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Rights group: 2,799 deaths by Egyptian authority in two years

MEMO | August 15, 2015

Some 2,799 Egyptians have been killed since the Egyptian authorities forcefully dispersed mass rallies in Cairo on August 14, 2013. The rallies were held as protest against the military coup which ousted the first every freely elected Egyptian president, an Egyptian rights group said on Friday.

Anadolu News Agency reported that the Egyptian Coordination of Rights and Freedoms stated that since June 30, 2013 until today, the Egyptian authorities’ varied methods of killing resulted in a large number of deaths.

According to the National Egyptian Council for Human Rights, on August 14, 2013, the Egyptian army and police dispersed the demonstrations against the military coup, killing 632 Egyptians. Meanwhile, national and international rights groups said the number of deaths was over 1,000.

Following the violent dispersal of the rallies, the Egyptian authorities adopted systematic killing, including torturing prisoners to death, liquidations and assassinations.

In June of this year, the Egyptian security forces assassinated nine unarmed Muslim Brotherhood leaders, claiming they were planning to make chaos in the country. The Muslim Brotherhood denied the accusations and stressed that the individuals were a team following up the families of Egyptians killed or wounded by the army and the police.

According to the report, which was divided into three stages, the first stage covered the period from June 30, 2013 until August 13, 2013, where 316 Egyptians were killed. The second stage covered August 14, 2013 until August 16, where 2007 Egyptians were killed. The third stage details the events from August 17, 2013 until August 12, 2015, where 476 Egyptians were killed.

Since the military coup against Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian authorities have been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of “inciting violence and terror” in the country.

In December 2013, an Egyptian court designated the group as a “terrorist organisation” and ordered all of its leaders and members to be arrested and their property confiscated.

Hundreds of its leaders and members have been sentenced to death or life in prison since the announcement of that ruling.

August 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

When the NSA tells journalists things, those things are not necessarily true

PrivacySOS | August 15, 2015

If you find yourself reading a story about US war or spying that contains a variation on the phrase “according to US officials” in the top paragraph, you are likely biting into a whopper of state propaganda and lies. Today’s NYT reporting on Snowden documents provides just the latest example.

Back in February 2014, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal published big time stories under the bylines of two of those newspapers’ most respected ‘national security’ and surveillance journalists. The Post story started like this:

The National Security Agency is collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans’ call records because of an inability to keep pace with the explosion in cellphone use, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Here’s the first paragraph of the Wall Street Journal story, reporting the same official claims:

The National Security Agency’s collection of phone data, at the center of the controversy over U.S. surveillance operations, gathers information from about 20% or less of all U.S. calls—much less than previously thought, according to people familiar with the NSA program.

AP’s Phillip Bump ran a story based on the Post’s version. Troublingly, his first paragraph dispensed entirely with the origin of the information. In Bump’s retelling, the information appears to have come from God—or at least is as good as The Word.

The NSA’s vaunted cell phone metadata collection program, often defended on the grounds that its comprehensive sweep of information allows the government to uncover unseen connections, only collected about 30 percent of all such information as of last summer.

The problem with these stories? Actual NSA documents (read: not NSA employee claims to journalists) show they are false.

The New York Times reports on documents disclosed by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden:

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans’ phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records.

I must quibble a bit with the New York Times excellent reporting here, only to suggest that what’s “striking” about the discrepancy between what journalists reported and the truth isn’t the fact that the NSA would lie to journalists. What’s striking is that journalists continue to print official, often anonymous, claims about government surveillance programs without a shred of evidence that those claims are true.

In February 2014, the NSA must have decided—perhaps in consultation with other parts of the US security state establishment—to lie to a few key journalists in order to propagate the myth that the all powerful intelligence agency couldn’t figure out how to obtain cell phone call records. At the time, not everyone believed it (myself included). But two powerful US newspapers were credulous, and printed the NSA’s claims as if they were fact—in the apparent absence of any documentation or other confirmation.

Everyone, including media consumers, needs to remember a very simple thing about intelligence agencies: they are professionals in deceit and manipulation. A good spy must be able to lie and connive in order to achieve their goals.

You wouldn’t expect a car mechanic to be a good oral surgeon. You also shouldn’t expect spies to tell the truth. Remember that the next time you read a newspaper article based off of undocumented, unproven “official” claims.

August 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian photographer’s visa problem exposes British government’s double standards

MEMO | August 15, 2015

Palestinian Hamdi Abu Rahma is a gifted photographer whose work in Gaza has been highly acclaimed around the world. He is also now at the centre of a political storm after he was told that he could not travel to Britain in order to take part in the renowned Edinburgh International Festival. Scottish politicians and supporters have accused the British government of trying to damage the reputation of the festival by its “overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” to refuse Abu Rahma a visa.

The row has erupted as Prime Minister David Cameron prepares to roll out the red carpet for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The timing is particularly sensitive, as an online petition calling for Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London next month has already attracted more than half of the 100,000 needed to trigger a parliamentary debate.

Now that the decision to reject the young Palestinian’s visa application has been challenged by members of the Scottish Government, as well as festival organisers and pro-Palestinian activists, there are hopes that the UK Visa and Immigration agency will think again.

Already widely travelled to show his work at exhibitions around the globe, this is the first time that Abu Rahma has had a visa application rejected without warning. Some observers are particularly surprised since the focus of his photography is about the power of non-violent resistance in Palestine, which he has captured through his camera lens.

“The UK government refused to give me a visa today and the reason for refusal was that I didn’t show any bank statements or documentation to demonstrate my ability to support myself during my visit,” he said in a prepared statement. “Despite sending complete evidence of the sponsorship provided to fund my trip and all contact details of my sponsors, proving that all my travel and accommodation costs have been met, they still refused my application.”

Abu Rahma pointed out that he has travelled extensively in order to tell the Palestinian story through his photographs but Britain is the first country that has refused him entry. “We all know the real reason for this refusal,” he said. “Britain knows very well what my trip is about. I am not going there to claim asylum or beg in the streets. I am going there to educate the British people and pose some questions.” Such questions as: “Have you ever asked Israel why they kill and murder innocent men, women and children in Palestine? Do you know why Israel occupies Palestinian land illegally and destroys our homes, and why it allows colonial settlers to move into our homes illegally against international law?”

Expressing his “deep disappointment” at being unable to travel to Britain on this occasion, the young photographer thanked his friends across the country for their support and for being willing to host him in their homes.

Phil Chetwynd, one of the festival organisers who invited Abu Rahma said: “The Network of Photographers for Palestine raised the money through crowdfunding to finance Hamdi’s visit earlier this year.” All of his travel and subsistence expenses are covered by this, he explained. “I pledged to provide accommodation throughout the visit. Last month I tried to contact the visa office in Amman to back-up Hamdi’s application, but the process is so obscure that they didn’t seem to have a mechanism to add information to that already submitted by the applicant. It seems that the FCO has tendered out the whole process to another organisation.”

Despite the visa ban organisers have said that they will still exhibit Hamdi’s photographs and will ask a performer from another show to read out the speech that he has prepared. As news spread of the visa ban, an additional exhibition of his work may now also be shown at “Welcome to the Fringe: Palestine day at Out Of The Blue (OOTB)”. Other events organised for Hamdi to speak in Inverness, Dundee and Glasgow may still go ahead via a live link-up to his home in Gaza.

According to Sofiah MacLeod, the chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the visa rejection came as “no surprise”. She pointed out that the Cameron government is preparing to welcome the “war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu to London in September. “As the petition calling on Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes nears 55,000 signatories, the government’s visa denial to Abu Rahma will only strengthen our resolve to oppose its complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing project against the Palestinians.” MacLeod is adamant that Palestinian voices, including Abu Rahma’s, will be heard at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in “unprecedented” numbers. “We already know that the Israeli government has received our message loud and clear that it is not welcome during the festival, or at any other time.”

Scottish Parliamentarian Joan McAlpine of the SNP raised the issue with Sarah Rapson, the Director General of UK Visas and Immigration within hours of hearing about Abu Rahma’s visa being rejected. In a letter seen by MEMO, she told Rapson: “While I understand that immigration is a reserved matter, culture is not. I am the co-convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Culture. I certainly feel that this decision is damaging to culture and the world’s greatest art festival in Edinburgh.”

McAlpine called for a rethink on what appeared to be “an overly bureaucratic and insensitive decision” adding: “I am particularly concerned that the decision means festival goers will miss the opportunity to hear this artist discuss his award-winning work, which of course has implications for freedom of expression.”

This is not the first time that Palestinian artistes have encountered difficulties at the hands of the UK Border Agency. Ali Abukhattab and Samah Al-Sheikh, a married couple also based in Gaza, were due to appear at the Institute for Contemporary Art in June 2013 as part of the Shubbak festival. They were to read from their own works and discuss how Palestinian writers in Gaza have responded to the ongoing Israeli siege and internal political situation.

Al-Sheikh, a short story writer and novelist, and Abukhattab, a poet and critic, are both established writers whose works have appeared in collections and anthologies. Both are also active in promoting the arts in Gaza, but that was not enough for the British government. In an increasingly familiar scenario for artists and writers seeking to visit this country, their visa applications were also rejected.

In April 2012, a tour by Palestinian Oud player Ahmad Al-Khatib and other musicians was delayed because of visa issues raised by the UK Border Agency. Discrimination by immigration officials has also hampered other Arab artists visiting the UK, including Iraqi poet Sabreen Kadhim, and even those only in transit through Britain’s airports, such as Syrian painter Tammam Azzam.

In an age when racial and religious discrimination is increasingly — and thankfully — more unacceptable, the fact that Arab artistes can still face what looks like systematic institutionalised discrimination is a huge concern. Instead of welcoming an alleged war criminal to London, perhaps David Cameron could look into this situation and start to treat all would-be visitors to Britain with fairness and justice.

August 15, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Mexico’s War on Journalists

By Laura Carlsen | CounterPunch | August 14, 2015

Earlier this summer, Ruben Espinosa fled Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz after receiving death threats. His work as a photojournalist there had made him an enemy of the state’s governor, who presides over one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a reporter.

On July 31, Espinosa was found beaten and shot dead in a Mexico City apartment.

Eight months ago, Nadia Vera, a student activist and cultural worker, looked boldly into a camera lens and told an interviewer that if anything happened to her, Veracruz governor Javier Duarte and his cabinet should be held responsible. She also fled Veracruz to the nation’s capital after suffering attacks.

On July 31, Nadia Vera was found sexually tortured and murdered, shot point-blank in the same apartment.

Three more women were assassinated in the normally tranquil, upper-middle class neighborhood that afternoon — an 18 year-old Mexican named Yesenia Quiroz, a Colombian identified only as “Nicole,” and a 40 year-old domestic worker named Alejandra. The press generally refers to the case as “the murder of Ruben Espinosa and four women,” relegating the women victims to anonymity even in death.

At a recent demonstration of journalists and human rights defenders, the sense of dread was palpable. As communicators in Mexico, we’re angry and intensely frustrated at how so many of our ranks have been killed, disappeared, displaced, or censored with no repercussions.

For many, including me, this crime especially hit home. For a long time, whenever I was asked if I was afraid to speak out critically in Mexico, I answered that fortunately Mexico City was relatively safe. Drug cartels and their allies in government only kept close tabs on reporters in more disputed areas.

The quintuple homicide in a quiet corner of the city shattered that myth — and with it what was left of our complacency. Several days before his murder, Espinosa told friends that a man had approached him to ask if he was the photographer who fled Veracruz. When he said yes, the man replied, “You should know that we’re here.”

Once considered a haven, Mexico City has become a hunting ground in a country where, too often, journalists end up reporting on the brutal assassinations of their colleagues — and wondering who will be next.

Targets

Ruben Espinosa had photographed social movements in the state of Veracruz for the past eight years, including journalists’ protests over the murder of Regina Martinez in 2012, a journalist and colleague of Espinosa at Proceso magazine. He covered the protests against the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa by local police in Guerrero and acts of repression by the Veracruz state government.

Espinosa captured a front-page photo of Governor Duarte, big-bellied and wearing a police cap, which appeared on the cover of Proceso alongside the title: “Veracruz, a Lawless State.” Espinosa noted that the governor was so enraged by the photo he had his agents obtain and destroy as many copies of the magazine as they could get their hands on. He reported that while he was taking pictures of the eviction of protesters, a government agent told him, “You better stop taking pictures or you´ll end up like Regina.”

The Mexican Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression recognizes 102 journalists murdered from 2000 to 2014.

Yet the Mexico City prosecutor didn’t even mention the threats and attacks against Nadia Vera, an activist and a member of the student organization YoSoy132, as a line of investigation in her murder. The UN High Commission on Human Rights in Mexico stated that Vera and the other female victims found with Espinosa showed signs of sexual torture. Mexico City investigators announced that they were applying investigative protocols for possible femicides, but didn’t say why or confirm the reports of rape and sexual torture.

The invisibility of the women victims in the press and the official statements has been partially compensated for by social media. In social networks, millions of posts and tweets have brought to light the lives of the women, and especially Nadia’s more public and activist past, in an impromptu campaign that insists that women’s lives also matter.

Signs of a Cover-Up?

Now, just days into the investigation, with the nation — and especially journalists — reeling from the news, there are already signs of a cover-up.

On August 2, Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Rios gave a press conference reporting on advances in the case. Although Rios promised to pursue all lines of investigation, he downplayed the possibility that this could be a political crime against freedom of expression, claiming that Espinosa was not currently employed.

Rios also stated that the photojournalist came to Mexico City to look for work — a thinly veiled attempt to pre-empt the dead journalist’s own version of the facts that he was forced to leave Veracruz due to ongoing persecution. The city attorney’s office has put forth robbery as the principal motive of the crime, despite the execution-style torture and killings, and hasn’t called on anyone from the Veracruz government to provide testimony.

These are signs that the city government may be trying to railroad the investigation, and they’ve outraged the public, especially journalists. The attorney general’s absurd claim that Espinosa was unemployed at the time of his murder, seemingly suggesting that his journalistic work wasn’t a motive, caused particular indignation.

On August 5, investigators announced that they’d arrested and were questioning a suspect based on a match with a fingerprint found in the apartment. Despite apparent advances, there’s a growing fear that the government has no intention of really investigating a crime that could lead straight to a powerful member of the president’s own party.

The U.S. Role

The involvement of the Mexican government in the crime itself, or at least in creating the climate that led to the crime and failing to prevent it, raises serious questions for U.S. policymakers as well. The watchdog organization Article 19 reports that nearly half of the aggressions against journalists registered were carried out by state agents.

Since 2008, the U.S. government — through the Merida Initiative and other sources — has provided some $3 billion to the Mexican government for the war on drugs. This is a period when attacks on human rights defenders and journalists have skyrocketed, and more than 100,000 people have been killed by criminals and security forces alike.

A fraction of that money has gone to mechanisms for protection that have so far proved worthless. Rather than helping, this serves to support the false idea that the Mexican state is the good guy in a war on organized crime. The cases of corruption, complicity, and abuse that pile up week by week have demolished this premise.

Supporting abusive governments and security forces while claiming to support the journalists and human rights defenders being attacked by them is like pretending to help the fox while arming the hunter — it just prolongs the hunt. Mexican citizens who speak up are being hunted, too often by their own government. It’s time the U.S. government came to grips with that and immediately suspended the Merida Initiative.

Until there is accountability and justice — and an end to the murder of those who tell the truth about what’s happening here — sending U.S. taxpayer money to Mexican security forces is a vile betrayal of Mexicans’ friendship and of the highest principles of U.S. foreign policy.

Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas Program in Mexico City and advisor to Just Associates (JASS).

August 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Bans Human Rights Watchdog Book

By Alexander Dyukov | International Information Group on Crimes against the Person | August 12, 2015

The report ‘Massive Human Rights Violations during the Civil Conflict in Ukraine 2013-2014′ is included in the list of books banned by Ukraine for import into the country. The Russian-language book and report is the annual report of the International Information Group on Crimes against the Person (IGCP). The principle author of the report and the coordinator of the ICGP is Alexandr Dyukov, who lives in Russia.

The list of 38 banned books was prepared and issued by the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine. It was published on the official page of the Customs Service of Ukraine on Facebook on August 7. “We present a list of books banned from importing to Ukraine in order to prevent informational war attacks and misinformation, the spread of anti-humanism, fascism, xenophobia and separatism, encroachment on the territorial integrity and the state system stipulated by the Constitution of Ukraine,” says the report of the Customs Service of Ukraine.

Massive Human Rights Violations during the Civil Conflict in Ukraine 2013-2014 was published at the end of June 2015. The book presents facts concerning crimes against the person and violations of civil rights and freedoms committed during the civil conflict in Ukraine. It contains summarized information about violations of the international norms of human rights by state authorities, non-state organisations and armed groups in Ukraine. At the same time, the publication lists violations of human and civil rights committed by all parties of the conflict.

“Our final report shows that large-scale human rights violations acquired a systematic character long ago,” says Alexandr Dyukov. “All parties of the conflict neglect human rights. Within the so-called anti-terror operation, the Ukrainian military regularly commit crimes which are, in fact, war crimes, such as murders, tortures, abductions and unselective attacks on civilians and infrastructure.

“These crimes have a systematic character with a certain involvement of the state authorities, thus they can be qualified both as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The information revealed in our publication gives a clear confirmation of this.”

Mr. Dyukov is not surprised with the ban of the book in Ukraine. “Let me remind you that in May, the Ukrainian Parliament officially announced the refusal of Ukraine to fulfil the undertaken international duties to protect human rights,” says Alexandr Dyukov. “After all, it’s a logical decision. Violations of basic human rights in modern Ukraine are not only daily life routine but also an element of the state structure. Consequently, collecting and spreading information about these violations is a seditious and anti-state act. However, we hope that due to the new ban, more people will learn about our book. Fortunately, there are no borders in the Internet.”

At the moment, the IGCP team is working on the English version of its report. The Russian-language version can be read and downloaded here. It is 344 pages long.

The International Information Group on Crimes against the Person (IGCP) was established in February 2014 as an international civil initiative. The group aims at collecting information about political and other crimes against the person committed in Ukraine since February 22, 2014, as well as informing people in Ukraine, the European Union and the Russian Federation about them.

IGCP is coordinated by Alexandr Dyukov, a Russian historian and head of the Historical Memory Foundation.

August 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

At it Again: Law Enforcement Officials’ Anti-Encryption New York Times Op-Ed

By Jamie Williams | EFF | August 12, 2015

Yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. and law enforcement officials from Paris, London, and Madrid published an anti-encryption op-ed in the New York Times—an op-ed that amounts to nothing more than a blatant attempt to use fear mongering to further their anti-privacy, anti-security, and anti-constitutional agenda. They want a backdoor. We want security, privacy, and respect for the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that we be “secure” in our papers. After all, the Founding Fathers were big users of encryption.

The government’s use of horror stories to convince us that we should unlock our doors and give it free reign to pry inside our lives is nothing new. FBI Director James Comey is notorious for his examples of how cell-phone encryption will lead law enforcement to a “very dark place.” Yesterday’s op-ed adopts Comey’s signature tactic, focusing on the fatal shooting of a man in Illinois in June of this year and suggesting—without any evidence—that but for encryption built into both of the victim’s two phones (both found at the crime scene), police would have been able to track down the shooter. Never mind that of the two devices mentioned in the article, one of them (the Samsung Galaxy S6) isn’t actually encrypted by default.

The op-ed goes on to cite numerous other “examples,” again divorced from any actual facts, of cases in which encryption supposedly “block[ed] justice”—including 74 occasions over a nine-month period in which the Manhattan district attorney’s office encountered locked iPhones. Vance has touted this statistic before. But a spokesperson for his office told Wired last month that the office handles approximately 100,000 cases in the course of a year, meaning that officials encountered encryption in less than 0.1% of cases. And Vance has never been able to explain how even one of these 74 encrypted iPhones stood in the way of a successful prosecution.

The op-ed faults Apple and Google for attempting to offer their customers strong, user-friendly encryption. An iPhone with iOS8 automatically encrypts text messages, photos, contacts, call history, and other sensitive data though the use of a passcode. But contrary to the suggestion of the op-ed’s authors, Google has already backed off its promise to offer its users encryption by default, and Google would have been able to unlock the specific model of Samsung phone at issue.

But what’s more important than the op-ed’s shortage of facts is how out of touch it is with not only the fundamental importance of encryption and how encryption works, but also the U.S. Constitution.

The op-ed calls for an “appropriate balance between the marginal benefits of full-disk encryption and the need for local law enforcement to solve and prosecute crimes.” This single sentence demonstrates the numerous ways in which the authors are untethered from reality.

First, the benefits of encryption are in no way “marginal”—unless you view ensuring the privacy and security of innocent individuals across the globe as trivial goals. The authors here reveal their failure to appreciate the need for encryption to protect against not only security breaches, but also criminals (the folks they are supposed to be protecting us from) and of course pervasive and unconstitutional government surveillance.

Second, when the authors say they want an “appropriate balance,” what they are really asking for is a backdoor—or golden key—to allow government officials to decrypt any encrypted messages. As The Intercept explained in an article outlining the many things wrong with the op-ed, Vance and his counterparts in Paris, London, and Madrid are “demand[ing]—in the name of the ‘safety of our communities’—a magical, mathematically impossible scenario in which communications are safeguarded from everyone except law enforcement.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: It is technologically impossible to give the government an encryption backdoor without weakening everyone’s security. Computer scientists and cybersecurity experts agree, and have been telling the government as much for nearly two decades. And earlier this year, one Congressman with a technical background called encryption backdoors “technologically stupid.” Everyone who understands how encryption works agrees.

Third, law enforcement isn’t currently and won’t in the future “go dark” as a result of encryption. The government voiced the same concerns over encryption stifling criminal investigations during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s—i.e., Crypto Wars, Part I—which saw efforts by the government to prevent the development and distribution of strong consumer encryption technologies. (Protecting your ability to use strong encryption was one of EFF’s very first victories.) Such concerns have proven to be unfounded in the past. Just a few weeks ago, former NSA director Mike McConnell, former Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff, and former deputy defense secretary William Lynn—in a Washington Post op-ed in support of ubiquitous encryption—remarked that despite losing Part I of the Crypto Wars,

[T]he sky did not fall, and we did not go dark and deaf. Law enforcement and intelligence officials simply had to face a new future. As witnesses to that new future, we can attest that our security agencies were able to protect national security interests to an even greater extent in the ’90s and into the new century.

The same is true today. And as the former national security officials recognize, “the greater public good is a secure communications infrastructure protected by ubiquitous encryption at the device, server and enterprise level without building in means for government monitoring.”

At its core, yesterday’s op-ed demonstrates a fundamentally different vision for the future than the one we have here at EFF. Our vision is for a world where the privacy of communications are protected and where we can use the best tools possible to protect it. The vision of Vance, Comey, and others in the anti-encryption camp is for a world where no one is secure and where everyone is vulnerable. Their vision is not consistent with reality. And we hope the public is not swayed by their fear tactics.

August 13, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Steven Salaita, Palestine and Free Speech

steven-salatia

By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | August 12, 2015

Steven Salaita is a renowned academic in the field of Native American Studies. That is why the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) hired him in 2013 as a tenured associate professor in the American Indian Studies Program. Salaita resigned from his previous position and had every reason to believe that he was on his way to Illinois. However he was terminated on August 1, 2014.

In the summer of 2014 Israel was in the midst of a murderous campaign in Gaza which killed more than 2,000 people, including 500 children. Steven Salaita is a Palestinian-American and like millions of people he vented anger and outrage as the horrific war crime continued. His posts on twitter garnered the attention of the administration and donors at the University of Illinois and he was fired before he even began working.

From the beginning Salaita waged a courageous fight to prove that he was in fact already an employee and to see that the university paid a price for mocking academic freedom, ruining his career and upending his personal life. He has succeeded in some of those efforts. The university experienced nearly universal condemnation and was censured by the American Association of University Professors for violating the principles of academic freedom. In addition, prominent persons such as Cornel West are boycotting the University of Illinois and have cancelled appearances in support of Salaita’s struggle.

UIUC has been on the losing end of the court battle, with one judge ordering the university to release emails related to the case and another ruling that Salaita’s lawsuit can proceed. That decision renders as patently false the university’s claim that he was not yet an employee. Salaita is enjoying legal victories and has secured a temporary position at the American University in Beirut, but his difficult experience points out that in America speech isn’t so free if powerful interests are taken to task.

Criticism of Israel is the third rail in American life. Politicians dutifully toe the line and either praise Israel without question or say nothing and hope to be unnoticed. Even local elected officials who have no role in foreign policy secure campaign funds and protection from political challengers if they support Zionism. They may face defeat should they do otherwise.

The Salaita case shows the insidious nature of the censorship that is imposed from without which inevitably creates self-censorship for millions of people. Even as Israel wages a very public campaign against congressional approval of the P5+1 nuclear energy agreement with Iran, the president still gives words of support to a country which boldly and blatantly interferes with his policy agenda.

Not only did president Obama praise Israel even after he was publicly humiliated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he claimed an equivalence between that country’s apartheid system and the black American struggle for freedom. Among the many shameful things he has said in his political life that is among the worst.

Taking on Israel in a public forum is a daunting task. The rules may be unwritten but they are real and Salaita’s experience is not lost on others. There is no other issue that engenders so much fear, silence and acquiescence. So great was the fear of retribution that the university’s trustees and administration made a decision which they should have known would come back to haunt them. Such incompetence only happens in an institution operating in a state of corrosive group think, outside pressure and systemic rot.

The university has spent more than $843,000 in public money to defend its losing cause. The soon to be former chancellor and other staff tried to hide their dirty work by using personal email addresses and not just in regards to the Salaita case. This inherently unethical behavior was meant to thwart any search for public information but shoes have begun to drop as more wrong doing comes to light. Chancellor Phyllis Wise, who orchestrated the firing, recently resigned but she will still have a $300,000 faculty salary and receive a $400,000 golden parachute.

When Salaita chose to fight for his right to work and to speak freely he revealed a lot more about the rotten state of academia and its connections with wealthy donors. Even public institutions are beholden to big money and live in fear of losing favor and funding. In an era of triumphant neo-liberalism everything is a commodity, including higher education.

Salaita could have condemned any country other than Israel using the same language and would not have lost his job. Such is the power of Zionism and its defenders. They have what amounts to a gangster protection racket, enforced not with guns but with money and positions for those who go along. Those who don’t are made to suffer.

The right to speak freely does not extend to everyone in this country, but then again it never did. Because of people like Steven Salaita some of that injustice is out in the open for all to see. American politicians, the corporate media, and big universities may still genuflect in Israel’s direction but that obedience shouldn’t extend to every citizen. Salaita is fighting not just for himself, but for true democracy for everyone.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She can be reached via Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

August 12, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Repression in Jordan to Protect Israel

The Trial and Sentencing of Amer Jubran

By Noah Cohen | Dissident Voice | August 11, 2015

On July 29, 2015, the trial of Palestinian activist Amer Jubran in Jordan reached its predictable conclusion: 10 years with hard labor for phony “terrorism” offenses, based at least in part on laws manufactured after his arrest.

Last year I wrote an article about the circumstances of Amer’s arrest and detention. At that time he was being held without charges, after being seized from his home in the middle of the night and held incommunicado at an undisclosed location for over 2 months.

In August of 2014, he was finally given a list of charges against him. These included the charge of threatening to “harm relations with a foreign government,” part of a new set of “anti-terrorism” laws enacted in Jordan in June of 2014 (a month after Amer’s arrest in May). The law is a codification of Jordan’s existing practice of arresting dissidents who call attention to the regime’s traitorous collaboration with the main political enemies of its own people: Israel and the United States. A pertinent example would be Mwaffaq Mahadin, tried in 2010 for “endangering relations with a foreign state” for speaking on Al-Jazeera about Jordan’s security cooperation with the US. Under the new legislation, this “crime” became a “terrorism” offense, punishable before the State Security Court.

In a statement about his trial and sentencing recorded from prison (recording here, transcript here), Amer recounts a moment in his interrogation by the GID (General Intelligence Directorate, Jordan’s infamous secret police) which leaves no doubt about the real decision-makers behind his arrest and imprisonment:

During the interrogation period, I was told by the GID that any decision made about me is involving (quote) ‘our American and Israeli friends’ (end-quote). All started when I refused to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance. I was told then that I will be sent behind the sun for such a refusal. And frankly it is very easy for me to disappear behind the sun rather than to be well outside, but a sell-out and traitor.

The involvement of the US in Amer’s detention and trial comes as no surprise. As I recounted in my earlier article, the US had already detained Amer while he was living in the United States for his political activism on behalf of Palestine and against the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While living here as a green-card holder, he committed the inexcusable crime of refusing to be intimidated by the wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim repression that immediately followed September 11.

In 2002, he stood on a stage in Washington DC, before an anti-war gathering of more than 75,000 people, and spoke against US support for Israel and against the invasion of Iraq.

Amer has clarified in conversation that his refusal “to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance” was a refusal to act as an infiltrator and informant for the GID. He was thus charged with supporting Hezbollah.

In a similar trial that reached its conclusion a day earlier, another 12 people were sentenced for periods of up to 15 years for supporting Hamas. As one commentator asked in the Jordan Times: “[I]n whose interest is it to try those who support the Palestinian Hamas movement?”

“Anti-terrorism” laws that criminalize support for armed movements of national liberation in Palestine and national self-defense in Lebanon have nothing to do with protecting Jordan or its people. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah has ever threatened the security of Jordan. Such laws are designed purely to protect the interests of Israel and the US in their ongoing violations of the national sovereignty of Arab lands.

Likewise, Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate and its State Security Court function as arms of foreign powers. They are not protecting the security of Jordanians, but rather the security of Jordan’s most violent and militarily aggressive neighbor (Israel), and US soldiers who use Jordan as a base for attacking other Arab countries. Most recently, the US has been using Jordan as a base for training military forces involved in the destabilization of Syria–a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire region in violence.

To do their work effectively, these agencies must necessarily suppress the human and political rights of Jordanians. Journalists, activists, professors, religious leaders and all of Jordan’s ordinary citizens live under the constant threat of Jordan’s secret police and its judicial security apparatus. Trials before the State Security Court lack even the outward semblance of judicial independence, with judges recruited from the military and the GID itself.

In the campaign to free Amer Jubran, we are calling for letters on Amer’s behalf to be directed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein, a Jordanian. We have no illusions about the UN or its High-Commissioner for Human Rights. The value of such a campaign is to show that people around the world are watching, and to strip away the sham of “human rights” and “democracy” in Jordan.

Jordan is the most valuable regional asset for both Israel and the US. Its GID is one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, active throughout the region, and does much of the dirty work of suppressing the rights of people in the Arab world. It’s time to expose its crimes, and disrupt the political arrangement behind them.

Noah Cohen is active with the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign and can be reached through the campaign at defense (at ) amerjubrandefense.org

August 12, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Bans Dozens of Russian Books

Sputnik – 11.08.2015

Goskomteleradio, the State Committee of Television and Radio of Ukraine, has issued a ban on 38 books by Russian authors, prohibiting their import onto Ukrainian territory, the press service of the agency has declared.

Goskomteleradio deputy head Bogdan Chervak did his best to explain the decision, stating that it was “dictated by the need to prevent the Russian Federation from using methods of information warfare and disinformation against the citizens of Ukraine to spread the ideologies of hate, fascism, xenophobia and separatism.”

The list of banned books includes several works by Donetsk-born science fiction writer Fedor Berzin, as well as Tom Clancy-style works of fiction predicting the Ukrainian civil war by Ukrainian-born author Gleb Bobrov and by Georgi Savitskiy.

The ban also targets books in the areas of political science and social science by conservative Russian publicist Alexander Dugin, radical political dissident Eduard Limonov, Russian academic and presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev, and renowned Russian economist Valentin Katasonov. Most of the banned books are related in one way or another to Ukraine; many of them were published over the past two years in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis.

Goskomteleradio warned that the list of banned Russian books is likely to be expanded, saying that it would cite Article 28 of Ukraine’s Publishing Act, which prohibits the distribution of published works which can be used to threaten Ukraine’s independence, change the constitutional order by force, or violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state.

The agency launched its initiative early last month, referring to the country’s State Fiscal Service with a request to include Russian books in the list of goods prohibited from import onto Ukrainian territory from Russia.

Authorities did not clarify what would happen to those who violated the ban on the import of the banned literature, but noted that the books themselves would be confiscated and destroyed.

Russian authors and social scientists have begun reacting to the ban. Russian pop historian Nikolai Starikov, whose book “Ukraine: Chaos and Revolution: The Weapon of the Dollar” made the list of banned books, argued that Kiev’s move is an attempt to hide some basic truths. Starikov emphasized that his book had “neither hate, nor a call to separatism, nor fascist ideas –[in other words] none of the things listed by Ukrainian authorities,” adding that by banning his work, Ukrainian authorities were trying to hide a simple truth, that “Ukraine has witnessed an unconstitutional seizure of power… [and] come under the external control of the US.”

Popular Russian radio journalist Sergei Dorenko, one of whose books also made the list, noted that “in the age of the internet, it’s simply funny for the Ukrainians to try and ban something.” Dorenko referred to the fact that since the appearance of the internet in countries like Ukraine and Russia, books have often been made available on the internet, for free, even before being published and released in bookstores. With the appearance of e-readers and tablets, the trend has become so pervasive that many authors, especially academics, have deliberately released their works online, for free, in order to get a wider readership. In such a situation, it’s questionable how much effect, if any, a ban on physical copies of books will actually have.

The latest ban on Russian media is part of a growing trend. Over the past year, Ukraine has created and diligently expanded its list of banned Russian media, prohibiting nearly 400 Russian films and television series, issuing a blacklist for Russian artists said to be ‘threatening Ukraine’s national security’, and banning the broadcast of over a dozen Russian television channels on Ukrainian territory for their alleged contravention of Ukrainian legislation. With the prevalence of internet and satellite television technology, experts doubt the practical effectiveness of Kiev’s initiatives.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Journalists arrested in Ferguson face charges a year later

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Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly (L) and Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery (R) © Twitter
RT | August 11, 2015

Two reporters have been summoned to face criminal charges related to their arrests last August in Ferguson, Missouri. Their media outlets, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post, have slammed the decision as “abuse” and “contemptible overreach.”

Ferguson police arrested Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post on August 14, 2014, at a McDonald’s on Florissant Avenue, where the reporters had set up shop to cover the ongoing protests over the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown.

When the police ordered them to clear out, Reilly tried to take a photo. Officers then demanded his ID, which he lawfully declined to provide. He was then detained, along with Lowery, “for not packing up fast enough.”

Both reporters were charged by the St. Louis county with “trespassing and interfering with a police officer,” almost a year after their arrest. They could face a fine of $1,000 and up to a year in a county jail, according to the St. Louis county’s municipal code.

Martin Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, blasted the decision to prosecute the journalists in a statement Monday.

“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Baron said. “You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority.”

“This latest action represents contemptible overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice,” Baron said.

“At least we know St. Louis County knows how to file charges,” Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim and senior politics editor Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote, denouncing the decision. If a reporter can be “charged like this with the whole country watching, just imagine what happens when nobody is,” they said.

According to the San Francisco-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, 24 journalists were arrested in Ferguson between August and November 2014, including RT’s Denise Reese. Several have sued the St. Louis County for unlawful arrest. Last week, the county settled with Gerald “Trey” Yingst and Turkish photographer Bilgin Sasmaz, paying out several thousand dollars and pledging to expunge arrest records and not file criminal charges.

More lawsuits are pending. One American and three German reporters sued the St. Louis police in March over their August 2014 arrests. One of them, Ansgar Graw of Die Welt, said he had covered many disputed areas and conflict zones, from Gaza and Georgia to Iran and Cuba. “But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.”

READ MORE: State of emergency declared in St. Louis county; activists arrested at federal courthouse

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Family Victimized by Immolation Ineligible for Compensation

By Stephen Lendman | August 11, 2015

Dawabsha family survivors aren’t afforded the same rights as Jews. Israel’s Property Tax and Compensation Fund Law (1961) provides monetary payments for property damage caused by terrorism.

Its Victims of Hostile Action Law (1970) provides compensation for bodily injuries suffered from terrorist attacks – as well as payments to family members of deceased victims.

Palestinians don’t qualify, only Jews, another example of a racist state, ignoring the rights of all people it’s obligated to protect.

Riham Dawabsha and her four-year-old son Ahmad are the remaining family survivors – both in intensive care precariously clinging to life with severe third-degree burns covering most of their bodies.

They’re physically unable to seek redress. They may not survive their ordeal. Yet Israeli law requires Palestinian victims of terrorism to appeal to a Defense Ministry committee – hostile to their interests – for compensation unlikely to be received.

Palestinian MK Yousef Jabareen called Israel’s system “absurd” and discriminatory. “Victims of nationalistic action must be eligible for compensation, and it doesn’t matter if they’re Arab or Jewish,” he said.

He wants Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to assure Palestinian terrorism victims are treated the same as Jews.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) attorney Dan Yakir called Israeli discrimination “another example of the intolerable disparity between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank in all areas of life.”

Firebombing the Dawbsha home on July 31 sparked worldwide outrage. Israeli officials called the attack “terrorism.” Riham and Ahmad deserve no less compensation and overall redress than Jews.

Nothing can replace the loss of 18-month-old Ali and Riham’s husband Saad. No amount of redress can reunite all family members in peace and security. Nothing can change what happened that fateful day.

Israeli security forces routinely conspire with settler terrorists against defenseless Palestinian victims – letting them rampage freely, commit near daily acts of violence and vandalism with virtual impunity.

Police states operate this way – including whitewashing their worst high crimes. Israeli forces last summer alone mass murdered over 2,200 Gazans, injured over 11,000, and turned large parts of the Strip to rubble – still not rebuilt because construction materials and other vital supplies are blocked from entering except in too small amounts to matter.

While horrendous crimes of war and against humanity were being committed, Israeli security forces viciously assaulted Arab citizens peacefully protesting ongoing carnage. Jewish activists joined them in solidarity.

On August 11, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel published a report titled “Silencing the Opposition: Israel’s Law Enforcement’s Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in Israel during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in Gaza, 8 July – 26 August 2014.”

Israeli authorities “adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to citizens opposing” aggressive war against 1.8 million Gazans trapped under siege, said Adalah.

The entire Strip was turned into a free-fire zone. No safe havens existed – not private homes, mosques, refugee camps, schools, or UN facilities to keep civilians out of harm’s way.

Israeli Arabs and Jews were denied their free expression right to protest. Police brutality confronted them. Serious violations of Israel’s Criminal Procedure Code and other statutes were committed.

“The police exhibited a complete disregard for the principles and criteria that apply to its authority for preventing and dispersing demonstrations, which are stipulated in rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court as well as Guideline 3.1200 issued by the Attorney General regarding the right to protest,” said Adalah.

After one month of conflict, over 1,500 protesters were violently arrested – mostly Arabs, some requiring hospitalization. Children were brutalized like adults.

Police viciously attacked every peaceful demonstration held throughout 51 days of conflict. Courts rubber-stamped their actions – ordering lengthy detentions for people exercising their legitimate rights peacefully, committing no crimes.

Judges showed overt sympathy with aggressive war murdering Palestinians in cold blood. They were intolerant of peaceful protesters.

Nearly 350 criminal indictments were filed on bogus charges of violating public peace, congregating unlawfully, acting unruly in public, assaulting police, inciting racism or committing violent acts.

Legitimate anti-war activism was criminalized – Israeli Arab citizens especially singled out for harsh treatment. Arab workers were fired for opposing government policies on Facebook and other social networking sites. Students and faculty members were disciplined the same way.

Adalah concluded its report saying “the attitude of the Israeli law enforcement authorities has not changed since the grave events of October 2000 (start of the second intifada), nor since the police’s gross misconduct against protestors during Israel’s previous military offensive in Gaza in 2009 (Operation Cast Lead).”

“(T)he incidents described in this report indicate that a public atmosphere of intolerance, racism, persecution and incitement characterized the most recent war.”

“Social networking sites became a frontier for targeting individuals opposed to the war on Gaza, with employees harassed and followed by co-workers and sometimes fired for online posts or statements.”

“The situation was just as severe for students and faculty members, whose political activities were closely monitored by universities and who faced disciplinary measures for speaking out against the military operation.”

“Altogether, the widespread phenomenon of Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of expression of Palestinians citizens reached a point to which that freedom was almost rendered non-existent, all with the aim of silencing opposition against a devastating war” – premeditated lawless aggression by any standard.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

School ‘banishes’ 7yo student for saying he doesn’t believe in God – lawsuit

RT | August 5, 2015

A seven-year-old Indiana student was “banished” from sitting with his classmates at lunch after stating that he did not believe in God, according to a lawsuit which claims the school violated the child’s First Amendment rights.

The suit – filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana and obtained by the Washington Post – claims the punishment occurred after the student, named only as AB, told a classmate on the playground that he didn’t go to church and didn’t believe in God.

That child then started to cry, stating that AB had hurt her feelings by saying that he didn’t believe in God.

The girl’s visible distress prompted a playground supervisor to report the incident to AB’s teacher, identified in the suit as Michelle Myer.

In response, Myer told AB that she was “very concerned” about what he had done, and said she was going to contact his mother.

Myer forced the child to sit by himself at lunch for three days, and told him that he shouldn’t talk to the other students because he had offended them.

The lawsuit states that this was distressing to AB, as it implied that he had done something wrong by expressing his personal opinion.

However, according to the suit, the hurt did not end there.

The matter was then sent to “another adult” employed at Forest Park Elementary School. Upon hearing the story, the adult reportedly told AB’s classmate that she should be “happy she has faith” and that she “should not listen to AB’s bad ideas.” She then patted the girl’s hand.

Despite Myer’s claim that she would contact AB’s parent, that phone call never took place. Instead, AB’s mother found out about the incident from her son, who came home from school upset and stating that he was hated by teachers and students at the school.

This prompted his mother to call the assistant principal of the school, demanding that her child not be punished for expressing his religious views. The teacher was also included in the call, during which she confirmed her involvement in the matter.

After the phone call, AB was apparently told by Myer and other teachers that he could believe what he wants to believe.

Following his three days of punishment, AB was allowed to sit with his fellow classmates at lunch. However, the lawsuit stresses that lasting damage has been inflicted on the student.

That damage includes the fact that some students refuse to talk to the child, and that AB is now “anxious and fearful” about school.

In response to the incident, the school district released a statement: “It is clear that it is not the province of a public school to advance or inhibit religious beliefs or practices. Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, this remains the inviolate province of the individual and the church of his/her choice. The rights of any minority, no matter how small, must be protected.”

Citing the violation of First Amendment rights, the suit is seeking damages and attorneys’ fees. The child’s mother has been allowed to proceed with the lawsuit anonymously, in order to protect her child’s identity.

August 7, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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