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“Free Pale*****”: BBC tries to settle censorship row

Left Foot Forward | February 2, 2012

The BBC Trust has announced that it is satisfied with the decision to censor the word Palestine from a freestyle performance by the rapper Mic Righteous.

In the show, which aired 11 February last year, Righteous rapped:

“I still have the same beliefs

“I can scream Free Palestine,

“Die for my pride still pray for peace,

“Still burn a fed for the brutality

“They spread over the world.”

The production team made the decision to put a sound effect, of glass smashing, over the word Palestine. You can listen to the whole performance here, or the offending section here.

In response to the original complaints, the BBC executive argued (pdf)

that BBC Radio 1Xtra and the BBC as a whole had a duty to be impartial. In this instance, the production team felt that Mic Righteous was expressing a political viewpoint which, if it had been aired in isolation, would have compromised impartiality.

The BBC’s guidelines on impartiality state:

The audience expects artists, writers and entertainers to have scope for individual expression in drama, entertainment and culture. The BBC is committed to offering it.

Where this covers matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or other “controversial subjects”, services should normally aim to reflect a broad range of the available perspectives over time.

Interestingly, the BBC apparently considers “scream Free Palestine” to be more of a controversial statement than “burn a fed”. The Trust has now released its adjudication of the matter, but in so doing has dodged the question.

They write:

The Committee agreed that it is for the Executive to decide what to include and what not to include in a broadcast, provided the result does not lead to a breach of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.

The Committee agreed that its duty was to assess whether the material as broadcast was likely to have been in breach of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines, in this case those relating to impartiality.

In other words, in response to complaints that the BBC was unfairly censoring an artist, the Trust has instead examined whether the finished program breached impartiality guidelines. Given the potential breach was never aired, the result of assessment was a foregone conclusion.

Amena Saleem, of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, argued:

The BBC Trust has moved the goalposts and decided to look at the censored content that was broadcast in February and April 2011.

“And the Trustees have decided that the content from which the word ‘Palestine’ had been edited was not biased against Palestine. This level of manipulation and duplicity would not be out of place in Catch 22.

The BBC needs to answer the real question; not whether the finished show was impartial, but whether it is acceptable policy to censor the word Palestine.

February 2, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

European MPs call on Israel to release Palestinian lawmakers

Ma’an – 02/02/2012

BETHLEHEM – A group of European Parliamentarians on Wednesday called on Israel to release 26 imprisoned Palestinian lawmakers, official news agency Wafa reported.

The group, composed of 26 members of the European Parliament, urged “the EU and its Member States to take immediate action” to release all imprisoned members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, a letter said.

“A strong and determined demand by the international community to free all Palestinian parliamentarians is long overdue and must become a priority,” the group said.

The EU lawmakers condemned the recent arrest of Palestinian parliamentary speaker Aziz Dweik, who was seized by Israeli forces at a Ramallah checkpoint on Jan. 19.

They also criticized the arrest of Palestinian MP Mohammad Tawtah and former Jerusalem affairs’ minister Khalid Abu Arafa, who were detained on January 23. during a raid on the Jerusalem headquarters of the International Red Cross.

“The most recent arrests aim clearly at undermining the prospect of Palestinian reconciliation and preventing the resumption of parliamentary life. They also jeopardize peace efforts,” said the letter written by EU parliamentarians.

February 2, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Obama concedes use of drones in Iraq

Washington plans to take bids for the management of drone operations in Iraq over the next five years

Press TV –  January 31, 2012

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged Washington’s unauthorized surveillance drone operations in Iraq where the un-mandated move has sparked outrage among senior Iraqi officials and the public.

“The truth is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside Iraq. There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected,” said Obama in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube on Monday.

The confirmation came after The New York Times disclosed that the US State Department began operating some drones in Iraq last year on a trial basis to help protect the US Embassy and that it stepped up their use after the last US troops left the country in December.

The report has infuriated senior Iraqi officials who say Washington must respect the country’s sovereignty and consult with the Baghdad government before carrying out any operation now that “the war is over.”

“I think that there’s this perception that we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes, willy nilly,” Obama said, adding, “It is important for everybody to understand that this is kept on a very tight leash.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also claimed that her department uses unmanned aerial vehicles to take pictures of US facilities and personnel abroad.

Meanwhile, The Times said that senior Iraqi officials told the newspaper that the US had not consulted with Iraqi government about the drone operations and that despite the official US withdrawal from Iraq, it maintains a strong presence in the country.

The daily said that since getting the approval for using surveillance drone aircraft over Iraq might be hard given the political tensions between the two countries, the US continues drone operations in the country without formal approval from Iraq.

It added that Washington plans to take bids for the management of drone operations in Iraq over the next five years.

January 31, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli police close soccer club, charity fund in Silwan

Ma’an – 30/01/2012

TEL AVIV – Israeli police shut down two organizations in East Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli media reported.

The soccer club and charity fund in the Silwan neighborhood will be closed for 30 days, Israeli news site Ynet reported.

They are alleged to be connected to Hamas, the report said.

Last week, Israeli forces detained the director and several employees of Wadi Hilweh information center in the same neighborhood.

January 30, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Detention of Palestinian political prisoners

By Shazia Arshad | Middle East Monitor | 29 January 2012

As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment to thwart the growing move towards democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli authorities began to arrest members of Hamas: 450 were detained in 2005 to prevent their participation in the election the following year; many were held in administrative detention, without trial or charge. Despite this the elections took place and a number of the candidates in prison were elected to the PLC.

The 2006 Palestinian elections were overseen by international observers, who declared them to be free and fair (more open, it has been said, than the 2004 re-election of George W Bush). Hamas ended up as the democratically-elected Palestinian government. A number of PLC members under the Change and Reform List (including Hamas members and supporters) were also chosen by the electorate and became the target of the Israeli authorities’ constant campaign of arrest and detention.

There are, at the moment, 27 PLC members and 2 Ministers being detained by the Israeli authorities.

Download Fact Sheet

January 29, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

California professor under attack for opposing “study in Israel” scheme

Nora Barrows-Friedman | The Electronic Intifada | 25 January 2012

A mathematics professor at the California State University at Northridge is the target of an attack campaign by various pro-Israel lobby groups and individuals because he maintains a website that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies.

Recently, Dr. David Klein has come under fire for organizing in opposition to the 23-campus-wide California State University (CSU) system’s resumption of a study abroad program in Israel, which was discontinued in 2002 because of a US State Department warning on travel to the region during the second Palestinian intifada.

In an open letter delivered to to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed last month, Klein — along with the signatures of more than 80 CSU faculty and staff members, and dozens of students statewide — urged the CSU administration to not reinstate the study abroad program.

In addition to an explanation of the historic injuring and killing of US citizens — including university students — by Israeli soldiers during unarmed protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the letter states that CSU students interested in this study abroad program “could face discriminatory treatment, based on race and ethnicity” (“An open letter to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed regarding the CSU-Israel study abroad program”).

It is well-known that at border crossings and the airport, Israel discriminates against — as well as regularly detains and deports — US citizens with Middle Eastern ancestry, or Arabic or Muslim names.

The US State Department’s travel warning explicitly states that Palestinian-American dual citizens — persons who were born in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have become naturalized US citizens — “are considered by the Israeli government to retain their Palestinian nationality, and Israeli authorities will view them as Palestinians.”

The travel warning adds, “Palestinian-Americans whom the Government of Israel considers residents of the West Bank or Gaza may face certain travel restrictions. These individuals are subject to restrictions on movement between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and within the West Bank and Gaza that are imposed by the Israeli government on all Palestinians” (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza: Country-specific information).

However, despite the open letter, the inherent discrimination within the Israeli study abroad program itself, and enormous statewide budget cuts that have eviscerated educational resources, the CSU administration announced in mid-December that it was “pleased to announce the re-opening of its program in Israel starting Fall 2012” (“Israel: Overview”).

The program will be hosted at the University of Haifa, making it nearly impossible for Palestinian CSU students who were born in the West Bank or Gaza to attend.

Already four CSU students are currently enrolled for the 2012-2013 school year, according to the Daily 49er, the campus newspaper of CSU-Long Beach (“Israel program back after safety concerns,” 23 January 2012).

Continuation of a disturbing trend on US campuses

Klein, a longtime human rights activist, told The Electronic Intifada that he worked with popular solidarity committees in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s, and also confronted Ku Klux Klansmen in rural Louisiana. But it was Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09 that spiked his interest in Palestinian rights. Klein began a website on his own CSU-Northridge faculty page to bring attention to what was happening in Palestine, and it has since become an in-depth resource for the growing, international Palestinian-led BDS movement.

In addition to hosting the website, Klein also joined the organizing committee of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and is a faculty advisor for the local Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at CSU-Northridge.

Since beginning his Palestine solidarity and BDS activism work, Klein has faced aggressive slander and threats by anti-Palestinian individuals and Israeli lobby groups who have called him and his website “anti-Semitic” (“Sample hate mail, opposition, and expressions of racism in response to the open letter to CSU Chancellor Reed and this website”).

Some of the most vicious attacks levelled against him personally, he said, include those by two faculty members at the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles who have founded the Amcha Initiative, a project which aims “to inform the Jewish community about the efforts made by Jewish students and faculty to combat anti-Jewish bigotry on California campuses.”

The two professors boast on the Amcha website that they have launched the “Investigative Taskforce on Campus Antisemitism” and have filed complaints with the UC system claiming “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish discourse and behavior in classrooms, [and] at university-sponsored events” (About us).

However, just recently, a California court and a University of California official disagreed with these types of claims. In late December, the court dismissed a lawsuit brought by students at UC Berkeley who claimed that they faced anti-Semitism on campus. The court determined the plaintiffs could not provide evidence to support their allegations.

Following on the heels of the lawsuit dismissal, a major announcement was made last week by University of California President Mark Yudof — an ardent supporter of Israeli policy — who, as Ali Abunimah reported for The Electronic Intifada, denied claims that Jewish students on UC campuses “face a climate of hostility that amounts to a violation of their civil rights, due to Palestine solidarity activism.”

Referring to two civil rights complaints at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz — where Amcha’s members have alleged that Jewish students face “intellectual and emotional harassment and intimidation” as a result of classroom discussions and on-campus events — Yudof stated: “These cases have to be carefully crafted with a fact pattern that is compelling. I don’t think in either of these cases these fact patterns exist” (College leaders balance Israel and speech,” The Forward, 17 January 2012).

Despite their inability to prove that a frightening culture of anti-Semitism exists on UC and CSU campuses, members of anti-Palestinian groups such as Campus Watch, Amcha and the nationwide academic watchdog group euphemistically called Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) have not relented in their mission to conflate anti-Semitism with Palestine solidarity activism or academic discussions on Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.

“The larger issue for the pro-Israel groups is that they don’t want to allow the criticism of Israel to be public if they can stop it,” Klein explained. “On a level playing field, in a debate or in a situation where all facts can be aired, they would lose. So the only way to win is to silence debate.”

Open debate: “breaking the rules” of academic freedom?

Dr. Lisa Rofel, a cultural anthropology professor at UC Santa Cruz, told The Electronic Intifada that she was subjected to harassment by Amcha and SPME after organizing on-campus events related to Palestine and critical analysis of Zionism. A member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Rofel said that she was brought up on charges three times by Israel lobby groups who claimed that she “broke the rules of academic freedom by talking about politics on campus.”

Rofel said that the chancellor’s lawyer on campus disagreed with the claims, so she was then brought up on the same charges to the university’s committee on academic freedom, who told the Israel lobbyists that they had no case and to stop harassing her.

“They were then very unhappy,” Rofel said. “Then, someone who’s a big supporter of Israel went to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and managed to get anti-Semitism [categorized] as a racial discrimination.”

“It’s very disturbing to me to define Jewish identity as a racial identity, because that’s what Hitler did,” Rofel added. “But you have to define it this way to claim anti-Semitism, and the whole point is that they’re trying to bring up a charge of anti-Semitic discrimination on campus with the Department of Education against those of us who put on these events, and against the university administration who didn’t do anything to stop it.”

The Israel lobby’s threats and intimidation tactics against other US professors have worked — and some academics have been punished for holding open discussions on Israeli policies. Dr. Terri Ginsberg, who was denied tenure at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 2008, has been subjected to academic censorship efforts by Israeli lobby groups and has been subsequently blacklisted for other faculty positions. She is now embroiled in legal proceedings in her ongoing fight against censorship and intimidation.

In an interview with The Electronic Intifada in December, Ginsberg said that NCSU admitted that it openly suppressed a speech of hers which was “critical of Zionism and supportive of the Palestine liberation struggle” and that the university “chose not to interview or hire” her for a tenure-track position because of her scholarship on Palestine and the Middle East.

In reference to Ginsberg’s ongoing struggle, Rofel said she feels that the administration at UC Santa Cruz isn’t as susceptible to Israeli lobby attacks, and she feels generally supported.

“[The university] has protected me in terms of not finding me guilty of any charges related to violations of academic freedom,” Rofel said. “And I feel very lucky to be on this campus, because [what happened to Ginsberg] would not happen here.”

An imperative time for universities to support faculty, students

Back at CSU-Northridge, Klein said that like Rofel, his university’s administration has been protective of him and has supported his activism under the banner of academic freedom. He added that there has not yet been any indication that his website nor tenured position are in jeopardy.

However, even after the CSU system reinstated the Israel study abroad program last month, Klein said the attacks on him by outside lobby groups and individuals have not quelled, and the demands to take down his website are still unrelenting.

Klein told The Electronic Intifada that he believes there is “a great deal of coordination” among various Zionist and Israeli lobby groups, but it is Amcha’s targeted attacks in particular that have been most troublesome.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith, the founding members of Amcha, “have been beating the drums the hardest, demanding that the university take down my website,” Klein said.

“And now, since the university has supported my website as an expression of academic freedom, now they’re attacking the university administration,” he added. “The acting president, Harry Hellenbrand, is a signer of the open letter [against the reinstatement of the Israel study abroad program], and they’re attacking him for that, and they’re going to the chancellor.”

US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) organizing committee members Sunaina Maira, professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, and Nada Elia, professor of Global and Gender Studies at Antioch University in Seattle, told The Electronic Intifada by email that the attempts to censor Klein run against the very idea of academic freedom and open discussion in university classrooms. Maira said that the viciousness of the attacks on Klein “betray a desperation to shut down free and honest debate and to exceptionalize the case of Israel.”

“Professor Klein is a courageous and conscientious scholar who has chosen not to remain silent in the face of egregious violations of international law and overt racial discrimination in Israel,” Maira added.

“As a principled Jewish American scholar, he has worked with students and colleagues to oppose a program that would legitimize an illegal occupation and discriminatory policies, which the Brand Israel campaign would like the world to ignore, in the face of growing global condemnation and international outrage,” she said.

Elia said that the Israeli lobby’s attempts to excoriate the cultural and academic boycott movement against Israeli institutions and describe it as an effort that violates, not protects, academic freedom should be carefully examined.

“We should be very clear about the fact that the Palestinian call for boycotting Israeli institutions which are complicit in the occupation is not a violation of academic freedom — it is a means to an end, a strategy to achieve the academic freedom that currently does not exist in Israel and Palestine, and is seriously jeopardized in the US,” she stated.

As of press time, more than 860 persons have signed on to a public petition (penned by his colleagues at USACBI) demanding that the California State University system — and, specifically, CSU Chancellor Reed — defend David Klein and not capitulate to the lobby’s demands that his website be taken down, nor should he be subjected to academic punishment (“Sign petition in support of Dr. David Klein and academic freedom here”).

Along with public support, Klein said he’s optimistic about the support from within the university itself. “So far, the administration is standing with me,” he explained. “Hopefully it’ll be representative of a paradigm shift.”

Klein said that now, more than ever, is an imperative time for universities to stand by their faculty and students. Indeed, addition to the attacks on academics like Terri Ginsberg and Norman Finkelstein, ten Muslim students at UC Irvine last fall were charged and convicted by the Orange County District Attorney’s office with disrupting a public meeting for their protest of the Israeli ambassador’s speech on campus.

“[It sets] an important precedent,” Klein said, referring to his case. “It’s a precedent for a faculty member to be able to post criticisms of Israel and Israeli policy on a website. So if the current situation stands and I’m allowed to continue to do that, it immediately opens doors for other faculty in the 23 other state university systems. But it would also have positive effects for the other university systems as well.”

While well-funded Israel lobby groups attempt — and fail — to prove that a pandemic of anti-Semitism exists on college campuses, student activism in support of Palestinian rights continues to strengthen.

Groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine — with growing chapters across California and the rest of the US — are more determined than ever to press forward with divestment initiatives and creative protests against Israeli apartheid policies.

“I can’t put my finger on it but I feel that worldwide, there’s a shift in the last couple of years where there’s a greater opening to criticize Israel and the policies that Israel imposes on the Palestinian people,” Klein said.

Lisa Rofel of UC Santa Cruz said that although she’s less optimistic than her colleague about a general paradigm shift, she knows that it’s important to analyze the reasons why Israel lobby groups are spending so much time and effort attempting to censor discussion.

She told The Electronic Intifada: “The activities of people who are trying to silence us are very worrisome, because they’re so anti-democratic, so rigid. If they’re so convinced about the rightness of their position, then they shouldn’t worry about open debate.”

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an award-winning independent journalist, and is a staff writer and editor for The Electronic Intifada.

January 25, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

International Privacy Day: Fighting Data Retention Mandates Around the World

By Katitza Rodriguez | EFF | January 24, 2012

This January 28 marks International Privacy Day, the day that the first legally binding international privacy treaty was opened for signature to Member States in January 28, 1981. Different countries around the world are celebrating this day with their own events. This year, we are honoring the day by calling attention to recent privacy threats around the world and describing a few of the available tools that allow individuals to protect their privacy and anonymity.

Today, we are calling on governments to repeal mandatory data retention schemes. Mandatory data retention harms individuals’ anonymity, which is crucial for whistle-blowers, investigators, journalists, and for political speech. It creates huge potential for abuse and should be rejected as a serious infringement on the rights and freedoms of all individuals.

It has been six years since the highly controversial Data Retention Directive (DRD) was adopted in the European Union. Conceived in the EU and steamrolled by powerful U.S. and U.K. government lobbies, this mass-surveillance law compels EU-based Internet service providers to collect and retain traffic data revealing who communicates with whom by email, phone, and SMS, including the duration of the communication and the locations of the users. This data is often made available to law enforcement. Europeans have widely criticized the DRD, and year after year, it has inspired some of the largest-ever street protests against excessive surveillance.

The European Commission has begun mounting a defense for this highly controversial mass-surveillance scheme, though they have thus far been unable to show that the DRD is necessary or proportionate. For the DRD to be legal in the EU, any limitation to the right to privacy mustbe “necessary” to achieve an objective of general interest and “proportionate” to the desired aim. This requirement is important to ensure that the government does not adopt severe measures to address a problem that could be otherwise solved in a way that is less harmful to civil liberties.  But the Commission has been arguing that all uses of retained data illustrate that the Directive is “valuable.” This doesn’t meet the legal standard. Instead, the Commission should provide evidence that in the absence of a mandatory data retention law, traffic data crucial to the investigation of “serious crime” would not have been available to law enforcement.

Despite the European Commission’s efforts to preserve the Directive as-is, a leaked letter confirms that the Commission has been scrambling to conjure evidence for the “need” of a DRD scheme in the European Union. It also underscores the fact that there is no system of oversight that would allow citizens to monitor the impact of the proposed program on their privacy rights. Perhaps the most disquieting detail that has been confirmed by the letter is that service providers have already been storing instant messages, chats, uploads, and downloads. This type of data collection falls outside the scope of the DRD. Moreover, the letter indicates that “unnamed” players seek to broaden the uses of the DRD to include prosecution of copyright infringement including “illegally downloading.” Since this is not a serious crime, this legally falls outside the scope of the DRD.

In response to this leak, EDRI stated, “The leaked document however shows that the Commission can neither prove necessity nor proportionality of the Data Retention Directive – but still wants to keep the Directive.” The leaked letter also disclosed that the EU Commission is evaluating the possibility of amending the Directive. The Commission has commissioned a study into data preservation in the EU and around the world. According to the letter, this exercise is to be completed by May 2012.

Ending Data Retention: Constitutional Challenges

Constitutional courts have begun weighing in on the legality of this mass-surveillance scheme. In a decision celebrated by privacy advocates, the Czech Constitutional Court declared in March 2011 that the Czech data retention law was unconstitutional. Earlier this month, the same Court dealt another blow to data retention by annulling part of the Criminal Procedure Code, which would have enabled law enforcement access to data stored voluntarily by operators. Most importantly, the Czech Court used compelling language in articulating the importance of the protection of traffic data. The Court stated that the collection of traffic data and communication data warranted identical legal safeguards since both have the same “intensity of interference”.

We couldn’t agree more. Sensitive data of this nature demands stronger protection, not an all-access pass. Individuals should not have to worry whether one sort of private information has less protection than another.

Jan Vobořil of Iuridicum Remedium, which led the legal complaint against the Czech data retention law, told EFF:

I believe that both decisions will help ensure that new legislation enforces the same restrictions as exist for use of wiretap. These include strong privacy safeguards for government access to citizen’s data, the obligation to inform individuals about the use of their data, and so on.

Several other courts in EU member states have also ruled on the illegality of data retention laws. Earlier in 2009, the Romanian constitutional Court rejected the imposition of an ongoing, sweeping traffic data retention program. The Court rightly emphasized that mandatory data retention overturns the presumption of innocence in a way that treats all Romanians like potential suspects. Despite this court decision, a new draft data retention bill was introduced in the Parliament, but the Senate finally rejected it at the end of 2011.

In March 2010, the German Court declared unconstitutional the German mandatory data retention law. The Court ordered the deletion of the collected data and affirmed that data retention could “cause a diffusely threatening feeling of being under observation that can diminish an unprejudiced perception of one’s basic rights in many areas.” The lawsuit was brought on by 34,000 citizens through the initiative of AK  Vorrat, the German working group against data retention.

Over in Ireland, the Court is referring to the European Court of Justice the case challenging the legality of the DRD, thanks to the complaint brought by Digital Rights Ireland. The Irish Court acknowledged the importance of defining “the legitimate legal limits of surveillance techniques used by governments”, and rightly emphasized that “without sufficient legal safeguards the potential for abuse and unwarranted invasion of privacy is obvious”. The Courtsin Cyprus and Bulgaria have also declared their mandatory data retention laws unconstitutional.

The DRD compels EU member countries to implement the Directive into national law. Fortunately, many member states have not yet done so. The Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Romania, and Sweden have not adopted this piece of legislation, despite pressure from the European Commission to do so. In Austria, the data protection law will take effect in April 2012.  AK Vorrat Austria plans to use all legal means to challenge the legality of the DRD. They have also handed over a petition to the Austrian Parliament asking the government to fight against the DRD at the EU level and to review all existing anti-terror legislation. (If you are Austrian, sign the petition today at zeichnemit.at.) In Slovakia, the NGO European Information Society Institute is opposing the Slovakian data retention implementation law.

Meanwhile, civil society groups are resisting and campaigning against this oppressive data retention law. EDRI, along with EFF and AK Vorrat, has fought to repeal the DRD in favor of targeted collection of traffic data. EDRI has previously reported that Deutsche Telekom, a German telco, illegally used telecommunications traffic and location data to spy on roughly 60 individuals including journalists, managers, and union leaders. They also reported that two major intelligence agencies in Poland used retained traffic and subscriber data to illegally disclose journalistic sources without any judicial oversight. These are only a few examples in which data retention policies have directly threatened individuals’ expression and privacy rights.

The DRD is a threat to Internet privacy and anonymity, and has been proven to violate the privacy rights of 500 million Europeans. EFF, together with EDRI, will keep fighting to repeal the DRD in favor of targeted collection of traffic data.

Mandatory Data Retention in the United States

Two bills introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2009 would have required all Internet providers and operators of WiFi access points to keep records on Internet users for at least two years to assist police investigations. Neither bill became law. Some legislators and law enforcement officials continue to argue, however, that mandatory data retention is necessary to investigate online child pornography and other Internet crimes. In January 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held a hearing that discussed whether Congress should pass legislation that would force ISPs and telecom providers to log Internet user traffic data. In May 2011, H.R. 1981, which would require retention of such traffic data, was introduced in the House of Representatives. This bill is still alive and continues to be a threat to the privacy and anonymity of all Americans. EFF has joined civil liberties and consumer organizations in publicly opposing H.R. 1981. Please join EFF, and help us defeat this bill before it is made law. Contact your Representative now.

January 25, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Speaker Of Palestine Parliament Receives Six Months Administrative Detention

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | January 24, 2012

The Israeli Military Court at the Ofer Israeli prison, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, decided to imprison the elected head of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), Dr. Aziz Dweik, to six months administrative detention.

On Sunday, a court was held to look into the possibility of placing him under administrative detention, without any charges officially filed against him.

Both Dr. Dweik and legislator Khaled Tafesh, from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, were taken prisoner on Friday.

Representing Dr. Dweik, Lawyer Fadi Al-Qawasmi stated that the court issued the administrative detention order despite the fact that no charges were brought against his client.

The Palestinian Legislative Council slammed the Israeli court ruling against Dr. Dweik, and demanded the release of all elected legislators, ministers, and officials.

On Thursday at dawn, Israeli troops kidnapped legislator, Abdul-Jaber Foqaha, after breaking into his home in Ramallah. Soldiers confiscated documents, a mobile phone, and a computer that belong to the legislator.

On Sunday, Israeli troops broke into the International Red Cross headquarters in Jerusalem, and kidnapped two Palestinian members of parliament.

Khaled Abu Arfa and Mohammed Totah, both members of the political wing of the Hamas movement and elected MPs, were detained from the IRC headquarters, having spent over 18 months seeking refuge in the building following Israel’s illegal revocation of their Jerusalem residency.

Israel is currently holding prisoner 26 elected Palestinians legislators.

The Hamas movement stated that Israel is acting on obstructing and foiling all efforts to create a national unity government, and wants to destroy any chances of Palestinian reconciliation.

January 24, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli special forces kidnap Jerusalemite MP, minister from Red Cross premises

Palestine Information Center – 23/01/2012

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli special forces stormed the Red Cross premises in occupied Jerusalem on Monday and kidnapped MP Mohammed Totah and former Jerusalem minister Khaled Abu Arafa, the PIC reporter said.

He said that the Israeli forces took both officials to an unknown location, quoting relatives as expressing fears that they would be banished from Jerusalem similar to their colleagues Mohammed Abu Tir and Mohammed Attoun.

The Israeli intelligence warned Totah and Abu Arafa in a telephone call two weeks ago that they should leave the Red Cross premises and occupied Jerusalem within 48 hours.

The kidnap coincides with an escalation in the targeting of Hamas lawmakers in the West Bank the latest being a few days ago when the Israeli occupation soldiers arrested Palestinian parliament speaker Dr. Aziz Dweik and MP Mohammed Tafesh.

January 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

No more back room deals — Users must have a voice in governing the Internet

By Kurt Opsahl | EFF | January 20, 2012

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd gave an interview to the New York Times yesterday, in which “Mr. Dodd said he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise.” While framed by the Times as his acceptance of defeat (the MPAA had rejected a prior meeting), the article shows that Dodd still doesn’t get it.

The former Senator hopes for a return to the traditional levers of power, where the laws are written by lobbyists, and sold by back-room deals negotiated behind closed doors. He wants to frame the debate as the comfortable story of a dispute between companies in Silicon Valley and companies in Hollywood, that would doubtless be resolved on the basis of who’s more connected or has better lobbying budgets ‒ or so he hopes.

It wasn’t the technology companies who broke the back of PIPA and SOPA.  To be sure, Internet companies played a critical role ‒ Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Craigslist and over a hundred thousand other websites changed their home pages, informed their users about the bills and facilitated the users’ communications to Congress.

But the dramatic and unprecedented sea change in opposition to blacklist legislation on the Hill came about because of the users themselves.  Millions of users ‒ and voters ‒ like you spoke as one, and demanded that freedom of the Internet not be sacrificed on the altar of outdated business models.  The opposition was grassroots, not astroturf.

Now that the proponents of SOPA/PIPA have blinked, and taken the bills back to committee, there will be calls to come to a “compromise.” But there is no need to assume that legislation is necessary. As we discuss the future of the Internet, all stakeholders, including the people who use Internet services and consume (and create and share) movies and music, must have a seat at the table.  The internet is too important to be debated, dissected and possibly disabled in a private meeting.

January 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Facebook shows its tyrannical face, blocks solidarity page of hunger striker

Palestine Information Center – 22/01/2012

RAMALLAH — The facebook controllers erased a solidarity page protesting Israel’s arbitrary detention of Islamic Jihad leader Khader Adnan who has undergone open hunger strike since the first day of his arrest.

Facebook claimed the page was blocked because it was used to incite against Israel.

Information technology expert Ali Sa’eed said Zionist parties could be behind this unjust facebook decision.

He noted it was not the first time, facebook blocked pages supporting the Palestinian national cause and called for reopening other facebook pages to challenge its racist behavior.

January 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Britain Bans Press TV

By AFSHIN RATTANSI | CounterPunch | January 20, 2012

For the first time, British government censors have banned a 24-hour news channel from British viewers. As of the afternoon, UK-time, 20th January 2012, viewers of Press TV, an avowedly anti-imperialist TV channel headquartered in Tehran and featuring many of the voices found in CounterPunch, saw the words “Channel Unavailable” when tapping their clicker. And so the war on Iran by Britain, Israel and the U.S. continues using propaganda, proxy militants and asymmetric warfare.

Unlike the U.S., whose authorities have so often had to get around the first amendment to ban media from Americans, the UK has no law against the abridging of freedom of speech or against “infringing on the freedom of the press”. The decision was made by Ed Richards, previously Senior Policy Advisor to Tony Blair and a Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC. He now runs OFCOM, a regulatory agency charged with judging what news Britons are able to view.

One of the broadcast regulator’s central arguments about Press TV is that it is not convinced that editorial control is based in Britain. I’ve worked for numerous foreign channels that are allowed to broadcast in the UK, so I know this discrepancy will come as a surprise to my former employers at the London offices of CNN International, Bloomberg and Al Jazeera, all of which ultimately answer, editorially, to bosses in Atlanta, New York and Doha.

Press TV Ltd., a UK-based production company making programmes for Press TV has also been fined $155,000. This was because the channel in Tehran, broadcast an interview with Maziar Bahari of Newsweek whilst he was in prison. Bahari, who I have appeared with on discussion panels about the situation in Iran, is on the record as saying he wants Press TV banned and, basically, war on Iran. His views on banning TV stations are shared by the British government. We know this thanks to Wikileaks which released a secret cable from 2010 detailing the views of Jaime (sic) Turner, “Deputy Head of Multi-lateral affairs at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office”:

Her Majesty’s Government is looking at other ways to address the issue. Her Majesty’s Government is exploring ways to limit the operations of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s PRESS TV service. However, UK law sets a very high standard for denying licenses to broadcasters. Licenses can only be denied in cases where national security is threatened, or if granting a license would be contrary to Britain’s obligations under international law. Currently, neither of these standards can be met with respect to PRESS TV, but if further sanctions are imposed on Iran in the coming months, a case may be able to be made on the second criterion.

While it is obviously a badge of honour for journalists to provoke such paranoia in a government – how is Press TV threatening UK national security?! – the cable also revealed Britain to be begging for U.S. intervention vis a vis France:

5. (S) In the immediate term, Her Majesty’s Government plans to lobby the French government to approach Eutelsat and press it to drop Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s broadcasts from the Hotbird satellite. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting broadcasts several channels from the satellite, both domestically (even most terrestrial TV channels in Iran are dependent on a satellite and repeaters) and internationally, so it is an important source of income for Eutelsat. While it would be unlikely for the company to agree to drop the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting broadcasts spontaneously, Turner believes it would be susceptible to an approach by the French government because of the cover it would gain from complying with an official government request. Her Majesty’s Government would appreciate U.S. Government engagement with the government of France on this issue.

Nothing happened as regards London lobbying Paris to push the channel off the Eutelsat satellite but over here, I have witnessed bizarre examples of British journalists wishing to crush press freedom. Only in the past week, the UK Sunday Times’ Eleanor Mills wrote that Press TV “… has been fined £100,000… by the TV regulator OFCOM; many may think a more fitting punishment would see the station taken off air.” Such is the insouciant hackery of some British journalists when it comes to issues of free speech.

Those who have watched Press TV (it is, of course, available on the internet let alone nearly twenty free-to-air satellites) will know that its coverage of international events does not conform to the neoliberal news and current affairs brainwashing paradigm in mainstream newsrooms. It is one of the only TV stations in the world that genuinely gives international news, on a daily basis, covering all continents.

As CounterPunch readers know, there is already a war on Iran and this British decision is another front. Let’s hope that at least some of OFCOM’s board – you know who you are, Colette Bowe, Lord Blackwell, Dame Lynne Brindley, Tim Gardam, Dame Patricia Hodgson, Stuart McIntosh, Mike McTighe and Jill Ainscough – will realise that the purpose of the regulator was not to infringe on press freedom. In the meantime, still legal channels such as Russia Today are so far tolerated and give British viewers a view of the world different to the sanitised Orwellian fictions available on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom. And soon, as British viewers continue to switch off their television sets and boot up their computers, UK governments may realise that it is powerless to ban information getting to the masses.

~

Afshin Rattansi runs Alternate Reality Productions Ltd. One of its commissions is Double Standards, a political satire show for Press TV, broadcast every Saturday at 2230 GMT. Shows can be accessed via www.doublestandardstv.com. He can be reached via afshinrattansi@hotmail.com.

See also:

How to watch Press TV in the UK

January 21, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment