‘I’m a Trade Unionist, Not a Terrorist’: UK in Workers’ Union Spying Row
Sputnik – 22.09.2015
The British government, along with large multinational corporations, are trying to wash away the rights of workers and create a culture of fear among the country’s workforce through a series of systematic spying and blacklisting campaigns, a former blacklisted worker has told Sputnik.
As the government tries to usher through a new Trade Union Bill, described by critics as one of the most oppressive in the Western world, multinational corporations have been accused of taking part in extensive spying and intimidation tactics aimed at effectively locking vocal workers’ rights campaigners out of their professions.
The controversial bill has drawn the ire of trade unionists all over the country, with officials particularly angered by proposals which would require 50 percent of members to vote in favor of taking strike action for an event to be considered legal.
There are also fears that fines of up to £20,000 may be issued for unions whose members don’t wear identifying armbands during pickets.
Conservative business secretary Sajid Javid said the proposals would stop workers making “endless threats” at the expense of “hardworking people,” while union officials have seen it as an attack on trade unions and workers’ rights.
“The Tory government at the moment are trying to introduce the new Trade Union Bill, which even some Conservative MPs have said is the most restrictive legislation for trade unions in the whole of western Europe,” Dave Smith, former trade union representative and member of the Blacklist Support Group told Sputnik.
“The British government is never neutral when it comes to disputes between trade unions — it’s always on the side of big business.”
Some aspects of the Conservative’s bill even raised eyebrows with Tory MP David Davis saying some of the aspects resembled oppressive measures implemented by former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
“I agree with most of the Trade Union Bill. I think it’s very sensible… but there are bits of it which look OTT, like requiring pickets to give their names to the police force,” Davis told the Guardian.
“What is this? This isn’t Franco’s Britain, this is Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain.”
‘Spying and Blacklisting Still in Practice’
On top of the government proposals for trade unions, Dave Smith raised concerns over historical spying and intimidation tactics, which over the years has seen many trade union representatives placed on a blacklist, shared and used by multinational corporations to effectively lock some workers out of employment.
It was also revealed that undercover police units took part in spying and intelligence, gathering exercises on a number of unions and various members over the space of 40 years in order to identify leading figures in the movement and place them on employment blacklists.
While officially such practices are illegal, Dave Smith told Sputnik that he believes “there is no question about it whatsoever” that spying and blacklisting is still going on.
“They [large companies] were lying to everyone and lying to parliament for forty years, so why should we believe them now?”
Mr Smith, who is the co-author of the book, ‘Blacklisted: the Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists’, said he was first placed on a blacklist in the early nineties merely for campaigning over unpaid wage disputes and raising health and safety concerns in the construction industry.
“People got added to the list for doing fairly standard trade union activities — standing up for workers’ rights, standing up for unpaid wages, standing up for safety. That’s why I got on it,” Smith said.
“What they used to do, is as well as keeping files on you, every time you applied to work on a big building site, the big multinationals would check to see if your name was listed or not. And if you were on the black list you were just sacked or you weren’t offered a job.”
Despite being a qualified engineer, Smith said he was eventually forced to change professions to help pay his mortgage, because he couldn’t manage to find employment, even during the UK’s building boom of the late ’90s — early 2000s.
Blacklisting ‘Systematic’
He said the practice of placing some workers on an industry blacklist was endemic in Britain, and affected thousands of workers over the years — in some cases, ruining people’s lives.
“I’ve seen people whose blacklist files have got entries from the 1960s. This isn’t just one or two rogue managers having a quiet word with each other in a pub spreading a bit of gossip about you — this is systematic.”
“This is [a case of] directors of a multinational company keeping files on people and deliberately stopping people from getting work because of their trade union activities. I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a criminal — I’m a trade unionist. They’re deliberately stopping us because they don’t want trade union activists on their building sites.”
Mr Smith said that such practices, which he believes are to a degree still in operation today, created an environment of fear, where workers are now hesitant to stand up for their rights amid attacks from David Cameron’s Conservatives.
“The whole purpose was not only to victimize the activists but to discourage anyone else from standing up for their rights as well. It’s to scare everybody else and create that climate of fear.”
Facebook snoops on people just like NSA – Belgian watchdog to court
RT | September 21, 2015
Facebook is spying on people in “the very same way” that the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) does, said the Belgian data protection watchdog at a court hearing where the social network stands accused of violating the privacy of internet users.
“When it became known that the NSA was spying on people all around the world, everybody was upset. This actor [Facebook] is doing the very same thing, albeit in a different way,” said Frederic Debussere, a lawyer representing the Belgian privacy commission (BPC) at the Monday court hearing.
The Belgian watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the social network, accusing it of breaching EU law and violating the privacy rights of internet users. The BPC issued a report in March, arguing that Facebook tracked everyone, even users who had logged-out and people who don’t even have a Facebook account at all, via the use of cookies and the ‘like’ or ‘share’ buttons which can be found on more than 13 million websites worldwide.
This is possible, the report claimed, because the cookies are automatically installed on the computers of internet users each time they visit a page containing a Facebook plug-in, such as the ‘like’ button.
According to EU law, websites must ask for a user’s permission before installing any cookies. This is why Facebook’s policy is considered to in “violation of the European law” by the BPC.
The BPC is now threatening Facebook with a daily fine of €250,000 ($280,213).
“Don’t be intimidated by Facebook. They will argue our demands cannot be implemented in Belgium alone. Our demands can be perfectly implemented just in this country,” said Frederic Debussere, addressing the court.
Facebook has consistently denied all accusations and claimed that its practices are in compliance with EU law, accusing the BPC of presenting false reports.
“We will show the court how this technology protects people from spam, malware, and other attacks, that our practices are consistent with EU law and with those of the most popular Belgian websites,” a Facebook spokesperson said, as quoted by the Guardian.
Addressing questions about the company’s cookie policy, another Facebook representative, Paul Lefebvre, said that “they allow Facebook Ireland to identify bad faith attempts to gain access via the browser being used,” adding that if Belgium imposed a ban on this Facebook activity, the country “would become a cradle for cyber terrorism.”
Additionally, Facebook rejects the very idea it could be held accountable in Belgium as the company’s European headquarters are located in Dublin, Ireland, and its activities watched over by that country’s data protection authority.
The company does not rule out returning to talks with the BPC.
The case is now being closely watched by the rest of the EU’s 28 privacy watchdogs, including that of Holland, which has also started to question Facebook’s activities and privacy policy.
READ MORE:
Facebook ‘breaks EU laws’ tracking all visitors, even non-users – report
Fact: Facebook tracks non-users – says ‘fix already underway’
‘No respect for users, no precise answers:’ Facebook privacy policies slammed by Belgian watchdog
Chicago police spied on survivor of Chicago police shooting, Black political groups
PrivacySOS | September 20, 2015
Between November 2014 and January 2015, the Chicago Police Department monitored the First Amendment protected speech and political activity of dozens of groups and individuals, among them a victim of a Chicago police shooting, according to newly released documents.
Chicago based activist Freddy Martinez released the records after obtaining them through a public records request under the Illinois open government law. Among the groups monitored by CPD were:
Chicago Cop Watch, Let Us Breathe, Hands Up United, Occupy Chicago, We Charge Genocide, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Justice for Roshad, Black Youth Group, the Black is Back Coalition, the New Black Panther Party, and many others.
Among the individuals monitored were Corey Harris, who was shot by Chicago police, and anyone identifying as an activist or anarchist on social media.
The monitoring occurred during a period of intense agitation nationwide surrounding a Missouri grand jury’s finding that Officer Darren Wilson should not be tried for his killing of young Black Ferguson resident Mike Brown.
Freddy Martinez, the activist who obtained the records, told me:
“The resources of the government would be better served addressing the deep issues that BLM is highlighting. However the priority seem to be to criminalizing dissent and tracking activists through “fusion center” sharing of intelligence. It’s extremely important for groups to understand that this is the level of surveillance they will face when organizing against a racist police structure because we do have to organize.”
The document listing the protests, groups, and individuals monitored by the Chicago police during this time period is called a First Amendment Worksheet. Officers must fill out these forms when they intend to monitor protected speech or associational activities. The form disclosed to Martinez is an order to terminate the surveillance. Martinez told me that the initial authorization to conduct form was probably written outside the time period for which he requested records. It would be useful to see that document to understand exactly why the Chicago police, in its own mind, viewed these Black organizing initiatives with such apprehension and apparent fear.
Late last year, Chicago police used a controversial stingray device to track protesters’ cell phones. Earlier this year, records revealed that CPD officers were picking through the trash of opponents to the Chicago Olympic bid.
MI5 Paying British Muslims ‘Decent Money’ to Spy on Mosques
Sputnik – 21.09.2015
Britain’s intelligence agency is paying Muslims to spy on people living in their own community to try and avert terrorist attacks from homegrown Islamist extremists, the Guardian has revealed.
An anonymous source told the newspaper that MI5 is employing people across the UK in Muslim communities on temporary contracts to gather intelligence on specific targets attending the same mosque. The source also stated that they knew of one Muslim informant who had been paid £2,000 by the security services to spy on a specific mosque for six weeks.
“It’s been driven by the [intelligence] agencies, it’s a network of human resources across the country engaged to effectively spy on specific targets. It’s decent money.”
But MI5’s method of paying money to Muslims to spy on people in their own communities has come under criticism. Salman Farsi, spokesman for the UK’s largest mosque in East London suggested that the offer of money could corrupt the intelligence:
“If there’s money on the table, where’s the scrutiny or the oversight to ensure whether someone has not just come up with some fabricated information? Money can corrupt.”
Following the terror attack in London in 2007, the government spent millions on its ‘Prevent’ program to counter radicalization — but eight years later it has been accused of failing to prevent terrorism and radicalization, instead alienating Muslim communities in the UK further.
According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission: “The Prevent regime of attempting to stop young Muslims from being radicalized is not working and is simply alienating Muslims in Britain by serving as a cover for intelligence gathering on the community.”
But with around 650 young men, women and children who have fled the UK to join ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria and 3,000 radicalized terrorists being monitored by the MI5 — it appears that the British government’s approach to preventing terror isn’t working — and could be the reason behind this new push for for more powers.
The UK government and intelligence agency MI5, however, appear to agree on one thing — big Internet and social media companies should do more to help the authorities by reporting suspect users and sharing swathes of encrypted data with intelligence officers.
In what seems to be another round in the public relations exercise pushing for more support for the government’s Communications Data Bill or Snooper’s Charter, as it is also known, the head of the MI5 told British media that Internet and social media companies should inform the authorities if any users are a cause for concern.
“Some of the social media companies operate arrangements for their own purposes under their codes of practice which cause them to close accounts.”
Andrew Parker also wants the companies to pass on those account details to the intelligence agencies.
The Snooper’s Charter, would grant police and intelligence services more power to intercept and monitor almost every channel of terrorist communication online and offline. It could also force Internet companies to hand over users’ private data.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May is seeking support from Internet and telecoms companies for the controversial surveillance bill, whilst the head of MI5 publicly calls for more powers to monitor potential threats amid revelations his officers are paying Muslim informants ‘decent money’ to spy on their own mosques.
Native American 2nd grader kicked out of class for traditional Mohawk haircut
RT | September 21, 2015
It was a banner week for kicking children out of class. Along with Ahmed Mohamed and his homemade clock, a Native American student in Utah was told to lop off his Mohawk or leave school… until tribal leaders were forced to step in.
Jakobe ‘Kobe’ Sanden entered his second-grade classroom rocking a ‘hawk, not because it looked cool but because of his Native American roots. But the 7-year-old was kicked out of class because the “distracting” hairstyle was a potential violation of Arrowhead Elementary School’s dress code.
His mother, Teyawwna Sanden, was shocked when Susan Harrah, the principal of the Santa Clara school, called her to say she needed to pick up Kobe and get his hair cut.
“We had the students that weren’t used to it,” Harrah told KSTU. “They had called that out. So the teacher brought the student to my attention.”
The school’s online handbook stipulates only that “hair color should be within the spectrum of color that hair grows naturally.” The school district’s dress code goes further, stating: “Students have the responsibility to avoid grooming that causes a distraction or disruption, interrupting school decorum and adversely affecting the educational process.” It also notes that “Extremes in body piercings, hair styles and hair colors may be considered a distraction or disruption.”
Mrs. Sanden expressed her frustration with the school’s reaction on Facebook.
“So f’n irritated right now,” she wrote. “I get a call from the boys’ school and she said Kobe’s not allowed to have a Mohawk … that’s it’s school policy. WTH! Really? It’s hair!”
Kobe’s father, Gary Sanden, was traveling on business, but reached out to the Washington County School District’s superintendent of primary education.
“I was sympathetic to what they were saying ‒ that it was not conducive to learning,” he told the Washington Post. “But I couldn’t understand how it could be a distraction to the kids.”
The superintendent told Mr. Sanden to obtain letters from tribal leaders supporting the family’s claim that the hairstyle is part of their heritage.
“That’s like calling up the governor of our state,” he said. “But I called and got the letter. My wife did too.”
Mr. Sanden is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, which is based out of New York. Mrs. Sanden belongs to the Kaibab Band of Paiutes Indians.
“It is common for Seneca boys to wear a Mohawk because after years of discrimination and oppression, they are proud to share who they are,” Seneca Nation Tribal Councilor William Canella wrote. “It’s disappointing that your school does not view diversity in a positive manner, and it is our hope that Jakobe does not suffer from any discrimination by the school administration or faculty as a result of his hair cut.”
Canella told Native News Online that it was “ironic” that he had to step in to address such a situation at a school named Arrowhead. The Utah school is near several Indian reservations, including the Shivwits Band of Paiutes, which is less than 10 miles from the school, and the Kaibab Paiutes near the Utah-Arizona border.
Harrah told the Salt Lake Tribune that she felt the school had handled the hairstyle hubbub with aplomb, though she was surprised by the attention it received because “It took about a half hour of my time.”
“If there’s any kind of a hairstyle that is a distraction, then we have to tell the parents that we’ve got a problem,” she said. “There’s a protocol that we go through, and I felt like it was handled efficiently and that we respected their culture.”
Mr. Sanden disagreed, however, noting that Kobe had to sit by himself in Harrah’s office for part of the day.
“That’s the sad part of the whole situation,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. “To ostracize him like that ‒ that’s stuff from the ’50s.”
“It could have been handled 10 different ways,” he added.
Kobe’s removal from class happened less than three weeks after Malachi Wilson, a 5-year-old member of the Navajo Nation, was sent home on his first day of kindergarten at F.J. Young Elementary in Seminole, Texas because his long hair violated that district’s dress policy. The school required Malachi’s mother, April Wilson, to obtain documentation proving her son’s indigenous heritage, Indian Country Today reported.
In Louisiana last August, a Rastafarian teenager was suspended for three weeks from South Plaquemines High School for his dreadlocked hairstyle. The unnamed student claimed that not cutting his hair was a religious mandate, and his mother presented a letter from the 1st Church of Rastafar I explaining the religious significance of not cutting one’s dreadlocks. He eventually received an exemption from the school.
New Hampshire library to implement Tor above DHS objections—and how
PrivacySOS | September 16, 2015
A few weeks ago the Department of Homeland Security tried to intervene in a local library’s privacy program. Last night, the community roundly rejected those calls, explicitly choosing freedom over fear. Library board meetings don’t usually attract crowds, media, or protest. But something highly unusual—and extraordinarily encouraging—happened last night in a small town on the New Hampshire/Vermont border.
The drama unfolded in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where dozens of residents attended a library board meeting and spoke passionately about privacy and freedom before a gaggle of reporters and even some out of town activists. People in the room told me the energy was incredible. Some people cried. At the end of the meeting, the crowd that had gathered to passionately discuss issues at the heart of civic action and democracy erupted in cheers, elated at their collective success and lived commitment to the state motto: Live Free or Die.
The question before the public at the meeting last night was whether or not the Kilton Library in Lebanon should implement a Tor middle relay. Doing so would make the library a part of a global network of internet anonymity nodes offering users some measure of security and safety to people living under the terror of despotic regimes and abusive boyfriends alike. Weeks prior, the cops and the feds had managed to pull the plug on the project, a collaboration among the library, the Tor Project, and the Library Freedom Project.
But despite the Feds’ backroom fear mongering, the people of Lebanon, New Hampshire were not scared—and unlike DHS, which was mysteriously nowhere to be found last night, the people did their lobbying in full public view.
Nearly everyone who attended spoke in favor of the library’s plan to participate in Tor’s global internet freedom network. The only people who voiced opposition were the police chief and the town manager. But in the face of overwhelming community support, to include a local newspaper’s editors, even these few opponents were quick to temper their criticism of Tor, stressing that they would never tell the public it couldn’t do something like this if people want to.
People clearly want to. The room was so festive and pro-privacy that at the end of the meeting, the library board appeared unsure of what to do. It was so obvious that for a moment they just looked around. The people had spoken, and they weren’t scared, despite what DHS had told the local police, and what the local police had told the library. The library director stood up and proclaimed: the Tor node will return! The crowd cheered.
There were many remarkable moments during the public testimony. One woman, a library employee originally from Colombia, said that she wished a technology like Tor had existed in her country during a period of extreme repression in the early 2000s. It could have helped people, she said.
Library board chairman Francis Oscadal got philosophical, saying, “With any freedom there is risk. It came to me that I could vote in favor of the good … or I could vote against the bad. I’d rather vote for the good because there is value to this.” Please mark that quote and return to it; it’ll be endlessly relevant.
The Kilton Library and the community of Lebanon, New Hampshire have put the world on notice: privacy isn’t shameful and we don’t have to apologize for wanting to be free. We’d all do well to take heed, and gain some courage from their collective wisdom. Instead of fearing the bad in the world, and reacting based on those fears, we should vote for the good.
Britain Moves From Democracy to Authoritarian State in Pernicious Veil of Secrecy
By Graham Vanbergen | TruePublica | September 16, 2015
One should not forget that “Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control”.
When David Cameron won the 2015 election one of the first things he said was; “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone”. This ominous statement immediately threw a dark shroud over Britain’s civil liberties laws, its openness and participation.
Few of the mainstream establishment press thought this was worthy of mention. From ZeroHedge – It’s not just those domestic extremists and crazy “conspiracy theory” kooks who took serious issue with UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s overtly fascist language when it comes to freedom of expression in Great Britain.” The Independent was more sanguine – “This is the creepiest thing David Cameron has ever said.”
New powers being brought in by the Conservatives should be of great concern to everyone. They are expected to be the introduction of banning orders for organisations who use hate speech in public places, but whose activities fall short of proscription and include;
- New Extremism Disruption Orders to restrict people who seek to radicalise young people;
- Powers to close premises where extremists seek to influence others;
- Strengthening the powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities who misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism;
- Further immigration restrictions on extremists;
- A strengthened role for Ofcom to take action against channels which broadcast extremist content.
Simply take out the word ‘extremist’ from those five points and you have the existence of something completely different. Of course you could be forgiven for thinking that the government would not abuse such laws. But they already allow for such abuses to take place on current terror laws, for instance:
- The BBC is using laws designed to catch terrorists and organised crime networks to track down people who dodge the £145.50 licence fee.
- The Metropolitan Police Service has also come under fire for using the same powers to access the phone logs of journalists on two newspapers to trace their protected sources.
- In addition, Big Brother Watch discovered 372 councils had been authorised (by gov’t) to use the terror laws 9,607 times -the equivalent of around eleven spying missions a day to hunt down non-payment of council tax.
- Seven public authorities, including the BBC, refused under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose why or how often they had used the powers. The BBC now refuses 48% of such requests.
What is most striking about these events are that publicly funded bodies such as the BBC, the Police and local authorities are refusing to answer perfectly reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests. They are exercising powers they shouldn’t have but were given by a government that the electorate were not consulted on and do not approve of in the first place.
There is proof that local authorities have even used terror laws to surveillance dog fouling, underage sunbed users and people breaking smoking bans.
Now that the Conservative government in Britain has it’s feet under the desk it is preparing to enact new legislation that, under the guise of the “war on terror,” that will vastly expand police-state powers and essentially criminalise speech and other political activity.
Presented officially as an anti-terrorism bill, the proposed measures will be targeted at any popular opposition to the government’s policies of aggressive militarism abroad and austerity measures in Britain, or for that matter anything the government deems worthy of oppressing.
The new bill will include a series of measures targeting groups and individuals deemed by the government to be “extremist.” This term is defined so vaguely as to encompass a wide array of political activity.
The new bill will create extremist “disruption orders” for individuals and “banning orders” for groups. The targets for these new police powers will be those who have conducted “harmful” behaviour.
The “harmful” behaviour covers activities that pose “a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, even alarm or just distress or creating a ‘threat to the functioning of democracy’.”
This will be used to criminalise campaigns critical of government policy and protests, which are frequently dispersed by the police on precisely the grounds that they disrupt public order. The language also indicates that the government would have the authority to target those merely planning such activity prior to it taking place – and they would do that through mass surveillance.
UK intelligence agency GCHQ has already been caught acting unlawfully by spying on two international human rights organisations. In addition, last year it was revealed that GCHQ were illegally eavesdropping on sacrosanct lawyer-client conversations in order to both disrupt and make gains on negotiations. GCHQ failed to follow its own secret procedures. “If spying on human rights NGOs isn’t off-limits for GCHQ, then what is?” said Privacy International.
From here we can see we now have a vast illegal state surveillance system that Mussolini would have had wet dreams about. The government is slowly closing down Britain’s very open society and they intend on doing so using one of Britain’s finest philosophers and a well tried theory.
The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow a single watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. Although it is physically impossible for the single watchman to observe all cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that all inmates must act as though they are watched at all times, effectively controlling their own behaviour constantly.
The internet has become the architecture of the state managed panopticon.
Speaking to the Guardian weeks after his appointment as the UN special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci described British surveillance oversight as being “a joke”, and said the situation is worse than anything George Orwell could have foreseen.
Terror laws we have are already being abused. One is reminded of 82 year old Mr Wolfgang‘s pass being seized and he then detained under the Terrorism Act for interrupting Tony Blair’s speech at the Labour party conference in 2005.
Some of the most egregious cases of misuse include: a council in Dorset putting three children and their parents under surveillance to check they were in the catchment area for the school they had applied to.
Like the prisoners of Jeremy Bentham’s building – there is nowhere to hide in the panopticon.
A report by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, had warned in 2009 that increasing use of surveillance by the government and private companies was a serious threat to freedoms and constitutional rights, stating, “The expansion in the use of surveillance represents one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the Second World War. The government’s of 2010 and 2015 have taken no notice at all.
‘Tempora‘ was one such government mass surveillance and spying programme among many. It is alleged that GCHQ produces larger amounts of metadata than America’s NSA. By May 2012 300 GCHQ analysts and 250 NSA analysts had been assigned to sort data.
The amount and type of data collected and stored is mind-boggling. Every email, phone call, location data, relationships, family and friends, affairs, work, income, expenditure, social habits, it simply has no end. You would not write down the passwords to your email account, bank or Amazon account, social media platforms and give a stranger the list. But that is exactly what GCHQ and other organisations have got.
‘Optic Nerve‘, another UK state surveillance mission, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing. They have stored naked pictures of you, your little daughter and pictures you have sent to family and friends in a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy. This was a biometric exercise of epic scale – collating nearly 2 million citizen images in just a few months.
On May 13th 2013, Edward Snowden made a dash via Hong Kong to Moscow. That June the spying and surveillance revelations came forth. And what came forth was the stunning realisation that our government has been lying to us about the sheer scale of state surveillance conducted on a truly industrial scale.
Not happy with all this illegal state activity over its citizens, new orders that the government are now seeking contain bans on individuals broadcasting their views on television, and anyone subject to an order will be compelled to submit any written publication, including social media posts, to the police before it is printed. In addition, the orders will make it illegal for individuals to attend or address public gatherings or protests.
Banning orders will allow the government to outlaw any organisations it feels is not in their interests. If such a move is taken, anyone found to be a member of such an organisation will be guilty of a criminal offence. Authorities will also be able to shut down premises used by groups.
Human rights group Privacy International branded the new proposal as an “assault on the rights of ordinary British citizens.”
As the Guardian’s home affairs editor wrote in an analysis of the proposal, “the official definition of non-violent extremism is already wide-ranging” and, as Big Brother Watch has pointed out, the national extremism database already includes the names of people who have done little more than organise meetings on environmental issues.”
Last year the government even attempted to hold an entire terrorism trial in secret before abandoning it at the last minute.
Together with a sweeping attack on democratic rights and legal norms, the Conservatives’ anti-terror bills will further advance the government’s right-wing agenda. Cameron’s proposals make clear that the Conservatives are determined to vastly expand the repressive powers of the state.
In little more than five years the state has gone from an open society of democratic principle to one that resembles an authoritarian state. Soon, it will be impossible to have a dinner party with friends without the state knowing about it and wanting to know the purpose of your gathering. Quite the opposite of his ‘big society’.
The British government and its intelligence services are acting under a pernicious veil of secrecy to the detriment of all citizens.
Kremlin Slams Kiev for Including Journalists in Sanction List
Sputnik – 17.09.2015
Moscow condemns the inclusion of journalists in Kiev’s new sanctions list and believes the move to be unacceptable and violating freedom of speech, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
“The fact that there are many individuals from the media in that list is, of course, absolutely unacceptable and completely against any principles in the freedom of speech, and in this case we strongly condemn this decision, especially in regard to including individuals in the media,” Peskov told journalists.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree sanctioning 90 entities and barring almost 400 people, including several high-ranking individuals and journalists, from entering Ukraine for one year. The Ukrainian president said the sanctions would contribute to his country’s defense amid the conflict in the southeast.
More than 40 journalists and bloggers from countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Latvia and Russia, were targeted by the restrictions.
Later that day, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) slammed the decree, saying it blocked vital news and information about the crisis in the country.
Amid violence in Ukraine’s southeast, the freedom of media, particularly Russian media, has been repeatedly violated in the country. According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a number of international journalists working in Ukraine have been kidnapped, tortured and killed since the start of the conflict.
This is not the first restriction of Russian media in Ukraine. In February, Kiev stripped 115 Russian news outlets of accreditation in governmental institutions.
Are Neocons an Existential Threat?
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 15, 2015
The neoconservatives arguably have damaged American national interests more than any group in modern history. They have done more harm than the marginal Communists pursued by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, more than the Yippies of the 1960s, more than Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglars in the 1970s or the Iran-Contra conspirators in the 1980s.
The neocons have plunged the U.S. government into extraordinarily ill-considered wars wasting trillions of dollars, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and destabilizing large swaths of the planet including the Middle East, much of Africa and now Europe. Those costs include a swelling hatred against America and a deformed U.S. foreign policy elite that is no longer capable of formulating coherent strategies.
Yet, the neocons have remained immune from the consequences of their catastrophes. They still dominate Washington’s major think tanks as well as the op-ed pages of virtually all the leading newspapers, including The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. They hold down key positions in the State Department, and their “liberal interventionist” pals have the ear of President Barack Obama.
Clearly, the neocons are skilled operatives, knowing how to arrange a steady stream of funding for themselves, from military contractors donating to think tanks, from U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, and from ideological billionaires set on aligning U.S. foreign policy with hard-line Israeli desires.
The neocons are adept at writing op-ed articles that twist any set of facts into support for their ideological cause; they supply just the right quote that fits into the news cycle’s latest narrative; and they host policy conferences that attract powerful politicians and fawning media coverage.
But are the neocons a force that can coexist with the American Republic? Have they become an existential threat not only to the constitutional structure crafted in 1787 but to continued life on the planet? Are they locked on a course of action that could lead to a nuclear holocaust?
Clearly, the neocons’ commitment to Israeli interests violates a key principle established by the nation’s early presidents who all warned against “foreign entangling alliances” as a fundamental threat to a citizens’ republic that would transform America into a warrior state that would inevitably sap the nation’s liberties.
That loss of liberty has surely happened. Not only is there now bipartisan support for a surveillance state that can spy on the personal lives of American citizens, but the U.S. government has wedded itself to the concept of “strategic communications,” a catch-phrase that merges psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into a seamless approach toward managing public perceptions at home and abroad.
When information is systematically pushed through a filter designed to ensure consent, the core democratic concept of an informed electorate has been turned on its head: The people no longer oversee the government; the government manipulates the people.
Neocon Tactics
All this has been part of the neocon approach dating back to the 1980s when key operatives, such as Robert Kagan and Elliott Abrams, were part of inter-agency task forces designed to whip the American people into line behind the government’s aggressive war policies. Guided by seasoned CIA propagandists, such as Walter Raymond Jr., the neocons learned their lessons well.
But the neocons are no longer just threatening the existence of the Republic; they are now endangering the continuation of life itself. They have decided to launch a new Cold War against Russia that will push the world toward the brink of thermo-nuclear war.
Of course, the neocons will frame their doomsday strategy as all Vladimir Putin’s fault. They will insist that they are just standing up to “Russian aggression” and that anyone who doesn’t join them is a “stooge of Moscow” or “weak.” They will dictate the shape of the debate just as they have in countless other situations, such as guiding Americans to war in Iraq over non-existent WMD stockpiles.
The neocon pundits will write seemingly authoritative op-eds about devious Kremlin strategies which will glue black hats on the Russians and white hats on whomever is on the other side, whether the neo-Nazis in Ukraine or the Islamic State/Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria. Americans will be whipped up into a frenzy that will demand a direct clash with the “Russ-kies” or “regime change” in Moscow.
There will be little or no concern about the risks. With the neocons, there never is. The assumption is that if “Amur-ika” is tough, the other side will back down. Then, with U.S.-led economic sanctions from the outside and U.S.-funded NGOs stirring up trouble from the inside, “regime change” becomes the cure-all.
Everyone who’s important in Official Washington – everyone on the talk shows and op-ed pages – knows that these disruptive situations always play out just the way they’re diagramed inside the top think tanks. A hand-picked “democratic reformer” who’s traveled the think-tank circuit and gotten the seal of approval – the likes of Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi – will easily be installed and then the target country will do whatever the neocons dictate. After all, that approach worked so well in Iraq. The neocons always know best.
Raising the Stakes
Yet, with Russia, the stakes are even higher than with Iraq. Yes, it’s easy to find fault with Vladimir Putin. I myself have a personal rule that men over 40 should keep their shirts on when out in public (unless maybe they’re actors in a Bond film or going for a swim at the beach).
But Putin at least is a rational player in global affairs. Indeed, he has tried to cooperate with President Obama on a variety of key issues, including convincing Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and getting Iran to make concessions in the nuclear deal – two contributions to world peace that infuriated the neocons who favored bomb-bomb-bombing both Syria and Iran.
At a dinner party in Europe this summer, I was asked by a well-informed British woman what should be done with Putin. My answer was that Putin doesn’t frighten me; it’s the guy who comes after Putin who frightens me – because despite the neocons’ confidence that their “regime change” plans for Moscow will install a malleable moderate, the more likely result would be a much harder-line Russian nationalist than Putin.
The idea of the nuclear codes being handed to someone determined to defend the honor of Mother Russia is what scares me. Then, the clumsily aggressive neocons in Washington would have their reckless counterpart in Moscow, with neither side having the wisdom of a John F. Kennedy or a Nikita Khrushchev as displayed during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Would American neocons or a Russian super-nationalist have the wisdom and courage to back down, to compromise, to make the concessions necessary to avoid plunging over the edge? Or would they assume that the other guy would blink first and that they would “win” the showdown?
I recall what William R. Polk, one of Kennedy’s mid-level aides during the Cuban Missile Crisis, wrote recently about what happens to the human mind under such stress.
“Since human beings make the decisions, we must be aware of decision makers’ vulnerabilities,” Polk wrote. “During the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was one of about 25 civilians fully engaged in the events. I was not at the center but in the second or third ‘echelon.’ So I did not feel the full strain, but by the Thursday of the Crisis, I was thoroughly exhausted. My judgment must have been impaired even though I was not aware of it.
“I do remember, however, a terrible episode – fortunately lasting only a few minutes – at which I thought to myself, ‘let’s just get it over with.’ When later I met with my Soviet counterparts, I got the impression, although they denied it, that my feelings were not unique. How the strain impacted on the inner group I can only guess.”
If someone as stable and serious as Bill Polk had such thoughts – “let’s just get it over with” – what might happen when American neocons or hyped-up Russian nationalists are inserted into the decision process? That is an existential question that I don’t want to even contemplate.
Endless Putin-Bashing
And, if you doubt that the neocons will engage in over-the-top Cold War-style Putin bashing, you should read the op-ed by The Washington Post’s neocon deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl on Monday, entitled “Putin shifts fronts: With a move into Syria, he continues his in-your-face maneuvers.”
Diehl delves into Putin’s psyche – a process that is so much easier than doing real reporting – and concludes that Putin’s decision to join the fight in Syria against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda is just another attempt to stick his finger in the eye of the righteous but clueless United States.
Diehl, of course, starts off with the neocon-approved narrative of the Ukraine crisis, ignoring the key role of neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s wife) in midwifing the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed an intensely anti-Russian regime on Russia’s border. Nuland even handpicked the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a phone call several weeks before the coup that “Yats is the guy.”
The coup-makers then dispatched neo-Nazi militias (and Islamist militants) to wage a bloody “anti-terrorism operation” against ethnic Russian Ukrainians who resisted the “regime change.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]
But all that complexity is neatly boiled down by American neocons and the mainstream U.S. media as “Russian aggression.” Regarding the Syrian civil war, some neocons have even joined with senior Israeli officials in claiming that a victory by Al Qaeda is preferable to the continuation of Assad’s secular regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Syria’s Nightmarish Narrative.”]
Yet, however the story goes, the biggest bad guy is Putin, always with sinister motives and evil intent. So, in explaining the situation in Ukraine and Syria, Diehl writes:
“Throughout the summer, Russia’s forces in eastern Ukraine kept up a daily drumbeat of attacks on the Ukrainian army, inflicting significant casualties while avoiding a response by Western governments. On Sept. 1, following a new cease-fire, the guns suddenly fell silent. Optimists speculated that Vladimir Putin was backing down.
“Then came the reports from Syria: Russian warplanes were overflying the rebel-held province of Idlib. Barracks were under construction at a new base. Ships were unloading new armored vehicles. Putin, it turns out, wasn’t retreating, but shifting fronts — and executing another of the in-your-face maneuvers that have repeatedly caught the Obama administration flat-footed.”
The rest of the op-ed is similarly didactic and one-sided: Putin is the villain and Obama is the rube. In Diehl’s world, only he and other neocons have what it takes to take on Putin and put Russia down.
Any alternative explanation for Russia’s action in Syria is brushed aside, such as Putin deciding that a victory by either Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front – as favored by Israel – or the even more bloodthirsty Islamic State is unacceptable and thus Assad’s regime must be stabilized to avert a major geopolitical catastrophe.
Typically, the neocons breeze past the frightening logic of what the collapse of Assad’s military would mean for the Middle East, Europe and the world. After all, once Israeli leaders decided to throw in their lot with Al Qaeda in Syria, the die was cast as far as the neocons were concerned.
But the notion that the neocons can micromanage the outcome in Syria, with “moderate” Al Qaeda taking Damascus rather than the more “radical” Islamic State, reflects the arrogant know-nothing-ism of these U.S. opinion leaders. More likely, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front would coordinate with their former allies in the Islamic State and share in the Sunni revenge against Syria’s Christian, Alawite, Shiite and other minorities.
So, while the Islamic State would busy itself chopping off heads of “heretics,” Al Qaeda could use its new headquarters in Damascus to plot the next round of terror attacks against the West. And, as destabilizing as the current refugee flow into Europe has been, it would multiply astronomically as the survivors of the Islamic State/Al Qaeda bloodletting flee Syria.
With Europe in chaos and the neocons still insisting that the real enemy is Russia, the possible consequences would be frightening to contemplate. Yet, this is the course that the neocons have set for the world – and nearly all the Republican candidates for president have signed on for the journey along with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
In 2014, arch-neocon Robert Kagan, whom Secretary of State Clinton selected as one of her advisers while also promoting his wife, Victoria Nuland, told The New York Times that he could embrace a Clinton presidency: “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.” [For more, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Hillary Clinton a Neocon-Lite?” and “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’“]
So far, virtually no one in the 2016 presidential race or in the mainstream U.S. news media is seriously addressing the reality of the neocons’ “regime change” chaos spreading across the Middle East and the prospect of a destabilized Europe. What limited discussion there is on the campaign trail mostly echoes Jackson Diehl’s Putin-bashing.
No one dares confront the existential question of whether the United States and the world can continue to tolerate and accommodate the neoconservatives.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Anti-war Jeremy Corbyn attacked for defending white peace poppy
RT | September 15, 2015
Opponents of newly-elected Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have attacked the Stop the War coalition chairman’s defense of the white peace poppy and lukewarm commitment to attend the annual Remembrance Day commemoration in November.
Corbyn made the remarks on Monday at the first Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting since his triumph with an overwhelming 60 percent of the vote for the leadership on Saturday.
He refused to rule out wearing a white poppy during the ceremony held each year at the Cenotaph on Whitehall. His office has since insisted he will wear a traditional red poppy.
According to Politics Home, sources said Labour MPs present at the meeting were “shocked” by his comments.
“He was asked about the white poppy and offered a defense of it,” one MP said.
“He then said he attended memorial events in his own constituency and he wasn’t sure what would happen this year,” they added.
‘Hope Corbyn knows where to draw line’
Another MP claimed the public would be “appalled” if Corbyn stood at the Cenotaph wearing a white poppy.
“They will not understand it – they will think he is on a different planet. It is deeply offensive to our armed forces, who have given their lives for the democracy and freedoms he enjoys,” Labour MP Simon Danczuk said.
“I hope Jeremy will know where to draw the line on pushing a particular political agenda. The Cenotaph is no place to fight political battles.”
‘White poppies worn to oppose war’
Asked whether he would wear a red poppy, Corbyn said: “I don’t know what is going to happen this year.
“People wear white poppies because of their deep opposition to war.”
The Labour Party leader said he respects Remembrance Day regardless of what poppy he wears.
A spokeswoman later confirmed Corbyn, who attended the Battle of Britain commemorations on Tuesday, would wear a red poppy on Remembrance Sunday.
Just like the traditional red poppy, the white one is worn to remember those who died while emphasizing a lasting commitment to peace.
According to Stop the War, wearing a white poppy is a “respectful way to put peace at the heart of remembering those who died in war.”
However, opponents of the white poppy argue the red poppy already encompasses the sentiments claimed for the white poppy, such as “remembering all the victims of war.”
When the white poppy was first established in the 1930s, a number of women lost their jobs for wearing them, as it was believed the statement undermined those who had died in service.
In 2006, Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow sparked controversy after refusing to wear a red poppy on air, saying demands for him to wear the traditional flower was “poppy fascism.”
Dead left unattended after Egyptian forces attack tourists
Mada Masr | September 14, 2015
The bodies of the Egyptian victims are still lying in the desert following the killing of 12 Mexicans and Egyptians by security forces on Sunday, according to a lawyer whose relative was killed in the attack.
Amr Imam, a lawyer at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, who was on his way to the scene of the accident by the time of publication, told Mada Masr that neither the prosecution nor the forensics want to investigate, citing other family members who have been at the Western Desert since yesterday.
“That means that the bodies have already deteriorated,” he said, “although the accident happened only 500 meters away from the road.”
Ten other passengers in a convoy of four cars were injured and transferred to the hospital, according to a statement by the Ministry of Interior, which was released early Monday morning.
The ministry claimed the convoy was in a restricted area, and that a joint police and military force was on a mission to tackle armed groups in the area.
Earlier on Sunday, the Islamic State released a statement on social media saying they had exchanged fire with the Egyptian military in the Western Desert.
Imam said that tour guide Awad Fathi and the other victims were killed by an Apache, according to eyewitnesses, including the driver, who is the only Egyptian who survived the accident.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo quoted an anonymous employee of the tour group Qasr El Bawity, who said that the group was fired on as they were eating dinner and that “some tried to run away, but the military followed them and fired at those who tried to escape.”
“[The army] didn’t even call them an ambulance; it was people from the oasis who helped them,” the source was quoted as saying.
Mexican President Peña Nieto condemned the accident on Twitter, saying “Mexico condemns these events against our citizens and has demanded that the Egyptian government launch an exhaustive investigation into what happened.”
In a phone call on Monday, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry expressed condolences to his Mexican counterpart, explaining that the tourists were in an allegedly restricted area and that their presence coincided with an ongoing operation against terrorists.
Shoukry further explained that the tourists were in cars that are similar to those of suspects in the operation, according to a statement issued on the ministry’s website.
He assured the Mexican foreign minister that the Interior Ministry will investigate the matter, and that the Egyptian government will provide all necessary medical assisstance for the injured, as well as facilitate the transfer of the bodies back to their home country.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zeid declined any further comment on the incident, deferring to the Interior Ministry statement.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism issued a statement regretting the accident, saying investigations are underway.
The statement said that the results of the investigations will be announced as soon as possible.
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zeid declined any further comment, referring the press instead to the statement made by the Foreign Ministry on Monday.
The civilian deaths are the latest in a country embroiled in a violent conflict with Islamist insurgents, focused in the area of North Sinai. On the same day as the accident, the Armed Forces announced the deaths of 53 insurgents in North Sinai, claiming a total of 349 insurgent deaths since September 7. No civilian deaths have been reported by the military.
However, the identity of those killed is often subject to conflicting reports, such as the worker from a military owned company killed by the army in Arish, North Sinai, in June. While the military claimed he was an insurgent fighting for Islamic State affiliated Sinai Province, an eyewitness told Mada Masr that the man had no such connection.
The Egyptian government ratified a law on August 16 making it illegal to contradict official reports of terrorist attacks. The law came in the aftermath of an attack on the military in North Sinai where the government claimed 17 people were killed. Foreign news outlets estimated the deaths at 60-70.
Cameron Calls UK Labour Party With New Leader ‘Threat to National Security’
Sputnik – 13.09.2015
LONDON — The Labour party, which elected Jeremy Corbyn its new leader on Saturday, has become a threat to the United Kingdom’s national and economic security, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday.
“The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security,” Cameron wrote in his Twitter account.
Corbyn has been widely referred to as one of the most “rebellious” members of UK parliament, as he had opposed Britain’s participation in the Iraq war, and spoke against the renewal of the British Trident nuclear deterrent infrastructure.
Also on Saturday, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon also said that Corbyn’s triumph will negatively affect the lives of ordinary Britons.
The Conservative party fears that Corbyn would breach a consensus between the two major British parties on major issues, such as nuclear weapons, taxation and others.
Corbyn won the UK Labour Party’s leadership race on Saturday obtaining some 59.5 percent of votes in the first round.
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Only a Beginning… Charles Malik’s vision of an emergent Pax Judaica
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
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