SOPA-Supporting News Outlets Aren’t Covering SOPA
By Dave Copeland | Read Write Web | January 6, 2012
MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC have dedicated no time to covering the Stop Online Piracy Act in their evening newscasts since Oct. 1, according to a report by Ben Dimiero of Media Matters For America.
CNN, meanwhile, has dedicated a single evening news segment to the issue. All of the companies covered in the report have either publicly supported SOPA or have parent companies that have done so.
Dimiero based his report on Lexis-Nexis searches which includes transcripts of nighttime newscasts.
Comcast/NBCUniversal (which owns MSNBC and NBC News), Viacom (CBS), News Corporation (Fox News), Time Warner (CNN) and Disney (ABC) are all listed as supporters of the bill. ABC and CBS are also listed as separate supporters of the bill.
SOPA would block access to sites accused of violating U.S. copyright laws. The measure has been called Draconian by opponents who say it would fundamentally change the free-flow of information across the Internet. Proponents, ranging from the NBA to Universal, say the measure is needed to block sites which flagrantly flaunt copyright laws and make content available for free without paying copyright owners.
Traditional media companies have been key players in lobbying for SOPA’s passage, with more than half of that funding coming from cable television providers, commercial TV and radio stations, and the entertainment industry. Opponents of the legislation have been developing apps to help voters track how their legislators stand on SOPA and how much they have received in campaign donations from SOPA-supporting entities.
Homeland Security monitors journalists
RT | 07 January, 2012
Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but the Department of Homeland Security is on the ready to make sure that the government is keeping dibs on who is saying what.
Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.
Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.
Also included in the roster of those subjected to the spying are government officials, domestic or not, who make public statements, private sector employees that do the same and “persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest,” which to itself opens up the possibilities even wider.
The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses.
The development out of the DHS comes at the same time that U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady denied pleas from supporters of WikiLeaks who had tried to prevent account information pertaining to their Twitter accounts from being provided to federal prosecutors. Jacob Applebaum and other advocates of Julian Assange’s whistleblower site were fighting to keep the government from subpoenaing information on their personal accounts that were collected from Twitter.
Last month the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk Massachusetts District Attorney subpoenaed Twitter over details pertaining to recent tweets involving the Occupy Boston protests.
The website Fast Company reports that the intel collected by the Department of Homeland Security under the NOC Monitoring Initiative has been happening since as early as 2010 and the data is being shared with both private sector businesses and international third parties.
French protesters slam police brutality
Press TV – January 8, 2012
Hundreds of French people have taken to the streets in the city of Clermont-Ferrand to denounce the police’s heavy-handed tactics against residents.
Over five hundred people attended the silent march on Saturday to show their support for Wissam El-Yamini, a thirty year old man who went into coma following his arrest on New Year’s Eve.
Scores of young residents also staged a sit-in protest outside the city’s police station, holding a banner that said “No one above law, stop burr, we are all with you Wissam”.
Wissam was violently arrested on the night of December 31 by two officers near a shopping center in the district of Gauthière.
According to the local police, Wissam went into coma after having a heart attack while he was being transported to the police station.
The incident has provoked violent riots across Clermont-Ferrand. During the last two nights, angry protesters set fire to more than thirty vehicles across the city.
Hamas: Israel detains party leader, son
Ma’an – January 5, 2012
JENIN – Israeli forces detained a Hamas leader and his son in the northern West Bank on Wednesday evening, party officials said.
Ali Abdulllah Khalil Abu Al-Rab, 50, and his 20-year-old son were returning from Ramallah to their home in Qabatiya, near Nablus, when they were apprehended by forces at the Zaatara crossing, the officials said.
Abu Al-Rab was jailed in Israel for 19 years before his release last year. His son is a student at the Arab American University in Jenin.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the report. She said eight people were detained across the West Bank overnight Wednesday.
National-Security Assassination of Americans in 1973
By Jacob G. Hornberger | January 4, 2011
A Chilean judge has indicted a retired U.S. Naval officer, Capt. Ray E. Davis, in the murder of two American citizens in Chile during the U.S.-supported Pinochet coup in 1973. The indictment indicates that the U.S. military and the CIA may have been responsible for the national-security assassination of two Americans several decades before the start of the war on terrorism.
The two Americans were journalists — 31-year-old Charles Horman and 24-year-old Frank Teruggi. During the Pinochet coup in 1973, both men were taken captive and executed in cold blood.
For decades, the CIA, playing the innocent, denied any involvement in the murders.
Then, in 1999 a declassified State Department document revealed that the CIA had, in fact, played some unidentified role in at least Horman’s murder.
What role? We don’t know. Ever since the revelation of that State Department document, the CIA has remained mum on the case, obviously taking the position that secrecy and cover-up is the best policy.
By the same token, despite the fact that the State Department document clearly furnished sufficient cause to impanel a federal grand jury to investigate the CIA’s role in the murders, the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic regimes has steadfastly failed and refused to do so.
At the same time, Congress has failed and refused to open an investigation into the murders, in the process subpoenaing CIA officials to testify what exactly the CIA’s role was in the murders, the identity of the CIA officials who participated in the murders, and whether President Richard Nixon or other high U.S. officials ordered the hit to be made on the two Americans.
Horman’s murder was the subject of the movie “Missing,” starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
The Chilean indictment of a retired U.S. military officer brings a new dimension to the case — the confluence of the two branches of the U.S. national security state — the military and the CIA — to allegedly bring about the murder of two American journalists, on grounds of national security.
What did Horman and Teruggi supposedly do to justify being taken out? The allegation is that during the coup, Horman acquired evidence documenting the U.S. government’s complicity in the coup. Therefore, the argument goes, by acquiring such information Horman became an immediate threat to the national security of the United States.
Moreover, the fact that Horman and Teruggi were leftists, liberals, or socialists who were supporting the socialist regime of Salvador Allende might have also constituted evidence of their being a grave threat to the national security of the United States during the Cold War.
The Chilean indictment of Davis alleges that he gave Horman a ride from the U.S. military installation in Valparaiso, where Horman allegedly acquired the information showing U.S. complicity in the coup, to Horman’s apartment in Santiago.
After that, Horman was picked up by Pinochet’s national-security goons, taken away, and executed.
While no one except the CIA, and possibly the U.S. military, knows exactly what the CIA role was in the murder, the allegation is that the CIA and the military signaled Pinochet that they wanted Horman (and possibly Teruggi) executed but without any evidence pointing to U.S. complicity in the murders.
One ironic twist to this saga involves the murder of a Chilean citizen by the Pinochet regime, on grounds of national security. During his brutal dictatorship, Pinochet sent a national-security hit team to Washington, D.C., where it murdered Orlando Letelier, who had served in the Allende government, on the streets of Washington, D.C. Even though the person who orchestrated the murder, a man named Michael Townley, ultimately got a sweetheart plea deal, no doubt because he had been an agent of the CIA, at least the Justice Department treated the hit as a murder rather than a legitimate assassination by the Pinochet regime to protect Chile’s national security.
On the other hand, however, the U.S. government has never treated the executions of Charles Horman and Michael Teruggi in the same way. Apparently, the notion has been that once the U.S. national security state decides that someone is a threat to national security, including an American, it has the legal authority to eliminate such a threat through assassination.
Equally important, the presumption seems to be that the final judge of what constitutes a sufficient threat to national security to justify an assassination of an American or anyone else lies with the national-security state itself, either through the CIA making the determination itself or by following orders of the president.
All of this, of course, is sheer nonsense. There is clear evidence indicating that two Americans have been murdered by agents of the U.S. national security state. This is not a case where the victims are alleged to have played an “operational role” in attacking the United States or even releasing classified information embarrassing to the U.S. government. The very worst thing Horman and Teruggi allegedly did was acquire information from military sources indicating U.S. government complicity in a regime-change operation in a foreign country and of being liberals, leftists, or socialists.
Since when do such things justify the national-security assassination of American citizens by either the U.S. military or the CIA?
There is no statue of limitations on murder. The U.S. government, including the Justice Department and the Congress, owe it to the American people, including the families of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, to open official investigations into the murders of these two young men and to bring to justice every U.S. official who participated in such murders.
If Chileans aren’t scared to confront the truth, why should Americans be?
Delegitimizing discrimination: struggle of Palestinians in Israel focus of new book
By Rod Such – The Electronic Intifada – 4 January 2012
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy by British investigative journalist and The Electronic Intifada contributor Ben White links the struggle of Palestinians within Israel, who make up 20 percent of the country’s population, with those in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the global diaspora.
With a foreword by Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), the book provides current and well-documented information on the systematic discrimination facing Palestinian citizens of Israel, the increasingly repressive measures being taken against both Palestinian and Jewish dissenters in Israel, and the ongoing Judaization within Israel, particularly in Galilee and the Negev (Naqab) desert, that is intended to further segregate and isolate Palestinians from Israeli Jews.
But perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is its dissection of political Zionism, providing a framework to understand why a state that defines itself as Jewish cannot be democratic. A state that defines itself as belonging to one ethnic group, White shows, is inherently wedded to discrimination and inequality, combining elements of both an ethnocracy and a theocracy, but not the kind of pluralistic democracy that guarantees equal rights for all and protections for national minorities.
In her foreword, Zoabi seizes on this very message, noting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be viewed not through “the lens” of Israel’s illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but rather through the lens of equal rights.
“The argument that the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is one of a conflict with a racist settler project that was founded on notions of ethnic purity,” Zoabi writes, “is understood implicitly by all Palestinians. We Palestinians were quick to comprehend the relationship between ourselves – as indigenous inhabitants of this land – and those who came to take our place (in every sense) without even considering a common life with or alongside us, and without acknowledging that which had gone before them.”
Zoabi herself is part of the movement within Israel to redefine the state as a “state for all its citizens.” She notes that the dominant Zionist political parties within Israel diametrically oppose this notion and thus expose their project as essentially antidemocratic.
“The ‘state of all its citizens’ project has forced the ‘Jewish state’ to admit the primacy that it grants to Jewish-Zionist values over democratic values,” she writes, “and to recognize the impossibility of coexistence between the two … After all, what is the recent ‘legislation’ pertaining to the Jewishness of the state, and the escalation of the process of Judaization from the level of policy, if not a direct acknowledgment of the conflict between democracy and Zionism, and the privileging of the latter over the former?”
For White, the insistence of the Zionist parties on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is not a tactic merely to block negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, nor is it solely about the Palestinians within Israel. Instead, as he succinctly puts it, “Israel’s definition as ‘Jewish and democratic’ is the contradiction at the heart of the conflict.” He devotes the first chapter, “Jewish and Democratic?,” to framing the discussion that will follow, showing how this definition of a state inherently results in the privileging of Jews at the expense of non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
Discriminatory patterns
White then carefully documents the discriminatory patterns resulting from this definition. For example, in the chapter titled “The Land Regime,” he notes that the Palestinian population within Israel is six times greater than it was in 1948, yet land privately owned by Palestinians has declined to a mere 3.5 percent of total available land. Furthermore, successive Israeli governments have helped finance and support the creation of more than 700 new Jewish communities since 1948, as compared with none for the Palestinian minority “except for seven townships in the Negev intended to ‘concentrate’ the Bedouin population.”
For this reviewer, White’s chapters on “Judaization and the Demographic Threat” and “Systematic Discrimination” were among the strongest, providing extensive background information on topics that are rarely mentioned in mainstream media coverage in the United States.
White reveals that among Israeli officials there is a preoccupation with the “demographic threat” posed by Palestinian citizens of Israel, a preoccupation that might best be described as the secret discontent underlying every supremacist regime. It has led Israeli governments to colonize largely Palestinian areas within Israel itself — including by demolishing Palestinian homes, a practice that takes place not just in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, but also within Israel itself. Part of countering the “demographic threat” is to make sure there is a Jewish presence in every part of Israel, which White refers to as the “Judaization of space.”
A case in point is Nazareth and Upper Nazareth in the Galilee. White explains that after 1948 the remaining Palestinians within Israel — who numbered slightly more than 100,000 out of a previous population of more than 850,000 — were concentrated largely within the Galilee and the Negev (Naqab). The city of Nazareth was almost entirely Palestinian and was the largest Palestinian city controlled by Israel before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.
To “‘assert a Jewish presence in the area,’ in the words of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli government created Upper Nazareth as a Jewish settlement. This settlement was allowed to expand and flourish, eventually growing to 50,000 residents and occupying 42,000 dunams [a dunam is a quarter of an acre], whereas in Nazareth, 70,000 Palestinians were “forced into just 14,000 dunams: four times as crowded.” The mayor of Upper Nazareth still regards Palestinians as a “demographic threat” and announced in June 2009 the creation of a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood “‘to counter Arabs moving in.’”
A spate of recent books has documented the impact of discrimination against Palestinians within Israel, among them Saree Makdisi’s Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Ilan Pappe’s The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, and Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman. All provide valuable information on inequalities and discrimination.
However, White’s figures are among the most current available. For example, he notes that in 2010, Palestinian citizens accounted for a third of all poor people in Israel and of the 30 communities with the highest unemployment, 27 of them were Arab. Whole sectors of employment are off limits to Palestinians. Israeli government data from 2011 showed that of the more than 2.3 million people employed by 170,000 Jewish-owned businesses, less than 86,000, or only 3.7 percent, were Palestinian citizens. A survey of almost 200 industrial firms in 2010 showed that 41 percent did not “‘employ any Arab college graduates.’”
Discrimination in education
On the topic of education, this reviewer wished that White had provided more background information to explain Israel’s de facto system of segregated education from kindergarten through the 12th grade. White acknowledges that Israel does not have a legally-segregated K-12 school system.
Nevertheless, the system of de facto segregation in education resulted from a deliberate policy. Military rule fenced off Palestinian rural villages from Jewish settlements and rigidly controlled Palestinians’ ability to move freely with a permit system not unlike apartheid South Africa’s notorious passbooks. Military rule ensured a system of segregated schools in rural areas. What is often not appreciated is what happened in the so-called “mixed cities” where Palestinians and Jews lived together, such as Haifa.
There, in 1948, the Haganah (an armed Zionist organization) forcibly removed Palestinians from the Carmel Ridge and “German Colony” areas to concentrate them in a single neighborhood, the Wadi Nisnas, despite objections from Palestinian members of the Knesset (MKs) who noted that the purpose was to create a “ghetto.” As one MK put it at the time, “It’s described as a military action. But in fact it’s a political one. It’s racism!”
Despite the MKs’ objections, the Haganah commander who implemented the forcible creation of a ghetto noted that he wasn’t interested in their views. They were simply to do as they were told, as recounted in the Israeli historian Tom Segev’s 1949: The First Israelis.
Of course, so-called “separate but equal” school systems are anything but. White documents a study conducted in association with the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics which found that for each Jewish student, schools have a budget of around $1,100 a year, compared with a figure of just $191 for each Palestinian student, almost six times less.
Rethinking our approach to Israel
In his concluding chapter, White returns to his theme of why the political Zionist dream of a Jewish state is central to the conflict. “There is an urgent need to rethink our approach to Israel, consistent with the reality on the ground in the West Bank, the reasons for the failure of the ‘peace process,’ and the situation for the Palestinian minority in a Jewish state. It means moving beyond the ‘occupation’ discourse that limits the conflict to policies and phenomena specific to the territories conquered by Israel in 1967. It is time to re-integrate the different elements of the historic conflict, and see the ‘Question of Palestine’ holistically.”
He adds, “it is necessary to see how, as a result of Israeli policies and legislation, one in seven Palestinians is a second-class citizen, a third are under military rule without citizenship, and half of all Palestinians are outside the borders, dispossessed and forbidden from returning. This latter reality is central to the contradiction of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state, an identification that was only established and can only be maintained, by the expulsion and forcible exclusion of half the Palestinian people.”
By placing the emphasis on human rights and equality, White argues that the struggle must be redirected toward genuine “democratization and de-colonization, based upon the recognition of both Palestinian and Jewish rights.
“Freed from the imperative of maintaining an exclusivist ethno-religious state, issues like water rights or the status of Jerusalem are transformed from the stumbling blocks of tortuous negotiations into opportunities for celebratory affirmations of a common homeland and the mutual protection of both communities’ rights.”
This perspective surely must be taken up by those engaged in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, a global nonviolent movement confronting Israeli apartheid. The great theorist of nonviolence, Gene Sharp, argued that its effectiveness lies in the “delegitimization” of the policies of oppression. Its power comes not from pressuring the powerful or from disrupting the status quo but from making the policies of oppression illegitimate in the eyes of the nation’s citizens and the world.
Thus, the Birmingham, Alabama civil rights protesters who were water-hosed by Bull Connor’s firemen, as seen on nationwide TV, were part of the process of delegitimizing the US South’s system of segregation. Once that occurred, the resulting victories in civil rights legislation became inevitable. So, it is not Israel itself that is being made illegitimate, but rather the policies of privileging one ethnic group over another as summed up in the phrase “the Jewish state.”
Rod Such is a freelance writer and former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He is a member of the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign and Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights.
When Can the President Assassinate Americans?
By Daniel McCarthy | American Conservative | December 30th, 2011
The New York Times puts this question to the GOP contenders. Sophistry ensues. “Under what circumstances, if any, would the Constitution permit the president to authorize the targeted killing of a United States citizen who has not been sentenced to death by a court,” the paper asks. Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, and Romney take the same line: “Under wartime circumstances” says Newt; “If such an individual is engaged on a battlefield,” says Huntsman; “Due process permits the use of deadly force against all enemy combatants, including citizens,” Romney avers; and “The President would be so authorized … where a citizen has joined or is associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities against the United States” according to Perry. Only Ron Paul describes the conditions in which extrajudicial targeted killing of Americans is permitted as “none.”
The others engage in Orwellian obfuscation, claiming that “battlefield” circumstances permit this — as if the situation the Times is asking about is one in which some American terrorist is shooting away at U.S. troops in combat or about to detonate a bomb on American soil. But that isn’t “targeted” killing. The practice Huntsman, Gingrich, Romney, and Perry — and President Obama — defend includes the assassination of Americans who are, in Perry’s words, only “associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities.” In fact, the power claimed by these men goes far beyond that since, again, this is extrajudicial killing, in which there is no obligation for the executive to provide evidence to a judge or anyone else that the murdered man is guilty of what Uncle Sam accuses him of.
Stripped of the evasions, what they are saying is that you or anyone else can be killed if the president thinks — or claims to think — that you are “associated” with “a nation or group” that is engaged in hostilities with the United States. Janet Reno would approve. This doctrine would have saved her some crocodile tears over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians at Waco. Even the unarmed women and children there, after all, were “associated” with a group engaged in hostilities with the United States.
Needless to say, there are Americans who join extremist groups, but existing law-enforcement powers and military doctrines already permit killing them when they are actually engaged in acts of deadly violence. The Republicans’ invocations of a “battlefield” might sound reassuring, until you realize that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, according to two of its supporters, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), designates even the U.S. itself as a battlefield. The whole world is one.
I have trouble taking these claims to more-than-royal power seriously; more precisely, I have trouble ascribing good faith to the intellectuals who try to justify an omnipotent presidency. But it’s a nominally free country, so let them have their say, in elections as well as op-ed pages and the corridors of our think tanks and universities. It seems to me, though, that we ought to hear from those who believe in a limited and law-bound executive as well. Ron Paul shouldn’t be alone in this. The public needs to know what’s at stake here and just how few political leaders think there should be any restraints at all on the power of the president to kill.
False arrest followed by interrogation for European solidarity volunteers in Nabi Saleh
2 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
In the morning of the 30th of December three members of the International Solidarity Movement and one other international were walking the streets of Nabi Saleh when two military jeeps drew up and stopped next to them. A group of approximately ten soldiers jumped out of the jeeps grabbing two of the international volunteers, forcing them into the jeeps as they drew away. Inside the car they were told they were under arrest for disobeying orders, stating that when they had instructed the internationals to stop, the internationals had fled and disobeyed. The ISM volunteers found this strange as they were the ones who actually stopped, and those who ran away were not arrested. The arrested were taken to a military-base where all their belongings were taken from them. They were then interrogated by a policeman. In this interrogation the charges were changed, shifting to allegations against the volunteers that they had entered a closed military-area, which also was strange as soldiers had blatantly let them into the area just an hour earlier.
After some hours waiting in the military base, they were handcuffed and driven to a police-station where they were also shackled. Once again they were interrogated by another policeman, this time for disobeying orders to stop when the soldiers supposedly wished to inform the volunteers that they were in a closed military-area.
After the interrogation they were given a paper written in Hebrew to sign. It was translated orally by a soldier. They refused to sign it and instead they were given another paper that said that they could not go to Nabi Saleh for 15 days.
Afterwards they were released without charges. The policemen asked them to tell Europe how well the Israelis had treated them.
Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Bill Into Law
ACLU | December 31, 2011
WASHINGTON – President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law today. The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations. The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill.
“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. said Romero. “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today. Thankfully, we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.”
The bill also contains provisions making it difficult to transfer suspects out of military detention, which prompted FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify that it could jeopardize criminal investigations. It also restricts the transfers of cleared detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries for resettlement or repatriation, making it more difficult to close Guantanamo, as President Obama pledged to do in one of his first acts in office.
Glenn Greenwald presents 25 reasons to register as a Republican
Glenn Greenwald:
The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama … holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes… Full article at Salon.com
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In almost half of all states the only way that you can voice your opposition to these despicable policies is to register as a Republican 30 days (in some states less) prior to the primary election. As a registered Republican you have the privilege of voting for the candidate that has taken a contrary position on all of these issues, Ron Paul.
You can also help send Romney or Gingrich packing as an added perk. But be sure to re-register as a Republican in time.
From The Center for Voting and Democracy:
Here are the types of Primaries in the states
Open primary:
Voters of any affiliation may vote for the candidate of whatever party they choose. Some of these open primary states may not have party registration at all; however open primary states do prohibit voters in X primary from going on to participate in Y’s primary or runoff. Yet, this prohibition can be difficult to enforce.
The crucial issue in open primary states is “crossover” voting, which can contribute to the victory of a nominee closer to the center or radically further away. It most often involves members of Party Y (either in an area dominated by Party X or when Party Y’s nominee is a foregone conclusion) voting for the Party X candidate whose views are the most reconciliable with their own. Though this brings the race closer to the center, Democratic and Republican party establishments generally dislike open primaries.
Occasionally, there are concerns about sabotage, or “party crashing,” which involves voting for the most polarizing candidate in the other party’s primary to bolster the chances that it will nominate someone “unelectable” to general election voters in November. An example is Republicans voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary.
Closed primary:
Only voters registered with a given party can vote in the primary. Parties may have the option to invite unaffiliated voters to participate. Typically, however, independent voters are left out of the process entirely unless they choose to sacrifice their freedom of association for the opportunity to have their say in who represents them. Closed primaries may also exacerbate the radicalization that often occurs at the primary stage, when candidates must cater to the “base,” yet the “fringe” of the party are typically more motivated to turn out.
In a few states, independent voters may register with a party on Election Day. However, they must remain registered with that party until they change their affiliation again. A couple of states even allow voters registered with one party to switch their registration at the polls to vote in another party’s primary. In these rare instances, a closed primary can more closely resemble open or semi-closed primaries than the closed primaries of other states.
Semi-closed primary:
Independents may choose which party primary to vote in, but voters registered with a party may only vote in that party’s primary. The middle ground between the exclusion of independents in a closed primary and the free-for-all of open primaries, the semi-closed, primary mostly eliminates the concern about members registered to other parties “raiding” another’s election.
Of course people who align with Party X may theoretically still vote in Party Y’s primary if they just register as independent, but it appears most voters do not think that way. Moreover, the potential for sabotage through tactical party registration is also present in the strictest of closed primaries.
Top Two/ non-partisan primary:
This method puts all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, on the same ballot. The top two vote-getters then face off in the general election. This type of system is used in California, Louisiana, and Washington, as well as in Nebraska for non-partisan election such as for the state’s legislature.
Note on terminology: “Top Two” primaries are often referred to as “open primaries,” but that terminology has long been used in reference to the type of party primaries in which all voters may choose in which party’s primary to participate. By contrast, the “Top Two” system eliminates party primaries altogether. It is more accurately described as “nonpartisan primaries.” It would be more precise and less confusing to at least call them “nonpartisan open primaries.”
The following is a running list of states by types of party primary, updated December 2011:
Here are the individual state rules
| State | Closed | Open | Semi-Closed | Source | Remarks | Presidential Primary or Caucus |
| Alabama | x | Ala. Code § 17-13- 7 | Open | |||
| Alaska | R | D | Alaska Stat. §§ 15.25.014, 15.25.060 | Parties select who may vote in their primaries. To vote in the GOP primary, a voter must be registered as a Republican 30 days before Election Day. | Open | |
| Arizona | x | Ariz. Att’y Gen. Op. No. I99-025 (R99-049) | Arizona uses a “Presidential Preference” system instead of a traditional primary system. Voters must be registered for a party in order to receive a ballot. | Closed | ||
| Arkansas | x | Ark. Code Ann. § § 7-7-306- 308 | Open | |||
| California | N/A | N/A | N/A | Proposition 14; CA S.B. 28 | California uses the “Top Two” Plan. On June 8, 2010 voters passed Prop. 14 to create a nonpartisan blanket primary system in which all candidates are listed on the same primary ballot and the top two vote recipients face off in the general election. | R: Closed; D: Semi-Closed |
| Colorado | x | Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-7-201 | Closed, but unaffiliated voters may, however, change their party registration up until Election Day. Affiliated voters must change affiliation 29 days prior to the election. | Closed | ||
| Connecticut | x | Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 9-431, 9-59 | Parties may choose to allow for semi-closed elections if they make a change to their party rules; however, as of now, the primaries remain closed. | Closed | ||
| District of Columbia | x | D.C. Code Ann. § 1-1001.09(g)(1); 1-1001.05(b)(1) | Closed primary for D.C. elected officials such as Delegate, Mayor, Chairman, members of Council, and Board of Education. | Closed | ||
| Delaware | x | Del. Code Ann. § 3110 | Closed | |||
| Florida | x | Fla. Stat. Ann. § 101.021 | Closed | |||
| Georgia | x | R: Semi-Closed; D: Open | ||||
| Hawaii | x | Haw. Rev. Stat § 12-31 | No party affiliation at registration. | Open | ||
| Idaho | R | D | Idaho Code Ann. § 34-904A | Until 2011, all Idaho primaries were open. After the GOP obtained a declaratory judgment that mandating open primaries violated freedom of association and was thus unconstitutional in Idaho Republican Party v. Ysura, the legislature passed a bill allowing parties to choose which type of primary they use. Democrats have chosen a semi-closed primary; unaffiliated voters may register a party at the polls on election day, but they are bound to that party affiliation at the next election. | R: Closed; D: Semi-Closed | |
| Illinois | x | 10 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/7-43, -45 | Voters declare their party affiliation at the polling place to a judge who must then announce it “in a distinct tone of voice, sufficiently loud to be heard by all persons in the polling place.” If there is no “challenge,” the voter is given the primary ballot for his or her declared party. | Semi-Closed | ||
| Indiana | x | Ind. Code §§ 3-10- 1-6, 1-9 | Classified as a “modified open” primary.” A voter must have voted in the last general election for a majority of the nominees of the party holding the primary, or if that voter did not vote in the last general election, that voter must vote for a majority of the nominees of that party who is holding the primary. However, there is really no way to enforce this, and cross-over occurs often. The same modified open primary is used for the presidential primary. | Open | ||
| Iowa | x | Voters may change party on the day of the primary election. | Closed | |||
| Kansas | R | D | Kan. Stat. Ann. §§ 25-3301 | Federal courts declared KS law unconstitutional and now the parties decide who will vote in their primaries. In 2012, Republicans will hold closed primaries; however, they will allow unaffiliated voters to register Republican on election day. Democrats will allow both affiliated and unaffiliated voters to vote. | Closed | |
| Kentucky | x | Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 116.055 | Closed | |||
| Louisiana | x | Act 570 | The congressional primaries changed from a closed system to an open system with the passage of Act 570, effective January 1, 2011 | Closed | ||
| Maine | x | Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 21, §§ 111, 340 | Closed | |||
| Maryland | x | Md. Code Ann., Elec. Law §§ 3- 303, 8-202 | Parties may choose to hold open primaries, but must notify the State Board of Elections 6 months prior. | Closed | ||
| Massachusetts | x | Mass. Gen. Laws ch.53 §37 | Semi-Closed | |||
| Michigan | x | Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.575; Public Act 163 | Voters do not have to declare a political party to vote; but must vote for all one party once they enter the voting booth. | Closed | ||
| Minnesota | x | Minn. Stat. § 204D.08 | Open | |||
| Mississippi | x | Miss. Code Ann. § 23-15-575 | No registration by party affiliation. However, in order to participate in the primary, a voter must support the nominations made in that primary. | Open | ||
| Missouri | x | Mo. Rev. Stat. § 115.397 | R: Semi-Closed; D: Open | |||
| Montana | x | Mont. Code Ann. § 13-10-301 | No party registration in MT. Each voter has the choice which ballot to use on Election Day. | Open | ||
| Nebraska | x | Neb. Rev. Stat. § 32-702 | Partisan primaires are closed, meaning congressional primaries are closed; however unaffiliated voters may vote for a candidate of a particular party. | Semi-Closed | ||
| Nevada | x | Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 293.287, 293.518 | Closed | |||
| New Hampshire | x | N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann § 659:14 | Closed primaries in effect; but the statute allows for semi-closed primary if that party’s rules allow for it. | Semi-Closed | ||
| New Jersey | x | N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:31-13.2 | Closed | |||
| New Mexico | x | N.M. Stat. §1-12-7.2 | Parties may choose to allow for semi-closed elections if they make a change to their party rules; however, as of now, the primaries remain closed. | Closed | ||
| New York | x | N.Y. Elec. Law § 5-304 | Closed | |||
| North Carolina | x | N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 163-59, -119 | State law provides for closed primaries, but both parties have opened them up to unaffiliated voters, who may choose on Election Day. | Semi-Closed | ||
| North Dakota | x | N.D. Cent. Code, § 40-21-06 | No party registration. | R: Closed; D: Open | ||
| Ohio | x | Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3513.19 | Voters’ right to vote in the primary may be challenged on the basis that they are not affiliated with the party for whom they are voting in the primary. | Closed | ||
| Oklahoma | x | Okla. Stat. §26-1-104 | Closed | |||
| Oregon | x | Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 247.203, 254.365 | Closed | |||
| Pennsylvania | x | 25 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 2812 | Closed | |||
| Rhode Island | x | R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 17-9.1-23 | An unaffiliated voter for the past 90 days may designate his or her party affiliation on election day by voting for that party in the primary. | Semi-Closed | ||
| South Carolina | x | S.C.Code Ann. §§ 7-11-10 | A U.S. District Court judge ruled inGreenville County Republican Party Executive Committee v. South Carolina, that South Carolina’s open primary is constitutional. | Open | ||
| South Dakota | R | D | S.D. Codified Laws § 12-6-26 | Parties may choose to allow for semi-closed elections. Democrats have opened up their primaries to allow unaffiliated voters to vote. | R: Closed; D: Open | |
| Tennessee | x | Tenn. Code Ann. § 2-7-115 | Voters must affiliate with a party, but may choose to affiliate with that party on the election day. In Tennessee, voters are not registered with party affiliations. | Closed | ||
| Texas | x | Tex Elec. Code Ann. § 172.086 | No registration by party; voters are not held to affilation of past election. Each year, voters have a clean slate and must choose on primary day whether to vote by a party affilation or as unaffiliated; voters are held to that affiliation in the runoff. For the presidential primary, it is the same system as of December 19, 2011. | Open | ||
| Utah | R | D | Utah Code Ann. §§ 20A-2-107.5 | Parties may choose to open up the primary. Currently, Republicans have a closed primary while Democrats have opened up the primary. | R: Closed; D: Open | |
| Vermont | x | Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 17, § 2363 | No registration by party. For presidential primary, voters must declare which ballots they want. | Open | ||
| Virginia | x | Va. Code Ann. § 24.2-530 | If a primary is called, it will be open. | Open | ||
| Washington | N/A | N/A | N/A | Wash. Rev. Code § 29A.52.112, 29A.36.171 | Similar to California’s Top Two system. | R: Closed; D: Semi-Closed |
| West Virginia | x | W. Va. Code § 3-5- 4 | Technically a closed system, but all parties allow any voter who is not registered with an official party to request their ballot for the Primary Election. | Semi-Closed | ||
| Wisconsin | x | Wis. Stat. § 6.80 | Voters may vote for only one party, but do not have to be affiliated with any party before coming into vote on Election Day. | Open | ||
| Wyoming | x | Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 22-5-212 | A voter can change his or her party affiliation on election day. |
Israel’s Repressive Permit System
By Stephen Lendman | The People’s Voice | December 28th, 2011
Under South African apartheid, pass laws segregated blacks from whites, restricted their movements, required pass books be carried at all times, and be produced on demand or face arrest and prosecution.
Evolving from the 18th and 19th century until their 1986 repeal, they restricted entry to cities, forcibly relocated blacks, denied them most public amenities, many forms of employment, and became apartheid’s most hated symbol.
Repressive Israeli occupation is worse. It’s a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide.
It incorporates the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism. It separates Palestinians from their land and heritage, denies them their lawful rights, and displaces them from areas Israel wants exclusively for Jews.
Apartheid is the worst form of racism. Israel’s militarized occupation is the worst form of apartheid. It incorporates violence, military incursions, land theft, home demolitions, targeted assassinations, murder, mass arrests, torture, destruction of agricultural land, and isolation. It’s slow-motion genocide, including suffocating Gazans under siege.
The ID/permit system is one of many elements designed to make greater Israel an ethnically pure Jewish state.
Israel requires all permanent residents and citizens over 16 to have a color-coded ID cards. Called te’udat zehut, they’re for West Bank and Gazan Palestinians, East Jerusalem ones, Israeli Arabs and Jews.
For Palestinians, they dictate where they may live, work, move, or be allowed through West Bank checkpoints, to Israel or Gaza. Doing so requires hard to get permits. They’re easily cancelled without notice.
Jews have blue IDs, Palestinians either Israeli-issued orange ones (in Hebrew) or nearly identical Palestinian Authority-issued green ones with a PA seal on top. The following information is included:
- name and ID number;
- father and mother’s names;
- date and place of birth;
- religion;
- marital status;
- gender; and
- photo.
Prior to 2005, ethnicity was also included. It’s still available on request from state registrations.
A separate document includes:
- current and previous addresses;
- previous names;
- citizenship, including for permanent resident citizens of other countries;
- name, birth date and ID numbers for spouse and children; and
- electoral polling stamp.
Israel’s Bureaucratic Nightmare
On December 23, Haaretz writer Chaim Levinson headlined, “Israel has 101 different types of permits governing Palestinian movement,” saying:
Most common ones let Palestinians “work in Israel, or in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Over the decades, however, the permit regimen has grown into a vast, triple-digit bureaucracy.”
Separate permits are required for Al-Aqsa Mosque worshippers and clerics. Medical permits distinguish between physicians and ambulance drivers. They also differ for “medical emergency staff” and “medical staff” in the seam zone (between the Green Line and Israel’s Separation Wall).
Escorting a patient in an ambulance requires permit permission as does simply accompanying a patient.
Others are for traveling to a West Bank wedding or Israel, as well as visiting Israel for a funeral, work meeting, or court hearing.
New permits followed Israel’s Separation Wall construction, including for farmers cut off from their land. For example, permit permission is required for “farmer(s) in the seam zone.” A separate one is for “permanent farmer(s) in the seam zone.” In other words, working one’s own land requires Israeli permission.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Occupied Palestine-based international agencies waste 20% of their time applying for, renewing, and dealing with permit related problems.
Machsom Watch, a checkpoint monitoring organization, claims Shin Bet uses Israel’s permit system to recruit informers. Palestinians rejected for security reasons are targeted. In return for spying, they offer “assistance” getting permits.
Besides other daily abuses, Israel’s permit system creates a dystopian nightmare for Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Major media scoundrels almost never discuss its existence, let alone its draconian harshness.
A Final Comment
In 2001, Israel enacted an Electronic Signature Law. Plans were to issue smart ID cards. The project stalled for a decade. Storing biometric data electronically raises privacy and other civil liberty concerns.
Unlike magnetic cards, however, biometric characteristics are hard to counterfeit, copy, share, lose, or guess.
After much debate, Israel’s Knesset enacted the Biometric Database Law in December 2009. A year later, Netanyahu’s government approved it. As a result, the Interior Ministry will begin issuing Israeli citizens smart ID cards and electronic passports with embedded chips over a two year trial period.
New regulations call for:
- issuing a biometric ID;
- requiring fingerprints and facial images;
- encrypting and securing the data; and
- transferring it among authorized agencies.
At the end of the year end 2013 trial period, all Israeli citizens will be required to provide biometric data for IDs, passports, and storage in Israel’s national database.
Palestinians already must have their hands electronically scanned when applying for Israeli-Issued Magnetic ID cards. At issue is facilitating freer movement under repressive imposed restrictions.
For example, West Bank Palestinians wishing to reach Jerusalem, Gaza or Israel must apply and pay for a magnetic card. Having one proves they have security clearance permission. If gotten, it’s for short periods. Most often it’s for medical or other emergencies.
Foreign travel requires an Interior Ministry-issued “laisser passer.” If granted, it’s good for one year and renewable only in Israel. To reach Jordan, a valid passport is needed. Many West Bank and East Jerusalemites have it as the Hashemite Kingdom once administered the Territory.
Under siege, Gazans are entirely isolated with few exceptions, other than those able to reach Egypt through Rafah. Those granted travel permission to Jordan or abroad via Ben Gurion Airport must have authorized IDs, magnetic cards and permits.
For decades under occupation, Palestinians have been governed by hundreds of draconian military orders. They cover virtually everything from bank account withdrawals, water rights, land transactions, opening a business, growing onions, public gatherings, what can and can’t be published, planting and growing fruit trees, and much more.
Under military occupation, their lives are repressively micromanaged. Orwell understood it well. He once called “the price of liberty….not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.” Getting it, of course, is worth it.
~
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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New Book
The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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