Guess Who Wants to Kill the Internet?
It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman. Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the “global war on terror” which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.
On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.
According to the bill he recently proposed in the Senate, the entire global internet is to be claimed as a “national asset” of the United States. If Congress passes the bill, the US President would be given the power to “kill” the internet in the event of a “national cyber-emergency.” Supporters of the legislation say this is necessary to prevent a “cyber 9/11” – yet another myth from the fearmongers who brought us tales of “Iraqi WMD” and “Iranian nukes.”
Lieberman’s concerns about the internet are not new. The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, released a report in 2008 titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” The report claimed that groups like al-Qaeda use the internet to indoctrinate and recruit members, and to communicate with each other.
Immediately after the report was published, Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of You Tube, to “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations.” That might sound like a reasonable request. However, as far as Lieberman is concerned, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are terrorist organizations.
It’s hardly surprising that Lieberman’s views on what constitute terrorism parallel those of Tel Aviv. As Mark Vogel, chairman of the largest pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) in the United States, once said: “Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions … is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman.”
Lieberman has been well-rewarded for his patriotism – to another country. In the past six years, he has been the Senate’s top recipient of political contributions from pro-Israel PACs with a staggering $1,226,956.
But what is it that bothers Lieberman so much about the internet? Could it be that it allows ordinary Americans access to facts which reveal exactly what kind of “friend” Israel has been to its overgenerous benefactor? Facts which they have been denied by the pro-Israel mainstream media.
How much faith would American voters have in the likes of Lieberman, who claims that the Jewish state is their greatest ally, if they knew that Israeli agents planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954 in an attempt to undermine relations between Nasser and the United States; that Israel murdered 34 American servicemen in a deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967; that Israeli espionage, most notably Jonathan Pollard’s spying, has done tremendous damage to American interests; that five Mossad agents were filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001; that Tel Aviv and its accomplices in Washington were the source of the false pre-war intelligence on Iraq; and about countless other examples of treachery?
In his latest attempt to censor the internet, does Lieberman really want to protect the American people from imaginary cyber-terrorists? Or is he just trying to protect his treasonous cronies from the American people?
Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as ‘domestic extremist’
By Paul Lewis and Rob Evans | The Guardian | 25 June 2010
For John Catt, protest has never been about chaining himself to a railing or blocking a road in an act of civil disobedience. The 85-year-old peace campaigner’s far milder form of dissent typically involves turning up at a demonstration with his daughter, Linda, taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene.
However this, it seems, has been enough for police to classify Catt and his 50-year-old daughter “domestic extremists”, put their personal information on a clandestine national database and record their political activities in minute detail.
Secret files have revealed how police have systematically documented their political activities, undermining official claims that only hardcore activists were placed under surveillance.
The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) recorded their presence at more than 80 lawful demonstrations over four years, logging details such as their appearance, and slogans on their T-shirts.
Catt and his daughter, from Brighton, were aware that surveillance teams were often in the vicinity during their protests, but they had no idea how closely they were being monitored until their files were released under the Data Protection Act
Police said they did not legally have to disclose them, but did so to show there was “nothing sinister in what we hold”.
The Catts, who have no criminal records, said they were “shocked and terrified” when they read their files. “Our activities were totally legitimate – we were not interested in non-violent direct action,” said Linda . “My dad likes to sketch and I will hold a banner and shout a few things. But I’m careful about what I say.”
They said the most worrying aspect was the seemingly banal information the surveillance officers had been logging, from observations about their demeanour and car number plates, to notes about their conversations with local reporters.
Amid the pages of detailed logs was an entry that noted how on the morning of 25 September 2005, John Catt was “clean shaven” when he attended a demonstration by Sussex Action for Peace. The Catts have been part of a long running campaign against an arms factory in Brighton, run by the American-owned EDO MBM Technology, over sales to Israel.
Since 2004, campaigners have mounted more or less weekly demonstrations outside the factory, in particular protests at which the activists bang drums and other objects to produce a cacophony.
Catt’s artistic endeavours received particular scrutiny. “John Catt sat on a folding chair by the southern most gate of EDO MBM and appeared to be sketching,” states one of several logs. “He was using his drawing pad to sketch a picture of the protest and police presence,” said another from 10 March 2006. A separate report, about his sketch of a Guantánamo Bay detainee, noted: “John Catt was very quiet and was holding a board with orange people on it.”
Last year, anti-EDO campaigners held a series of a “anti-war creativity” workshops with music, poetry and artwork. These included an exhibition of art by Catt and others, a fact recorded on the NPOIU database as “including … the classic drawings of John Catt, veteran anti-war activist”.
When the Guardian first revealed details about a police monitoring system that keeps tabs on political activists last year, police gave assurances they were not interested in everyday campaigners. They said surveillance was needed to monitor “domestic extremists” – a term that has no legal basis but is defined by police as activists who are determined to break the law to further their political aims.
Anton Setchell, who is national co-ordinator for domestic extremism for the Association of Chief Police Officers and is responsible for the NPOIU database, said most campaigners would never be considered domestic extremists.
However, information about the Catts has been transferred to the Police National Computer in Hendon and in July 2005, they were stopped by police under the Terrorism Act after driving into the east London to help a family member move house. They later discovered police had placed a marker against their car registration on the database, triggering an alert – “of interest to public order unit, Sussex police” – each time they drove beneath an automatic number plate reading camera.
The Catts said they were particularly shocked to discover that they had been tracked for two days in Manchester in 2008, during the Labour party conference, while their involvement in events only fleetingly connected to protest activity was recorded. “At 1020 hours … seen at Lobby point on Peter Street were two anti-war protesters from Brighton, John Catt and Linda Catt”, reads the entry.
Three times police noted Linda Catt had sat in the public gallery of Brighton magistrates court, to witness the trial of fellow campaigners for alleged breaches of public order law or local bylaws arising out of the EDO MBM protests.
The final entry on John and Linda Catt’s file was on 27 September last year, after the pair marched against New Labour. The record observed that the protest had been “organised by a number of trade unions”, adding: “Seen as part of the protest was John Catt and Linda Catt”.
When asked about the Catts today, Setchell said most of the protests against EDO had been “lawful … but some have been violent and disorderly, leading to a large number of arrests”.
Police had therefore monitored the demonstrations and “a small number” of lawful protesters, including the Catts, “will have their names recorded alongside others at protest events”. He accepted the Catts had not been responsible for the violent disorder.
Last year Setchell had said: “If it is just a street type of protest, or sitting in a field or something, I will probably never ever speak to those forces about it whatsoever. I deal with the more serious stuff, that requires slightly more sophisticated analysis and co-ordination and investigation, which doesn’t mean people sitting in roads or chaining themselves to a fence.”
A sample entry from police log of the Catts’ activity on the National Public Order Intelligence Unit database:
“At 16.24 hrs on Wednesday 24th of September 2008 a Silver Car was driven to Home Farm Road by Linda Catt,” said one entry on the UK-wide system that stores information about campaigners. The Catts were among protesters campaigning to close down a local arms factory owned by EDO MBM, a US-owned firm, over sales to Israel.
“John Catt was in the front passenger seat. Upon arrival the vehicle parked close to the footpath entrance and both occupants got out of the vehicle. John Catt removed a frame piece of art work from the rear of the vehicle and put it on display. The artwork was a cartoon sketch of the EDO MBM site with the following text: ‘EDO MBM Listed on the stock exchange’. During the demonstration Linda Catt and an individual had a discussion together away from the main group.”
Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter
BBC | June 25, 2010
A journalist working for a private newspaper has been shot dead in front of his house in the Rwandan capital.
Witnesses say Jean Leonard Rugambage, the acting editor of Umuvugizi newspaper, was fired on by two men who then fled in a car.
The authorities had recently suspended the paper, prompting it to start publishing online instead.
Police say they do not know who was behind the attack – the paper’s exiled chief editor has blamed the government.
‘South Africa shooting link’
Editor Jean Bosco Gasasira, who fled to Uganda in April after his paper was suspended, said Kigali had master-minded the assassination of Mr Rugambage who died in hospital after the shooting.
“I’m 100% sure it was the office of the national security services which shot him dead,” he told US state-funded radio Voice of America.
Mr Gasasira said it was because of an article published on the Umuvugizi website relating to the attempted killing last weekend of former army chief Lt Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa.
Rwanda has denied accusations it was behind the shooting of Lt Gen Nyamwasa.
He went into exile in South Africa earlier this year after falling out with President Paul Kagame, who he accused of corruption.
Mr Kagame denies these charges and his government accuses Lt Gen Nyamwasa of being behind grenade attacks in Rwanda earlier this year.
In April, Mr Kagame reshuffled the military leadership and two high-ranking officers were also suspended and put under house arrest.
Earlier in the month, Umuvugizi was suspended for six months by the press council for inciting opposition to the government.
Its website, launched in May, is not currently accessible through Rwandan internet providers; the authorities deny involvement in blocking it.
Mr Rugambage, who is survived by his wife and a child, was acquitted of genocide crimes by a local “gacaca” court in 2006.
The BBC’s Geoffrey Mutagoma in Kigali says his death has shocked many journalists in the country.
Presidential elections are due in Rwanda in August – the second such vote since the 1994 genocide.
Human rights groups have accused the Rwandan government of repressing independent media in the country, which Kigali denies.
Mr Kagame’s government argues that it must take care to control the media and politicians to avoid a repeat of the genocide, in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
Earlier this week, UN chief Ban Ki-moon appointed Mr Kagame to co-chair a committee of “superheroes to defeat poverty” – to push for progress in achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
He has been praised for trying to modernise Rwanda’s economy since coming to power at the end of the genocide.
IOF soldiers abduct daughter of businessman, serve demolition notice
Palestine Information Center – 26/06/2010
File Photo – IOF Home Invasion
TULKAREM — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have stormed the home of Palestinian businessman Ali Al-Dadu in Tulkarem city and kidnapped his daughter Yasmin after confiscating a number of personal computers in the house.
Local sources said that the IOF troops broke into the house before dawn Friday and thoroughly searched it, wreaking havoc in the process.
The IOF soldiers had detained Dia, Yasmin’s brother, a couple of days ago at the Karame crossing on returning from Jordan into the West Bank.
Dadu’s shop was burnt at the hands of Fatah elements after Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip more than three years ago and his losses were estimated at millions of dollars. The businessman and his sons were repeatedly detained by Fatah militias and the IOF soldiers since then.
Hebrew press had reported that the IOF soldiers rounded up six Palestinians on Friday in northern and southern areas of the West Bank including two brothers in Qabatia, Jenin district.
Meanwhile, IOF troops delivered a demolition notice to a citizen in the northern Jordan Valley on Friday following a series of similar demolition notifications in the area.
Local sources told the PIC that the IOF soldiers handed Ahmed Nawaja’a a written order not to live or be present in the area of his residence and asked him to evacuate his home within 24 hours.
Obama forgot vow of closing Gitmo?
Press TV – June 26, 2010
US President Barack Obama has sidelined efforts to close the Guantanamo prison, making it unlikely that he will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013, US senators say.
The White House acknowledged last year that Obama will miss his initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison and to eventually move the detainees to one in Illinois.
“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan.
He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.
And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who supports the plan to close the plan, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.”
He says some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis,” have stymied the plan, The New York Times reported.
Some senior officials say privately that the administration has done its part, including identifying the Illinois prison, and blame Congress for failing to execute that endgame.
But Levin says the US administration is unwilling to make a serious effort to exert its influence.
Last year, for example, the administration stood aside as lawmakers restricted the transfer of detainees into the United States except for prosecution. And its response was silence several weeks ago, Levin said, as the House and Senate Armed Services Committees voted to block money for renovating the Illinois prison to accommodate detainees, and to restrict transfers from Guantanamo to other countries — including, in the Senate version, a bar on Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. About 130 of the 181 detainees are from those countries.
“They are not really putting their shoulder to the wheel on this issue,” Levin said of White House officials.
A recent Pentagon study, obtained by The New York Times, shows US taxpayers spent more than $2 billion between 2002 and 2009 on the prison.
The US Administration officials believe taxpayers would save about $180 million a year in operating costs if Guantanamo detainees were held at Thomson, which they hope Congress will allow the Justice Department to buy from the State of Illinois at least for federal inmates.
Idiocy holds sway on the Supreme Court and inside the Obama administration
By Paul Woodward on June 25, 2010
It seems hard to fathom but the evidence is now overwhelming: if someone repeats the word “terrorist” often enough their brain will become functionally useless.
Consider the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday in support of the Obama administration’s sweeping definition of “material support” as applied to so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) — a designation applied by the State Department.
If an NGO such as the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) wants to train a group such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes, then the HLP risks criminal prosecution. Why? Such training could help legitimize the PKK and also free up resources that it can dedicate to its terrorist activities.
Solicitor General Elena Kagan (who is nominated to become a Supreme Court Justice) argued the case for the Obama administration.
Kay Guinane described the decision:
The Court ruled that even though pure speech is entitled to a high level of constitutional scrutiny, it would forgo such scrutiny and defer to Congress and the executive branch, which asserted unsupported, theoretical findings that support aimed at countering violence can somehow indirectly support violence. The Court’s reasoning was that the matter involves national security.
With its overly deferential approach, the Court failed to fulfill its responsibilities in the checks-and-balances system that keeps our democracy healthy. If it had looked behind the broad generalizations cited by the government, it would have seen there are no facts either in the Congressional Record or elsewhere that support the Congressional or State Department “findings.” And even if there are some circumstances where conflict mediation and human rights training can be co-opted to support violence, it is not inevitable that it will happen in all cases.
For an obvious example of the fault in the findings, one need look no further than the Good Friday Accords that brought a lasting peace to Northern Ireland for the first time in more than eight centuries. For years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had worked to bring violent factions of Catholics and Protestants to the bargaining table. Their work behind the scenes was instrumental in persuading those groups — “terrorists” in the eyes of most of their captive civilian populations, as well as the governments seeking to disarm them — to put down their weapons and negotiate a peaceful resolution to 850 years of violence.
If the “material support” law had been in place, as authorized by the Supreme Court today, those organizations would have been criminals. And the people of Northern Ireland would likely still be victims of sectarian violence that only a very few supported.
“Orwellian” doesn’t begin to describe a law that makes it a crime to promote peaceful conflict resolution.
If the administration actually intends to uphold the law in the way they argue it should be applied, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be expected to continue forever.
There is a rather broad consensus among foreign policy analysts in the US and Europe, that Hamas, a designated FTO, has far too much grassroots political support among ordinary Palestinians for the organization to be destroyed. Neither Israel’s war on Gaza nor it’s internationally supported siege of Gaza, succeeded in bringing the Islamist organization and democratically-elected government to its knees.
If the Obama administration wants to revive the Middle East peace process, sooner or later Hamas will have to be involved. It’s hard if not impossible to anticipate that those involved in the initial efforts to open dialogue with Hamas can avoid falling foul of the broad definition of “material support” that the Supreme Court has just upheld.
The Obama administration told the Supreme Court that the United States is engaged in an effort to “delegitimize and weaken” groups such as Hamas, yet it would behoove Washington and democratic governments everywhere to remember where political legitimacy springs from: not idiotic Supreme Court rulings, but the will of the people — and that includes the Palestinians.
Losing It at the Airport Checkpoint
TSA’s War on the Bill of Rights
By RALPH NADER | June 25, 2010
If you are planning to fly over the 4th of July holiday, be aware of your rights at airport security checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has mandated that passengers can opt out of going through a whole body scanning machine in favor of a physical pat down. Unfortunately, opting for the pat down requires passengers to be assertive since TSA screeners do not tell travelers about their right to refuse a scan. Harried passengers must spot the TSA signs posted at hectic security checkpoints to inform themselves of their rights before they move to a body scanning security line.
Since the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight by a passenger hiding explosives in his underwear, TSA has accelerated its program of deploying whole body scanning machines, including x-ray scanners, at airport security checkpoints throughout the United States. Scanning machines peak beneath passengers’ clothing looking for concealed weapons and explosives that can elude airport metal detectors. So far, TSA has placed 111 scanners at 32 airports. They expect to have 450 scanners deployed by the end of the year at an estimated cost of $170,000 each.
Privacy, civil rights and religious groups object to whole body scanning machines as uniquely intrusive. Naked images of passengers’ bodies are captured by these machines that can reveal very personal medical conditions such as prosthetics, colostomy bags and mastectomy scars. The TSA responded by setting the scanners to blur the facial features of travelers, placing TSA employees who view the images in a separate room and assuring the public that the images are deleted after initial viewing.
Yet, a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uncovered documents showing that the scanning machines’ procurement specifications include the ability to store, record and transfer revealing digital images of passengers. The specifications allow TSA to disable any privacy filters permitting the exporting of raw images, contrary to TSA assurances.
It begs logic that the TSA would not retain their ability to store images particularly in the event of a terrorist getting through the scan and later attacking an aircraft. One of the first searches by the TSA would be to review images taken by the scanners to identify the attacker.
The Amsterdam airport is using a less intrusive security device called “auto detection” scanning which generates stick figures instead of the real image of the person and avoids exposing passengers to radiation. Three United States Senators recently wrote to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano urging her to consider these devices.
More pointedly, security experts, such as Edward Luttwak from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have come forward questioning the effectiveness of whole body scanners since they can be defeated by hiding explosives in body cavities. The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, has stated that it is unclear whether scanners would have spotted the kind of explosives carried by the “Christmas Day” bomber.
About one-half of these body scanning machines use low dose x-rays to scan passengers. Last May, a group of esteemed scientists from the University of California, San Francisco wrote to John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, voicing their concerns about the rapid roll out of scanners without a rigorous safety review by an impartial panel of experts. The scientists caution that the TSA has miscalculated the radiation dose to the skin from scanners and that there is “good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.”
David Brenner, director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, has also voiced caution about x-raying millions of air travelers. He was a member of the government committee that set the safety guidelines for the x-ray scanners, and he now says he would not have signed onto the report had he known that TSA wanted to scan almost every air traveler.
Passenger complaints to TSA and newspaper accounts of passenger experiences with scanners contradict TSA assurances that checkpoint signs provide adequate notice to travelers about the scanning procedure and the pat down option. Travelers, who reported that they were not fully aware what the scanning procedure involved, said they were not made aware of alternative search options.
Many travelers complained about their privacy, and their families’ privacy, being invaded. Some were concerned about the radiation risk, particularly to pregnant women and children. Some travelers felt bullied by rude TSA screeners. The Wall Street Journal reported that one woman who refused to go through the body scanner was called “unpatriotic” by the TSA screener.
Expensive state-of-the-art security technology that poses potentially serious health risks to vulnerable passengers, invades privacy, and provides questionable security is neither smart nor safe. For the White House it is a political embarrassment waiting to happen.
President Obama should suspend the body scanning program and appoint an independent panel of experts to review the issues of privacy, health and effectiveness. After such a review, should the DHS and TSA still want to deploy body scanners at airports, they should initiate a public rulemaking, which they have refused thus far, so that the public can have their say in the matter.
If you experience any push-back from TSA screeners when you assert your right to refuse to go through a whole body scanner and request a pat down security search instead, please write to info@csrl.org.
Did the State Dept cave to pressure in denying flotilla activist entry to U.S.?
By Alex Kane on June 23, 2010
When a near-capacity crowd of New Yorkers sat down in their seats to hear testimonials on June 18 from survivors of Israel’s attack on an aid flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza, they expected to hear from three different activists. Instead, they only heard from two at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn.
Days after a June 14 press conference, called by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY), that demanded a State Department investigation into the visa applications of two of the three speakers, a former Turkish politician named Ahmet Faruk Unsal was not allowed into the United States.
The denial of entry to the politician who is also an activist with IHH, the humanitarian organization that was a main force behind the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, raises the question of whether the State Dept. caved to pressure from the JCRC-NY, an umbrella group of local Jewish organizations, and New York politicians who backed the JCRC’s call.
The press conference was attended by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Representatives Jerry Nadler, Anthony Weiner, Carolyn Mahoney, Charles Rangel and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. JCRC-NY gathered thousands of signatures on a petition that was delivered to the State Dept. The petition detailed the group’s allegations that IHH was linked to “terrorist” organizations.
JCRC-NY counts some influential Zionist groups as members of their organization, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith.
“It is the responsibility of our government to ensure that terrorists, and those who support terrorist activities, not be allowed to enter the United States,” said Nadler, who is known for his ardent support for Israel, at the press conference.
However, others have cast doubt on the accuracy of linking IHH to “terror” groups. IHH has worked recently in New Orleans and in Haiti at a time when the United States military took a leading role in directing relief efforts there. No government in the world considers IHH a “terrorist” organization other than Israel. Furthermore, according to Andy Pollack, an activist with Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the group that organized the Brooklyn event, Unsal’s visa was valid until 2011, and had been used to travel in the U.S. two times before he was denied. “But now all of a sudden he was told it was only a transient visa and no longer valid for US travel,” wrote Pollack in an email.
Marsha B. Cohen, an expert on the Middle East and a contributor to Inter Press Service’s Lobelog, detailed in an article on Mondoweiss how the evidence linking IHH to “terrorism” was dubious at best. And an “think tank with ties to Israel’s Defense Ministry, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center,” reports the Washington Post, has stated that there is “‘no known evidence of current links between IHH and ‘global jihad elements.’”
A State Dept. spokesperson reached by phone said she didn’t have any details on Unsal, and that decisions regarding individual visas are confidential.
Unsal, a former MP with the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey, was aboard the Mavi Marmara when the Israeli Navy raided the ship in international waters and opened fired on activists, killing 9 and injuring dozens. He was scheduled to speak along with filmmaker and activist Iara Lee, whose video of the attack aboard the Turkish ship was seen around the world, and Viva Palestina activist Kevin Ovenden.
”The JCRC was gratified to learn that IHH activist and former Turkish MP Ahmet Faruk Unsal was denied entry when he attempted to enter the United States,” Michael S. Miller, the CEO of JCRC-NY, said in a statement. “We have been advocating for an investigation of IHH and its members for their ties to terrorism and terror organizations and we hope that this level of scrutiny continues.”
You can decide for yourself: was the State Dept. cowed into not allowing Unsal to share his story?
Who Says We Can’t Criticize Israel?
By Peter Ewart | Palestine Chronicle | June 21, 2010
Like a postage stamp that has been licked too often, a word can lose its power and authority if it is used indiscriminately.
So it is with the word “terrorist” that is now routinely applied by governments all over the world to demonize and marginalize political opposition. And likewise with the word “anti-semitic” which is a label stuck on just about anyone who is not in total support of the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.
Indeed, Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, was given precisely that label after calling Israel an “apartheid state”.
Even South African Judge Richard Goldstone, himself Jewish, who led a UN authorized fact-finding mission into Israel’s invasion of Gaza last year has been called anti-semitic for his findings which have been labeled as “anti-Israel” by the Israeli government.
Closer to home, Canada, the aid organization Kairos had its funding cut off by the Harper government because of, the government alleges, its support for the boycott movement against Israel and its “anti-semitism”. Kairos is a joint venture of thirteen Canadian churches and church organizations, including Catholic, Anglican, Christian Reformed, Evangelical Lutheran, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Society of Friends, and United Church.
The latest public figure to get the “anti-semitic” label is NDP MP for East Vancouver, Libby Davies. She has had this pinned on her because she expressed support for the international campaign to boycott and sanction Israel for its blockade of Gaza, as well as suggesting that Israel has been “occupying” the land since 1948.
Prime Minister Harper has since called for Davies to resign as deputy NDP leader and Liberal Bob Rae has accused her of “hostility and ignorance”. Even some members of her own party, the NDP, have attacked her, with Thomas Mulcair NDP MP calling her comments “egregious” and out of step with her party.
It is quite interesting that, while the caucuses of the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are very quick to jump on Davies, they have made no criticism of the killings by Israeli commandoes of the nine people on the ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza by Israel.
It is also quite interesting that, as a 2007 BBC poll shows (see footnote 1), 52% of Canadians have a negative view towards Israel, while only 23% had a positive one. The question should be asked: Just who is out of step with who? Is it Libby Davies or is it the three federal parties in parliament who are out of step with the Canadian people?
Indeed, it is these same three federal political parties that have formed “The Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-semitism”, the members of which are claiming that criticizing Israel is a “new form” of anti-semitism. Dylan Penner, founding member of Independent Jewish Voices, believes that the ultimate objective of this Parliamentary Committee is “to introduce legislation that would make it a crime to criticize Israel”.
All of this raises serious questions about freedom of speech and right to conscience in Canada. Parliamentarians and Canadians themselves should have the right to criticize the policies and practices of any of the 190+ countries in the world as they see fit, and that includes Israel. If criticism of Israel is “off limits” and “illegal”, how soon before it becomes a crime to criticize the Canadian government itself?
In an interview, Libby Davies has also said that there are other federal MPs who do not approve of Israeli actions, such as the blockade of Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon, but who “are actually afraid to speak out.” According to her, this constitutes a new type of “McCarthyism” in Canada.
Why are they afraid to speak out? A number of analysts have commented about the strength of the Israel lobby in the U.S. and that members of Congress are afraid to criticize Israel for fear of being targeted by this well-financed lobby. Is that the case in Canada? More than a few believe that is also true (see footnote 2).
So what are the implications for politics in Canada if MPs are afraid to speak out because they fear reprisal from the lobbyists and supporters of a foreign government? For one thing, perhaps such MPs should not be in Parliament. If they are intimidated by these lobbyists, how can they be expected to stand up for their own constituents?
Secondly, rather than having a parliamentary committee examining and dissecting the beliefs of ordinary Canadians, maybe it’s time would be better spent looking at the power of lobbyists in Ottawa who lobby on behalf of foreign governments and who seek to make criticism of these governments off limits or even illegal.
Now that is a postage stamp that might just stick.
– Peter Ewart is a writer and columnist based in Prince George, British Columbia. This article was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca.
Notes:
(1) BBC World Service poll. March 6, 2007.
(2) Canada’s Israel Lobby. By Peyton Vaughan Lyon, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Carleton University
Police postpone CCTV scheme targeting British Muslims
By David Sapsted | The National | June 17. 2010
LONDON // The introduction of a network of more than 200 CCTV cameras giving blanket coverage of two predominantly Muslim areas of Birmingham is to be postponed after furious protests.
Muslim, civil rights and community groups were enraged after it emerged earlier this month that the cameras were not primarily for crime prevention and detection, but were paid for by the police for anti-terrorism surveillance.
It led to accusations that, because of the concentration of Muslim families in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook districts of the city, the police had stigmatised the area as a terrorist ghetto.
The Safer Birmingham Partnership, the joint city council/police organisation that installed the cameras, backed down yesterday after mounting protests and a parliamentary motion condemning the move, and announced that the 218 cameras would not be switched on in August as planned.
About 60 of the cameras are hidden in buildings or trees. Another 150 are on roadside poles and monitor every vehicle entering the two districts. When the cameras first started going up in April, the Safer Birmingham Partnership said it had received a £3 million (Dh16m) grant from the Home Office to improve community safety and reduce crime.
However, The Guardian newspaper revealed earlier this month that the cameras were actually financed through the Association of Chief Police Officers’ fund for terrorism. The stated objective of the fund is to finance projects that “deter or prevent terrorism or help to prosecute those responsible”. Amid mounting anger in the two communities, civil rights lawyers threatened legal action, Roger Godsiff, the Labour MP for the area, tabled a motion condemning the move as a “grave infringement of civil liberties” and, after several public meetings, a petition was started calling on Chris Sims, the chief constable of the West Midlands, to resign.
Mr Godsiff said yesterday: “I put down an early day motion in the House of Commons expressing my concern about the way it had been handled and saying that there should be proper public consultation before the cameras are activated.
“If that’s what the police have now decided to do, I applaud them for doing so.”
The total of 150 number plate recognition cameras in the two areas is more than three times the total in the rest of Birmingham, which has a population of just over a million, about 15 per cent of them Muslims.
Announcing the postponement of the switching on of the network pending consultation with the two communities, the Safer Birmingham Partnership said in a statement: “We apologise for these mistakes, which regrettably may have undermined public confidence in the police and the council.
“Although the counter terrorism unit was responsible for identifying and securing central government funds and has overseen the technical aspects of the installation, the camera sites were chosen on the basis of general crime data, not just counter-terrorism intelligence.”
However, city councillors, including the deputy leader of the council, Paul Tilsley, and Ayoub Khan, the councillor in charge of community safety programmes, said they had not been involved in the decision to install the cameras and that it had purely been in the hands of police.
Mr Khan yesterday welcomed the move to defer the deployment of the cameras and called on the police to physically cover them up to reassure residents that they were not being used, otherwise many residents “will not believe they are inactive”.
He said that the failure to consult earlier had left a bitter taste. “All communities felt offended by the manner in which number plate recognition cameras were placed, not just the Muslim community,” he told the Birmingham Mail. “I am not against [number plate recognition cameras] and CCTV technology. In many areas it is welcome because it creates a feeling of safety. Unfortunately, with this particular scheme it is obvious that the local communities were not consulted. I was never informed at any stage in relation to the intensity or the geographical coverage of such a system. Counter terrorism was mentioned at a meeting, but it was as a bolt-on extra not the main thrust.”
Tanveer Choudhry, a local councillor, said: “The area has been stigmatised as a terrorist ghetto. The police should remove the cameras until they have fully consulted with local communities.”
Mr Choudhry said that some in the community were sceptical about the belated consultation and that, eventually, the cameras would go live regardless of local opinion.
Birmingham is not regarded as one of the hotbeds of Muslim extremism in Britain, although five young men were convicted in 2008 of a plot to capture and behead a soldier to protest against the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan.
Steve Jolly, the organiser of a grassroots campaign against the cameras, said: “Birmingham is one of the most successfully integrated cities in the country. Coming together to oppose the scheme has united the Muslim community and what you might call the white, middle-class community. We’re speaking with one voice.”
The Lobby strikes back
By M. Idrees | Pulse Media | June 17, 2010
The American Jewish Committee has found an interesting way to describe the Freedom Flotilla. It calls it the the ‘Terror Flotilla‘. AJC is the foreign policy arm of the Israel lobby. At present it is busy establishing a proliferating network of front organizations in Brussels and Geneva to lobby the EU and UN. Among them is Coalition Against Terrorist Media, founded by its Israel lobby affiliated Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, which has been seeking to ban all Middle Easter channels deemed hostile to Israel. In the US the lobby (led by AIPAC and MEMRI) has rammed through HR 2278 to put legislative muscle behind this effort to narrow the parameters of acceptable opinion. It had successflly pressured the EU to ban Hizbullah’s al-Manar TV a few years back. Now it has pressured France to ban Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV, too. (Remember, this is the lobby that Noam Chomsky and Phyllis Bennis tell you is a distraction).
As you’ll see in the al-Jazeera report below, the dubious Reporters Without Borders has refused to condemn this suppression of free speech. The French claim the channel was banned because of its ‘incitement to violence and racial hatred’. They give as examples only some 3D stimulation which glorifies Palestinian resistance against Israel. RWB apparently concurs. The incitement to violence and racial hatred is all the while a staple of Fox News. But to the best of my knowledge it has never been banned. So of course this is political. I hope activists recognize that it isn’t enough to participate in symbolic action. The space for dissent is being progressively reduced (take for example the calls by various US politicians to ban flotilla activists entering the US). It is time to think and act strategically. It is time to challenge the lobby.
Here is our friend Safa from Press TV reporting from Gaza, followed by a rather lackluster report from Al Jazeera.
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Aaron Siri’s Book: Vaccines, Amen
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we’ve been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
And he does. … continue
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- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
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