Max Blumenthal on Anti Semitism, Neo Fascists and Gilad Atzmon (Amusing As Well As Tragic)
The campaign against me and my work fell apart a while ago. I assume that my Jewish detractors came to realise that I enjoy their attention and use it to affirm my criticism of their tribal and exclusivist identity politics.
But yesterday I had a nostalgic moment reading Max Blumenthal dissing me publicly. When Blumenthal was asked about Israeli critics he ended up talking about the vile ‘anti Semites’, ‘neo Fascists’ and the ‘racists’ in the movements. Interestingly enough, he failed to remember any name but one – Gilad Atzmon.
Atzmon is a “pure anti Semite who believes that all of the problems of Israel flow not from colonialism but from Judaism.” said Blumenthal.
Apparently, not buying into the clumsy ‘colonial paradigm’ makes me into a ‘neo Fascist’, ‘anti Semite’ and a ‘racist’.
It is obviously clear that Blumenthal didn’t read a single word by me. I naively believe that if someone insists to criticise my work, he or she better spend some time to read me first. It is an established fact that Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah also called for my disavowal while admitting to Prof. Norton Mezvinsky that he has never read a single word by me. Tragically enough, the fear of intellectual exchange and open discourse is endemic within the Jewish progressive ghetto but also within some quarters of the solidarity movement.
However, those who are even mildly familiar with my thoughts know that Blumenthal reacts out of hysteria rather than knowledge. My scholarship is not concerned with Judaism (the religion) nor am I referring to Jews (the people). I am critical of Jewish Identity politics and Jewish ideology. I elaborate on Jewish-ness and Jewish culture as opposed to Judaism. Race, genetics or biology have never been part of my study. If anything, I am critical largely of Jewish secular politics and culture rather than the Jewish religion.
I am indeed critical of the ‘colonial paradigm’ which Blumenthal adheres to. Colonialism is defined traditionally as a material exchange between a settler state and a mother state. Israel is clearly a settler state, however, it is far from being clear what is its ‘mother state’. Is it the USA, Britain or actually the Jewish people? In fact I argue adamantly that the colonial paradigm is there to divert the attention from the embarrassing fact that the Jewish State being racially driven, nationalist and expansionist is actually closer in its political nature to Nazi Germany rather than to South Africa. I guess that Max Blumenthal, who operates within Jews-only political cells doesn’t like this equation. Yet, such an argument doesn’t make me into a neo Fascist or an anti-Semite. If anything, it secures my status as an out-spoken observant mind.
Unlike Blumenthal and his comrades, I also believe that if Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, we are more than entitled to verify what its Jewishness stands for. Does this make me into a racist? I guess that the huge lists of scholars and humanists who decided to endorse my work didn’t think so.
But I also believe that since Max Blumenthal identifies politically as a secular Jew who operates within Jews-only political cells (and even signs on ‘Jewish letters’, as he himself admits), is actually a legitimate case study of Jewish tribal political operation.
Sooner or later Blumenthal and his comrades will have to make an effort and tell us what their ‘Jewishness’ stands for. Is it a love of chicken soup they share, or is it something more profound?
Being an expert on the matter and an avid reader of Jewish history, I know pretty well why Blumenthal is tormented by my work. Jewish hegemony within radical movements always backfired. My work indeed exposes an intrinsic dishonest element within the Jewish Left in general and Jewish anti Zionism in particular. I guess that the vastly growing popularity of the descriptive abbreviation AZZ (Anti Zionist Zionists), only suggests that Blumenthal & Co have a good reason to panic. In The Wandering Who I give this very panic a name – Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre – TSD).
I would like to take this opportunity and advise Blumenthal that killing the messenger is not going to rescue his cause: it would only attribute him the characteristics of just another Judas and he has himself to blame for it.
South America: UNASUR To Build Fibre-Optic ‘Mega Ring’
By Chelsea Gray | The Argentina Independent | August 21, 2013
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has approved plans for an optic fibre mega-ring which will break its members’ “dependence on the US, and provide a safer and cheaper means of communication.”
The fibre optic ring will become part of a ten-year plan to physically integrate all 12 UNASUR member states. The line, which will reach up to 10,000 kilometres long and will be managed by state enterprises from each country it crosses, is expected to interconnect South America through higher coverage and cheaper internet connections.
Industrial Minister of Uruguay, Roberto Kreimerman, explained that “it is about having a connection with great capacity that allows us to unite our countries together with the developed world.”
He continued to say, “We are considering that, at most, in a couple of years we will have one of these rings finalised.” He also added that ”I think the economy, security, and integration are the three important things we need in countries where Internet use is advancing exponentially.”
At the moment, up to 80% of Latin America’s communications go through the US. However, plans for an independent communication line comes shortly after the US was discovered to have been spying on Latin American data. The National Security Agency (NSA) were revealed to have been monitoring emails and intercepting telephone logs, spying on energy, military, politics, and terror activity across the continent.
UNASUR is made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Declassified FISA Court Opinion Shows NSA Lied Repeatedly To The Court As Well
By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | August 21, 2013
The EFF finally gets to step away from one of its many legal battles with the government with its hands held aloft in victory and clutching a long-hidden FISA court opinion.
For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Issued in October 2011, the secret court’s opinion found that surveillance conducted by the NSA under the FISA Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated “the spirit of” federal law.
Beyond the many instances of NSA malfeasance, the most damning aspect of the opinion is its lack of effect on future behavior. What does make it past the redaction details repeated wrongdoing that even the FISA Court, long perceived to be the NSA’s rubber stamp, found egregious.
A footnote on page 16 points out that the agency had “substantially misrepresented” the extent of its “major collection program” (including the harvesting of “internet transactions”) for the third time in less than three years. The same set of footnotes attacks the so-called “big business records” collection, accusing the agency of using a “flawed depiction” of how it used the data to basically fleece the FISA court since the program’s inception in 2006.
Then there’s this pair of concluding sentences, which severely undercut anyone’s arguments that the FISA Court is a reliable form of oversight.
Contrary to the government’s repeated assurances, NSA has been repeatedly running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the standard for querying. The Court concluded that this requirement had been “so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall… regime has never functioned effectively.”
Other pages detail more concerns, including misrepresentation of the methods used in 702 collections, which the opinion claims “fundamentally alters the Court’s understanding of the scope of the collection.”
As the Washington Post points out, this opinion, which details many instances in which the NSA flat out lied to the court, lends some credence to statements made by presiding judge Reggie Walton, who claimed the court was limited to making decisions based on information the NSA provided. This opinion appears to detail the NSA setting up its own complicit court system, intentionally misleading it in order to continue its surveillance programs unabated.
The only problem with accepting Walton’s narrative completely is the fact that, despite this opinion, the court granted every request that year (2011) and then proceeded to do the same the following year. The court was lied to but still kept giving the agency the thumbs-up on each new court order.
The leaks keep coming and keep pointing to the same conclusion: the NSA has acted as a law unto itself. And all the while it continues to point at its “overseers,” which include Congress (which has been lied to directly by the agency when not having information withheld from it by the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee) and the FISA Court (which has been lied to directly and is hampered by its reliance on the NSA’s data and narratives — which pretty much just means more lying).
And despite all this evidence that the NSA’s “oversight” is nearly completely compromised, the defenders, including those within the agency, continue to insist the system is working the way it should. In their eyes, maybe it is.
Related articles
Key Loophole Allows NSA To Avoid Telling Congress About Thousands Of Abuses
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | August 19, 2013
As we’ve noted, one of the key claims by NSA surveillance defenders was that the program had strong oversight from Congress. However, with the revelations last week about thousands of abuses, it’s become quite clear that this isn’t true. Late on Friday, Rep. Jim Himes, who is on the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that he was unaware of those violations, was told that there were “no abuses” and that these kinds of abuses are unacceptable:
Remember, this isn’t just a Congressional Rep, but a member of the Intelligence Committee, who is in charge of overseeing the NSA surveillance program. Hell, he’s even on the oversight subcommittee, and no one told him about any abuses, despite thousands happening per year. That’s astounding, and highlights how the claims of Congressional oversight are clearly bogus. Furthermore, it makes a mockery of the statement that House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers put out on Friday, claiming that “The Committee has been apprised of previous incidents.” Himes says that’s completely untrue.
How is this happening? Marc Ambinder explains the “loophole” that the NSA has used to avoid telling Congress about these abuses. It’s a bit convoluted, but basically, the NSA believes that Congressional oversight only covers spying done under FISA — the law that covers any spying done on Americans, for which a court order is needed. FISA doesn’t cover spying on non-US persons (i.e., foreigners who are outside the country at the time of surveillance). And that’s where some of the abuses came in, and the NSA believes that since those aren’t “FISA” related, and Congress is only overseeing “FISA,” they don’t have to report those mistakes.
Since the focus of oversight efforts has been on FISA compliance, NSA gives Congress detailed narratives of violations of the FISA-authorized data sets, like when metadata about American phone records was stored too long, when a wrong set of records was searched by an analyst or when names or “selectors” not previously cleared by FISA were used to acquire information from the databases. In these cases, the NSA’s compliance staff sends incident reports to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for each “significant” FISA violation, and those reports include “significant details,” the official said.
But privacy violations of this sort comprise just one third of those analyzed by the inspector general. Of the 2,776 violations reported by the NSA from May 2011 to May 2012, more than two-thirds were counted as E.O. 12333 incidents. And the agency doesn’t provide Congress detailed reports on E.O. 12333 violations.
Now, you can argue these are very different circumstances, but Ambinder points out that’s not really true in many cases:
In some ways, it’s a distinction without a difference: it does not matter to U.S. citizens whether their phone call was accidentally intercepted by an analyst focusing on U.S.-based activities or those involving a foreign country. But the difference is relevant as it keeps Congress uninformed and unable to perform its oversight duties because the NSA doesn’t provide the intelligence committees with a detailed narrative about the latter type of transgressions.
For example, if someone’s e-mails were inadvertently obtained by the NSA’s International Transit Switch Collection programs, it would count as 12333 error and not a FISA error, even though the data was taken from U.S. communication gateways, and NSA would not notify Congress.
So, basically, any “error” that involves spying on Americans doesn’t “count” as an abuse, as far as the NSA tells Congress (who keep claiming they’re in charge of oversight), because they “obtained” it outside the US, and the “error” is considered outside of FISA. That’s a pretty massive loophole through which the NSA can hide its abuse of programs from Congress.
Related articles
- EFF: Leaks Prove NSA Has No Meaningful Oversight – (dslreports.com)
- Uncontrolled by FISA court, NSA commits ‘thousands of privacy violations per year’ (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Egyptian army kills journalist, wounds another
Middle East Monitor | August 20, 2013
Security sources said that Egyptian security forces killed a senior editor in state Al-Ahram newspaper Tamer abdul-Ra’ouf at a military checkpoint near the city of Damanhour on Monday night.
The sources said that the security forces shot fire at Abdul-Ra’ouf and Hamid al-Barbari, the correspondent of Al-Jomhoriyya newspaper; state newspaper, too. Abdul-Ra’of immediately died and Al-Barbari sustained serious injuries.
In a statement on its Facebook page, the Egyptian army said that the journalists’ car casted doubts as the journalists were driving very fast during the night curfew. The statement said that the journalists did not respond to the army’s calls or warning shots to stop.
“There was no exaggerated use of fire shooting or intended killing,” the statement, which called for people to commit to the curfew, said.
Egyptian Interim government has imposed curfew in wake of bloody dispersal of two major sit-ins for pro-Morsi supporters in Cairo. More than one thousand Egyptians killed and couples of thousands injured.
Arab Organisation for Human Right in the UK said that “arbitrary” killings in Egypt against protesters calling for the end of the military coup in Egypt.
Egyptian journalist slapped with 4-day detention after surviving army shooting
Egyptian Journalist who was injured after army forces opened fired on him and killed his colleague is accused of possessing unlicensed weapons
Ahram Online | August 21, 2013
Damanhour prosecution ordered late Tuesday the detention of Al-Gomhoreya journalist Hamed El-Barbary, who had survived an army shooting a day earlier, for four days pending investigation after being charged with possessing weapons.
Tamer Abdel-Raouf, Bureau chief of Al-Ahram newspaper in Beheira, was shot dead on Monday evening while driving his car a few hours after the beginning of the state-imposed curfew at 7pm. El-Barbary, who was in the same car, got injured.
After he was hospitalised, El-Barbary testified that army forces at a checkpoint located south of Damanhour, northern Beheira governorate, fired at the car after ordering the driver, Abdel-Raouf, not to pass through. He said Abdel-Raouf complied but forces shot him anyway.
Earlier, Egyptian Armed Forces Spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali said the forces did not intend to kill them.
In his statement, Ali said that the passengers “breached the curfew, drove quickly towards the security checkpoint and did not comply with calls to stop or warning shots fired in the air.”
He added that the car did not stop for the forces to know the identity of its passengers.
On 14 August, Egypt’s interim Cabinet re-introduced a state of emergency, which includes a daily curfew starting at 7pm until 6am in 14 governorates. This came amid recurrent clashes across the nation between security forces and supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi.
Journalists and media personnel are officially exempt from the curfew.
Cellphone tracking cases highlight privacy concerns in digital age
Rt | August 20, 2013
In recent weeks, two cert petitions were filed seeking review of whether the Fourth Amendment covers police searches of cellphone records upon arrest.
From mobile phone and GPS tracking to license plate reading and domestic surveillance drones — not to mention recent revelations of widespread abuse of surveillance capabilities by the National Security Agency — these cases and many others highlight major questions that remain unanswered regarding how privacy rights of Americans can co-exist with the use of rapidly evolving technologies.
State and federal law enforcement agencies have wasted no time seizing on gaps and omissions in established legal precedent to justify vast, routine surveillance of the American public which tests Fourth Amendment rights.
On July 30, a petition was filed in Riley v. California challenging a previous ruling in a California appellate court that affirmed the petitioner’s convictions, which stemmed in part from a questionable search of his smartphone in 2009 following a traffic stop for expired license plates. And late last week, the US Department of Justice filed a petition in United States v. Wurie asking for review of a First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that police needed a warrant to access a suspect’s phone records. Regarding Wurie, the government contends a cell phone is no different from any other item on a suspect at the time of arrest. The search pertaining to Wurie occurred in 2007.
On the surface, the two cases have much in common. But in Riley, the phone in question is a smartphone – a Samsung Instinct M800. In Wurie, the cellphone was a Verizon LG flip-phone incapable of maintaining the breadth of information – including internet searches, email, photos and other media – that a smartphone can store.
As of May, Pew Research Center found that 91 percent of Americans own cellphones, and 61 percent of those cellphones are smartphones.
GPS technology has received more scrutiny from courts than cellphones have in recent years. Last week, the Justice Department appeared before a federal court defending its right to shield legal memos that provide guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators for how to use GPS devices and other surveillance technologies from the public. In a sense, the memos were released upon a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil LIberties Union (ACLU), though their contents were heavily redacted.
The memos (read here and here) were legal interpretations of a January 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Jones in which the court ruled the use of GPS technology to track a car’s movements constitutes a “search” within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment. Upon release of the indecipherable legal memos, the ACLU filed a lawsuit seeking the full, uncensored guidelines.
“While we agree that executive branch lawyers should be able to freely discuss legal theories, once those opinions become official government policy the public has an absolute right to know what they are,” wrote Brian Hauss, legal fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “Otherwise, the government is operating under secret law that makes accountability to the people impossible.”
The ruling in United States v. Jones left many unanswered questions regarding the use of other location-monitoring technologies pertaining to, for example, the tracking of cellphones or the use of license-plate readers – not to mention the use of surveillance drones in the US. In addition, the Jones ruling fell short of even determining whether a warrant is necessary to use GPS devices.
Building on the Jones decision, New Jersey recently became a state ahead of the curve in defining rules for law enforcement and privacy rights in the digital age. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in July that state police must have a search warrant before obtaining tracking information from cellphone providers.
“Using a cellphone to determine the location of its owner can be far more revealing than acquiring toll billing, bank, or internet subscriber records,” Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in the case’s opinion. “Details about the location of a cellphone can provide an intimate picture of one’s daily life and reveal not just where people go – which doctors, religious services and stores they visit – but also the people and groups they choose to affiliate with. That information cuts across a broad range of personal ties with family, friends, political groups, health care providers and others.”
In June, Montana became the first state to require police to obtain a warrant before tracking a suspect’s cellphone.
In March 2012, the ACLU reviewed records from over 200 local police departments, finding vast, aggressive use of cellphone tracking for emergency and nonemergency uses.
Another ACLU report, released in July of this year, queried around 600 local and state police departments (and other state and federal agencies) via public records requests to assess how these agencies use automatic license plate readers. The civil liberties organization found massive databases of innocent motorists’ location information gleaned through hundreds of millions of “plate reads” by the ubiquitous readers. Data is often stored for an indefinite period of time, revealing just how easy it is for law enforcement – as well as many private companies – to track any license plate with few legal restrictions in place to stop them.
For example, for every one million plates that were read in the state of Maryland in the first half of 2012, 2000 (0.2 percent) were hits, mostly regarding registration or emissions issues. Of those 2000 hits, less than 3 percent (47) were potentially connected to more serious crimes.
In addition, much of this network of readers throughout the nation is in place thanks to a large amount of federal funding – $50 million in the last five years.
Approval of licenses for domestic drones has begun, as RT has reported, even though solid rules for their eventual use in American skies have yet to materialize from either Congress or the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA expects as many as 30,000 drones in American airspace by 2020.
For now, many local law enforcement agencies are leading the quest for drone-use approval, though requests for commercial drones are mounting. As of February 15, 2013, there were 327 active drone certifications despite there being no regulatory framework in place. However, the FAA did get around to certifying two types of unmanned aircraft for civilian use in the US in late July.
In the meantime, federal government agencies have used drones domestically both out in the open and in secret. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has admitted to already using surveillance drones despite no established law or guidelines for their use. The US Department of Homeland Security has used surveillance-capable drones along the border for years, even allowing other federal agencies to use its fleet to the tune of 250 times in 2012 alone, The New York Times reported.
UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations
RT | August 20, 2013
UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper’s website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.
After more talks, two “security experts” from GCHQ – the British version of the National Security Agency – visited the Guardian’s London offices.
Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.
“We can call off the black helicopters,” Rusbridger said one of the officials joked.
Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed.
During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.
But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough.
“You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.
In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and “take advantage of the most permissive legal environments.”
“I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations… Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger.
“The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.”
Rusbridger pointed out that the whole incident felt like a “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.”
The news comes after Sunday’s international incident during which David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow airport under the UK Terrorism Act for the maximum time allowed before pressing charges. Greenwald was the reporter who exclusively broke the Snowden story.
The editor promised that the Guardian will “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.”
Another US security source told Reuters that Miranda’s detention was meant to send a message to those who received Snowden’s classified documents, about how serious the UK is in closing all the leaks in relation to the whistleblower’s revelations.
Greenwald, who first published secrets leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, responded by promising to release more documents. He added that the UK would be “sorry” for detaining his partner for nine hours.
Snowden, who has been granted asylum by Russia, gave Greenwald up to 20,000 documents with details about the US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ surveillance operations.
‘US is the intellectual author behind detention of Miranda’
Lawyer Eva Golinger told RT that the UK has violated all concepts of freedom of the press. “We are talking about a media outlet. Journalists and their spouses and partners being detained and interrogated. So clearly there has been a decision made that everything related to Edward Snowden must be captured no matter what, violating anyone’s right under any country’s laws.”
Golinger believes that government’s pressure on journalists could inspire some to cover the topic of government surveillance even more, instead of discouraging them to do so.
“The more principled the people reporting are, the more they will continue to pursue that work in the face of threat. Such cheap threats and intimidation give people even more reasons to continue doing what they are doing because it shows that those in power are clearly frightened of the information that is being put out,” she explained.
“At the same time it could certainly intimidate other journalists and create the environment of self-censorship, where many would be unwilling to take the risks that are involved with national security reporting, particularly when it comes to the US.”
Golinger argued that US is the “intellectual author behind the detainment of Miranda.”
“We are talking about a search and capture that is going on for Edward Snowden and it is the US that is leading that effort. It is not the UK or other European nations, they are merely abiding by the wishes of the US…What I believe is that Washington has simply put out a request to all of its allies that anyone related to Edward Snowden must be detained if they come into your territory and the UK abided by that and did their duty.”
YouTube bans Press TV’s new page
Press TV – August 20, 2013
YouTube has disabled Press TV’s new account under pressure from the Israeli-American Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that ordered the video-sharing site to end the Iranian channel’s live broadcast.
“On August 20, YouTube’s parent company Google deactivated Press TV’s new account weeks after disabling the channel’s official page,” said Press TV Newsroom Director Hamid Reza Emadi.
“YouTube broadcasts a variety of obscene images and provides a platform for terrorists to propagate their dangerous ideologies, but it cannot tolerate the broadcast of an alternative media channel from Iran,” he said, adding that YouTube is doing what the ADL is ordering it to do.
“ADL has contacted YouTube regarding concerns about Press TV,” reads an article on ADL’s official website, further noting that the station’s “broadcast on Youtube comes at the a time when the United States, the European Union and others in the international community are seeking to isolate Iran.”
Since January 2012, Press TV has come under mounting pressure from European governments and satellite companies, which have taken the alternative channel off the air across the European Union.
In a statement published on the official website of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the pro-Israeli lobby has lauded Spain’s efforts to ban Press TV, saying Madrid has pulled the plug on the Iranian channel following months of negotiations with the AJC.
Meanwhile, Press TV has created a third YouTube page.
“Viewers can now watch our videos at http://www.youtube.com/Presstvonair ,” he added, stressing that the channel will create more and more pages to counter the YouTube censorship.
ADL orders YouTube to disable Press TV account: Emadi
Press TV – August 18, 2013
Video-sharing site YouTube deactivated Press TV’s official page without explanation after the Israeli-American Anti-Defamation League (ADL) ordered it to terminate the Iranian channel’s live broadcast.
“We have not been able to upload new videos on our official YouTube page since July 25. Both YouTube and (its parent company) Google have declined to comment,” said Press TV Newsroom Director Hamid Reza Emadi.
He added that YouTube was “in fact responding to an ADL order to stop us from revealing Israeli crimes to the world.”
An article on ADL’s official website has accused Press TV of bypassing the West’s sanctions by broadcasting live via YouTube and other internet and mobile platforms.
“ADL has contacted YouTube regarding concerns about Press TV,” reads the article, further noting that the station’s “broadcast on YouTube comes at a time when the United States, the European Union and others in the international community are seeking to isolate Iran.”
Since January 2012, Press TV has come under mounting pressure from European governments and satellite companies, which have taken the alternative channel off the air across the European Union.
In a statement published on the official website of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the pro-Israeli lobby has lauded Spain’s efforts to ban Press TV, saying Madrid has pulled the plug on the Iranian channel following months of negotiations with the AJC.
“In recent years has emerged a channel that not only challenges the Zionists’ long-time media dominance, but also has it questioned the West’s silence on their (the Zionists’) crimes against humanity. That’s Press TV and they’re determined to silence it,” Emadi added.
He said Press TV had to create an alternative YouTube account to upload its videos.
“Viewers can now watch our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/PresstvNewsCast,” he said.
Focusing on the Core Harms of Surveillance
By Frank Pasquale | Balkinization | August 16, 2013
The “summer of NSA revelations” rolls along, with a blockbuster finale today. In June, Jennifer Granick and Christopher Sprigman flatly declared the NSA criminal. Now the agency’s own internal documents (leaked by Snowden) appear to confirm thousands of legal violations.
Legal scholars will not be surprised by the day’s revelations, just as few surveillance experts were all that shocked by the breadth and depth of PRISM, PINWALE, MARINA, and other programs. Ray Ku called warrantless surveillance unconstitutional in 2010. Civil liberties groups and legal scholars warned us repeatedly about where Bush-era executive power theories would lead. As anyone familiar with Bruce Ackerman’s work might guess, pliable attorneys have rubber-stamped the telephony metadata program with a “white paper” that “fails to confront counterarguments and address contrary caselaw” and “cites cases that [are] relatively weak authority for its position.” There are no meaningful penalties in sight (perhaps because the OLC has prepared documents that function as a “get out of jail free” card for those involved).
Like the data mining they employ, the NSA surveillance programs are hard to govern democratically (or cabin legally) because of the speed, scale, and secrecy of the problems they address. They fall into “black holes” of administrative review, where the inclination of judges to review them is at lowest ebb. Even if judges find “ticking time bomb” scenarios unlikely in the extreme, the surveillance apparatus can evoke plenty of other existential risks to demand deference. If you were on the FISA court and the NSA told you that they needed to collect everyone’s data because they were trying to track down a swarm of poison-bearing microdrones, how long would you delay them to “dig into the substance” before approving the request? As Desmond Manderson has argued, “Trust Us Justice” is the order of the day.
Real Harms
Nevertheless, the long-term danger of an unaccountable surveillance state is probably much greater than that posed by any particular terror threat.* Both Julie Cohen and Neil Richards have explained the many dangers arising out of pervasive surveillance. As Richards observes,
[The] special harm that surveillance poses is its effect on the power dynamic between the watcher and the watched. This disparity creates the risk of a variety of harms, such as discrimination, coercion, and the threat of selective enforcement, where critics of the government can be prosecuted or blackmailed for wrongdoing unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance.
To make this more concrete: note that the US’s intelligence apparatus has already extensively monitored libertarians and peace activists. According to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat.” During Occupy Wall Street, investigative journalists uncovered command centers advised by federal and local officials and banks. Skeptics wondered whether banks’ lucrative “private detail pay” and donations for police helped motivate multiple, brutal crackdowns on peaceful (if unorthodox) protesters. Homeland security officials may have advised local police on containment of the hundreds of “Occupy” encampments that arose in the fall of 2011. And in terms of selective enforcement: one has to wonder why police decided to care about a six-year-old open container violation at the homes of activists one day before May Day protests.
For a concrete example of how an activist deals with this type of news, consider the story of one Daytona woman:
[She] is a 45-year-old married mother of two young children. She is a homeowner, a taxpayer and a safe driver. She votes in every election. She attends a Unitarian Universalist church on Sundays. She is also, like nearly all who have a relationship with the Occupy movement in the United States, being monitored by the federal government. . . . McLeish worries about how being a target of FBI attention will affect her life. “Can the inclusion of my name and information on a federal law enforcement domestic terrorist watch list impact my ability to make a living and provide for my children?” she asked.
This is not a purely speculative concern, however much the SCOTUS majority in Clapper v. Amnesty may dismiss such worries as the fruit of a “chain of contingencies.” FBI screens are used to deny persons jobs, now. Many applicants have no idea they are even part of the hiring process:
Updating the records of those who fall through the cracks can be confusing and cumbersome. FBI regulations say that employers and licensing agencies should give applicants time to challenge and correct their records, either by contacting the FBI or the jurisdiction that collected the data. But applicants are not always given a copy of their report or told why they were disqualified. Often, the burden is on them to prove an error was made.
Even if the databases don’t include those who are not arrested, what stops law enforcement agencies from including “suspects” in related databases? Employers may not want to have anything to do with someone “under watch” by the government. Moreover, even being arrested can be a form of speech: consider the Moral Monday protesters in North Carolina.
Speculative No More
In his press conference last week, President Obama stated, “If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.” In Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, Justice Alito trivialized the plaintiffs’ concerns as mere conjecture. Surveillance promoters on both left and right argue that privacy activists haven’t demonstrated any concrete harms. The former NSA director has dismissed those concerned as “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”
Implications of paranoia (among those worried about surveillance) now themselves appear fantastical. The Supreme Court’s bizarre decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International, that respondents’ claims about being monitored were “too speculative” to merit judicial review, now deserves not merely rebuke, but reconsideration. Unless the surveillance apparatus wants to claim that Greenwald, the ACLU, EPIC, and PCJF are making up documents out of whole cloth, it has to acknowledge that not only have laws been violated, but exactly the types of harms those laws were designed to stop have indeed occurred. This is not just a matter of legalist punctilio or nihilist skepticism.
Tragically, the core surveillance harms are not likely to provoke much political pushback against the NSA. Unlike the Framers, who wrote the Constitution shortly after risking their lives for their political commitments, most Americans have little respect for the political targets of NSA/DHS/FBI/Police/DEA surveillance and information sharing.** For the average voter, about the only thing more suspect than the two major parties are political activists who operate outside their ken. Justice Roberts’s FISA Court, and the dozens of appellate judges like them, are unlikely to have more enlightened views. A movement to make the surveillance apparatus more accountable will need to achieve its goals indirectly, focusing on the costs, creepiness, or crony capitalism of mass surveillance. I hope to elaborate on each of these issues in future posts.
*Though perhaps not greater than the sum of terror threats—a question presently explored via cost-benefit analysis, but probably better addressed in scenario planning.
**To preempt the comment “you’re mixing up different programs:” please take a look at this article on vertical and horizontal fusion of data sources in the new Information Sharing Environment. For the TL;DR crowd, there’s this.
Related article
- NSA “Nothing to see here, people” types thoroughly embarrassed again (washingtonmonthly.com)
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Book Review
The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2026
Before the killings that helped bring down Ukraine’s president in February 2014, American diplomats were discussing who should enter its government. In a leaked telephone call, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland told US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, “I think Yats is the guy,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk. Washington had clear preferences and was working to advance them. Later that month, Yatseniuk became prime minister.
Ivan Katchanovski’s The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine examines the violence that preceded that transfer of power. Drawing on television footage, witness testimony, forensic examinations and Ukrainian court proceedings, he argues that elements of the opposition shot protesters and police in a false-flag operation. His case centres on evidence of protesters being shot from opposition-controlled locations, including Hotel Ukraina, overlooking the killing ground. … continue
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- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
