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Israeli forces shut down media launch in Jerusalem

Ma’an – 02/04/2012

JERUSALEM – Israeli forces raided the Jerusalem office of a university media institute on Monday, shutting down the launch of an online media network and detaining employees.

Plainclothes police shut down the launch of the Hona al-Quds news site in the al-Khalidiya neighborhood of Jerusalem’s Old City, and confiscated equipment and files, network director Harun Abu Arrah told Ma’an.

Two employees — Adel Ruished and Mohannad Izheman — were detained, and guests attending the launch were blocked from entering.

Employees were presented with an order signed by the Israeli minister of internal security forbidding the event as a banned initiative of the Palestinian Authority, director of Al-Quds University Institute for Modern Media Lucy Nusseibeh told Ma’an.

The university, which launched Hona al-Quds, has been registered as an independent non-governmental organization with Israeli authorities for decades, Nusseibeh added.

The launch was intended to take place simultaneously with the institute’s Ramallah office by Skype.

Izheman, a university security guard, has since been released with a summons to return to police offices on Tuesday, and Ruished, the university’s Administrative Director of Jerusalem Affairs, is still being held, a university statement said.

Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the facility was “closed until further notice,” on suspicions of use for Palestinian official activity in Jerusalem.

“This is the second attack on our media institution in five weeks — this is education and not a political project,” Nusseibeh said.

In late February, Israeli forces raided the institute’s Al-Quds Educational TV in Ramallah-district Al-Bireh and confiscated its broadcasting equipment, claiming it was interrupting legal broadcasting.

The same day, Israeli forces also raided Watan TV’s newsroom in Ramallah and seized transmitters.

Reporters Without Borders said at the time it was “deeply shocked” by the raids.

“These arbitrary and illegal operations served yet again to intimidate Palestinian media and journalists, the victims of repeated attacks by the (Israeli army),” the group said in a statement.

April 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Results of Nationwide Government Cell Phone Tracking Records Request Show Frequent Violations of Americans’ Privacy Rights

By Catherine Crump, ACLU Staff Attorney | March 31, 2012

The ACLU has just released the results of our affiliates’ public records requests to hundreds of police departments around the country asking them about their cell phone tracking policies.

What we have learned is disturbing. Many of the approximately 200 law enforcement agencies that responded said they track cell phones without a warrant. As The New York Times reports, this invasive form of surveillance often happens without any court oversight at all.

A small number of agencies, such as in North Las Vegas and Wichita, said they do obtain warrants based on probable cause before tracking. Others, such as the Kentucky State Police, said they use varying legal standards, such as a warrant or a less-strict subpoena. The result is unclear or inconsistent legal standards from town to town that frequently fall short of probable cause.

The government should have to get a warrant before tracking cell phones. That is what is necessary to protect Americans’ privacy, and it is also what is required under the Constitution.

The fact that some law enforcement agencies do get warrants shows that a probable cause requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy, allowing police to protect both public safety and privacy.

Last August, in an unprecedented effort to penetrate the secrecy around the policies, 35 ACLU affiliates around the country filed over 380 requests under states’ freedom of information laws. The ACLU asked state and local law enforcement agencies about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones. An in-depth summary of what we found, with links to documents, is here.

The responses varied widely, and many agencies did not respond at all. The documents included statements of policy, memos, police requests to cell phone companies (sometimes in the form of a subpoena or warrant), and invoices and manuals from cell phone companies explaining their procedures and prices for turning over location data. There’s a map with links to the documents and requests state-by-state here.

The documents provide an eye-opening view of police surveillance of Americans. In Wilson County, N.C., police obtain cell phone tracking data where it is “relevant and material” to an ongoing investigation – a standard much lower than probable cause. Police in Lincoln, Neb., without demonstrating probable cause, obtain even GPS location data, which is more precise than cell tower location information. In Tucson, Ariz., police sometimes obtain cell phones numbers for all of the phones at a particular location at a certain time (this practice is known as a “tower dump”).

The U.S. Supreme Court in January held in U.S. v. Jones that prolonged location tracking is a search under the Fourth Amendment, but the effects of that ruling on law enforcement have yet to be seen.

The ACLU supports bipartisan legislation currently pending in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that would address this problem called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act. It would require law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant to access location information from cell phones or GPS devices. It would also mandate that private telecommunications companies obtain their customers’ consent before collecting location data. At least 11 state legislatures are also considering bills related to location tracking.Technology is evolving quickly, and often to the detriment of privacy. How much privacy Americans enjoy is a choice that ultimately is ours as a society to make.

Tell Congress: Support the GPS Act!
Act Now

April 1, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rallies Worldwide to Mark the 9th Anniversary of the Disappearance of Aafia Siddiqui

Please also note that events scheduled for Saturday include a rally in New York at 12 noon, and a rally in Toronto (sisters only) at 6 pm. On Friday (March 30), there is also a rally in Fort Worth, Texas at 3.30 pm.

By Andy Worthington – 29.3.12

On Saturday, outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, I will be speaking at an event marking the ninth anniversary of the disappearance in Pakistan of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who vanished for five years and five months, and then mysteriously reappeared in Afghanistan in August 2008, where she was arrested, and then allegedly tried to shoot at the US soldiers who were holding her.

She was subsequently flown to New York, where, in September 2010, after a trial at which she did not appear to be well, although her mental health was not considered to be an issue worthy of scrutiny, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison, which she is serving in a notorious psychiatric prison, FMC Carswell, in Texas. 

The rally outside the US Embassy, organized by the Justice for Aafia Coalition, takes place from 3 pm to 6 pm, and the speakers, and the timing of speeches, are as follows:

1500: Introduction
1510: Sultan Sabri (Croydon Muslim Association)
1520: Raza Karim
1530: Andy Worthington (journalist, author of The Guantánamo Files)
1540: Asif Hussain
1550: Raza Nadim (MPACUK – Muslim Public Affairs Committee)
1600: Sheikh Suliman Ghani (Imam, Tooting Islamic Centre)
1610: Anas Altikriti (Cordoba Foundation)
1620: Ken O’Keefe (anti-war activist)
1630: Statement of Support from the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers
1635: Joy Hurcombe (Save Shaker Aamer Campaign) reads out Statement of Support from Walter Wolfgang
1645: Omar Deghayes (former Guantánamo prisoner)
1655: Adnan Rashid (Hittin Institute)
1705: Sultana Parvin
1715: Uthman Lateef (Hittin Institute)
1725: Conclusion

I hope to see some of you down there, as the case of Aafia Siddiqui, which I have been following for many years, remains deeply troubling. My previous articles can be found here, and below is a re-cap of her story, drawn largely from an account of the website of the Justice for Aafia Coalition.

Please also note that other events scheduled for Saturday include a rally in New York at 12 noon, and a rally in Toronto (sisters only) at 6 pm. On Friday (March 30), there is also a rally in Sandton, South Africa at 2 pm, and another in Fort Worth, Texas at 3.30 pm.

The story of Aafia Siddiqui

Nine years ago, on March 30, 2003, Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani citizen, and a cognitive neuroscientist, disappeared in Karachi along with her three children, the youngest of whom, Suleman, was just a baby. For the next five years their whereabouts were unknown, and have never been publicly acknowledged by either the Pakistani or the US government, even though it seems clear that she was held in secret detention, where she was severely abused. Former Bagram prisoners have stated that a female prisoner was held in the prison, identified by the number “650,” and have said that they heard her horrific screams.

Following demands for her recovery by human rights organisations and the Pakistani public, Aafia resurfaced in Afghanistan in August 2008, framed with the attempted murder of US personnel. Transferred to the US, she was convicted in a shocking miscarriage of justice and was sentenced in September 2010 to 86 years in prison. She is currently held in isolation at FMC Carswell, Texas, a facility notoriously referred to as the “hospital of horrors.” She is denied any meaningful contact with her family and is unlikely to see her children again.

Whilst the two elder children were released in 2008 and 2010 respectively, the whereabouts of her youngest child, Suleman — only six months old at the time of the abduction — remain unknown, although it is believed that he may have been killed art the time of her initial capture. Most recently, disturbing reports have emerged that her health is deteriorating and there are serious concerns that she may have cancer.

To request Aafia Siddiqui’s repatriation to Pakistan, please contact the following officials in the US and Pakistani governments:

Eric Holder: Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001, Tel: +1 202 353 1555, Email: AskDoJ@usdoj.gov

Hilary Clinton: Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State, 2201 C Street, N.W. Washington DC 20520, Tel: +1 202 647 4000, Fax: +1 202 261 8577, Email: questions@friendsofhillary.com

Mr. Asif Ali Zardari: President of Pakistan, President’s Secretariat, Islamabad, PAKISTAN, Tel 92 51 920 4801/921 4171, Fax 92 51 920 7458, Email: publicmail@president.gov.pk

Mr. Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani: Prime Minister of Pakistan, Prime Minister House, Islamabad, PAKISTAN, Fax: + 92 51 922 1596, Email: secretary@cabinet.gov.pk

Mr. Rehman Malik: Minister of Interior, Room No. 404, 4th Floor, R Block, Pak Secretariat, Islamabad, PAKISTAN, Tel: +92 51 921 2026, Fax: +92 51 920 2624, E-mail: minister@interior.gov.pk, ministry.interior@gmail.com, interior.complaintcell@gmail.com

Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi: Foreign Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Islamabad, Pakistan, Tel: +92 51 921 0335, Fax: +92 51 920 7600, Email: smhq148@hotmail.com

You can also write to Aafia:

Aafia Siddiqui # 90279-054
FMC Carswell
Federal Medical Center
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
U.S.A.

And to send a message of support to her family, email: support@justiceforaafia.org

March 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Engaging Gilad Atzmon

Click here to view part I

Click here to view Part II

Click here to view Part III

Click here to view Part IV

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Israeli-born Gilad Atzmon, one of Europe’s finest jazz musicians, was in Washington, DC for the first time at the end of a multi-city North American grassroots tour to discuss his recently published and highly controversial book, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics.

On March 14, Atzmon was interviewed by Prof. Norton Mezvinsky, Connecticut State University Professor of History Emeritus, at Washington’s Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. The previous day a letter signed by 23 Palestinian activists called for “the disavowal of the racism and anti-Semitism of Gilad Atzmon.”

Watch the video of the Atzmon addressing the charges frequently levied against him. Decide for yourself—should Atzmon continue his frank discussion of Jewish identity or should his voice be silenced?

The Washington Report believes that no writer or thinker should be shunned in the United States—or anywhere—and we stand by our decision to host his DC events.

March 27, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Sarkozy bans Muslim cleric from visiting France

Al Akhbar | March 26, 2012

President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday that influential Qatar-based Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi was not welcome in France, adding to concerns that the French leader is fueling Islamophobia.

Egyptian-born Qaradawi, 86, has been invited to visit next month by the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF).

“I told the emir of Qatar himself that this gentleman was not welcome in the territory of the French Republic,” Sarkozy told France Info radio.

Qaradawi, who hosts a popular show on Al-Jazeera satellite television, backed Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and has launched a fund-raising effort for the Syrian opposition.

He had been due to attend the UOIF congress at Le Bourget near Paris on April 6 alongside renowned Egyptian preacher Mahmoud al-Masri.

“I said that a certain number of people, who have been invited to this congress and who maintain or who would like to take positions that are incompatible with the republican ideal, would not be welcome,” Sarkozy said.

Qaradawi, who has close ties with the leadership of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, left the country in the 1960s after being imprisoned by the regime of president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

He is accused of having made homophobic statements and was banned from entering Britain in 2008. He has been banned from entering the United States since 1999.

Sarkozy has fanned right-wing discourse ahead of French presidential elections this year in an attempt to win conservative voters wary of immigration and France’s large Muslim population.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan recently accused the French leader of inciting racism and Islamophobia in a bid to get re-elected.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

March 26, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

French President Sarkozy Sees Opportunity for Censorship, Seizes It

By Jillian C. York | EFF | March 22, 2012

In the wake of a horrific rampage, in which Mohamed Merah (now dead after a 32-hour standoff with police) reportedly murdered three French soldiers, three young Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has begun calling for criminal penalties for citizens who visit web sites that advocate for terror or hate.  “From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished,” Sarkozy was reported as saying.

Apart from the obvious flaws in Sarkozy’s plan–users, can, of course, use anonymizing tools to view the material or simply access it from a variety of locations to avoid appearing as “habitual” viewers–there are numerous other reasons to be concerned about criminalizing access to information.

First, there’s no guarantee that criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism.  Extremist violence didn’t start with the Internet and it won’t end with it, either.

Second, who defines “hate speech”?  In France, that definition includes Holocaust denial, which in the past resulted in Yahoo! discontinuing auctions of Nazi memoribilia (the collectors of which are not, by any stretch, all sympathizers).  And negative comments about France’s Muslim community have also resulted in criminal penalties, most notably in the case of actress Brigitte Bardot, who has been convicted five times for “inciting racial hatred.”  While Holocaust denial and comments about Muslims such as those made by Bardot may be deplorable, they should not be criminal.

Finally, while Sarkozy is not–yet–calling for websites to be blocked, it wouldn’t be a stretch; after all, France already offers mechanisms for blocking child pornography and “incitement to terrorism and racial hatred.” If Sarkozy were to decide censorship is the answer, one major risk would be overblocking: there’s nary a country in the world that censors the Internet without collateral damage (in Australia, for example, testing on a would-be censorship regime found the site of a dentist blocked, among others).

EFF has serious concerns about the implications of Sarkozy’s comments.  When a democratic country such as France decides to censor or criminalize speech, it is not just the French that suffer, but the world, as authoritarian regimes are given easy justification for their own censorship.  We urge French authorities to judge crime on action, not expression.

March 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US public radio journalist fired after calling Israeli occupation ‘brutal’

Al Akhbar | March 22, 2012

A veteran American journalist has been fired after referring to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land as “brutal.”

Sunni Khalid, managing news editor at WYPR-FM in Baltimore, was dropped by the public radio station on Thursday after more than nine years on the job.

He had been on probation following criticism of comments he made on Facebook about Israel’s continued illegal occupation of Palestine.

“I, for one, have had enough of this pandering before the Israeli regime,” he wrote.

“The war-mongering toward Iran has, once again, distracted the world from Israel’s brutal military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.”

Khalid, who previously worked for National Public Radio, has also written for Time Magazine, The Washington Times, and USA Today.

Israel maintains economic control over Gaza and the West Bank, with devastating consequences for the Palestinian civilian population.

Rights groups including Amnesty International have repeatedly condemned rights abuses against Palestinians.

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

NSA Chief Appears to Deny Ability to Warrantlessly Wiretap Despite Evidence

By Trevor Timm | EFF | March 21, 2012

The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says. — Wired Magazine, April 2012

Last week, in Wired Magazine, noted author James Bamford reported on an expansive $2 billion “data center” being built by the NSA in Utah that will house an almost unimaginable amount of data on its servers, along with the world’s fastest supercomputers. Part of the purpose of this new center, according to Bamford, is to store “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’”

In the Wired article, Bamford interviewed former NSA official William Binney, a “crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network.” Binney further shed light on the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, first exposed by the New York Times in 2005 and the subject of EFF’s long running suit Jewel v. NSA, which challenges the constitutionality of the NSA’s program.

The NSA claims it only has access to emails and phone calls of non-U.S. citizens overseas, but Binney provides more detail to the many previous reports by the New York Times, USA Today, New Yorker, and many more that the program indeed targets US based email records. In the 11 years since 9/11, Binney estimates 15 to 20 trillion “transactions” have been collected and stored by the NSA. From the Wired article:

He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation’s cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says. “That’s not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.”

The Director of NSA, General Keith Alexander, testified at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) grilled him on the details of the Wired story. He appeared to deny the main points of the article, including that the NSA was intercepting emails, phone calls, Google searches, and phone records of individuals in the United States—as well as the technical capabilities of the program’s software described by Binney. But perhaps more strangely, Alexander also seemed to claim the NSA did not have the technical ability to collect Americans’ emails and Internet traffic even if it weren’t required to get a warrant:

Gen. Alexander: In the United States we’d have to go through the FBI process, a warrant to get that and serve it to somebody to actually get it.

Rep. Johnson: But you do have the capability of doing it?

Gen. Alexander: Not in the United States.

Rep. Johnson: Not without a warrant?

Gen. Alexander: We don’t have the technical insights in the United States, in other words, you have to have something to intercept or some way of doing that. Either by going to a service provider with a warrant, or you have to be collecting in that area. We’re not authorized to collect, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information. (emphasis ours)

In our lawsuits, EFF has provided evidence that the NSA operated a monitoring center out of AT&T’s switching facility in San Francisco that has the ability to do exactly what Gen. Alexander says the NSA can’t.  In light of all the evidence, it is hard to take comfort from Gen. Alexander’s apparent denial.  In previous discussions of the warrantless wiretapping program, the government has used crabbed and unusual definitions of words to make misleading statements that also seem like denials but turn out to be largely word games.

In one prominent example, then Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden said in a 2006 statement: “Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations…”  Later, when confronted with evidence of a wider drift net program during his confirmation hearing, he explained “I pointedly and consciously downshifted the language I was using. When I was talking about a drift net over Lackawanna or Freemont or other cities, I switched from the word ‘communications’ to the much more specific and unarguably accurate ‘conversation.’”

Notably, the NSA’s interpretation of what it means to “collect” communications seems to be quite limited.  Under Department of Defense regulations, information is considered to be “collected” only after it has been “received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component,” and “[d]ata acquired by electronic means is ‘collected’ only when it has been processed into intelligible form[,]”  So, under this definition, if the communications of millions of ordinary Americans were gathered and stored indefinitely in Utah, it would not be “collected” until the NSA “officially accepts, in some manner, such information for use within that component.”

The illegality of warrantless wiretapping, however, does not depend on when the NSA officially accepts the information or processes it into intelligible form (whatever that means).  Americans’ privacy and constitutional protections do and should not hinge on word games.  We are looking forward to establishing, in the Jewel v. NSA case, a simpler proposition: that the government can’t spy on anyone, much less everyone, without a warrant.

~

on March 23, 2012

Recently a report by Wired magazine revealed the details of a spy center in Bluffdale, Utah. It says that the National Security Agency has turned its surveilance apparatus on the US and its citizens, including phone calls and emails. This week the NSA chief testified to Congress and took questions about his agency’s ability – both legally and physically – to spy on US citizens and denied that this is happening. Trevor Timm, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes otherwise – he brings his take on the issue.

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

Even After Supreme Court GPS Decision, Feds Still Want Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking

By Sarah Roberts | Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | March 19, 2012

Even after January’s landmark Supreme Court decision cast significant doubt on the government’s ability to electronically track a person’s location without a warrant, the Justice Department continues to defend this practice. On Friday, the ACLU, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing that the government should be required to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before seizing 60 days’ worth of location information generated by an individual’s cell phone.

The appeal by the government comes after a federal district court judge in Texas held that the constitution does indeed require a warrant for such information. As long as a cell phone is turned on, it automatically registers its estimated location with the nearest cell towers as frequently as every seven seconds. This means that every person who uses a cell phone is creating a vast record of personal information, from doctors’ visits to church attendance to visits to friends’ homes.

In our brief, we urge the court to hold that the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant and demonstrate probable cause before obtaining cell phone location data. Most people are unaware that their every movement can be tracked through their phones, and we maintain an expectation that such information will remain private. Cell phone location data, especially data collected over a prolonged period of time, is simply too sensitive to allow the government access without proving to a judge that there’s good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of a crime.

This is the first time in years that a higher court will consider the constitutionality of this issue. By refusing to appeal lower-court decisions where a judge required a warrant, the government has avoided allowing appeals courts to make a ruling.

Unfortunately, the government believes that most people know that their cell phones are generating a near-constant record of their locations and movements, and it argues that individuals cannot reasonably expect that this information will remain private.

The government is wrong. We shouldn’t have to choose between using the modern technology that society has come to rely upon and being able to expect that our private information will remain private. Instead, our brief encourages the court to recognize that when we take our cell phone to the gym or to a political rally, we certainly don’t intend for the government to be following along.

March 20, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US builds world biggest spy center

Press TV – March 19, 2012

The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is building the biggest spy center for intercepting and storing electronic communications collected from all over the world and American citizens.

A new report published by the monthly magazine Wired, said that the centre located in Bluffdale, a remote valley in the state of Utah, can process yottabytes (a million billions of gigabytes) of data.

The facility of USD 2 billion is designed to “intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications including the contents of telephone calls, private e-mails, mobile phone text messages and Internet searches.

According to the report, the facility is “the most covert and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever,” and it will use 65 megawatts of electricity a year, with an annual bill of USD 40 million.

The spy center intercepts commutation signals as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.

Using what will likely be the world’s fastest super computer, the NSA can gather data through ‘dumb’ home appliances such as refrigerators, ovens and lighting systems which are connected to the Internet.

The facility is to provide technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), collect intelligence on cyber threats and carry out cyber-security objectives, reported Reuters.

March 19, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel bars Palestinian MP from going to Geneva to attend UN conference

Palestine Information Center – 19/03/2012

RAMALLAH — The Israeli occupation authority and its forces refused on Sunday to allow Hamas lawmaker Ibrahim Dahbour to travel abroad.

MP Dahbour was on his way to Geneva to join a Palestinian parliamentary delegation invited by the international network for rights and development to participate in a conference, sponsored by the UN human rights council, on Israel’s violations against Palestinian lawmakers.

The lawmaker told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that Israeli soldiers at Al-Karama crossing informed him that he was banned from travel for security reasons.

It was not the first time he was banned from traveling outside the occupied Palestinian territories, the MP affirmed. He added that Israel does not want the Palestinian lawmakers to be in contact with the international community and have the chance to explain and rally support for their national cause.

March 19, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

California Scholars Say UC President’s Israel Bias Impacts Academic Freedom

CNI | March 12, 2012

Mark Yudof, President of the University of California, helped the ADL, one of whose primary activities is to advocate for Israel, raise $700,000 at its 2010 fundraising dinner at the Beverly Hilton. Yudof called the ADL "a light of the Diaspora." (L-R) UC President Mark Yudof; ADL Regional Director Amanda Susskind; Jurisprudence Award .honoree Arthur N. Greenberg and his wife, Audrey; Humanitarian Award honorees Ardyth and Samuel Freshman; and ADL Regional Board Chair Nicole Mutchnik

Mark Yudof, President of the University of California, helped the ADL, one of whose primary activities is to advocate for Israel, raise $700,000 at its 2010 fundraising dinner at the Beverly Hilton. Yudof called the ADL “a light of the Diaspora.” (L-R) UC President Mark Yudof; ADL Regional Director Amanda Susskind; Jurisprudence Award .honoree Arthur N. Greenberg and his wife, Audrey; Humanitarian Award honorees Ardyth and Samuel Freshman; and ADL Regional Board Chair Nicole Mutchnik

A group of 150 scholars at twenty California institutions of higher learning, are concerned about the latest statements and actions of UC President Mark Yudof.  The group, known as California Scholars for Academic Freedom (CS4AF), believes that under the guise of promoting “civility and tolerance,” Yudof has in fact delivered a blow to the right to dissent and protest.

CS4AF Statement:

Our concerns are twofold: an apparent bias regarding the right of free speech and dissent on UC campuses, and a stated reliance on advice from two organizations that lack credible experience in dealing with academic freedom.

In a March 8 letter addressed to the UC community, President Yudof presented a one-sided argument about the problem of intolerance by focusing exclusively on protests against speakers who represent the Israeli government or whose presentations endorse the manner in which Israel maintains its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

In his letter, President Yudof treats characterizes the disruption of speeches at a UC Davis event titled “Israeli Soldiers Speak Out” as “hate-driven… attacks.”  In so characterizing the event, he appears to have relied on a letter from the AMCHAI Intiative and made no further effort to determine the facts of the case.

At this February 27 event, which featured two members of the Israeli Defense Forces, there were two protests: an organized, peaceful protest by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and a sustained outburst by a university employee not associated with the group. The SJP protest was organized with the support of members of Jewish Voices for Peace and MECHA. According to UC Davis faculty who were present, this protest “did not disrupt the event, nor did any members of this diverse coalition interrupt the speakers.” Rather, the protesters carried out “a silent walkout” followed by “a small, peaceful discussion outside the building where they discussed the realities of life under occupation.” Yudof’s letter nevertheless characterizes all the protests as “verbal attacks.” It then compares them to hate crimes such as drawing swastikas on the doors of Jewish students, hanging nooses to intimidate African American Students, and spray-painting profanities across the entrance to the LGBT Resource Center at UC Davis.

We find this comparison appalling. Israel is a nation-state, not an ethnic or religious group, and protests against the policies of a government are entirely distinct from hate crimes.  We believe that this criminalization of protest does a disservice to the entire UC community.

To persuade us that he seeks to foster toleration for everyone, the President might have condemned the documented instances of harassment and intimidation practiced by Stand With Us, including attacking bystanders with pepper spray and brandishing stun guns at UC Berkeley on February 25.  He might also have condemned the monitoring of UC faculty by organizations such as Campus Watch.  In one incident, a “monitor” fabricated a quote in order to depict UCLA professor Susan Slyomovics, the descendant of Auschwitz survivors, as a Holocaust denier – a podcast of the event refutes his claims.  No member of the UC administration has ever responded to such outrages with calls for tolerance and respectful coexistence.

An equally disturbing element of Yudof’s letter is his announcement that his office is “working with the Museum of Tolerance and the Anti-Defamation League to improve campus climate for all students and to take full advantage of our marvelous diversity.” The choice of these—and only these–particular entities amounts to taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and related issues. By leaving out groups working on behalf of Palestinian human rights or human rights in general, but collaborating only with organizations whose mandates are devoted to supporting Israeli governmental interests and squelching criticism of Israeli policies in all public domains, including university campuses, President Yudof is in effect advocating for one party rather than promoting tolerance across the board.

Moreover, the selection of these two organizations is problematic regardless of whether other organizations are also to be involved. The Anti-Defamation League has led numerous campaigns to defame and harass academics and others who criticize Israeli policies. The League has been sued and lost several cases involving spying and harassment. For example, in 2011, it was ordered to pay $10 million in damages to William and Dorothy Quigley for libelously characterizing them as anti-Semites. The Museum of Tolerance, whose mandate focuses on public education about the Holocaust, has been implicated in the destruction of a Palestinian cemetery in Jerusalem in order to construct a park featuring a monument to Zionism. Neither of these organizations is qualified to offer advice on academic freedom or freedom of speech at public universities, and it is our position that neither of them should be relied upon by the UC or involved in efforts to pursue the worthy goal of promoting tolerance.

The president of the University of California, the second largest university system in the United States, should speak for all his students, faculty and staff, not only for those whose political affiliations he may happen to support.  According to the Jewish Journal, the President recently “met with all of the UC Hillel directors in his office in Oakland to discuss our observations regarding how Israel is faring on campus, how the Jewish community perceives the university’s actions and inactions, and, most important, how Jewish students are feeling about the situation.”  As far as we know, he has made no comparable initiative to determine how Palestine is faring on campus, how the human rights community perceives the university’s actions and inactions, and, most important, how Palestinian or other concerned students, of any race, creed, or color are feeling about the situation.

It should not be necessary to explain that one can protest the actions of a government without committing a hate crime, and that reliance on partisan organizations is unlikely to “improve campus climate.”  We applaud and endorse any initiative “to foster a climate of tolerance, civility and open-mindedness,” but we do not believe that criminalizing dissent can ever serve that purpose

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Photo from 2010 Jewish Journal article Milken family recognizes Jewish educators, YULA rides, ADL honors

March 15, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment