Israel Gets Away with Murder .. Again
Not all Israeli assassinations are clandestine operations
By Tammy Obeidallah | February 11, 2010
Amid the glamour of the world’s tallest building, gold bars, man-made islands, casinos and fashion, a man lay dead in his hotel room. Preliminary reports would say he had been suffocated with a pillow; further investigation would determine that he was injected with poison.
Post-mortem photos of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, age 50, told a story the media would not tell: the tip of his nose blackened, red blotches covering his cheeks and jaw and a horrific indentation on one side of his nose testified of torture and a cruel execution.
Most news sources subliminally justified Al-Mabhouh’s murder in Dubai on January 20. He was described only as a “senior Hamas militant,” “founding member of Hamas’ military wing” or even “arch-terrorist.” As someone who was allegedly involved in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers in the 1980s and committed numerous other acts of armed resistance against Israel, he was undoubtedly a menace by western standards.
Al-Mabhouh grew up in the squalor of Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, but had lived in exile in Syria since 1989. He had been the target of two previous assassination attempts: a car bombing and a poisoning. The latter took place in Beirut only six months ago and rendered him unconscious for 30 hours.
The Israeli government issued a statement claiming Al-Mabhouh had traveled to Dubai en route to Iran in order to smuggle weapons back to his native Gaza. Israeli defense officials told the Associated Press that these rockets would be capable of reaching Tel Aviv 40 miles away. Evidently, there have been some major technological advances since Israel’s assault on Gaza last year, as retaliatory rockets fired from Gaza ranged only 25 miles.
While Israel has not officially acknowledged involvement in Al-Mabhouh’s murder, Israeli news agency Inyan Merkazi reported that a four-member squad of Shin Bet and Mossad agents interrogated Al-Mabhouh before executing him.
Whitewashed by western media as “extra-judicial assassinations” or “targeted assassinations,” such acts are tantamount to premeditated murder against anyone suspected of resistance against Israel’s 62-year occupation of Palestine. Al-Mabhouh’s death is the latest of numerous executions carried out by the Mossad and other Israeli government agencies throughout the Jewish State’s existence.
In 1972, the Mossad began a series of assassinations in what was supposed to be retribution for the deaths of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. Thirty-five suspects believed to have been involved in the attack were systematically ambushed throughout Europe and Lebanon. Many had ambiguous ties at best to the Munich operation and in a case of mistaken identity Ahmed Bouchiki, a young Moroccan waiter, was gunned down in Norway. Throughout this and other operations, the Mossad used false passports without the issuing government’s knowledge or approval in what has become a trademark of that organization’s modus operandi.
In 1997, Mossad agents traveled with Canadian passports to Amman, Jordan in a botched attempt on the life of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. In 2004, New Zealand jailed two Mossad agents for six months and imposed diplomatic sanctions against Israel after the pair illegally applied for passports in that country. Authorities in Dubai investigating the murder of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh have confirmed that his killers are traveling on Irish passports.
However, not all Israeli assassinations are clandestine operations.
Fateh co-founder Khalil al-Wazir, known as Abu Jihad, was killed in 1998 at his home in Tunis in front of his family. The 2004 Israeli airstrikes that killed Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin and subsequently his replacement, Abdelaziz Al-Rantissi also killed Rantissi’s son, his bodyguard and eleven bystanders, including a five year-old child.
Not only are the leaders of armed resistance in the crosshairs of Israeli assassins, but political activists who speak out against the occupation of Palestine as well. Cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, whose brutally honest body of work earned him many powerful enemies, was murdered in cold blood in London on the way to his office. Although Al-Ali was critical of Arab governments and the corruption present in the hierarchy of Palestinian resistance groups, a preponderance of evidence points directly to the Mossad being responsible for his death.
Ten months after Al-Ali was killed, Scotland Yard arrested a student named Ismail Suwan, who turned out to be a Mossad agent. Suwan confessed that his superiors knew of the plot to kill Al-Ali. Upon refusing to cooperate further, Great Britain expelled two Israeli diplomats and closed the Mossad’s London base. Despite all this, no one was ever brought to justice for the crime.
In March 2003, a 23 year-old American college student named Rachel Corrie was killed by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier while trying to prevent a home demolition in the Gaza Strip. It was learned through Corrie’s own writings that activists with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) had come under fire in the weeks prior to her death while trying to retrieve the body of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces. She told also of how the camp’s water wells were being destroyed by the Israeli military and that members of ISM had slept in front of the wells to deter the attacks.
Clearly the group’s activities were a source of consternation to the Israelis, one of whom took the opportunity to murder a young woman on a clear day in the Rafah refugee camp. Claiming Corrie’s death was “accidental,” he was never punished.
Many have paid the ultimate price for challenging the Israeli juggernaut, no matter what form that challenge has taken. Many individuals who never picked up a weapon have been targeted by the Jewish State. And if Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was attempting to procure weapons, he was simply guilty of trying to help his people defend themselves against Israeli aggression. Only when the western-dominated court of world opinion is no longer content to let Israel act as judge, jury and executioner, will there be justice for occupied Palestine and all the people who met untimely and brutal deaths in her defense.
Increase In Attacks on Reporters in West Bank
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – February 11, 2010
Palestinian reporters, either working for local or international agencies, were repeatedly subjected to attacks by the Israeli army, but recently such attacks witnessed a sharp increase leading to injuries, damage to equipment, and to preventing them from performing their duty.
Two of the reporters, Ata Oweisat and Mahmoud Oleyyan, work for the al Quds newspaper.
Another wounded journalist, Ahmad Gharabely, works for the French Press Agency.
Diala Jweihan, a reporter and camerawoman working for Al Quds Net was hit in her back by a concussion grenade, she lost consciousness and was transported to al Maqassed Hospital in Jerusalem. She was reportedly burned across her back, upper legs and right arm.
CNN cameraman, Karim Khader, was hit by a rubber-coated bullet fired by the army.
Samir Abu Gharbiyya, a reporter working for al-Jazeera English, was hit in the head by a stone thrown by a Palestinian meant for an Israeli soldier.
Israeli soldiers are said to have made attempts to destroy the cameras possessed by the attacked journalists.
Several reporters were also subjected to repeated attacks by Israeli soldiers during invasions targeting Burin and Iraq-Burin village, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Soldiers violently attacked Ashraft Abu Shaweeh, Hasan Al Ateety, Abdul-Rahim Qosabny, Nidal Eshtiyya, Ala’ Badarna, Rami Sweidan, Ja’far Eshtiyya and Aref Tuffaha.
Another reporter, Nasser Eshtiyya, was hit by a stone thrown by a Palestinian during clashes with Israeli soldiers invading Dir Nitham village.
The Palestinian Journalists Forum condemned the Israeli treatment of reporters, citing the numerous ongoing violations of their rights.
The Palestinian Journalists Forum called upon the International Journalists Forum, human rights and legal groups to intervene and stop the violations and attacks against reporters.
Saudi Arabia moves to regulate net news
Saudi Arabia is planning to introduce regulations that include licensing internet news sites in a bid to bring them under government control
Carlyle Murphy | The National | February 08. 2010
RIYADH // Saudi Arabia is planning to introduce regulations, including a licensing requirement, for its indigenous internet news sites, which have become a key fixture in the kingdom’s active online community.
The draft regulations, still under study, would require internet-based news sites to request a government licence and to respond to complaints about their content that are received by the ministry of culture and information.
“We want them to feel that they are under our umbrella,” Abdul Rahman al Hazza, spokesman for the ministry, said in a phone interview yesterday.
Mr al Hazza referred to the new rules as “guidelines for the e-press”, and said the idea is to help the electronic media with staffing and financing and give them “somebody to talk to” if they have problems. “It’s going to be simple and easy.”
Asked if the new rules would involve censorship, Mr al Hazza replied: “Not that much.” Mainly, he added, if there are complaints about something written at an online news site, “we just look at it”.
A report last year in the Saudi Gazette said the draft regulations also cover “appointment conditions for editors-in-chief, granting permits to journalists, and invitations to cover news events”.
A 2007 law already subjects online writers to criminal penalties for such things as defamation.
The planned regulations, which Mr al Hazza said are still two to three months away from being finalised by the ministry, are an effort to bring online news sites such as Sabq, Alweeam and A’ajel under government control in much the same way that the country’s traditional daily newspapers are regulated.
It is not clear if news sites like Elaph.com, which is London-based but has a Riyadh office, would also have to get a licence.
Saudi newspapers are licensed by the government and can be temporarily stopped from publishing if they print something upsetting to a government official. But this has been rare in recent years, during which the Saudi print media has been encouraged to report more critically on social and economic problems. There is considerable self-censorship, however, as the media stay away from sensitive issues.
Although the draft regulations under consideration do not apply to bloggers, there are concerns that the government eventually will try to regulate them as well.
“They are not talking about blogs” right now, observed one veteran Saudi blogger, Ahmed Ba-Aboud. “But eventually they will get to us. It is a concern.”
Mr Ba-Aboud, 38, a management consultant in the kingdom’s Eastern Province city of Dhahran, said the government does not understand that online media are attracting readers because they are not controlled like traditional newspapers. “There’s no way I’d send anything I write to the government to censor it,” he said. “That’s not how the internet works.”
Ahmed al Omran, who blogs at http://www.saudijeans.org, was caustic about what he called the ministry’s “dumb idea to regulate so-called electronic media”.
“Ironically, some owners of news websites are actually pushing for this law,” Mr Omran lamented in a posting last month.
“They argue that it would make it easier for them to get funding and make money from advertising. What about their independence and freedom that could be threatened by the new law? Well, apparently these things are not high on their agenda.”
Saudi Arabia’s sprightly blogging community includes both Saudis and foreigners writing in both Arabic and English. It also boasts one of the region’s highest proportion of female bloggers – about 46 per cent, according to a 2009 study by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. About one-third of the kingdom’s population regularly goes online.
The community’s latest arrival showed up February 2, when Mr Ba-Aboud launched a new English-language blog so that outsiders can learn more about “regular people like myself”.
Most foreigners know certain kinds of Saudis, Mr Ba-Aboud said in an interview, including “extremists like Osama bin Laden”, “rich people” and “people related to the government”.
But the voice of ordinary Saudis “does not reach around the globe in a similar magnitude”, he wrote at the new site, http://alternativesaudivoices.wordpress.com.
It will be a sort of communal blog in that Mr Ba-Aboud has invited anyone to contribute a posting, and as co-ordinator, he will post them on the site. Only those that “call for hate or violence” will be rejected, he added.
In an interview last November, Mr al Hazza, the ministry spokesman, said the new regulations arose partly because ordinary citizens “don’t know where to go” to complain about something written at an online news site.
“The problem we have is that there is no government department to refer to … Nobody to evaluate their job to see if they are doing wrong or right.”
Censorship “is not the idea” behind the new rules, he said. “The idea is to regulate.”
Mr al Hazza said a decision will probably be made in the next couple of weeks about whether the new regulations shall be issued by the minister of culture and information, Abdel Aziz al Khoja, or be sent to the Shoura Council for action.
Meanwhile, anyone wanting to send Mr al Khoja a comment on the new rules can reach him at his personal page at Facebook
US frees Reuters photographer held for 17 months without charge
Ibrahim Jassam
BBC | February 10, 2010
American forces in Iraq have released an Iraqi freelance photographer held in detention for 17 months without charge. Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, who worked for Reuters, was arrested in September 2008 in a dawn raid on his home.
The US said the photographer was a “security threat”, but all evidence against him was classified secret. An Iraqi court had ruled in December 2008 that there was no case against him and that he must be released, but the US military refused.
“How can I describe my feelings? This is like being born again.” Mr Jassam told Reuters.
According to Reuters, the US accusations were based on his “activities with insurgents”.
“The term ‘insurgents’ in Iraq generally refers to Sunni Islamist groups, like al-Qaeda. Jassam is a Shia Muslim,” the news agency said.
The US military has detained a number of Iraqi journalists working for international news organisations, but none have been convicted. It has been criticised by press freedom organisations such as Reporters Without Borders.
Tel Aviv’s hydra-headed monster
It’s outrageous that in all probability Israel will once again be allowed to get away with committing murder on foreign soil while the world remains silent
By Linda Heard | Gulf News | February 9, 2010
- Government-sponsored Israeli murderers are professional and have decades of experience. It’s highly unlikely that they would leave behind them a trail of hard evidence that would stand up in an international court of law.
- Image Credit: NINO JOSE HEREDIA/Gulf News
It’s surely ironic that the country that complains loudest about terrorism has assassination squads travelling the world in search of prey. The murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room last month is believed to have been carried out by members of the Mossad allegedly using Irish passports. And the fact that the Israeli government has declined to comment other than to falsely claim that Al Mabhouh was in the emirate to meet with Iranian officials speaks volumes.
Dubai’s Police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim has warned that an international arrest warrant will be issued in the Israeli Prime Minister’s name if it is proved that the crime was perpetrated by an Israeli hit squad. That would certainly be a logical course of action but it’s easier said than done.
Government-sponsored Israeli murderers are professional and have decades of experience. It’s highly unlikely that they would leave behind them a trail of hard evidence that would stand up in an international court of law.
Moreover, even if Benjamin Netanyahu’s name were to appear on an international arrest warrant there would be very few countries, if any, willing to face Washington’s wrath by putting him behind bars.
Let’s be realistic. It’s just not going to happen! Britain, for instance, regularly tips off Israelis who are wanted for war crimes and is attempting to change its own laws to ensure Israelis are no longer vulnerable.
It’s outrageous that in all probability Israel will once again be allowed to get away with committing murder on foreign soil while the world stays silent. The reaction or rather non-reaction of the international community is unprincipled. It isn’t hard to imagine what an orchestrated outcry there would be if assassins backed by Arab governments were targeting prominent Israelis abroad. Every western television network would have rolling news and commentary centering on ‘Arab terrorists’, while US and European leaders would be issuing warnings and sending condolences.
There will be those who will say ‘good riddance’ upon hearing of the demise of a top Hamas lieutenant but I believe that anyone who takes that stance needs to check their moral compass. Whatever we feel about the victim should be neither here nor there.
Rogue state
Countries that equip assassins with foreign passports — usually acquired using devious means — to violate the sovereignty of a third nation should be censured in the United Nations and isolated. When a nation’s leaders behave like the Sopranos it deserves to be branded a rogue state.
Over the decades, the Mossad, the Shin Bet and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out dozens of targeted assassinations. Several leaders of Hamas, Fatah, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hezbollah have been killed along with the Egyptian nuclear scientist Yahya Al Mashad, who was murdered in a Paris hotel room in June 1980. By some estimates, the Mossad is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of nuclear scientists and is believed to have been behind the killing of Canadian ballistics expert Gerald Bull shot outside his Brussels apartment in March 1990 while working for Iraq.
The Mossad may be a well-honed killing machine but there are times when it makes mistakes. In 1973, Mossad agents using fake Canadian passports murdered a Moroccan waiter in Norway, whom they mistook for a Black September leader, and were arrested.
In 1997, Canada withdrew its ambassador from Israel after Israeli assassins were caught with Canadian passports in Jordan after a failed attempt on the life of Hamas leader Khalid Mesha’al. Then, in 2004, there was a diplomatic contretemps between Israel and New Zealand when Israelis working for Israeli intelligence fraudulently tried to obtain New Zealand passports.
Al Mabhouh’s killing may be stamped with the Mossad’s trademark but, in the end, the case is likely to be filed away marked ‘unsolved’. The slayers who flew out of Dubai within hours of doing the deed will be given new identities, new passports and new assignments.
Israel’s propagandists will attempt to pin the blame on Arab intelligence agencies and the rest of us will simply yawn and turn the page… until the next time this government-licensed hydra-headed monster strikes. The question is who will be next?
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited
By Declan McCullagh | February 5, 2010
WASHINGTON – CNET – The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.
The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.
Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI’s digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to “retain for a period of 18 months” records including “the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call.”
At Thursday’s meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.
“The question at least for the bureau has been about non-content transactional data to be preserved: transmission records, non-content records…addressing, routing, signaling of the communication,” Motta said. Director Mueller recognizes, he added “there’s going to be a balance of what industry can bear…He recommends origin and destination information for non-content data.”
Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which called for the “retention of customer subscriber information, and source and destination information for a minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be available to the law enforcement community.”
Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both practical and privacy objections.
“We’re not set up to keep URL information anywhere in the network,” said Drew Arena, Verizon’s vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance.
And, Arena added, “if you were do to deep packet inspection to see all the URLs, you would arguably violate the Wiretap Act.”
Another industry representative with knowledge of how Internet service providers work was unaware of any company keeping logs of what Web sites its customers visit.
If logs of Web sites visited began to be kept, they would be available only to local, state, and federal police with legal authorization such as a subpoena or search warrant.
What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain name such as cnet.com, a host name such as news.cnet.com, or the actual URL such as http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html.
While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd, which pioneered it inside the United States.
The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that required the logging of outbound URLs.
“Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged,” a staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of the FBI’s request was to identify visitors to two URLs, “to try to find out…who’s going to them.”
A Justice Department representative said the department does not have an official position on data retention.
Disclosure: The author of this story participated in the meeting of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, though after the law enforcement representatives spoke.
US Govt Can Kill Citizens Overseas as Part of ‘Defined Policy’
Director of National Intelligence Tells Congress Americans Can Be Killed
By Jason Ditz, February 03, 2010
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee today, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told representatives that American citizens can be assassinated by the US government when they are oveseas.
Blair said the comments were intended to “reassure” Americans that there was a “set of defined policy and legal procedures” in place and that such assassinations are always carried out by the book.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R – MI) inquired about the procedures involved, asking what the legal framework was under which Americans could be killed by the intelligence community.
Blair insisted that under no circumstances would Americans be assassinated overseas for criticizing the government, adding “we don’t target people for free speech.” Rather they are subject to assassination when the government decides they are a threat and when they “get specific permission.” Exactly who was giving that permission was unclear.
The question has been increasingly important as the Obama Administration attempts to help the Yemeni government assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who is not accused of any crimes by the US government. The administration maintains that secret evidence exists linking Awlaki to terrorism.
There seems to be a chilling lack of oversight in the procedure behind these killings, however, Blair’s assurances against politically motivated assassinations aside. The US has killed Americans in overseas attacks before, but only as “collateral damage.” It has never admitted to explicitly assassinating an American citizen before, though it seems that the policy is in place and such killings are only a matter of time.
Corporations are not people and money is not speech
By Supreet Minhas | Columbia Spectator | January 31, 2010
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned century-old restrictions on corporate spending in elections under the guise of protecting First Amendment free speech rights. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” This argument of the majority decision rests on the notions that corporations are covered by the same free speech protections as individual citizens and that campaign donations or financing are the same as speech.
Corporations, however, are inherently not the same as individuals and thus cannot have the same protections as individuals. There are a slew of laws that protect corporations and their interests in the arena for which they are by definition formed—namely the marketplace. The laws that govern corporations and the rights enjoyed by them are distinct from the laws and rights of individuals. A corporation, for example, can enter into contracts like an individual, but unlike an individual, a corporation’s members can be protected by limited liability so their personal assets are not at stake.
If a corporation, then, is a distinct legal entity governed by different laws than an individual is, corporations are not protected under the First Amendment in the same way that individuals are protected. Corporations, especially in their most powerful and wealthy incarnations, are exponentially more influential than most individuals in America. The restrictions on corporate spending in elections that were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court were meant to redress this power balance between average individuals and unduly influential businesses. Corporations already have a plethora of ways to influence politics, from political action committees to lobbyists on Capitol Hill. The framers of the Bill of Rights wanted to protect the voices of the trampled, not amplify the voices of the elite.
The other part of the Supreme Court’s premise for its decision is that the First Amendment free speech clause applies to campaign funding. While speech can be interpreted loosely as any form of expression, such an open, ambiguous definition would create a myriad of problems with all kinds of laws. An architect has a vision of a building: it is his art, his self expression, yet he cannot ignore local zoning laws that, for instance, restrict the height of his building. Should he sue the state for violation of his free speech, his right to expression? Equating money with speech also opens the door to sundry ludicrous claims by, for instance, an employer who objects to minimum wage laws since he’d like to express that his employees are only worth paying $3 an hour. There have to be restrictions on what constitutes speech to prevent a bastardization of the term and an overly liberal interpretation of the First Amendment.
A corporation already has the power to issue a statement in favor of a candidate or policy through its political action committees, and individual members of a business are welcome to contribute money as well. However, allowing a corporation to use its vast profits to directly finance the election or to remove a candidate compromises the democratic notion of a free and fair election. There are unseemly ties even now between politicians and various industries, but this new ruling would make such connections more robust and give them a veneer of legitimacy. A politician financed by a business would become completely beholden to its political agenda and not to the voters.
It’s not only the independence of politicians that’s at stake, but also the independence of our judges, who are at the very least expected to be impartial. Many states still use elections to appoint judges, which leaves them vulnerable to the influence of political spending. In a recent speech at a law school conference, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor worried about the impact of corporate campaign funding in judicial elections, saying that “judicial campaigning makes last week’s decision in Citizens United an increasing problem for maintaining an independent judiciary.”
Two cornerstones of our democracy—free elections and an independent judiciary—are threatened by the Supreme Court’s activist and meddling decision. The case could have been decided much more narrowly in favor of Citizens United, but instead, the majority of the justices decided to expand the case to champion the rights of big money over the interest of the American people. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (D-PA) introduced the Fair Elections Now Act last March. It would prohibit contributions from political action committees and would match individual donations, limited to $100, on a 4:1 basis so that fundraising focuses on the people. Such a system has been in place in New York City since the 1988 Campaign Finance Act. The rest of the country is long overdue to follow. Never before has the fight for public financing been more necessary.
The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science. She is a prospective law student.
Enemies Of Free Speech Call For Internet Licensing
Death of the web moves closer as UN calls for policing cyberspace
By Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones & Steve Watson | Prison Planet | February 1, 2010
Calls to introduce a licensing system to police the Internet on behalf of a powerful UN agency represent the latest salvo in a long-running battle to kill free speech on the web and bring an end to the powerful digital democracy that has devastated the carbon tax agenda of the UN by exposing the Climategate scandal.
UN International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure told the World Economic Forum in Davos this past weekend that global treaties need to be enacted in the name of stopping cyber warfare.
Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
“We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet,” he said.
“If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.”
Andre Kudelski, chairman of Kudelski Group, said that people should be forced to “have two computers that cannot connect and pass on viruses”. Since using the Internet requires a computer to connect to a network, it seems unclear as to how this would work without blocking off entire areas of the Internet altogether.
Globalists are invoking the threat of cyber attacks by nation states in order to accomplish their real agenda of stifling and regulating out of existence the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet. The establishment is furious at the level of influence individuals and small political groups have been able to wield by means of the world wide web, particularly over the last few years.
Climategate is a perfect example of the power of the digital democracy that authoritarian enemies of free speech want to crush. The Copenhagen global warming conference was completely devastated by the Climategate revelations which appeared just days before elitists convened to ram through their CO2 scam. As a result of bloggers feverishly pursuing the Climategate story, the entire foundation of the UN’s IPCC has been totally eviscerated and the global warming hoax is on its last legs.
The power to cripple entire branches of their control freak agenda within a matter of weeks has the globalists hopping mad, which is why their mission to eliminate real free speech on the web is accelerating.
“Don’t be surprised if it becomes reality in the near future,” writes ZD Net’s Doug Hanchard. “Every device connected to the Internet will have a permament license plate and without it, the network won’t allow you to log in.” … Full article
Argentina reveals secrets of ‘dirty war’
Buenos Aires, Jan 29 (IANS/EFE) Argentina has disclosed the secrets of the ‘dirty war’ waged against the left by the country’s military regime 1976-83.
The secret files of Battalion 601, described as the ‘brain’ that coordinated killings, kidnappings and other abuses, contains the identities of both military and civilian personnel who played a role in the repression.
The declassification of the documents began with an order from Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Jan 1.
The documents presented before the federal Judge Ariel Lijo for review contain data on 3,952 civilians and 345 army personnel who worked for Battalion 601, said Ramon Torres Molina, director of the National Archive of Memory.
The battalion’s civilian operatives included everyone from college professors to people who worked as porters, concierges and maintenance men at apartment buildings.
They were used to collect information and to infiltrate guerrilla groups and human rights organisations, with those assigned to infiltration duties given aliases with initials matching those of their real names.
The civilian agents were classified by grades corresponding to military ranks and the most proficient could aspire to the equivalent of colonel.
Torres, who refused to divulge any names until Judge Lijo finishes reviewing the documents, said the intelligence structure was created in the early 1970s and that it survived until 2000, when Battalion 601 was disbanded and its remaining 500 or so civilian operatives dismissed.
Some former commanders of the unit have died and others have been criminally charged, but many military and civilian veterans of the unit are at large, the archive director said.
The archive continues to thumb through more than 4 million digitised pages and thousands of dossiers in search of information about the crimes of a regime that left more than 30,000 ‘disappeared’.
Researcher: Israel destroyed Palestinian books
Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel’s establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says
Ynet | January 28, 2010
Israel plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the years after the State’s establishment, according to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher.
In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera’s website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian books in the framework of its plan to “Judaize the country” and cut off its Arab residents from their nation and culture.
According to the doctoral dissertation, Israeli authorities collected tens of thousands of Arab books in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Safed, and other towns that were home to Arabs. Israeli officials proceeded to hand out about half the books, while destroying the second half, characterizing them as a “security threat,” the researcher said.
In his al-Jazeera interview, the researcher claimed that, based on Israeli archives, IDF troops plundered the books from the homes of Palestinians expelled during the “Nakba” and handed them over to authorities. The State proceeded to establish a library in Jaffa and other towns for the books, he said.
‘Cultural massacre’
The researcher told al-Jazeera that according to documents he possesses, Israel destroyed 27,000 books in 1958, claiming that they were useless and threatened the State. Authorities sold the books, most of them textbooks, to a paper plant, he said.
“This was a cultural massacre undertaken in a manner that was worse than European colonialism, which safeguarded the items it stole in libraries and museums,” the researcher charged.
He added that some books were sold at discounted prices to Arab schools, while the others were transferred to the Hebrew University’s library in Jerusalem.
The researcher estimated that about 6,000 Palestinian books are currently available at the National Library at Hebrew University. However, he claimed that many other books in Arabic, English, and French were not recorded, charging that most of them are being held in the library’s warehouses and cannot be accessed.
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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