utmost respect for human rights and the well-being of the people.” The terrorized residents of urban communities like El Progreso 3 would certainly question that description of their local police force. One of the El Progreso 3  residents told the staff of the Human Rights Office that a police officer stole $2000 from her neighbor during the December 12th raid and threatened to kill him if he reported the crime.

Community members from El Progreso 3 have been struggling under the dual pressures of police harassment and the violence of street gangs for some years. Carlos Vasquez, who works with the Catholic Church on violence prevention efforts in El Progreso 3 and surrounding communities complained that the police didn’t even investigate the murders of community members killed by gang members in past years.  Their only activity was to , enter the community to collect the dead bodies. Instead of working on violence prevention, Vasquez says the police have ramped up their harassment of youth in the community, monitoring and photographing their organizing activities and movements. Residents fear that the anti-gang police will raid the community again using this information and they worry who will be taken next.

In the meantime, Emerson Rivera and his friend Giovanni Aguirre remain in hiding. Their fellow youth organizers are stuck inside an overcrowded jail and are only allowed to see their mothers once a week for three minutes when they come to deliver food. The youths were thus unable to participate in a soccer tournament they had organized and could not celebrate the holidays with their families. They are waiting for the slow process of justice to continue, since their next court hearing may not be for three or four months. Ana Gladis Rivera and her neighbors and friends, however, will continue organizing for the release of the young leaders, hoping that with the support of Salvadoran and international human rights organizations Emerson, Giovanni and the others might be able to get back to their important work of improving their community and fighting for a more just and fair El Salvador.

Alexandra Early works in El Salvador as a Coordinator for U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities (elsalvadorsolidarity.org). She can be reached at elsalvador.solidarity@gmail.com.

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January 12, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Fascinating Case of Lynne Stewart

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 7, 2013

Lynne Stewart is a New York attorney who is serving a 10-year sentence in the federal penitentiary for being a supporter of terrorism.

Her crime?

Two years after the 9/11 attacks, she read the following message from her client, convicted terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, at a press conference in New York City:

“I [Omar Abdel-Rahmn] am not withdrawing my support of the cease-fire, I am merely questioning it and I am urging you, who are on the ground there to discuss it and to include everyone in your discussions as we always have done.”

What’s criminal about that message?

The U.S. federal courts construed the message as exhorting the members of Abdel-Rahmn’s Islamic organization in Egypt, which U.S. officials had labeled a terrorist organization, to use violence to overthrow the Egyptian government. They said that made Stewart a supporter of terrorism.

The case is fascinating on several levels, not the least of which was that many Egyptian citizens were of the mindset that the Egyptian government was one of the most brutal, tyrannical military dictatorships in the world, one that had long oppressed the Egyptian people. It was, in fact, that deep-seated discontent among the Egyptian citizenry that ultimately led to the ouster of Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

So, why is that important?

It’s always been a belief of Americans that people everywhere have a right to use violence to overthrow tyranny. Stewart was convicted for going one step further and actually exhorting the Egyptians to use force to overthrow the tyrannical regime under which they had long suffered.

Let’s assume, hypothetically, that what Stewart did at that press conference was stand up and read the Declaration of Independence, specifically the following section:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

If she had done that, there is no way that the federal courts could have convicted her. After all, the Declaration of Independence is part of America’s heritage of freedom. It’s not against the law to read it in public.

Suppose she had added the following sentence: “The principles of the Declaration are not limited to Americans. They apply to people in every nation on earth who are suffering from tyranny.”

Could she then have been convicted? Again, I think that it would have been very difficult to convict her for supporting terrorism by simply extending the principles of the Declaration to people everywhere.”

Where Stewart crossed the line was in exhorting Egyptians to actually do what the Declaration says they have a right to do — use force to overthrow the Egyptian government.

So, why is that against the law? After all, one could rationally think that under principles of free speech, a person should be free to exhort people to do anything they want. After all, this is America, not Russia under Vladimir Putin, where people are being convicted for saying the wrong things.

There is one big reason why Stewart is in jail today for exhorting Egyptians to violently overthrow their government: The Egyptian government was a longtime ally and partner of the U.S. government and, therefore, wasn’t considered by U.S. officials to be a tyrannical regime that would trigger the right that Jefferson enunciated in the Declaration. Any American (or Egyptian) who would use violence to overthrow a non-tyrannical, pro-U.S. regime or exhort others to violently overthrow that regime is considered to be a terrorist or a supporter of terrorism.

Among the things that the Egyptian people hated most about Mubarak’s military dictatorship were the “emergency” powers enforced by Mubarak and his military, police, and intelligence forces. Such powers had come into existence some 30 years before, when Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated. The “emergency” enabled Mubarak, who was a military man, to use the Egyptian military to arrest people without warrants on suspicion of being terrorists, incarcerate them, torture them, and execute them — all without due process of trial or trial by jury.

These extraordinary powers were supposed to be temporary. They were to expire when the “emergency” arising from the assassination had expired. But some 30 years later, they were still in existence. And they were employed brutally against the Egyptian people, especially those who dared to challenge Egypt’s military dictatorship, military supremacy over the civilian population, and Egypt’s military dictator himself, Hosni Mubarak. Most Egyptians learned to just keep their mouths shut.

Not surprisingly, the Egyptians considered the exercise of such powers to be the hallmarks of a tyrannical regime. Indeed, such powers have long been the most distinguishing characteristic of a tyrannical regime. It was mainly the exercise of those “temporary, emergency” powers that drove Egyptians into the streets, risking their lives at the hands of the military dictatorship to bring fundamental change to their society.

In fact, one of the principal demands of the protestors throughout the protests was that Mubarak relinquish those “temporary, emergency” powers that came into existence 30 years before. Mubarak refused to do so, arguing that his temporary, extraordinary powers were more necessary than ever, especially given the global war on terrorism that came into existence on 9/11.

For those entire 30 years, the U.S. government took the side of Mubarak and his military dictatorship. Those temporary, emergency powers weren’t tyrannical, U.S. officials believed. They were instead the essential prerequisite for protecting Egypt’s “national security” and for maintaining “order and stability” in the Middle East.

After all, don’t forget that immediately after 9/11, President Bush did precisely what Mubarak had done during Egypt’s terrorist emergency some 30 years before. Bush decreed that the terrorist emergency that America was now facing meant that Bush, as commander in chief, now wielded those same extraordinary powers — the powers to arrest people as suspected terrorists without judicially issued warrants, torture them, incarcerate them indefinitely, and even execute them, perhaps have some sort of kangaroo military tribunal. Later, President Obama would expand those powers with a widespread assassination program.

Thus, how could U.S. officials look upon the Mubarak dictatorship as a tyrannical regime, since it was a loyal, pro-U.S. regime that was doing nothing more than what U.S. officials would do in similar circumstances?

It goes without saying, of course, that throughout those 30 years, U.S. officials continued plowing billions of dollars in cash and armaments into the coffers of the Egyptian military dictatorship, helping build it up and fortify its omnipotent military control over the Egyptian people. In fact, it came as no surprise when the U.S. government made the Egyptian military dictatorship one of its principal rendition-torture partners in its global war on terrorism.

Throughout the Mubarak dictatorship, if anyone called for the violent overthrow of the Egyptian government, the Egyptian government, not surprisingly, considered him a “bad guy” — i.e., a terrorist. But as Lynn Stewart found out, so did the U.S. government.

Now, one might point to Syria, where U.S. officials are doing precisely what Stewart got convicted of — exhorting the Syrian citizenry to violently overthrow the Syrian dictatorship.

Ah, but they would be missing an important point. Syria is no longer a partner and ally of the U.S. government. It used to be — i.e., when President Bush and the CIA entered into a secret torture partnership by which the Assad regime agreed to torture Canadian citizen Maher Arar for the U.S. government. But once that partnership was dissolved, it became okay for U.S. officials to exhort Syrians to violently overthrow the tyranny under which they have long suffered.

For exhorting the Egyptian people to violently overthrow their tyrannical regime, Stewart got sentenced to serve 28 months in jail, a fairly lengthy term for a 73-year-old woman suffering from breast cancer. Unfortunately for Stewart, however, in a public statement to the press after her sentencing, she scoffed at her sentence, declaring that she could serve it “standing on her head.” Her statement garnered the wrath of federal prosecutors and federal judges and earned her a resentencing, one that sent her away for 10 years instead of 28 months.

I wonder if Stewart has learned her lesson, one that the Egyptian people learned during the 30 years of the Mubarak dictatorship. In the age of the national-security state and never-ending emergencies, it pays to keep your mouth shut.

January 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU seeks more privacy pressure on Google, Facebook

RT |  January 10, 2013

European Union lawmakers are hoping to pressure internet giants such as Facebook and Google, to boost personal security controls and limit the collection of data without users consent.

A German MEP has proposed modifications to the 1995 Data Protection Act, suggesting legislation that would limit corporations’ ability to use and sell data, such as browsing habits, especially when users are unaware of the practice.

“Users must be informed about what happens with their data,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green Party MEP. “And they must be able to consciously agree to data processing – or reject it.”

EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding noted that she is “glad to see that the European Parliament rapporteurs are supporting the Commission’s aim to strengthen Europe’s data protection rules, which currently date back to 1995 – pre-Internet age.”

“A strong, clear and uniform legal framework will help unleashing the potential of the Digital Single Market and foster economic growth, innovation and job creation in Europe,” she added.

The report by the German MEP adds to a proposal for tougher data protection announced by the European Commission last January. The European Parliament, the European Commission and the bloc’s 27 nations say they will seek an agreement on the rules in the coming months.

Google and Facebook – who were among the first corporations to profit from user data – have been lobbying against any such moves in the European Union. The Internet goliaths have warned legislators that such laws may hamper innovation and harm business.

“We are concerned that some aspects of the report do not support a flourishing European digital single market and the reality of innovation on the Internet,” Erika Mann, head of EU policy for Facebook, said.

Meanwhile, the Industry Coalition for Data Protection, an ICT lobby group, stated that Albrecht had “missed an opportunity to reconcile effective privacy safeguards with rules protecting the conduct of business — both fundamental rights under the EU charter.”

The European Union frequently raises the issue of privacy controls, causing standoffs with major American corporations.

In September, in another standoff over privacy issues, Facebook was forced to remove its facial recognition software from the social network in Europe in order to comply with European data protection laws. This followed an investigation by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland.

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January 10, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemenis condemn presence of US Marines in Sana’a

Press TV – January 9, 2013

Yemeni citizens, rights groups and lawmakers have vehemently condemned the presence of US Marine troops on Yemeni soil and the transformation of a five-star hotel in the capital, Sana’a, into a US military base, Press TV reports.

In interviews with Press TV, the legislators and human rights activists harshly criticized the conversion of the capital’s Sheraton Hotel into a military building and said they considered the presence of American forces as an occupation of their country.

The Yemenis argued that the US move to bring in the Marines for the protection of its diplomatic mission is merely a pretext for US domination on the ground.

“American Marines entered the country before the revolution and their numbers have increased… it’s similar to what happened when Britain occupied southern Yemen decades ago. The presence of Marine forces in the large number can only be described as an occupation,” political activist Abdu Ahmed said.

The US embassy in Sana’a reportedly booked all the rooms in the Sheraton Hotel, firing 200 members of the hotel’s staff after paying them a severance payment equal to six months of salary.

“We feel insecure. Anyone who goes up on the rooftop of his building will be targeted with a red light pointed to his chest. So if we can’t feel safe in our own country where can we find security and peace of mind?” said a Yemeni citizen.

The growing US domination has sparked numerous mass demonstrations, particularly in the Sada’a governorate to the north of the capital Sana’a.

The protesters in these demonstrations expressed the peoples’ total rejection of foreign intervention in their country’s affairs.

The increasing number of US assassination drone attacks, which mostly target innocent civilians, were also lambasted by the human rights groups.

The activists said the growing US interference in Yemen’s affairs is considered a flagrant violation of the Middle Eastern country’s sovereignty.

“Giving [approval to] US Marines to violate the country’s sovereignty is treason and those giving approval must be prosecuted. The assassinations are carried out right after the US intelligence apparatus received names of people suspected of being involved in al-Qaeda. There are a number of normal people on these lists, who can be easily arrested and brought to justice if found guilty,” human rights activist Abdulrahaman Barman noted.

Washington uses its assassination drones in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia, claiming that they target the terrorists. The attacks, however, have mostly led to massive civilian casualties.

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January 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers violently break into five homes in the Al Ayn Camp

International Solidarity Movement | January 9th, 2013

Ransacking-in-Al-Ayn-2Al Ayn Refugee Camp, Occupied Palestine – Hundreds of Israeli soldiers in 27 military jeeps violently broke in and ransacked five homes in the Al Ayn refugee camp, Nablus. They caused widespread destruction in the houses involved in the raid. No arrests were made.

Weam Reda Khaled, a woman whose house was ransacked, recounted how forty soldiers with dogs broke open the door of her home at three this morning. They came into the living-room and bedroom, shouting and intimidating her and her children. The family was forced to stay in the doorway while soldiers searched the house and broke everything that came to their hands. One of her sons was blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated for two hours under the staircase. In the meantime, the army smashed furniture and electronic appliances in the kitchen, living-room and bedroom. They threw the television and some furniture on the roof, under the rain. Weam described how her four year old son was terrorised by the scene of the military violently breaking in and searching their house. Initially, soldiers even refused to let him go to the bathroom. This is the second time in the last eight months that Weam received such a visit. In May, soldiers broke into her home and arrested her husband, who is still being held in administrative detention without any charge brought against him.

Four other families in the Al Ayn camp suffered the same fate of Weam. In one case, a family of eight was forced to stay outside in shivering cold and heavy rain for four hours. Here, soldiers raided the store of the family and ruined the food kept there by throwing bread and flour on the ground and spilling oil all over the floor. Most of the furniture and appliances of the home were damaged or completely broken. In another case a man and his son were tied and locked in one room while soldiers ransacked the house, damaged the sofa, broke the TV and washing machine. A 70-year old man with a heart condition had to be hospitalised because of the shock suffered from the army’s invasion of his house.

The Al Ayn Camp, home to 5,000 refugees from the 1948 Zionist massacres, is known for its fierce resistance to Israeli occupation and for its resilience during the second intifada. During this raid the Israeli army told the families that they were searching for weapons. However, none were found in Al Ayn Camp during yesterday night’s ransacking.

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January 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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