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‘Vitoria!’ Mass protests force Brazil congress to reject ‘bill of discontent’

RT | June 26, 2013

Brazil’s legislative body has thrown out a proposed constitutional amendment, which was a key grievance of protesters across the country. The government is also planning to introduce a range of political reforms to appease demonstrators.

In what in being seen as a victory for people power, the measure was defeated on Tuesday by Congress by 430 votes to nine; with the Rio Times saying the protests were “largely fueled by social media and citizen journalists.”

The amendment, known as PEC 37, would have limited the power of state prosecutors to investigate crimes.

The protesters had argued that PEC 37 might have opened the way to more corruption; a problem which is endemic in Brazil.

Brazil ranks 69 out of 174 countries on the 2012 Transparency International index, a score that indicates significant problems with corruption.

The defeat of PEC 37 will keep public prosecutors at the forefront of the fight against corruption. If the amendment had become law, it would have granted power to carry out criminal investigations exclusively to the police.

Critics to the bill argued that it would have prevented prosecutors from conducting fair, impartial and effective criminal investigations, particularly into organized crime and corruption, in which the police themselves have been embroiled. In December last year 63 police officers were arrested after a yearlong bribery investigation.

The police in Brazil are amongst the most corrupt in the world and have been mired in recent years in a number of corruption scandals.

Congress also voted Tuesday to funnel all revenue and royalties from newly-discovered oil fields off the Brazilian coast into education and health.

The new fields are among the largest finds in recent years and, once fully operational, are expected to produce tens of billions of barrels of oil; although they are located deep on the ocean floor and extracting the oil will require expensive new technology and carries huge risks.

Protestors also voiced their anger at other issues, which they say the government is mishandling, including soaring levels of corruption, poor public services and the huge cost of staging the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, both to be held in Brazil.

The government, though, has promised a range of initiatives, which they say will combat corruption and improve public services.

A referendum proposing political reform is meant to address campaign financing and political representation, and the government says a vote may take place as soon as September 7.

A controversial plan to bring in foreign doctors to reverse a shortfall in the country is being pushed through despite the objections of Brazilian medical practitioners and an increase in public transport fares in many cities has also been scrapped. The President of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, has even proposed free transport for students.

Yet it is still unclear whether or not these hasty political concessions are having an impact. Protests are due to continue in the city of Belo Horizonte Wednesday, with tens of thousands of people expected to take part.

In a security nightmare for police, the demonstration will take place at the same time as the semifinal of the Confederation Cup between Brazil and Uruguay. One protest group has said it plans to protest outside the national team’s hotel.

Last Saturday there were violent clashes in Belo Horizonte during another protest and President Rousseff has warned against a repeat of violence.

June 27, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NGOs find loopholes in Foreign Agents’ Law, officials urge corrections

RT | June 13, 2013

Russian NGOs that receive funding from abroad have developed several methods that allow them to bypass the obligatory registration as ‘foreign agents’.

Currently the law obliges all NGOs engaged in political activities and receiving funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents”under threat of fines.

One possible option is to register an ordinary commercial company that would receive funds from abroad and employ NGO staff as workers to pay their salaries, Kommersant daily wrote quoting the head of a Russian NGO who spoke on the condition of total anonymity.

The source noted that about 15 Russian groups had already switched to this method.

Another possible loophole, suggested by the daily itself, is to set up an endowment that would properly register as a foreign agent and receive foreign funding which would then be transferred to one or several Russian groups, allowing them to skip the registration as they are formally sponsored by a Russian company.

The third way has been outlined in a recent report by the Civil Initiatives Committee, an influential expert group chaired by former finance minister Aleksey Kudrin, which said that under growing pressure Russian NGOs could re-register in neighboring states.

Some Russian officials already called for changes in the recently approved law, saying that the flaws of the original bill are being exposed as it is applied. Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, said that the practice was only showing one thing – that the law had been poorly written and that it was in need of corrections.

Fedotov added that the council had already prepared several suggestions on corrections, but he did not go into detail.

Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich has said that the law needs changes and called for activists to draft their amendments. But Dvorkovich added that the law is in force and must be observed by all members of the community until it is altered in the desired way.

Russia introduced the so-called Foreign Agents Law in November last year.

Prosecutors and the Justice Ministry launched a major nationwide program in March this year in order to check how the fresh law is being applied. The inspections caused protests from NGOs, rights activists and the international community, which claimed they were a form of government pressure on independent critics.

Russian officials, including the president, have repeatedly stated that the law is not banning any NGOs and simply requires disclosure of the sources of their income. Such transparency would give Russian citizens and voters some clues about possible motives of the groups’ political actions, the officials added.

Currently no organization is registered as a foreign agent in Russia.

June 14, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Germany slams US for ‘Stasi methods’ ahead of Obama visit

RT | June 12, 2013

Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program – revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower – are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security.

Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, a map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows.

German ministers are expressing their outrage over America’s sweeping intelligence-gathering leviathan, with one parliamentarian comparing US spying methods to that of the communist East Germany’s much-dreaded Ministry for State Security (Stasi).

Washington is using “American-style Stasi methods,” said Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party and member of the European Parliament.

“I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell,” he said, using the German acronym for the disposed German Democratic Republic.

Clearly, enthusiasm for the American leader’s upcoming visit will be much more tempered than it was in 2008 when 200,000 people packed around the Victory Column in central Berlin to hear Obama speak of a world that would be dramatically different from that of his hawkish Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

Merkel will question Obama about the NSA program when he visits in Berlin on June 18, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters on Monday. Some political analysts fear the issue will dampen a visit that was intended to commemorate US-German relations on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Bush excesses, Obama digresses

One year into his second term, Barack Obama seems powerless to roll back the military and security apparatus bolted down by the Bush administration in the ‘War on Terror.’

One consequence of this failure of the Obama administration to reign in Bush-era excesses emerged last week when former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, 29, blew the whistle on a top-secret intelligence system named Prism, which collects data on individuals directly from the servers of the largest US telecommunications companies.

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, PRISM gave US intelligence agencies access to emails, internet chats and photographs from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and Skype.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said leaked reports that US intelligence services are able to track virtually all forms of Internet communication demanded an explanation.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” she wrote in a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday. “The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point.”

All of the facts must be put on the table, the minister added.

Obama has defended the intelligence-gathering system as a “modest encroachment” that Americans should be willing to accept on behalf of security.

“You can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. There are trade-offs involved.”

The United States, however, is not legally restricted from eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be listening to and collecting the private communications of individuals anywhere in the world.

Peter Schaar, Germany’s federal data protection commissioner, said the leaked intelligence was grounds for “massive concern” in Europe.

“The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. “Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans.”

Meanwhile, German opposition parties hope to gain from the scandal, especially with parliamentary elections approaching in September, and Merkel looking to win a third term.

“This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever,” Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.

Obama is scheduled to hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday followed by a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the 18th triumphal arch that is one of Germany’s most recognizable landmarks.

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June 12, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Gulf allies crack down on Internet freedoms

RT | June 10, 2013

Gulf Arab allies of the US have come under fire for introducing a series of draconian measures that limit Internet freedoms. The measures restrict content on social media sites, making “offending” posts punishable by extensive jail sentences.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have tightened controls on Internet freedoms recently, targeting social media and phone applications alike in their communications crackdown.

Across the Gulf, dozens of journalists and social media users have been arrested since the beginning of the year for being in violation of the uncompromising national laws.

Punishments include deportation and lengthy prison sentences for crimes such as making derogatory comments about the government “in bad faith,” and offending religion and family values. In Saudi Arabia last month, top cleric Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh warned citizens against using Twitter, stating that those who use social media sites “have lost this world and the afterlife.”

Saudi Arabia

After threatening to ban messaging applications like Skype and WhatsApp, Saudi Arabia’s telecom regulator has chosen a new target: The web-based communication app Viber. The instant messaging application has been blocked since June 5.

“The Viber application has been suspended… and the [regulator] affirms it will take appropriate action against any other applications or services if they fail to comply with regulatory requirements and rules in force in the kingdom,” the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) said in a statement.

Viber allows its users to text, call and send photos and video messages worldwide using a 3G or Wifi connection, and boasts over 200 million subscribers worldwide.

In March, the CITC warned mobile providers in the Kingdom that if they could not find ways to monitor encrypted messaging and VOIP applications, then they would be blocked, according to local media. The commission then issued a statement saying that “it would take suitable measures against these apps and services,” in its push for greater control over the Internet.

The Saudi government has also begun arresting Twitter users for posts to their accounts. Local media reports that the government is looking into ending anonymity for Twitter users in the country by making users register their identification documents.

Qatar

Despite its status as a regional media hub, the emirate state is considering a new cybercrime law that would widen government control over news websites and online commentaries.

If passed, the law would enable the government to punish websites or social media users for violating “the social principles or values,” or for publishing “news, photos, audio or visual recordings related to the sanctity of the private and familial life of persons, even if they were true, or infringes on others by libel or slander via the Internet or other information technology means,” Qatar News agency reported.

United Arab Emirates

At the end of 2012, the UAE passed a sweeping new cybercrime law: Anyone found guilty of criticizing the country’s rulers or institutions online may be jailed or deported. The law attracted widespread opposition, with legal consultants warning it is broad enough to penalize anyone caught posting allegedly offensive comments against the state.

This law has been used to jail citizens for Twitter posts over the past few months. In May, the UAE appeals court sentenced Abdullah Al-Hadidi to 10 months in jail for tweeting details of the trial of his father.

He was arrested on March 22 on charges of disseminating information on Twitter “in bad faith.” The court ruled that he wrote false details of a public hearing that, along with his father, involved 93 other people accused of plotting to seize power in the Gulf Arab state.

Kuwait

The government has arrested dozens of activists and at least six journalists in 2013 in the constitutional emirate, often described as the most liberal country in the region.

In March, Twitter user Hamed Al-Khaledi was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly insulting the ruler of the Gulf nation. Others have been accused of “threatening state security” or “offending religion.”

In April, a Kuwaiti court sentenced former parliamentarian and opposition leader Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison for remarks deemed critical of the ruler of the state, which he made last year at a public rally.

Kuwait has been a member of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) since 1996, which protects the right to freedom of expression, including peaceful criticism of public officials.

Bahrain

The Bahraini government has been trying to suppress an ongoing uprising by introducing stricter penalties. In April, the government passed a law making it illegal to insult the Gulf state’s King Hamad bin Issa al Khalifa, or its national symbols.

Recently, Bahraini blogger and activist Ali Abduleman was granted asylum in the UK after two years in hiding. Adbuleman claims he was persecuted by the government “for exercising the right to express his opinions” on his website. The Bahraini government claims he was tried for “inciting and encouraging continuous violent attacks against police officers” and conspired to spread “false and inflammatory rumors.”

In May, 62-year-old Bahraini protester Abdulla Sayegh was sentenced to three months in prison for hanging a national flag from his truck during a 2011 rally. The same month, six Twitter users were jailed for allegedly offensive comments about the country’s ruler deemed to be ‘abusing freedom of expression.’ According to prosecutors, they posted comments that undermined “the values and traditions of Bahrain’s society towards the king.”

One of the best-known human rights abuse cases in Bahrain is that of activist Nabeel Rajab, who was sentenced to three years in jail in August 2012 on charges of ‘participating in an illegal assembly’ and ‘calling for a march without prior notification.’ He openly criticized the country’s regime on RT for Julian Assange’s show The World Tomorrow.

The country has witnessed mass protests led by the kingdom’s majority Shiites against the minority Sunni-led government for two years. The Shiite demonstrators call for a transfer to a democratic system, and complain of discrimination in jobs and government. Their loyalty is in turn questioned by the ruling Al Khalifa monarchy, which has been in power for decades.

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June 10, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Lazy Greeks myth, red herring in explaining crisis’

Peter Mertens, leader of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, believes the Eurozone debt crisis is pushing member states towards “a very large number of social conflicts.” Mertens told RT that Europe faces three alternatives – saving the euro with “authoritarian measures by taking national sovereignty overnight to the European level”, breaking up into “two, three or four Europes”, or adopting a socialist model, “where banking system is public, where energy system is public, where there is democracy.” He believes Europe needs radical changes to its financial sector.

See transcript: http://on.rt.com/r9ai58

July 1, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | 2 Comments

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