911 Blog

Bahrain declares martial law

2011-03-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

By Lin Noueihed and Frederik Richter

MANAMA (Reuters) - Bahrain's king declared martial law on Tuesday as his government struggled to quell an uprising by the island's Shi'ite Muslim majority that has drawn in troops from fellow Sunni-ruled neighbour Saudi Arabia.

The three-month state of emergency will hand wholesale power to Bahrain's security forces, which are dominated by the Sunni Muslim elite, stoking sectarian tensions in one of the Gulf's most politically volatile nations.

Disturbances shook the kingdom through the day. A hospital source said two men, one Bahraini and the other Bangladeshi, were killed in clashes in the Shi'ite area of Sitra and more than 200 people were wounded in various incidents.

State television said a Bahraini policeman was also killed, denying media reports that a Saudi soldier had been shot dead.

The United States, a close ally of both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, said it was concerned about reports of growing sectarianism in the country, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. It dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman to Bahrain to push for dialogue to resolve the crisis.

Speaking in Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said she had told her Saudi counterpart to promote talks to resolve the situation.

It was not clear if a curfew would be imposed or whether there would be any clampdown on media or public gatherings.

"In order for the situation to return to normal we have to establish order and security and ... stop the violations which have spread disturbances among the people of our dear country," said Interior Minister Sheikh Rashed al-Khalifa.

Bahraini state media have said Shi'ite opposition activists, who complain the state has been naturalising Sunni foreigners to tip the sectarian balance, are targeting foreigners.

The opposition says the security forces are full of naturalised foreigners willing to use force against protesters.

SAUDI ANXIETY

On Monday, more than 1,000 Saudi troops rolled into the kingdom at the request of Bahrain's Sunni rulers. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have said they would also send police.

Thousands of Bahrainis marched on the Saudi embassy in Manama on Tuesday to protest against the intervention.

"People are angry, we want this occupation to end. We don't want anybody to help the al-Khalifa or us," said a protester who gave his name as Salman, referring to the ruling family.

Analysts said the troop movement showed concern in Saudi Arabia that any concessions in Bahrain could inspire the kingdom's own Shi'ite minority.

Over 60 percent of Bahrainis are Shi'ites who complain of discrimination at the hands of the Sunni royal family. Calls for the overthrow of the monarchy have alarmed the Sunni minority, which fears that unrest could serve non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.

Iran, which sits across the Gulf from Bahrain, criticised the decision to send in Saudi troops.

"The presence of foreign forces and interference in Bahrain's internal affairs is unacceptable and will further complicate the issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said at his weekly news conference in Tehran.

A Bahraini foreign ministry official called the remarks "blatant interference in Bahrain's internal affairs," the state news agency BNA said, adding that Manama had recalled its ambassador to Iran for consultations.

SECTARIAN CLASHES

Bahrain has been gripped by its worst unrest since the 1990s after protesters took to the streets last month, inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

Unlike those countries, where the mainly Sunni populations united against the regime, Bahrain is split along sectarian lines, raising the risk of a slide into civil conflict.

Violent clashes between youths wielding clubs, knives and rocks have become daily occurrences, forcing Bahrain University and many schools to close in order to avoid further trouble.

The United Nations and Britain echoed the U.S. call for restraint and the Group of Eight powers expressed concern, though analysts said the escalation showed the limits of U.S. influence when security was threatened.

Amnesty International urged Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to restrain their forces after witnesses said protesters were shot.

"The king's declaration of a state of emergency must not be used as a cover for repression," said Malcolm Smart.

The disturbances are a major blow to the economy in Bahrain, whose oil reserves dwindling. Shops and offices were closed on Tuesday and the streets were deserted.

Fitch cut Bahrain's credit ratings by two notches to BBB for A-minus and said more downgrades were possible in the short term as political risk soared in the country.

The largest Shi'ite opposition group, Wefaq, condemned the imposition of martial law and urged international intervention.

In a sign that security could deteriorate, the U.S. State Department advised against all travel to Bahrain due to a "breakdown in law and order."

Armed youths attacked the printing press of Bahrain's only opposition newspaper Al Wasat overnight in an effort to stop its publication.

Metal barricades and piles of sand and rocks blocked the main road to the financial district and most shops were shut.

Around Bahrain, residents have placed skips, bins and pieces of metal on the road, to prevent strangers from entering their neighbourhoods. Young men, some wearing masks and carrying sticks, guarded the entrances to their areas.

(Reporting by Robin Pomeroy in Iran, Firouz Sedarat in Dubai, Walter Brandimarte in New York and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

In the Wake of Japan's Earthquake, A Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe

2011-03-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

By Yoichi Shimatsu

Emergency Special Report I

The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai's masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan's shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33
feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.

Nature's terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand.
The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn't the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it's buildings that kill - to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.

Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, Chiba, should never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out.
Whenever things go wrong, underlying risks had led to a liability and, in a responsible society, accountability.

Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world's most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin
(Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing, I beg to differ. Japan is just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.

Hidden nuclear crisis

The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors - "in order to avoid public panic" - is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That's the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and the point is that Japan is no shining exception. So what today is being silenced on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those - Tepco's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant - is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world's largest with six boiling-water reactors.

Over past decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996 amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Our reporters got confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, the facts be damned. For a nation that's lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible now only because the finger on the button is our own.

People are the best defense

Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya's famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. The Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore their communication system. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.

Northeast Japan is better prepared than other localities because in the wake of the Kobe quake in 1995, the regional Keidanren, or federation of industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparedness.

First on my list was a people-based communications network such as the citizen's band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize despite power blackouts. That point directly led to the fast licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care.
These systems must be routinely used at least on weekends so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stay familiar with their operation.

Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as a self-sustaining community. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.

As participants in communities, who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly "bomb" that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-con. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium, and for that matter the cleanliness and healthiness of "clean" coal.

Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.

At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean's depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.

Emergency Special Report II

Quake Monitor: Meltdown has started - Saturday 12 March (noon Japan time zone)

Meltdown is underway. Japan's Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station in the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The presence of these substances in air samples is a sure indicator that an uncontrolled chain reaction has started.
Overheated uranium rods have eaten through their protective metal casings and have started nuclear fission. The regulatory agency's announcement overturns the earlier claim of plant operator TEPCO that all uranium rods were intact.

The National Institute of Radiological Science, in Chiba outside Tokyo, has flown a team of doctors and nurses by helicopter to a health center 5 km from the Fukushima plant to monitor nuclear exposure in workers, emergency crew and local residents.

Nuclear workers, who this morning restarted the pumping of cold water into the reactor, are being hampered by aftershocks of larger than Richter 6. Plant operator TEPCO ordered the release of steam from the overheated reactor this morning because internal pressure is twice higher than the allowable limits of the original facility design. Plant officials say that the steam is being filtered of radioactive particle. Outside the plant, however, the monitoring station detected outdoor radiation levels 8 times higher than normal, indicating either leakage or filter malfunction.

Three of the six reactors of the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, were operating at the time of the Tohoku quake. The failure of back-up generators caused significant rise in temperatures inside No.1 (46 MW
output) and No.2 (784 MW) reactors.

The Japanese government overnight dispatched truck-mounted power generators to both plants in order to restart cooling pumps. On-site back-up batteries that run the control system were depleted of power within 8 hours of the blackout. Authorities are now locating robots to dispatch for remote control repairs to the reactors because the interior is unsafe for human employees.

Impact on North America:

The Pacific jetstream is currently flowing due east directly toward the United States. In the event of a major meltdown and continuous large-volume radioactive release, airborne particles will be carried across the ocean in bands that will cross over the southern halves of Oregon, Montana and Idaho, all of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and Iowa and ending in Wisconsin and Illinois, with possible further eastward drift depending on surface wind direction.

Most of the particles can be expected to travel high in the atmosphere, with fallout dependent on low pressure zones, rainfall and temperatures over the US. If a meltdown can be contained in Fukushima, a small amount of particles would be dispersed in the atmosphere with little immediate effect on human and animal health.

Another climate factor to be taken into account is the potential for an El Nino Variable bulging the jetstream further northward, causing fallout over western Canada and a larger number of American states.

Seasonal rainfall over Japan does not normally begin until mid-April and does not become significant until early June.

If very high radiation releases are detected at some point, a potential tactic to lessen contamination of North America is for the US, Canadian and Russian air forces to seed clouds over the northwest Pacific to create a low pressure front and precipitation to minimize particle mass reaching North America.

Emergency Special Report III

Ohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2:

"The Good News Guys"

Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time) Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public.According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building. The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor. So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence. Yes, there's nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don't breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.

The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a "4" on the international nuclear-events scale of 7. This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.

Enough of the Good News

The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn't buying Tokyo's weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.

A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant, found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear "hibakusha" shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160.
The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.

A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.

Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.

Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure the equivalent of a "Hail Mary pass"..

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan's tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.

Players not prayers

USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly Naoto Kan government. Instead of dispatching in experts from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.

The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional "enemies"
Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.

Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole "aid" exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.

PRC: In contrast to Washington's ulterior motives, China in an unprecedented move has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed "off the record"
China's development of mineral blends that block radiation "much more than 90 percent, nearly totally".
When asked why the institute doesn't commercialize their formulas, he responded: "We've never thought about that." That's too bad because if one of China's exports was ever needed, it's their radiation blanket.

Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children's lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.

Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the "what me worry" attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.

Correction to Monitor 1: In our haste, we blurred over some important details on the use of potassium iodide tablets. These are taken to block radioactive
iodine-131 from affecting the human thyroid gland, thus lowering the risk of cancer and other disorders.

Yoichi Shimatsu currently with Fourth Media (China) is former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.

Global Research Articles by Yoichi Shimatsu

Bahrain imports Gulf military force

2011-03-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

(UKPA)

Troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations have moved into Bahrain to back up its Sunni rulers in the face of escalating Shiite-led protests seeking to break the monarchy's hold on power.

Bahrain's main opposition groups immediately denounced the intervention as an "occupation" that pushed the tiny Gulf kingdom dangerously close to a state of war.
It also marked the first cross-border military operations to try to quell unrest since the Arab world's rebellions began in December and underscores the Gulf leaders' worries about their own standing and fears that instability in Bahrain could give a foothold for Shiite powerhouse Iran.

The strife in Bahrain began to dramatically escalate over the weekend just as the US defence secretary arrived to urge its leaders - key Washington allies - to heed at least some of the demands for change.

A Saudi security official said the Gulf units dispatched to Bahrain are from a special force within the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council.
The 1,000 strong force was deployed by air and road and to help protect key buildings.

The GCC members are Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Its arrival force comes a day after some of the most widespread chaos in the month-long series of protests and clashes that have left seven dead and the nation deeply divided.

A group of pro-government MPs has urged Bahrain's king to impose martial law and claimed "extremist movements" were trying to disrupt the country and push it toward sectarian conflict.

A coalition of seven Shiite-led opposition factions pledged to demand a UN investigation into the Gulf leaders' decision to send in the special force for an internal conflict. The unit had been deployed in the past to Kuwait, including during the 1991 US-led campaign to drive out Saddam Hussein's troops and before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Bahrain Protests Throw Kingdom Into Chaos

2011-03-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

NPR Staff and Wires

Thousands of anti-government demonstrators cut off Bahrain's financial center and drove back police trying to push them from the capital's central square shaking the tiny island kingdom Sunday with the most disruptive protests since calls for more freedom erupted a month ago.

Demonstrators also clashed with security forces and government supporters on the campus of the main university in the Gulf country, the home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

The clashes fueled fears that Bahrain's political crisis could be stumbling toward open sectarian conflict between the ruling minority Sunnis and Shiites, who account for 70 percent of the nation's 525,000 people.

Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa said the government is willing to discuss reforming its semi-democratic parliamentary system. But protesters like Hassan al-Mubarak are in no mood to talk

"This government, we've been giving them a chance for 230 years," he said. "They don't want to change."

The opposition is split between those who favor confronting the regime and others who are looking to negotiate.

In some neighborhoods, vigilantes set up checkpoints to try to keep outsiders from entering. Bahrain's interior ministry warned Saturday that the "social fabric" of the nation was in peril.

A day after visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged quick progress toward reform, thousands of protesters gathered before dawn to block King Faisal Highway, a four-lane expressway leading to Bahrain's main financial district in downtown Manama, causing huge traffic chaos during morning rush hour and preventing many from reaching their offices on the first day of the work week.

"No one was able to go to work today. Thugs and protesters were blocking the highway," complained Sawsan Mohammed, 30, who works in the financial district. "I am upset that Bahrain is no longer a stable place."

Security forces dispersed about 350 protesters "by using tear gas," the government said. But traffic was clogged until late morning and many drivers sent messages of rage and frustration to social media sites.

"I blame the protesters for what's happened in Bahrain today," said Dana Nasser, 25, who was caught in the traffic chaos and never made it to her office.

About 2 miles away, police at the same time moved in on Pearl traffic circle, site of a monthlong occupation by members of Bahrain's Shiite majority calling for an elected government and equality with Bahrain's Sunnis.

Many protesters in recent days have pressed their demands further to call for the ouster of the Sunni dynasty that has held power for more than two centuries.

Witnesses said security forces surrounded the protests' tent compound, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the activists in the largest effort to clear the protesters since a deadly crackdown last month that left four dead.

Activists tried to stand their ground and chanted "Peaceful! peaceful!"

The crowd swelled into thousands with protesters streaming to the square to reinforce the activists' lines as police continued firing tear gas. By early afternoon, police pulled back from the square, eyewitnesses said.

At Bahrain University, Shiite demonstrators and government supporters held competing protests that descended into violence when plainclothes pro-government backers and security forces forced students who had been blocking the campus main gate to seek refuge in classrooms and lecture halls, said Layla al-Arab, an employee at the Arts Collage.

Two protesters sustained serious head injures and hundreds looked for medical help, mostly with breathing problems from tear gas, hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Gulf kingdom holds particular importance to Washington as the host of the main American military counterweight to Iran's efforts to expand its armed forces and reach into the Gulf.

Bahrain has also tried hard to position itself as an attractive investment destination and Middle East banking center. Even the passport stamps issued to incoming visitors declare the kingdom as "Business-friendly Bahrain."

Then They Came for the Trade Unionists

2011-03-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) is under fire for his budget proposal that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public sector union workers. (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Megan McCormick / Flickr)
On this day, it behooves us to remember the words of Martin Niemoller.

"First they came for the communists," he wrote, "and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

I am a trade unionist, and yesterday in Wisconsin, they came for me. They came for you. They came for every working person in America, and their intent could not be more clear. Governor Scott Walker, along with the Koch Brothers and the right-wing radicals of the Republican Party, moved in darkness and with shameless deceit to gut the ability of dedicated laborers to bargain on an equal footing for the right to earn a living wage and to have access to decent health care.

Among other things, the bill as passed allows the state to fire anyone who participates in a strike. The story of the 20th century was written by workers who dared to face the truncheon in order to fight for their basic rights, and the strike was integral to that struggle. Any Wisconsin worker who dares to stand in defiance of The Bosses now faces personal annihilation, not just for themselves, but for their family. America was made in the struggle of union workers standing shoulder to shoulder in defiance of the idea that being rich means being right. That struggle is now in mortal peril, and the outcome affects all of us.

Fairness and the rule of law had no place in Wednesday's filthy action. This move was done in secret, without notice or announcement as required by Wisconsin law, and bears the stamp of the cowards and cretins who are responsible. Similar anti-worker legislation has been unfolding in Ohio, Indiana, Florida and more than a dozen other states. Those responsible claim such actions are necessary because of economic concerns, but the Wisconsin perpetrators tipped their hand. They stripped the bill in question of anything having to do with the state budget, so as to give them the chance to vote without a quorum...but the entire premise of their anti-union attack was that the destruction of collective bargaining was needed to salvage the state's financial situation. By gutting the bill of any semblance of budgetary issues, all they were left with is what they were after in the first place: the end of collective bargaining, the end of unions altogether, and by proxy, the end of the Democratic Party.

Eric Kleefeld, the excellent reporter for TalkingPointsMemo, and a Wisconsin native, exposed the endgame thusly:

The Democratic Party in Wisconsin is, to an extent that is not true in most other states, a genuine labor party -- a party that is intertwined with unions at the institutional level, with many politicians who have also been union officials or done legal work with unions, and which speaks for organized labor in key debates. They in turn compete with the Republican Party, which represents business interests as embodied by the state's Chamber group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, in what has until now been a sometimes uneasy but nevertheless predictable political system.

In short, unions in Wisconsin are not just economic organizations made up of their respective workers - they are political institutions that are a major part of the state. As such, a change to the state's union laws that would threaten the existence of organized labor would in turn threaten the existence of the Democratic Party itself in Wisconsin, as people have known it for over half a century -- something that state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) may have accidentally alluded to earlier today.

On top of that, the class consciousness was especially ignited by Walker's phone call two weeks ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who was posing as Republican financier David Koch. During that call, Walker discussed his ideas for tricking the Democrats into coming back by pretending to negotiate, his ambition to bust the public employee unions in the mold of President Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, and that he had considered (but ruled out) planting troublemakers in the crowds of protesters. But beyond the specifics, the optics alone were amazing: The state's governor was seen buddying up to someone he believed to be a mega-rich donor from out of state.

Say what you will about the Democratic Party. For my part, I can say plenty, especially about President Obama's total absence during the three weeks this struggle has been going on, and about the White House's angry insistence that the fight in Wisconsin is merely "a distraction."

All Party nonsense aside, this is about a governor attacking people who work for a living, because they have the gall to believe standing together to fight for simple things like fair wages and basic health care is more important than a failing governor's ego or political aspirations.

The fact of the matter is that Governor Walker has unleashed a frontal assault on working people in his state because wealthy corporatists believe "Because I Say So" is enough. Make no mistake, friends. This is class warfare. It is brazen, unmistakable, and now out in the open. They have so much, but they want more. It has been made all too clear that they will gut your life, your rights, your everything, in order to get what they want, and what they want is absolute and total control.

Mr. Niemoller wrote his poem decades ago. It might read like this today:

First they declared corporations were "people," and I didn't complain because I'm already a person.

Then they made unlimited money "speech," and I didn't complain because the American Dream says I'll be rich someday, too.

Then they commandeered the means of production by shipping our greatest strength - manufacturing - overseas, because they don't have bothersome unions over there, and I didn't complain because WalMart has cheap stuff.

Then they bought Congress so they could write the laws, and I didn't complain because I can’t be bothered to vote.

Then they bought the Supreme Court so they could cement their rule, and I didn't complain because I don't have time to pay attention.

Then they bought the news so they could convince everyone it's always been this way, and I didn't complain because it's always been this way.

Then they manhandled an election and I didn't complain because I'm not from Florida.

Then they lied us into wars and I didn't complain because I'm not a soldier, or an Iraqi, or an Afghani.

Then millions died for profit and I didn't complain because the graphics on the news were totally awesome.

Then they started locking people up because they said they could and I didn't complain because nobody locked me up.

Then they started spying on everyone because they said they could and I didn't complain because I'm a real American.

Then they came for the worker, but thanks to supply-side trickle-down economics, I don't have a job.

This truth is self-evident.

They are coming for you, and they are relentless.

Stand up.

For your country, for your family, for yourself.

Stand up.

Be heard.

Strike!

Madison a Foretaste of Things to Come: The Next Big Occupation Could Be Boomers Taking Over the Capitol Building

2011-03-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

by: Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening | News Analysis

Union supporters demonstrate outside the State Capitol as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker prepares to speak about the state budget at a joint session of the Legislature in Madison, Wis.(Photo: Nicole Bengiveno / The New York Times)
The dramatic and inspiring occupation of the Wisconsin Statehouse in Madison by angry public workers and their supporters over the past few weeks is an exciting preview of what we can expect to see in the halls of Congress before long, as right-wing forces, funded by corporate lobbies and corporate-funded think-tanks push hard for cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare.

The drive to undermine these two critically important social programs is moving into high gear as the 79-million Baby Boomers this year start to reach eligibility, even as their other assets--their homes and their investment portfolios--are still shriveled by the Wall Street heist known as the “fiscal crisis” and Great Recession.

For years, the right has been gravely warning of the supposedly looming “bankruptcy” of Social Security and the even more imminent “bankruptcy” of Medicare, as though these twin disasters for the elderly were an actuarial imperative. In fact, both programs are political creations, whose problems have political causes and political solutions.

Social Security is starting to draw down the huge reserves it had built up, not because of an increase in retirees (the bulge in retirees hasn't hit yet), but because the share of national income that is subject to the Social Security FICA tax has fallen, from 90% back in the 1980s to just 84% now, as the wealthy have appropriated an increasingly large share of the total national income. If more of the income of the rich were slapped with the FICA tax, to bring the total share of income subject to FICA back to 90%, there would be plenty of money to pay promised benefits into the foreseeable future. The same can be said of Medicare. More taxes on the rich would ensure the funding of that program too.

There is no inherent reason why only the first $106,000 of a person’s income should be subject to the FICA tax. It could be the first $200,000, or the first $500,000, and if it were the latter, we could be talking about improving benefits for retirees, or lowering the retirement age, not just preserving current levels. Benefits could be better still if investment income were no longer exempted from a FICA tax (and the Medicare tax).

But here’s the big point: Corporate America, and its political lackeys in the Republican and Democratic Parties, know that they are about to confront a dramatically more powerful protagonist in their campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare: the Boomer Retirees.

The so-called Senior Lobby is already enormously powerful. That’s why Social Security has so far largely defied concerted efforts by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to undermine it, and it’s why Republicans and conservative Democrats running for national office always hasten to claim they are not going to threaten Social Security or Medicare, or at least that they won’t threaten “current beneficiaries.” It’s why they call Social Security the “third rail” of American politics: touch it and you die (for those of you unfortunate enough to live where there are no subways, the third rail is the “hot” rail that carries the electricity to power the electric trains).

But a Boomer retiree population will be two times the size of the current retiree population. That means that just in terms of the number of potential voters, it will be two times as powerful. But that’s only part of the story. The new generation of retirees are the people who came of political age in the late 1950s during the Civil Rights movement, and the 1960s and ‘70s during the anti-war movement and the feminist movement. We are veterans of both engaged electoral politics (witness that support our generation gave to the insurgent campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern, as well as a host of more successful Congressional campaigns), and of powerful and of successful militant street politics.

What we showed back then in our youth and our formative young-adult years was that when our interests were on the line, as they were with the draft, or when we saw a gross injustice, as was the case with Jim Crow, we knew how to fight politically. I'm not suggesting that the people born in the decade and a half after World War II are particularly radical, but I am suggesting that when this age cohort gets riled and the right issue or issues sets the spark, we've got the spirit and experience to take that struggle to the streets and the halls of Congress. And both our personal interests and our sense of justice are certainly on the line when it comes to the growing attack on Social Security and Medicare.

Just one example. I spent a year teaching at Alfred University, a little liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere in western New York State. It was the 1990-91 school year--the year the US invaded Iraq and "liberated" Kuwait. Students who opposed the war came to me and asked me what to do. I didn't want to "lead" them, but they just had no idea where to start. "How can we get students here to wake up?" these kids asked me. I said, "What are you thinking of doing? They said they thought they might go down to the main street (the only street!) that runs through the little town of Alfred, and hold signs against the war. "How will that get the students to come out and join you?" I asked. They agreed it wouldn't help. It was winter, and who'd even be down there? So finally I asked, "What if you marched through campus, calling the kids to leave class and join you?" The kids looked shocked. "March through the campus? Outside? or in the buildings?" I said, "You have to decide." Again they looked shocked. But that was what was decided. They began marching the next day, with anti-war signs, crying "Join us!" Their numbers swelled. Eventually there were hundreds of them, and so they marched down to Main Street, but instead of just standing on the sidewalk with their signs, they took over the street and shut it down! My role, small enough, was just to remind them of what was possible. They took it from there.

My prediction: As the number of Boomers nearing or entering retirement soars, and the number anticipating or signing up for Medicare soars over the next few years, we will see massive national campaigns grow around not just saving these programs but expanding and improving them. With traditional pensions vanishing, and with IRAs and 401(k) plans having been exposed as the shams they are, we are going to see an irresistable demand grow for Social Security benefits to be raised, particularly for poorer retirees, so that all Americans can have a secure old age. And we will see another irresistable political drive to have Medicare not just improved but broadened to cover all Americans, as we Boomers recognize that it makes no sense at all to have a program that only covers the oldest and sickest of Americans, and not the younger and healthier population (our own kids and grandkids!). We will realize that it is in our interest to have all Americans invested fully in supporting a well-funded national Medicare program.

And if we don’t get it, we will be ready and willing to do what the public employees of Wisconsin are doing now--or more.

Hold on to your seats (and your walkers)! The new Boomer retirees are coming!

Isolation: “The Ideal Way Of ‘Breaking Down’ A Prisoner”

2011-03-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

By: Jeff Kaye

The isolation and degradation of Bradley Manning by the Marine Corps penal authorities at the Quantico brig represents a significant acceleration of government torture policy, as it is meant, among other things, to further desensitize the U.S. population to the use of torture. Torture will be used on political dissidents in this country, that is clear now, and PFC Manning is the first, but there will be others.

How bad is isolation? Bad enough that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself felt it warranted a “caution” in his April 16, 2003 memo authorizing certain aggressive forms of interrogation, i.e., torture.

Caution: the use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approvals for extension of the length of by the appropriate level in the chain of command. This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe that detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III, Article 13 which provides that POWs must be protected against acts of intimidation; Article 14 which provides that POWs are entitled to respect for their person; Article 34 which prohibits coercion and Article 126 which ensures access and basic standards of treatment. Although the provisions of Geneva are not applicable to the interrogation of unlawful combatants, consideration should be given to these views prior to application of this technique.

Rumsfeld — bureaucrat that he is — concentrates on the legal obstacles to the use of isolation. But the psychological components have been well studied for decades. The following is from a 1961 article on use of isolation for interrogations written by Lawrence Hinkle, then a psychiatrist at Cornell Medical Center, and a CIA consultant (link to quote can be found here, emphasis in quote is mine):

It is well known that prisoners, especially if they have not been isolated before, may develop a syndrome similar in most of its features to the “brain syndrome”…. They become dull, apathetic, and in due time they become disoriented and confused; their memories become defective and they experience hallucinations and delusions…. their ability to impart accurate information may be as much impaired as their capacity to resist an interrogator….From the interrogator’s viewpoint it has seemed to be the ideal way of “breaking down” a prisoner, because, to the unsophisticated, it seems to create precisely the state that the interrogator desires: malleability and the desire to talk, with the added advantage that one can delude himself that he is using no force or coercion…. However, the effect of isolation on the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved, or deprived of sleep.

In the Camp Delta Guantanamo camp-wide SOP, declassified a few years ago, isolation was described as a tactic meant “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee” by isolating him or her in a Maximum Security cell, without even access to Red Cross or religious personnel, for at least the first four weeks upon arrival. Such isolation is meant to deprive the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist.”

Indeed, it appears that the Marines are implementing the SERE “Coercive Management Techniques,” themselves modeled after Albert Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which was taught to interrogators at Guantanamo. What are these “coercive management techniques”? I outlined them in an article in June 2008, which also examined the ways JPRA/SERE personnel taught their techniques to Guantanamo interrogators and “behavioral consultants”:

1. Isolation: This deprives the prisoner of all social support and “ability to resist”. While turning the prisoner upon his own resources, it “makes victim dependent upon interrogator” (quotes are from the SERE version). Furthermore, isolation can be complete, semi, or “group isolation”.

2. Monopolisation of Perception: This means again “physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.” The goal? To fixate the prisoner upon his “immediate predicament”, the technique also “eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor,” frustrating all action “not consistent with compliance.”

3. Induced Debilitation and Exhaustion: This is what it seems to be, i.e., a method to weaken a prisoners’ “mental and physical ability to resist.” Techniques include: “Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged constraint. Prolonged interrogation” and “over-exertion”, among other practices (tortures!)

4. Threats: Which “cultivates anxiety and despair”, including threats of death, non return, “endless interrogation and isolation”, threats against family, and “mysterious changes of treatment”.

5. Occasional indulgences: To provide positive motivation for compliance, it also has the effect of hindering “adjustment to deprivation.”

6. Demonstrating “Omnipotence” and “Omniscience”: The purpose of this is said to suggest to the prisoner the “futility of resistance”. How is this done? By “demonstrating complete control over victim’s fate”. (And this, by the way, is a crucial way that the ban on habeas corpus for these prisoners, recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fed into the military’s torture program, by demonstrating that there was no appeal to anyone.)

7. Degradation: This is where one finds the prevention of personal hygiene, the insults, taunts, “demeaning punishments” and “denial of privacy”. The goal was to damage prisoner self esteem, making “capitulation” a lesser evil. It also “reduces the prisoner to ‘animal level’ concerns.” [Forced nakedness or stripping of the prisoner would come under this category. In fact, "stripping" or "forceful removal of detainee's clothing" was part of the 2002 SERE SOP "coercive management techniques, "used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee."]

8. Enforcing Trivial Demands: Again the point is to develop compliance in the captive, and takes place through “enforcement of minute rules.”

So there you have it, these are the “principles” the SERE instructors insisted future trainers for interrogators at Guantanamo (and since SERE instruction migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan as well, we can presume there as well) “be thoroughly prepared to discuss and explain”.

I suppose we can say these techniques have now migrated to Quantico as well, and so the torture virus enters the domestic body bloodstream, through its military vector.

Make no mistake, we are living in a totally lawless world, where there is no accountability for great crimes, whether those crimes be the torture of countless thousands, the aggressive bombing and devastation of non-attacking countries, violations of privacy against ordinary citizens, or the rape and pillage of the economies of the world for the benefit of a privileged few.

Anonymous actively probing Koch brothers' corporate networks

2011-03-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

By Crystal Chatham, AP

There was nothing terribly sophisticated about the denial-of-service attack executed by the activist hackers at Anonymous to temporarily knock out the website of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.

But the senior execs at Georgia Pacific and other corporate holdings controlled by the Koch brothers ought to be very nervous. Anonymous, best known for similarly crippling websites of firms hostile to WikiLeaks, says it has begun actively probing for network weaknesses in Georgia Pacific and other Koch brothers' holdings.

Should the activist hackers succeed in cracking into any of the Koch brothers' corporate networks, Anonymous could solidify its emerging persona as a digital-age Robin Hood, says Josh Shaul, chief technology officer of network security company Application Security.

"These guys have so much attitude and spunk," says Shaul. " Anonymous is coming out of its shell and seems to be saying, 'Hey, we'll be the voice of the people, we'll be the Robin Hood fighting for the poor against the powerful.' "

In this statement, Anonymous accuses the Koch brothers of "fabricating grass-roots organizations and advertising campaigns to sway voters based on their falsehoods." The statement concludes:

Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse -- is complicit in these attacks. We are actively seeking vulnerabilities, but in the meantime we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries' paper products. We welcome unions across the globe to join us in this boycott to show that you will not allow big business to dictate your freedom.

The group's highest-profile hack to date shows what it is capable of. On Feb. 5, a group of five elite hackers gained deep access to data intelligence firm HBGary, defaced and damaged most if its systems, and stole 77,000 e-mails from the Google Enterprise cloud-based service used by the company.

Upon being made public on the Internet, the stolen e-mails were pored over by reporters and activists; they revealed stunning details of how high-stakes, corporate-backed disinformation campaigns get birthed.

Click here to read about the pivotal role a 16-year-old girl played in that hack. The lightning rod in that caper -- HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr -- on Monday announced his resignation. Barr will go down in tech history as the disinformation expert who stirred Anonymous into a higher gear -- by bragging that he had identified the group's leaders and planning to expose them on Valentine's Day at the Security B-Sides conference in San Francisco.

Though corporations have spent billions shoring up network perimeter defenses, determined hackers routinely gain deep access into corporate systems. They do so by combining simple social-engineering trickery with proven hacking tools.

We recently published this news story about how one cybergang stole more than $50 million by setting up an elaborate series of stings of European companies participating in Europe's carbon-credits exchange. Another gang got deep into Nasdaq's Directors Desk cloud collaboration tool for senior executives, where they lurked for more than a year before recently being detected.

The activist hackers at Anonymous have demonstrated knowledge and skills of the techniques used by top hacking groups that concentrate on breaking into corporate networks for profit.

"They better be concerned," Shaul says of the Koch brothers. "What Anonymous is saying is, 'We're getting ready to execute whatever attack we can, so you better be worried. In the meantime, we're going to be a big pain.' "

Update: 5:50 p.m Eastern. A Michael Goldfarb called Technology Live and identified himself as a spokesman for Koch Industries. Goldfarb requested to go off the record for a "substantive discussion." We declined. The caller declined to comment on the Anonymous attack.

Walker must go! For a general strike in Wisconsin!

2011-03-03T06:21:00.001-08:00

By David North

The budget presented by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Tuesday has caused profound shock and outrage among workers throughout the state. It has now become clear to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin workers and their families that they are confronted with a ruthless attempt to drastically lower their living standards, eviscerate crucial social services and benefits, and strip away their democratic rights.

Walker is demanding cuts of at least $1.5 billion from the state’s budget to close a deficit that has been created, to a great extent, by his recent massive reduction of tax rates for large corporations.

These cuts include:
$1.25 billion in cuts to school aid and local government, including a reduction of more than $900 million in education funding statewide, which translates into a cut of approximately $500 per pupil.

$500 million in cuts from Medicaid, which finances critical state health programs for more than one million Wisconsin residents. The impact on low-income and uninsured adults and families with children will be devastating.

$250 million will be cut from funding for the University of Wisconsin. Moreover, as part of a privatization scheme that will serve the interests of wealthy investors, the Madison branch of the University of Wisconsin will be carved off from the state system. This will cost the jobs of at least 17,000 UW workers and lead to a sharp increase in college tuition costs over the next two years.

The Walker budget document is a declaration of war. His inclusion of further demands for the elimination of collective bargaining follows logically from his budget proposals. The cuts that he is calling for make a mockery of “bargaining,” because his budget proposals require, by their very nature, the complete surrender by workers to his unilateral demands.

The oft-repeated position of union officials—that they are prepared to accept Walker’s budget cuts if only he steps back from his demand for an end to collective bargaining—is not only cowardly, it represents a dangerous evasion of the political reality that exists in Wisconsin.

The term “collective bargaining” means nothing at all if unions are prepared to accept the dictates of state governments, which are acting in the interests of the capitalist bosses of the banks and industry. Collective bargaining did not emerge in the form of a permission slip granted by generous corporations to the workers. It was wrested from the capitalist class in the course of decades of bitter conflict for social and democratic rights, in which countless thousands of workers’ lives were lost. In the final analysis, collective bargaining existed only to the extent that workers were prepared to exercise the weapon of the strike to overcome the intransigence of the capitalist class and its political hirelings in local, state and federal government.

Walker’s budget signifies in practice, if not yet in law, the collapse of collective bargaining. His administration is ramming a brutal and socially destructive budget down the throats of Wisconsin working people and their families.
How should the working class in Wisconsin respond to this political reality?
In recent days, there has been a growing realization among working people throughout Wisconsin that protests in the state capital are insufficient and that they must escalate their struggle.

Sentiment is building for a general strike by the working class. Wisconsin workers, in ever greater numbers, are coming to realize that nothing short of a massive mobilization of their collective strength will be sufficient to beat back the attack of the Walker administration.

This sentiment is justified and corresponds to the political reality that exists in Wisconsin and, increasingly, throughout the United States. The collapse of collective bargaining-—that is, the attempt of the state to impose, with the implicit threat of force, intolerable and unacceptable demands upon workers—has a profound objective significance. The ruling class is telling working people: “We do not negotiate. We demand. You must accept our terms.”

This signifies, in effect, the end of compromise between the classes. The growing recognition of this political reality among workers lies behind the rising sentiment for a general strike.

It is necessary for workers who have come to this conclusion to build the momentum for a general strike. Talk about a general strike must turn toward its actual preparation.

In every work place, meetings should be called to discuss, debate and vote on a resolution for a general strike. Wherever substantial support exists for a general strike, rank-and-file committees, independent of union officials, should be formed to prepare for this action.

This movement should base the call for a general strike on the following demands:
* Total rejection of all economic concessions by the Wisconsin workers. Instead, social spending should be increased to meet the pressing problems created by three years of recession caused by the criminal speculative activities of the banks.
* Unequivocal rejection of any and all restrictions on the legal right of workers to negotiate and, when they so decide, strike to defend and improve their standard of living.

* For a substantial increase in taxes on corporate profits and the very rich to cover the budget deficit and the costs of new and essential social spending.
* For the immediate resignation of Governor Walker and his reactionary administration. Walker has deliberately made himself the political spearhead of the corporate attack on the working class and the use of dictatorial methods. The demand for his removal from office arises from the recognition that the struggle of Wisconsin workers against this budget is, in essence, a political struggle.

The call for Walker’s removal does not imply a vote of confidence in the Democratic Party. Beyond the borders of Wisconsin there are Democratic Party governors and mayors who are calling for budget cuts no less draconian than those sought by Walker. The Obama administration is collaborating with the state governors and the Congress in Washington in the implementation of budget cuts that will wreak havoc on the lives of workers throughout the country.

However, inspired by the example set by Wisconsin workers, the fight against the attacks on workers’ rights will expand from state to state and across the country as a whole, in opposition to all the political representatives of the capitalist class.
Thus, the demand for Walker’s removal raises the most important issue of all—the necessity for workers to create their own, independent, socialist alternative to the corporate-controlled Republican and Democratic parties.

The Socialist Equality Party supports and encourages the movement for a general strike against the Walker administration and its reactionary budget. The growing sentiment among workers that such action is necessary testifies to the intensity of social conflict in the United States. However, we urge workers to recognize that they are fighting not just one governor, but the capitalist class as a whole and the profit system upon which its rule is based.

Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda

2011-02-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

By Darlene Storm, Computerworld Feb 23, 2011 2:03 pm

It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary
Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake
social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on
controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as
surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be
didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear
campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not
really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the
dirty work behind closed doors.

EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social
media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook
(PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information,
other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access
protected information.

It's not a big surprise that the U.S. military also wants to use social
media to its benefit. Last year, Public Intelligence published the U.S. Air
Force social media guide which gave 10 tips for social media such as, "The
enemy is engaged in this battlespace and you must engage there as well."
Number three was "DON'T LIE. Credibility is critical, without it, no one
cares what you have to say...it's also punishable by the UCMJ to give a
false statement." The Air Force used the chart below to show how social
media influences public opinion.

The 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base sought the
development of Persona Management Software which could be used for creating
and managing fake profiles on social media sites to distort the truth and
make it appear as if there was a generally accepted agreement on
controversial issues. "Personas must be able to appear to originate in
nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online
services and social media platforms." What happened to don't lie and the
Uniform Code of Military Justice?

Everything revealed after Anonymous leaked emails from private security
firm HBGary Federal is disturbing on many levels. However, the Daily Kos
said with the Persona Management Software it would take very few people to
create "an army of sockpuppets" which could distort the truth while
appearing to be "an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."

So again I ask, what happened to number three . . . the rule about not
lying that was also "punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement"?

President and CEO of Plessas Experts Network, Inc, Kirby Plessas pointed
out some of the unethical and potentially illegal activities that Aaron
Barr's leaked emails suggested like "Chumming and baiting" which sounded
like "entrapment of some sort." There would be no warrant for the data
collected on individuals which could then be stored for how long? "THIS is
the entire reason Intelligence Oversight was created - to avoid this sort
of thing from ever happening again."

According to Redacted News, the leaked emails showed how names can be
cross-referenced across social media sites to collect information on people
and then used to gain access to those social ciricles. The emails also
talked of how Facebook could be used to spread government messages:

Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be
exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a
person's hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create
a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out
people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts,
then create the account and send a friend request.

Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be
exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed
and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have
over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending
a friend request to the target. To that end friend's accounts can be
compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When
choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected
as his/her weakest friend.

Lots of people have multiple online aliases, Facebook or Twitter accounts
for both business and private life. What most bothers me is the lying and
seemingly unethical means to an end. Although the government says it
doesn't approve of censorship, etc, when its secrets come to light, it
seems to be Okay with recommending underhanded tactics.

Secretary Clinton delivered a speech called, "Internet Rights and Wrongs:
Choices and Challenges In A Networked World." To help promote and support
Internet freedom, the State Department intends to award $25 million in
grants. While that is great news, the EFF reported, "For every strong
statement about preserving liberty, freedom of expression, and privacy on
the global Internet, there exists a countervailing example of the United
States attempting to undermine those same values."

Secretary Clinton later told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpou that
most Americans "are in favor of human rights, freedom, democracy. We know
that ultimately the most progress that can be made on behalf of human
beings anywhere is when those individuals are empowered, when they have
governments that are responsive." Clinton added, "At the same time, we
recognize that this process can be hijacked. It can be hijacked by both
outside and inside elements within any country."

So while the U.S. government can talk a good talk, what it does and what it
says often doesn't seem to jive. Gasp, I know, it's not a big shocker but
sometimes I find that utterly frustrating. The President wanted an Internet
Kill Switch, the FBI keeps pushing for backdoors on all-things-Net. What
happened to a code of ethics? Does it disappear behind closed doors, dirty
deeds done in the dark and used against the American people who are
supposed to be free to express themselves?

Canada, U.S. agree to use each other’s troops in civil emergencies

2011-02-24T20:49:00.001-08:00

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.

Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.

But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is requested or even used.

He said the agreement is “benign” and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.

“But there’s no agreement to allow troops to come in,” he said. “It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow’ piece is entirely up to the two governments.”

If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.

News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, is already making the rounds on left-wing blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.

On right-wing blogs in the U.S. it is being used as evidence of a plan for a “North American union” where foreign troops, not bound by U.S. laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.

“Co-operative militaries on Home Soil!” notes one website. “The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,’ don’t be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember — Canadian military aren’t bound by posse comitatus.”

Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.

Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will be reported on in the Canadian Forces newspaper next week and that publication will be put on the Internet.

Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn’t been released to the public as that requires approval from both nations. That decision has not yet been taken, he added.

Indiana Official: "Use Live Ammunition" Against Wisconsin Protesters

2011-02-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

By Adam Weinstein

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"

Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.

"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."

To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.

The incident seems all the more troubling now that the public-sector union fight playing out in Wisconsin is now headed to other states—including Indiana, where GOP senators Tuesday passed a bill that would abolish collective bargaining for state teachers. (Indiana's Republican governor walked back his support of the measure Tuesday after taking stock of the opposition.) Cox's public writings made it clear that he isn't a member of a public-service union, and he has no love for those who are.

"Individuals have the First Amendment right to post their own personal views in online forums on their own time," Corbin wrote to Mother Jones, "but as public servants, state employees also should strive to conduct themselves with professionalism and appropriate decorum in their interactions with the public." Cox had been contacted by the office, Corbin added: "We have reiterated to the employee the standards of professional conduct expected for all licensed attorneys and for employees of the Indiana Attorney General's Office. After all the relevant information is obtained, this agency then will determine whether there has been any violation of the personnel handbook."

In the meantime, we hoped to give Cox a chance to explain his thoughts in greater detail. In his initial email to Mother Jones, Cox had written, "Ask what questions you want & I will do my best to answer. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe I'll learn something." So we emailed him a list of questions:

What did he mean when he tweeted: "Planned Parenthood could help themselves if the only abortions they performed were retroactive"?

In referring to President Obama, why did he use a George W. Bush line once directed at the Iraqi people: "Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country"?

Were members of the SEIU really like Hitler's Sturmabteilung, and did he stand by his headline, "Putting the 'Reich' in Robert Reich"?

We never heard back.

Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' copy editor.

Scott Walker Runs on Koch Money

2011-02-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

by: Lisa Graves | PR Watch | Report

Madison, Wisconsin - A new investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy documents the big money funneled by one of the richest men in America and one of the richest corporations in the world to put controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in office.

The Republican Governors Association and the Kochs' Investment in Scott Walker

Walker was elected just over three months ago on the heels of an exceptionally expensive gubernatorial race in the Badger State, fueled by groups funded by the Koch brothers, David and Charles. David Koch, the son of a radical founding member of the John Birch Society, which has long been obsessed with claims about socialism and advocated the repeal of civil rights laws, personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June of last year. This was the most he had ever personally given to that group. (Fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch matched Koch's donation to the RGA with a $1 million donation from his company News Corporation, parent company of FOX "News" Channel.)

The RGA in turn spent $5 million in the race, mostly on TV ads attacking Walker's political opponent, Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. As this photo shows, the RGA described itself as a "key investor" in Walker's victory. In its congratulations, the RGA notes that it "ran a comprehensive campaign including TV and internet ads and direct mail. The series of ads were devastating to Tom Barrett ... All told, RGA ran 8 TV ads and sent 8 pieces of mail for absentee, early voting, and GOTV, totaling 2.9 million pieces."

The Center for Media and Democracy reported on some of the RGA's spin-filled ads last November, including the ads against Barrett, and filed a snapshot report this week. As the RGA takes credit, its multi-million dollar negative ad campaign probably did help make the difference between the 1.1 million votes cast for Walker against Barrett's 1 million votes. According to Open Secrets, Koch Industries was one of the top ten donors to the RGA in 2010, giving $1,050,450 to help with governors' races, like Walker's.

As Mother Jones has noted, the Koch Industries' political action committee, KochPAC, gave Walker's campaign $43,000 directly (according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board). It may seem like a small amount compared with the millions the Kochs are spending funding the RGA and other groups, but that donation was one of the larger individual donations to Walker not from an expressly-named partisan PAC. It is, however, a drop in the bucket compared with the impact of a million-dollar negative ad campaign, especially because the candidate promoted by the mud-slingers does not have to get his hands dirty.

The Kochs' Investment in Americans for Prosperity

The laundering of Koch dollars through the RGA dwarfs the Kochs' direct donations to Walker, and it also does not tell the whole story. As the Center for Media and Democracy has been documenting on its SourceWatch site for several years, David Koch was the founder and chairman of a front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which received at least $12 million from the Koch Family Foundations and which is the predecessor of the group Americans for Prosperity.

As Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker, the Kochs do not deny funding Americans for Prosperity (the amount is not disclosed) but assert that they provide no funding "specifically to support the tea parties." "Specifically" is the key word in that sentence that does not deny what is known in the non-profit world as "general support," meaning general funding or endowments, for an organization's operations and overall mission. As Mayer noted, Peggy Venable -- who helps the Americans for Prosperity Foundation train Tea Party activists and "target elected officials" -- "said of the Kochs, 'They're certainly our people. David's the chairman of our board. I've certainly met with them, and I'm very appreciative of what they do.'"

Americans for Prosperity provided “Tea Party Talking Points” as the Tea Party was launched around tax day in 2009, and this weekend it is providing talking points to those coming to Madison for a pro-Walker protest it is helping to stage. Media watchers can expect to hear Americans for Prosperity protesters get equal time on the news, and more than equal time on FOX, using phrases to cloak union-busting as merely getting workers to accept "paying a fair share" through "modest but critical reforms" that end "strong-arming politicians for exorbitant benefits." The spin will also likely include a trumped up statistic claiming that private sector employees in Wisconsin earn 74 cents for every dollar paid to "overpaid" state union members--you know, teachers, firefighters, police, social workers, nurses, and other civil servants. An "unofficial" theme, a drumbeat of the Bircher baby propaganda efforts bankrolled by the Kochs, is calling opponents "socialists," a smear heard with increasing frequency as the Kochs' influence has expanded in the past two years.

Americans for Prosperity's Investment in Scott Walker

Notably, Americans for Prosperity bragged that it was going to spend nearly $50 million across the country in the November elections. As one of the groups exploiting the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations to influence election outcomes, it does not disclose its donors and it does not report its expenditures on so-called "issue ads." It did run such ads in Wisconsin last fall.

Americans for Prosperity has actively supported and promoted Scott Walker in a variety of ways. It featured him at its tea party rally in Wisconsin in September 2009, when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. Americans for Prosperity also ran millions of dollars in ads on a "spending crisis" (a crisis it did not run ads against when Republicans were spending the multi-billion dollar budget surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit), and it selected Wisconsin as one of the states for those ads in the months before the election. It also funded a "spending revolt" tour in Wisconsin last fall through its state "chapter."

Just how much money has Americans for Prosperity and its Wisconsin counterpart spent on issue ads or promoting Walker over the past two years is one of the questions for this weekend's orchestrated "Stand with Walker" event.

The Return on Investment?

Some things are known, though. Koch money helped get Scott Walker the governor's seat in Wisconsin. And now a major Koch-related group is spearheading the defense of Walker's radical plan to kill public employees' right to organize in Wisconsin. The question is whether an actual majority of Wisconsin citizens want two of the richest men in the world, who do not live here -- and who, as Lee Fang has pointed out, have eliminated jobs in this state -- to be playing such an influential role in the rights of working people here.

The Kochs assert that they do not "direct" the activities of Americans for Prosperity or the Tea Party. No, they just fuel them with their riches from the oil business they inherited from their daddy.

And they did not vote for Scott Walker in the traditional sense in a democracy. Rather, as the Republican Governors Association spells out, they "invested" in him.

What is the return desired for their investment? It looks like the first dividend Walker wants to pay, through the help of the Koch-subsidized cheerleaders from Americans for Prosperity, is a death knell for unions and the rights of workers to organize. But tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens have stood up this week to say this ROI will not be paid, that their rights will not be the price Walker exacts from them in return for the largess the Kochs have shown him as the anointed instrument of their agenda in this state.

Lisa Graves is Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the publisher of PRWatch.org, SourceWatch.org, and BanksterUSA.org. She formerly served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, as Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and as Deputy Chief of the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Courts.

What Conservatives Really Want

2011-02-23T09:03:00.001-08:00

by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting and on and on.

Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the president has discussed. But deficits are not what really matter to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions. Empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.
The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that.

Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life for a civilized society, and, as necessary, for business to prosper.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must not be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used against conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture or even death, say, for women's doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father - with individual, not social, responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will, of course, need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.

What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American - the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle-class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud, over and over, that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called "Democratic Communication Disorder." Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters, because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work - not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy - the democracy of caring, of social responsibility and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

Madison Area AFL CIO Votes to Prepare For General Strike

2011-02-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

By Mike Elk

This evening in a press release from IBEW Local 2304 President Dave Pokilinski, I received word that the 45,000 member Southern Central Federation of Labor, the local chapter of the AFL-CIO for the Madison and Southern Central Wisconsin area, has voted to make preparations for a general strike.

The press release reads as follows:

Around 10:50PM Wisconsin Time on February 21st the South Central Federation of Labor endorsed the following motions:

Motion 1: The SCFL endorses a general strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his “budget repair bill,” and requests the Education Committee immediately begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike.

Motion 2: The SCFL goes on record as opposing all provisions contained in Walker’s “budget repair bill,” including but not limited to, curtailed bargaining rights and reduced wages, benefits, pensions, funding for public education, changes to medical assistance programs, and politicization of state government agencies.

It’s important to note that this is just a threat and not actually going out on a general strike. Under the Taft-Hartley Act a general strike in support of other workers is illegal; therefore the key word is the phrase “begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike”. In addition, only individual unions, not the central labor federation has the ability to call a strike.

Many private sector unions would not go out on a general strike out of fear of being of sued by their employers. However, local labor observers say many public sector unions and some of the construction unions would go out on a strike. Threatening a general strike creates even more pressure for Scott Walker in the business community. The business community in Wisconsin already appears to bucking under the intense pressure of the mass labor mobilization.

Tea Party Leader Plans to Infiltrate Union "Goons"

2011-02-21T18:01:00.000-08:00

By Adam Weinstein

Last year, Mark Williams was tossed out of the Tea Party Express for his racially insensitive NAACP parody. (Three weeks later, he took the helm of an upstart tea party group.) Now, he wants to sow mayhem among "the union goons in Wisconsin" and elsewhere. According to a post on his blog today, Williams is seeking volunteers to pose with him as members of the Service Employees International Union at a Sacramento, California, rally, to act like angry fools and get the union workers bad publicity from "lazy reporters":

we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.

Williams later updated the post to report that tea partiers in multiple states, including Iowa, Colorado, and Massachusetts, were calling in to plan "their own creative ruses" for embarrasing the union demonstrators. "Several have also reminded me that we have a distinct advantage in that the SEIU primarily represents non-English speaking illegal aliens so we will be the ones whose comments will make air!!!!" he wrote:

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

Thus far, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, have been peaceful, according to reporting by MJ's own Andy Kroll. Anti-union protesters, led by media mogul Andrew Breitbart, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, and "Joe the Plumber," largely fizzled after a rally on Saturday. And the image of union workers that Williams seeks to portray seems to run uphill against the images of the employees' leaders seen thus far. But as labor disputes spread to other states, it remains to be seen whether tactics like those proposed by Williams will be effective in embarassing the public employees...or embarrasing the tea party "plants" themselves.

FBI Targeting Palestine Solidarity Activists in New England

2011-02-19T06:54:00.000-08:00

On the early morning of February 10, Richard Hugus, a member of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine, received a knock on the door by a member of the FBI accompanied by a police detective.

Richard asserted his right not to speak to the agent, who left behind a card identifying himself as agent David George.

When Richard's lawyer called to find out why the FBI was trying to interrogate him, the agent replied that they were interested in discussing an article Richard had written in 2005/2006 and a letter to political prisoner Aafia Sidiqqui.

In light of the recent grand juries that have been convened targeting Palestine solidarity and anti-war activists across the country, this FBI activity in Boston should come as no surprise.

For the NECDP, FBI repression is also nothing new.

We have experienced repression from the FBI and ICE since our inception in 2002, when Amer Jubran was arrested by FBI and INS agents who showed up at his door the day after our first demonstration and demanded that he cooperate with their investigation or face disappearance and indefinite detention.

"Please the ears of this gentleman," said the INS agent gesturing to the FBI, "or we'll let you rot for 50 years."

But while the FBI harassment is nothing new, a few things are worth noting about this latest development:

--The FBI openly asserted that it wants to investigate Richard for an article he has written.

In the past, we have been used to the FBI and the rest of the Homeland Security apparatus manufacturing fake grounds for investigating (and later arresting) activists--for such things as alleged immigration violations.

Over the last few years, the charge of "material support for terrorism"has been increasingly used to include public advocacy.

At the same time, there has been a constant public discourse on "violent radicalization" and "homegrown terrorism," in which spreading information and expressing opinions on the internet have been identified as threats to "security."

The idea that the FBI would investigate someone for expressing an opinionin an article is now normal. --Richard Hugus is a solidarity activist.

Although the FBI is still primarily targeting Arabs and Muslims with its "terrorism" investigations and arrests--with the number of such casesrising dramatically since the beginning of the Holder/Obama regime--the past year has shown a significant new trend of targeting not just Palestinians, but Palestine solidarity activists.

This attention to solidarity activists comes at a moment when zionists areincreasingly on the defensive. In 2010, officials at the "Israeli" Foreign Ministry said that they were considering stopping lectures by official representatives around the world because these only provide targets for arapidly growing protest movement.

The Reut Institute--a prominent zionist think tank--suggested in the same year that unless a new strategy were developed against the Palestine solidarity movement (including "legal" intervention, e.g. repression), "Israel" might soon find itself in theposition of being an international pariah state.

A central strategic recommendation of the Reut report was to distinguish between critics of Israeli policy and those who are committed to "delegitimizing Israel."

They suggest that it's important to treat the "critics" as potential allies--and give them more room to express themselves--in order to isolate the "delegitimizers."

What we are witnessing across the country is an attempt to isolate and remove radical voices from the public discussion about Palestine in order to reduce their influence within a growing movement.

Anyone who stands up for the right of Palestinians to resist or who refuses to accept the right of "Israel" to exist is in the rifle sight.

Richard Hugus is under investigation because he has used his skills as an activist, film-maker and writer to stand up for these fundamental truths:

oppressed people have the right to fight their oppressors; colonized people have the right to take back the land that was stolen from them.

As members of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine we give full support to these positions:

--The people of Palestine have the right to resist and to reclaim all oftheir historic land from colonization.

--The peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan have the right to resist US invasionand occupation by any means necessary.

We will not be silenced and we will not speak to the FBI.

Feds Approve Monsanto Herbicide-Resistant Crops

2011-02-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved plantings of three genetically engineered (GE) crops in as many weeks, including Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa that are engineered to tolerate Roundup Ready weed-killing herbicide.

The USDA on February 11 also legalized, without restriction, the world's first GE corn crop meant for biofuel production. Biotech giant Syngenta's Event 3272 seed corn will simplify ethanol production and is not meant to feed animals or humans.

The approvals flew in the face of legal and regulatory challenges posed by GE crop opponents and members of the agricultural industry. Opponents fear the GE crop varieties could contaminate conventional food crops and promote the overuse of herbicides like the glyphosate-based Roundup and more toxic chemicals used to kill glyphosate-resistant weeds.

Monsanto won a victory on February 4 when the USDA partially deregulated Roundup Ready sugar beets. A federal court in August 2010 temporarily banned the beets and ordered the USDA to re-review the environmental impacts of the Roundup Ready sugar beets as the result of a lawsuit filed by farmers and environmental groups.

Plaintiff attorney Paul Achitoff from the environmental group Earthjustice said the USDA's decision to allow plantings of the sugar beets under "lax conditions" violates federal law. However, the USDA said the beets pose no "plant pest risk" and farmers can start planting them before a final Environmental Impact Statement is issued in 2012.

Roundup Ready alfalfa was legalized without any restrictions on January 27 after nearly five years of legal battles that pitted farmers and GE critics against the USDA and Monsanto.

The USDA disappointed GE critics again last week when it fully deregulated Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta's Event 3272 GE corn. The corn is genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that converts starch to sugar, making it easier to process the corn and turn it into the biofuel ethanol.

The North American Millers Association (NAMA), a normally pro-biotech organization that represents 170 agricultural mills in 38 states, is concerned that Event 3271 kernels could accidentally mix with corn meant for food processing and damage the quality of food products like snacks and breakfast cereals.

"USDA has failed to provide the public with sufficient scientific data on the economic impacts of contamination on food production, or information on how USDA will ensure Syngenta's compliance with a stewardship plan," said NAMA President Mary Waters.

Fight the lies and misinformation; support truth! Please make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout today and keep real independent journalism strong.

The USDA is counting on a "closed loop system" created by Syngenta to prevent Event 3272 corn from contaminating the food supply and is encouraging dialogue between Syngenta and the food industry, according to a release. The USDA is aware that some millers and food processors are concerned about Event 3272 and is promoting participation in an industry advisory council sponsored by Syngenta to review the "closed loop system."

Bill Freese, GE critic and policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), said that the USDA should to take a closer look at Syngenta's track record.

A 2004 investigation conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that Syngenta had illegally distributed GE seed corn engineered to produce an unregistered pesticide on over 1,000 occasions to farmers in the US, South America and Europe.

The EPA fined Syngenta $1.5 million in 2006 for distributing the seed corn, which produced a then unregistered pesticide called Bt 10.

The USDA did not classify Event 3272 corn as a crop grown to produce an industrial compound during its review of Syngenta's petition to legalize the corn, and NAMA argues that the agency would have completed a more thorough scientific review of the product if it regulators classified it as industrial.

A USDA spokesperson told Truthout that Event 3272 is not considered an industrial product crop because its extra genetic traits turn starch into sugar, not ethanol itself.

Syngenta's own recently released data shows Event 3272 would have "adverse impacts" on food quality if it entered the conventional corn supply, according to NAMA.

NAMA spokesperson Terri Long said the millers' association is concerned about food product quality and not Syngenta's past violations.

Freese said that Event 3272 is supposed to be used for domestic ethanol production, but Syngenta has applied for import approvals for Event 3272 in nations where the US exports corn. Freese said Syngenta is trying to avoid liability in case Event 3272 does contaminate the domestic corn supply.

Freese and CFS helped represent plaintiffs in the lawsuits against the USDA that challenged initial approvals of Roundup Ready alfalfa and sugar beets.

Common Cause Asks Court About Thomas Speech

2011-02-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 15 February 2011
by: Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times News Service | Report

Justice Clarence Thomas attended a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago that have prompted new questions about his recent vote on Citizens United.

Washington - Discrepancies in reports about an appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas at a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago have prompted new questions to the Supreme Court from a group that advocates changing campaign finance laws.

When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.

In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.

Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.

“I don’t think the explanation they’ve given is credible,” Mr. Pearson said in an interview. He said that if Justice Thomas’s visit was a “four-day, all-expenses paid trip in sunny Palm Springs,” it should have been reported as a gift under federal law.

The Supreme Court had no comment on the issue Monday. Nor did officials at the Federalist Society or at Koch Industries.

Common Cause maintains that Justice Thomas should have disqualified himself from last year’s landmark campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case, partly because of his ties to the Koch brothers.

In a petition filed with the Justice Department last month, the advocacy group said past appearances at the Koch brothers’ retreat by Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with the conservative political work of Justice Thomas’s wife, had created a possible perception of bias in hearing the case.

The Citizens United decision, with Justice Thomas’s support, freed corporations to engage in direct political spending with little public disclosure. The Koch brothers have been among the main beneficiaries, political analysts say.

This article "Common Cause Asks Court About Thomas Speech" originally appeared at The New York Times.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

FBI harasses Michigan anti-war activist

2011-02-13T20:31:00.001-08:00

By Tom Burke

Kalamazoo, MI - FBI agents continue to harass anti-war and international solidarity activists, this time in Michigan. On Feb 3., longtime Michigan peace activist Dave Staiger received a phone call from the FBI. Special agent Karlie Wood asked to interview Dave in person. Staiger told the agent, “My policy is to contact a lawyer if the FBI or police want to talk to me.” The agent said, “Contacting a lawyer is not necessary,” and that Staiger was not in any trouble. Special Agent Wood then stated that she wanted to talk about matters relating to the Grand Jury subpoenas and FBI investigation in Minneapolis and Chicago.

On Sept. 24, 2010, the FBI raided seven homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, taking boxes of activists’ personal belongings, computers, cell phones and passports. The FBI delivered subpoenas to fourteen activists that month, including two people in Michigan. Then in December, under orders for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office in Chicago, nine more Palestine solidarity activists were subpoenaed for Jan. 25.

Sixty cities and campuses across the country and some overseas held protests Jan. 25. The original 14 and the new nine activists subpoenaed all refuse to speak at Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is a secret court of inquisition, handpicked by Fitzgerald’s office, with no judge. Those called before a Grand Jury have no right to a lawyer in the room with them and no press is allowed to witness the proceedings.

Dave Staiger said he participated in the recent National Call-In Day to Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney General Holder and President Obama, asking them to stop the FBI raids and shut down Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury. This helped him in knowing what to say to the FBI and to not be intimidated.

Staiger states, “This is an attack on free speech and it is undemocratic. It is starting to remind me of the 1950s and the McCarthy era.”

Mick Kelly, of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, has urged everyone in the progressive community to exercise their legal right to not answer questions put to them by FBI agents. “This is a witch hunt against anyone who is standing up against war and injustice. Tell FBI agents you have nothing to say. Period.” says Kelly.

Why Bradley Manning Is a Patriot, Not a Criminal: An Opening Statement for the Defense of Private Manning

2011-02-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

Thursday 10 February 2011
by: Chase Madar | TomDispatch | News Analysis

Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old from Crescent, Oklahoma, enlisted in the U.S. military in 2007 to give something back to his country and, he hoped, the world.

For the past seven months, Army Private First Class Manning has been held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Twenty-five thousand other Americans are also in prolonged solitary confinement, but the conditions of Manning’s pre-trial detention have been sufficiently brutal for the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Torture to announce an investigation.

Pfc. Manning is alleged to have obtained documents, both classified and unclassified, from the Department of Defense and the State Department via the Internet and provided them to WikiLeaks. (That “alleged” is important because the federal informant who fingered Manning, Adrian Lamo, is a felon convincted of computer-hacking crimes. He was also involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution in the month before he levelled his accusation. All of this makes him a less than reliable witness.) At any rate, the records allegedly downloaded by Manning revealed clear instances of war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, widespread torture committed by the Iraqi authorities with the full knowledge of the U.S. military, previously unknown estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. military checkpoints, and the massive Iraqi civilian death toll caused by the American invasion.

For bringing to light this critical but long-suppressed information, Pfc. Manning has been treated not as a whistleblower, but as a criminal and a spy. He is charged with violating not only Army regulations but also the Espionage Act of 1917, making him the fifth American to be charged under the act for leaking classified documents to the media. A court-martial will likely be convened in the spring or summer.

Politicians have called for Manning’s head, sometimes literally. And yet a strong legal defense for Pfc. Manning is not difficult to envision. Despite many remaining questions of fact, a legal defense can already be sketched out. What follows is an “opening statement” for the defense. It does not attempt to argue individual points of law in any exhaustive way. Rather, like any opening statement, it is an overview of the vital legal (and political) issues at stake, intended for an audience of ordinary citizens, not Judge Advocate General lawyers.

After all, it is the court of public opinion that ultimately decides what a government can and cannot get away with, legally or otherwise.

Opening Statement for the Defense of Bradley Manning, Soldier and Patriot

U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning has done his duty. He has witnessed serious violations of the American military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, violations of the rules in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, and violations of international law. He has brought these wrongdoings to light out of a profound sense of duty to his country, as a citizen and a soldier, and his patriotism has cost him dearly.

In 2005, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member [in Iraq], if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to try to stop it.” This, in other words, was the obligation of every U.S. service member in Operation Iraqi Freedom; this remains the obligation of every U.S. service member in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. It is a duty that Pfc. Manning has fulfilled.

Who is Pfc. Bradley Manning? He is a 23-year-old Private First Class in the U.S. Army. He was raised in Crescent, Oklahoma (population 1,281, according to the last census count). He enlisted in 2007. “He was basically really into America,” says a hometown friend. “He was proud of our successes as a country. He valued our freedom, but probably our economic freedom the most. I think he saw the U.S. as a force for good in the world.”

When Bradley Manning deployed to Iraq in October 2009, he thought that he’d be helping the Iraqi people build a free society after the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein. What he witnessed firsthand was quite another matter.

He soon found himself helping the Iraqi authorities detain civilians for distributing “anti-Iraqi literature” -- which turned out to be an investigative report into financial corruption in their own government entitled “Where does the money go?” The penalty for this “crime” in Iraq was not a slap on the wrist. Imprisonment and torture, as well as systematic abuse of prisoners, are widespread in the new Iraq. From the military’s own Sigacts (Significant Actions) reports, we have a multitude of credible accounts of Iraqi police and soldiers shooting prisoners, beating them to death, pulling out fingernails or teeth, cutting off fingers, burning with acid, torturing with electric shocks or the use of suffocation, and various kinds of sexual abuse including sodomization with gun barrels and forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts on guards and each other.

Manning had more than adequate reason to be concerned about handing over Iraqi citizens for likely torture simply for producing pamphlets about corruption in a government notorious for its corruptness.

Like any good soldier, Manning immediately took these concerns up the chain of command. And how did his superiors respond? His commanding officer told him to “shut up” and get back to rounding up more prisoners for the Iraqi Federal Police to treat however they cared to.

Now, you have already heard what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to say about an American soldier’s duties when confronted with the torture and abuse of prisoners. Ever since our country signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture, it has been the law of our land that handing over prisoners to a body that will torture them is a war crime. Nevertheless, between early 2009 and August of last year, our military handed over thousands of prisoners to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well what would happen to many of them.

The next time Pfc. Manning encountered evidence of war crimes, he took a different course of action.

On the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) shared by the Departments of Defense and State Manning soon found irrefutable evidence of possible war crimes, including a now-infamous “Collateral Murder” video in which a U.S. Apache helicopter mowed down some 18 civilians, including two Reuters journalists, on a street in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. The world has now seen and been shocked by this video which Reuters is alleged to have had in its possession but had not yet made public. Manning is alleged to have leaked it to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks in April 2010.

Manning also found a video and an official report on American air strikes on the village of Granai in Afghanistan’s Farah Province (also known as “the Granai massacre”). According to the Afghan government, 140 civilians, including women and a large number of children, died in those strikes. He is alleged to have released that video as part of a tranche of some 92,000 military documents relating to our escalating war in Afghanistan -- already the longest war our nation has ever fought -- and Pakistan, where the war is steadily spreading. Manning is also alleged to have released to WikiLeaks some 392,000 documents regarding the Iraq War, many of which relate to the torture of prisoners, as well as some 251,000 State Department cables.

Now, in your judgment of Bradley Manning, please know that the stakes are indeed high, but not in the feverish way our political and media elites have been telling you from nearly every newspaper, channel, and website in the land. We will want you, a true jury of Manning’s military peers, to ask a few questions about what’s really been going on in this trial -- and in this country. After all, when we reward lawyers in the Justice Department who created memos that made torture legal with federal judgeships and regular newspaper columns, while locking lock up a whistle-blowing private, you have to ask: What country are we now living in?

This trial couldn’t be more important or your judgment more crucial. The honor of our country is very much at stake in how you decide. When we let the aerial slaughter of civilian noncombatants pass without comment or review, when a reported 92 children die from an American air strike on an Afghan village and 18 civilians are shot dead on a Baghdad street without the slightest accountability, except when it comes to locking up the private who ensured that we would know about these acts -- let me repeat -- the honor of your country and mine is at stake and at risk. Not the security of your country, though the prosecution will claim otherwise, but the honor of our country, and especially the honor of our military.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is one soldier who has done his duty. He has complied with it to the letter. Now you must do your duty as members of this jury and as soldiers.

Our Whistleblower Laws Protect Pfc. Manning

The prosecution will surely tell you that none of our existing whistleblower protection laws, interpreted narrowly, apply to Bradley Manning.

I say otherwise, and so will the experts we will call to the stand. You will hear from legal expert Jesselyn Radack, an attorney and former whistleblower who was purged, punished, and then vindicated for her courageous acts of disclosing illegal wrongdoing inside the Bush administration’s Department of Justice. Ms. Radack will explain to you why and how Bradley Manning is well protected by our current laws. After all, the Whistleblower Protection Act is designed to protect a government employee who exposes fraud, waste, abuse, or illegality to anyone inside or outside a government agency, including a member of the news media. This is well supported by case law. (See Horton v. Dep’t of Navy, 66. F3d 279, 282 (Fed. Cir. 1995)]. Isn’t that exactly what Pfc. Bradley Manning has done?

As a fallback argument, the prosecution is sure to suggest that WikiLeaks is not a real media entity in the way that the New York Times is. Any one of you who has ever gotten the news and information from the Internet knows otherwise.

The prosecution will also be eager to inform you that the Military Whistleblower Protection Act (MWPA) does not apply here. We, however, will prove to you that the act applies with great and particular force to Pfc. Manning. For one thing, the MWPA not only allows an even wider array of government officials to make disclosures of classified information, it also broadens the scope of what kinds of disclosure a soldier can make. It expressly allows disclosures of classified information by members of the armed forces if they have a “reasonable belief” that what is being disclosed offers evidence of a “violation of the law,” “an abuse of authority,” or “a substantial danger to public safety.” In other words, the purpose of the Military Whistleblower Protection Act is to protect soldiers just like Pfc. Manning who report on improper -- or in this case, patently illegal -- activities by other military personnel.

Now, there is no strict precedent, the prosecution will claim, for any of our whistleblower protection laws to apply to Pfc. Manning. But as we will make clear, there is no contrary precedent either. That’s because we’ve never seen a whistleblower disclosure as massive, vivid, and horrific as this one. We are in uncharted territory. If the plain language of these whistleblower protection laws is unclear, legal convention dictates that we look at the laws’ intent. Clearly Congress meant, and legislative history supports this, for the whistleblower protection laws to protect whistleblowers, not -- as this administration seems to think -- to prosecute them.

The progress of our common law is prudent, it is incremental, it is slow. But our common law is not dead. It does progress. Whether the common law will take that small step forward in the case of Pfc. Manning is your duty to decide. And your decision will have repercussions.

For if you convict Bradley Manning, then you are also clearing the way to try and possibly convict Army Specialist Joseph Darby, the whistleblower who leaked the Abu Ghraib photos and thereby ended acts of torture and abuse that were shaming our military and our nation. Now, Specialist Darby did not leak the photos of this disgrace up the chain of command or to the Army Inspector General as our whistleblower law envisions. Instead, he leaked it straight to the Army Criminal Investigative Division, and this path is not strictly what our whistleblower laws allow. Was Spc. Joseph Darby doing his duty as an honorable soldier when he exposed the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib? Or was he just trying to damage the United States? Your verdict on Bradley Manning could reopen that question, and answer it anew.

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If you convict Bradley Manning, you will also potentially be convicting the father of Army Specialist Adam Winfield. In February 2010, Winfield informed his father, Christopher Winfield, a marine veteran, via Facebook, of a homicidal “Kill Team” at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, that was murdering civilians. Winfield’s father tried to sound the alarm via phone calls to the Army Inspector General’s 24-hour hotline, to Senator Bill Nelson, and even to members of his son’s command unit in Fort Lewis.

Both father and son went beyond the “proper” channels to stop the murder of innocent Afghan civilians. Spc. Winfield is now on trial for possible complicity in the “kill team” murders, but no charges have been filed against his father. Tell me, then: Is Winfield’s father guilty of damaging his country because he tried to warn the Army about a homicidal “kill team” in the ranks? Whether you like it or not, whether you care to or not, this is something you will decide when you render your judgment on Bradley Manning’s actions.

The Espionage Charges

The most outlandish entries on the overachieving charge sheet are those stemming from the Espionage Act of 1917. After all, Pfc. Manning is just the fifth American in 94 years to be charged under this archaic law with leaking government documents. (Of the five, only one has been convicted.)

The Espionage Act was never intended to be used in this way, as an extra punishment for citizens who disclose classified material, and that is why the government only carts it out when its case is exceptionally desperate.

In order for Espionage Act charges to stick, it is required that Pfc. Manning had the conscious intent -- take note of that crucial phrase -- to damage the United States or aid a foreign nation with his disclosures. Not surprisingly, given this, you are going to hear the prosecution spare no effort to portray the release of these cables as the gravest blow to America’s place in the world since Pearl Harbor.

I hope you’ll take this with more than a grain of salt. For where is the staggering fallout from all the supposed bombshells in these leaked documents? Months after the release of the State Department cables, not a single American ambassador has been recalled. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who commands far more budget and power than the Secretary of State, publicly insists that these leaks -- the Iraq War logs, the Afghan War Logs, and the diplomatic cables -- have not done any major harm. “Now I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer and so on,” said Gates. “I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought.” Significantly overwrought? "Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve,” he added, “and it has for a long time."

So what happened to the biggest blow to American prestige since the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam? And keep in mind that the Secretary of Defense is by no means the only official pooh-poohing the hype about the WikiLeaks apocalypse. One former head of policy planning at the State Department looked at the cables, shrugged, and said that the documents hold “little news,” and that they are “unlikely to do long-term damage.” A senior Pentagon spokesperson, Colonel David Lapan, confessed to reporters last September that there is zero evidence any of the Afghan informers named in the leaked documents have been injured by Taliban reprisals. Tell me, where is the Armageddon that this 23-year-old private has supposedly loosed on our American world?

Of course, there’s no denying that some members of our foreign policy elite have been mightily embarrassed by the State Department cables. Good. They deserve it.

Their fleeting embarrassment is nothing compared to the shame they have brought down on our country with their foolish deeds over the past decade, actions that range from the reckless and incompetent to the downright criminal. It’s no secret that America’s standing in the world has been severely damaged in these years, but ask yourself: Is this because of recent disclosures of civilian deaths and war crimes --most of which are surprising only to Americans -- along with diplomatic tittle-tattle?

I suggest to you that the damage to our nation, which couldn’t be more real, has come not from the disclosures of a young private, but from our foreign policy elite’s long pattern of foolish and destructive actions. After all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq have cost rivers of blood. The price tag for our current foreign wars has now officially soared above the trillion-dollar mark (and few doubt that, in the end, the real cost will run into the trillions of dollars). And don’t forget, the invasion of Iraq has inspired new waves of hatred and distrust of our country overseas, and has provided an adrenaline boost for Islamic terrorists.

Needless to say, our political, military, and media elites have not lined up to take responsibility for this series of self-inflicted wounds. Before they try to pin a nonexistent catastrophe on Pfc. Manning, they ought to take a long, hard look in the mirror and think about the real damage they’ve done to our nation, the world, and not least the overstretched, overstrained U.S. military.

Just imagine: if only someone like Bradley Manning had leaked conclusive documentation about Saddam Hussein’s supposedly deadly but nonexistent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, the excuse for our invasion of Iraq. Such a disclosure would have profoundly embarrassed Washington’s foreign policy elite and in the atmosphere of early 2003, the media would undoubtedly have called for that whistleblower’s head, just as they’re doing now.

Such a leak, however, would have done a powerful load of good for our nation. Four thousand four hundred and thirty-six American soldiers would not be dead and thousands more would not be maimed, wounded, or suffering from PTSD. At the very least, more than 100,000, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians would still be living. These are the consequences of policy-making by a secretive government that wants the American people to know nothing, and a media that is either unable or unwilling to do its job and report on facts, not government spin.

You all are old enough to have noticed that the health of our republic and the reputations of our ruling elites are not one and the same. In the best of times, they overlap. The past 10 years have not been the best of times. Those elites have led us into disaster after disaster, imperiling our already breached national security, straining our ruinous finances, and tearing to shreds our moral standing in the world. Don’t try to blame this state of affairs on Private Bradley Manning.

The Nuremberg Principles Mean Something in Our Courts

Our soldiers have a solemn duty not to obey illegal orders, and Pfc. Manning upheld this duty. General Peter Pace’s statement on a soldier’s overriding duty to stop the torture and abuse of prisoners, whatever his or her orders, is not just high-minded public relations; it’s the law of the land. More than 50 years ago, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 incorporated the Nuremberg Principles, among them Principle IV: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to an order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” This remains the law of our land and of our armed forces, too.

I suspect the prosecution will have other ideas. They will tell you that the Nuremberg Principles are great stuff for commencement addresses, but don’t actually mean anything in practical terms. They will tell you that the Nuremberg Principles are of use only to the Lisa Simpsons of the human-rights industry.

But know this: some 400,000 of your fellow soldiers died in the Second World War for the establishment of those principles. For that reason alone, they are something that you in the military ought to treat with the utmost seriousness.

And if the judge or prosecutor should tell you that the Nuremberg Principles don’t mean a thing in our courts, they would be flat wrong. Courts have taken the Nuremberg Principles to heart before, and more and more have done so in the past few years. In 2005, for example, Judge Lieutenant Commander Robert Klant took note of the Nuremberg principles in a sentencing hearing for Pablo Paredes, a Navy Petty Officer Third Class who refused redeployment to Iraq, and whose punishment was subsequently minimized.

Similarly, at his court martial in 2009, Sergeant Matthis Chiroux justified his refusal to redeploy to a war that he believed violated both national and international law, and was backed up by expert testimony on the Nuremberg Principles. The court martial granted Sgt. Chiroux a general discharge.

A long line of Supreme Court cases, from Mitchell v. Harmony in 1851 all the way back to Little v. Barreme in 1804, established that soldiers have a duty not to follow illegal orders. In short, it is a matter of record and established precedent that these Nuremberg Principles have meant something in our courts. Yours will not be the first court martial to apply these principles, fought for and won with American blood, nor will it be the last.

Whistleblowers Are Patriots Who Sacrifice for Their Country

Whistleblowers who attempt to rectify the disastrous policies of their nation are not criminals. They are patriots, and eventually are recognized as such. Bradley Manning is by no means the first American to serve his country in such a way.

Today, Daniel Ellsberg is famous as the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, a secret internal history ordered up by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara himself that candidly recounted how a series of administrations systematically lied to the nation about the planning and prosecution of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg’s massive leak of these documents helped end that war and bring down a criminal administration. How criminal? Midway through Ellsberg’s trial in 1973, the Nixon administration offered the judge overseeing his treason trial the directorship of the FBI in an implicit quid pro quo, a maneuver of such brazen corruption as to shame any banana republic. The judge dismissed all the government’s charges with prejudice and now Daniel Ellsberg is a national hero.

Those born after a certain date may be forgiven for assuming that Ellsberg was some long-haired subversive of an “anti-American” stripe. In fact, he had been, like Bradley Manning, a model soldier.

At the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, Ellsberg graduated first in a class of some 1,100 lieutenants. He served as a platoon leader and rifle company commander in the Marine 2nd Infantry Division for three years, and deferred his graduate studies so he could remain on active duty with his battalion during the Suez Crisis of 1956. (You will note that deferring graduate school in order to stay on active military duty is the exact opposite of what so many of our recent, and current, national leaders did in those decades.) After satisfying his Reserve Officer commitment, Ellsberg was discharged from the Corps as a first lieutenant, and leaving the military went on to a distinguished career in government.

Daniel Ellsberg was a model Marine, and later a model citizen. His courageous act of leaking classified information was only one more episode in a consistent record of patriotic service. When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers he did so out of the profoundest sense of duty, knowing full well, just like Bradley Manning today, that he might spend the rest of his life in jail.

Ellsberg calls Pfc. Manning his hero and he is a tireless defender of the brave Army private our government has locked away in solitary.

Vandals trash things without a care in their hearts, but real patriots like former Lt. Ellsberg and Pfc. Manning do their duty knowing that the privilege of living in a free society does not always come cheap.

“Frankly and in the Public View”: The American Tradition of Diplomacy

Today, Ellsberg himself is lionized, even by the U.S. government, as a national hero. The State Department recently put together a traveling roadshow of American documentary films to screen abroad, and front and center among them is an admiring movie about Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. But then it is only appropriate that the government recognize Ellsberg and his once-controversial disclosures as part and parcel of the American tradition.

After all, demands for more open and transparent diplomacy are as American as baseball and Hank Williams. World War I-era President Woodrow Wilson himself insisted on the abolition of secret treaties as part of his 14 points for the League of Nations; in fact, it’s the very first point: “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”

How can foreign policy be democratic if the most serious decisions and facts -- alliances, death tolls, assessments of the leaders and governments we are bankrolling with our tax dollars -- are all kept as official secrets? The “Bricker Amendment” was an attempt by congressional Republicans in the 1950s to require Senate approval of U.S. treaties, in large part to open up public debate about foreign affairs. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat who served as representative to the U.N. for Republican President Richard Nixon, was also a severe critic of government secrecy and the habitual over-classification of state documents. These American statesmen knew that if foreign policy is crafted in secret, without the oxygen and sunlight of vigorous public debate, disaster and dysfunction would result.

For the past 10 years, we have had exactly such disaster and dysfunction as our foreign policy. Our leaders have plunged us into a dark world of secrecy and lies. Tell me: Is this Private Bradley Manning’s fault?

Let me be clear as I bring this opening statement to a close: for all the complexities this case holds, your job will in the end prove a simple and basic one. It’s your task not to let our leaders, or the prosecution, pin the horrendous state of affairs into which this country has been thrown on Pfc. Manning. I am confident that you will see him for the patriot he is, a young man with a moral backbone whose goal was not self-aggrandizement or profit or even attention and glory. His urge was to shine a bright light on his own country’s wrongdoing and, in that way, bring it, bring us, back to our nobler national traditions.

It is Pfc. Manning, not our fearless national leaders, who has sacrificed much to restore the rule of law and a minimal level of public oversight to American foreign and military policy. “Frankly and in the public view”: this once would have been called a reasonable description of the American character, something that set us apart from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia, or Imperial Japan. Whether our government has any responsibility to conduct its affairs frankly and in the public view in 2011 and beyond -- this is something else you will decide in your judgment on Pfc. Manning.

As soldiers, you know well that most Americans have insulated themselves from the last decade’s foreign-policy disasters. Even as we spend a trillion dollars on foreign wars, our taxes are cut. If you’re making decent money, the odds are it’s not your kids, grandchildren, brothers, or sisters who are off fighting, killing, and dying in our foreign wars. Most Americans, thanks in part to the media, have little idea of what you and your peers have lived through, the weight you have shouldered.

This is not true of Pfc. Bradley Manning. He came face to face with this disaster. He saw, and participated in, the roundup of Iraqi civilians to be tortured by their own national police force. Tell me honestly: Was this what Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to accomplish? Is this why you, his jury of peers, enlisted in the military?

Pfc. Manning saw this misery and rampant illegality with his own two eyes, and then, online, he discovered more of the same -- much, much more -- and he did something about it, knowing full well the penalty. “I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me […] plastered all over the world press,” he confided to the informant who betrayed him. Manning knew the stakes and the risks when he leaked these documents, but still he loyally performed his duty, both to the United States Army and to his country.

As one of Manning’s childhood friends from Crescent, Oklahoma, has testified, “He wanted to serve his country.” It’s up to you to decide whether he did.

You have a duty as a fully informed jury of free citizens. You are not an assortment of rubber stamps pulled out of a judge’s desk drawer. You are as important a part of this court as the judge, prosecutor, and the accused himself.

Whichever way you decide in your verdict, you will not face the consequences Bradley Manning already endures, but your judgment will have great consequences, not just for him, but for the honor and future of the country you have taken an oath to serve.

Now, go and do your duty.

Chase Madar is an attorney in New York and a member of the National Lawyers Guild. He writes for TomDispatch, the American Conservative magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the London Review of Books. (To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast video interview in which Chase Madar explores Manning’s case and his defense, click here, or download it to your iPod here.)

Copyright 2011 Chase Madar

A Rich Fantasy Life

2011-02-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 09 February 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

I know I should be immune to this by now, but I still find myself awestruck by the incredibly detailed, insulated fantasy world that the American conservative "movement" has created for themselves. No lie is too big to be told, no fact is too firm to be bent around ideology, no myth is too absurd to defend to the knife. The ability to spew deliberate nonsense into the credulous ears of Fox-watching right-bent voters - and to be utterly without shame while doing it - is the core of this "movement's" political muscle, and has been for a number of decades now.

Take, for example, this past weekend's festival of Reagan. The late president's 100th birthday opened the floodgates for an ocean of nonsense to be dumped on the American people. He was a great leader, the conservative's conservative, a small-government hero who deserves a place on Mt. Rushmore.

Rilly?

Ronald Reagan's "supply side" economic model was the gateway drug that led inexorably to the collapse of the American economy two years ago, and yet his conservative acolytes - as well as far too many Democrats who should know better - still cling to that economic model as if it were holy writ.

Ronald Reagan raised taxes massively, and grew the federal government enormously, while sending the country spiraling into a morass of debt we are nowhere near recovering from, and yet his worshippers continue to tout him as the perfect "small government" man.

Ronald Reagan and his people sold shiploads of weapons to Iran even as they supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his war against the Islamic Republic. Ronald Reagan and his people basically created the Taliban, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan as a means of carrying on the Cold War fight against the Soviet Union, and yet today his conservative followers cling to a "War on Terror" as their sword and shield.

Didn't hear any of this during the weekend's Reaganapallooza, did you? No surprise. Why let facts - Reagan was a terrible president who bears a great deal of responsibility for today's national problems, a president who exploded the debt and the size of government, a president who supported known terrorists and rogue nations with money and materiel even as they were killing Americans - get in the way of a perfectly good story line.

That's the kind of comfort bubble these people live in, and it must be a nice place to be, because they refuse to be budged out of it one centimeter. The Reagan worship we just witnessed is merely this week's iteration of an ongoing phenomenon: the creation of a parallel story line - nay, a parallel universe - to satisfy the already-calcified opinions of the far-right GOP base.

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A perfect example of this is the Tea Party "movement," which is nothing more or less than a creation of the "news" media. There is no Tea Party; the term is a re-branding of that same GOP base, and nothing more. By way of vast corporate cash infusions from entities like the Koch brothers, these Tea Party dupes were fooled into believing they are a force for the common man, for the worker, for truth and justice and the American way, and even managed to get some of their so-called representatives elected to Congress in 2010...but it didn't take long for the mythology to start unraveling.

"Earmarks are bad" was the 2010 campaign refrain, but the very breathing second these Tea Party House members hit their seats in Congress, earmarks suddenly became no big deal, and now they are hardly discussed outside of the cloak room. Job creation? Nah. The newly-minted GOP House majority instead went to work trying to redefine what rape is in order to attack abortion rights, before backing off amid a storm of outrage and protest. And, of course, there is the push to repeal the health care bill, which, like the attack on abortion, is about throwing red meat to the base instead of actually getting anything done.

Here in reality, the gulf between right-wing rhetoric and actual activity has not gone unnoticed:

The GOP majority is bringing only a handful of bills to the floor this week, and none would be characterized as major legislation. Four of the five measures will be considered under a procedure generally reserved for non-controversial legislation; the fifth is a resolution that merely instructs committees to review federal regulations for their impact on job growth.

Democratic leaders contend it doesn't amount to much.

"Members return Tuesday from a week and a half of recess for another light legislative agenda in the House of Representatives," Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for the assistant Democratic leader, Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), wrote in a note to reporters over the weekend. "Perhaps if House Republicans had a jobs agenda, the schedule would be more robust."

Greco scoffed at the resolution on federal regulations, saying the GOP planned to spend 10 hours debating a bill that "instruct[s] oversight committees to conduct oversight."

Adding to the criticism, a group of 10 Democratic committee leaders on Monday sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) denouncing the resolution as superfluous and a waste of time.

"The floor schedule that the Republican majority has pursued and intends to pursue this week will create no jobs," the Democrats wrote. "Indeed, spending two days, and taxpayer dollars, on a resolution calling on our committees to perform oversight functions that they are already authorized to conduct distracts from our efforts to create jobs."

Not everyone on the right is in love with the fiction that permeates and props up the "movement." Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, decided recently to abandon his re-election bid to keep his post. Why? "I have tired," he wrote in a memo to party officials, "of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying 'uniting conservatives' is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state." He was even more blunt with the Washington Post: "I have loved being chairman, but I'm tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is."

Unfortunately for the rest of us, people like Mr. Wadhams are the exception that proves the rule. The rich fantasy life enjoyed by the right - Reagan was great, the Tea Party is a "movement" for the little guy, and the new GOP House majority will be a force for good - continues unabated.

WikiLeaks Backers ‘Anonymous’ to Be Probed by U.S. Grand Jury

2011-02-10T07:09:00.001-08:00

By Michael Riley

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Evidence collected by the FBI about Anonymous, which attacked websites of four companies to punish them for blocking contributions to WikiLeaks, will be considered this week by a U.S. grand jury, according to court papers and an informal spokesman for the group of activist hackers.

The federal grand jury in San Jose, California, will begin reviewing evidence tomorrow that includes computers and mobile phones seized from suspected leaders as prosecutors probe the coordinated so-called denial-of-service attacks in December, according to a federal subpoena and the spokesman, Barrett Brown. Anonymous directed activists to target payment processors MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., EBay Inc.’s PayPal, and U.K.-based Moneybookers.com in public chat rooms.

Among the evidence seized by the FBI during multistate raids on Jan. 27 was data taken from an individual who controls one of Anonymous’s primary servers, identified by the organization only by his cyber-handle ‘Owen,’ Brown said.

“The FBI is breaking down people’s doors with guns drawn,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the board of the National Lawyers Guild, which has talked with Anonymous organizers about their legal defense. “A group of people are engaged in a modern day electronic sit-in, and the FBI wants to treat that like it’s terrorist activity.”

Anonymous responded on Feb. 6 by hacking a California-based security firm that it said was aiding the probe, hijacking 60,000 company e-mails and making them public on one of the organization’s servers. The e-mails included a proposal by the company to develop a malware tracking program for the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), among other confidential documents.

Drawn Guns

Jenny Shearer, a Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman, said the agency couldn’t comment on the probe or its targets. She said “it’s not unusual” to have drawn guns during the execution of a search warrant until “the situation is secure.”

The subpoena shows federal investigators are trying to piece together the workings of an elusive group composed of hundreds of hackers and activists stretched across several countries. Brown said about a dozen members are able to influence the direction of Anonymous.

Agents served a grand jury subpoena on a California man who goes by the screen name ‘Trivette,’ ordering him to appear before the panel tomorrow. It demands all information he has on how the December attacks were organized, including instructions to activists on how to download software that can overwhelm websites by inundating them with thousands of service requests a second.

‘Names, Handles’

The subpoena requested information on the group’s hierarchy and structure, including “names, handles, e-mail accounts, or IP addresses,” according to a copy provided to Bloomberg News by the organization.

The FBI also raided the home of a 19-year-old Nevada woman, Brown said. Agents seized two computers, including one owned by her father, her iPhone, two flash drives and a router, Brown said.

Among other recent high-profile attacks, Anonymous has claimed in public statements responsibility for crashing government websites in Egypt and Tunisia to support political protests.

Brown said the group, whose activities have sparked an international investigation and five arrests in Britain, is dedicated to “the defense of liberty.” Its goal is “a perpetual revolution across the world that goes on until governments are basically overwhelmed and results in a freer system,” he said.

History of Retaliation

Several cyber-security experts declined to speak about the group or its activities on the record because of its history of retaliating against critics, such as the Feb. 6 attack on a cyber security firm HBGary Federal, which Anonymous accused of aiding the government’s investigation.

Shearer, the FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment on any cooperation between the agency and the security firm.

Aaron Barr, the head of security services for the Sacramento-based company, was quoted in the Financial Times on Feb. 4 saying that he had information on the identity of Anonymous leaders that he planned to release at a cyber conference this month.

The following day, the group hacked into the company’s network and took more than 60,000 internal e-mails and began releasing them last night, Brown said. It also hijacked the Twitter accounts of HBGary’s employees, using them to post personal information such as social security numbers and addresses, he said.

In one e-mail provided by Anonymous, HBGary Chief Executive Officer Greg Hoglund discussed a possible “60 Minutes” interview on Anonymous, as well as how the security firm could use it to their advantage.

Public ‘Hero’

“Position Aaron as a hero to the public,” Hoglund wrote to Barr and Karen Burke, the firm’s spokeswoman. “I think these guys are going to get arrested, it would be interesting to leave the soft impression that Aaron is the one that got them, and that without Aaron the Feds would have never been able to get out of their own way.”

Burke declined to comment on that communication or the other e-mails or whether the firm negotiated with Anonymous to retrieve the internal communications before they became public, as the group claimed.

Investigation Continuing

“The investigation into our breach is still ongoing so it would be premature to comment further at this time,” HBGary Federal President Penny Leavy said in a statement.

The exposure has the potential to be extremely damaging to the security company and its reputation, said Susan Freiwald, an expert on cyber security and law at the University of San Francisco.

“It’s a security firm,” Freiwald said. “It’s especially sensitive for them to be portrayed as insecure.”

The search warrants issued by the FBI in some cases referred to possible violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the main federal anti-hacking statute, Brown said.

The law can be used to prosecute denial-of-service attacks, according to a Justice Department manual relating to computer crime and intellectual property posted on the agency website. Prosecutors must prove an attack caused at least $5,000 in damage to a company or its operations, a threshold the December attacks probably meets, Freiwald said.

No One Arrested

No one has been arrested yet in the U.S. in connection with the probe, Brown said. The Lawyers Guild’s Verheyden-Hilliard said the attacks against PayPal or MasterCard should be viewed as a form of modern-day civil disobedience, the equivalent of blocking a company’s virtual storefront.

Those attacks may have slowed or disabled the companies’ websites temporarily without affecting their payment processing functions, the companies said.

“Civil disobedience is historically more effective when the state intervenes in a heavy-handed way,” said Ryan Calo, an expert in cyber crime at Stanford University in Stanford, California. “It is not just the act but also all the follow-up -- the subpoenas, arrests, a trial. That’s all part of the act of civil disobedience.”

--Editors: Fred Strasser, Patrick Oster.

Torturing Democracy

2011-02-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

by: Henry A. Giroux, Paradigm Press | Book Excerpt

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, we have lived through a historical period in which the United States relinquished its tenuous claim to democracy. The frames through which democracy apprehends others as human beings worthy of respect, dignity, and human rights were sacrificed to a mode of politics and culture that simply became an extension of war, both at home and abroad. At home, the punishing state increasingly replaced the welfare state, however ill conceived, as more and more individuals and groups were now treated as disposable populations, undeserving of those safety nets and basic protections that provide the conditions for living with a sense of security and dignity. Under such conditions, basic social supports were replaced by an accelerated production of prisons, the expansion of the criminal justice system into everyday life, and the further erosion of crucial civil liberties. Shared responsibilities gave way to shared fears, and the only distinction that seemed to resonate in the culture was between friends and patriots, on the one hand, and dissenters and enemies, on the other. State violence not only became acceptable, it was normalized as the government spied on its citizens, suspended the right of habeas corpus, sanctioned police brutality against those who questioned state power, relied on the state secrets privilege to hide its crimes, and increasingly reduced public spheres designed to protect children to containment centers and warehouses that modeled themselves after prisons. Fear both altered the landscape of democratic rights and values and dehumanized a population that was ever more willing to look the other way as large segments of the populace were either dehumanized, incarcerated, or simply treated as disposable. The dire consequences can be seen every day as the media report a stream of tragic stories about decent people losing their homes; more and more young people being incarcerated; and growing numbers of people living in their cars, on the streets, or in tent cities. The New York Times offers up a front-page story about young people leaving their recession-ridden families in order to live on the street, often surviving by selling their bodies for money. Reports surface in the dominant media about unspeakable horrors being inflicted on children tortured in the "death chambers" of Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. And the American people barely blink.

The Bush administration further eroded a culture inspired by democratic values, replacing it with a culture of war and a culture of illegality that experimented with an extrajudicial detention system used to create torture chambers in Bagram, Kandahar, and Guantanamo Bay. After 2001, the language and ghostly shadow of war became all-embracing, not only eroding the distinction between war and peace but also putting into play a public pedagogy in which every aspect of the culture was shaped by militarized knowledge, values, and ideals. From video games and Hollywood films either supported or produced by the Department of Defense to the ongoing militarization of public and higher education, the notion of the common good was subordinated to a military metaphysics, warlike values, and the dictates of the national security state. War gained a new status under the Bush administration, moving from an option of last resort to a primary instrument of diplomacy in the war on terror. A dogmatic faith in war was supplemented by a persistent attempt to legitimate such a politics through another kind of war based on pedagogical struggle to create subjects, citizens, and institutions that would support such draconian policies. War was no longer the last resort of a state intent on defending its territory; it morphed into a new form of public pedagogy--a type of cultural war machine--designed to shape and lead the society. War became the foundation for a politics that employed military language, concepts, and policing relations to address problems far beyond the familiar terrains of battle. In some cases, war was so aestheticized by the dominant media that it resembled an advertisement for a tourist industry. The upshot is that it the meaning of war was rhetorically, visually, and materially expanded to name, legitimate, and wage battles against social problems involving drugs, poverty, and the nation's newfound enemy, the Mexican immigrant.

As war became normalized as the central function of power and politics, it became a regular and normative element of American society, legitimated by a state of exception and emergency that became permanent rather than temporary. As the production of violence reached beyond traditionally defined enemies and threats, the state now took aim at terrorism, shifting its register of power by waging war on a concept, broadening its pursuits, tactics, and strategies against no specific state, army, soldiers, or location. The enemy was omnipresent, all the more difficult to root out and all the more convenient for expanding the tactics of surveillance, the culture of fear, and the resources of violence. War was now a permanent and commonplace feature of American domestic and foreign policy, a battle that had no definitive end and demanded the constant use of violence. War had become more than a military strategy: it was now a pedagogy and a form of cultural politics designed to legitimate certain modes of governance, create identities supportive of militaristic values, and provide the formative culture that supported the organization and production of violence as a central feature of domestic and foreign policy.

It is difficult to imagine how any democracy can avoid being corrupted when war becomes the foundation of politics, if not culture itself. Any democracy that makes war and state violence the organizing principles of society cannot survive for long, at least as a democratic entity. The United States descended into a period in which society was increasingly organized through the production of both symbolic and material violence. A culture of cruelty emerged in the media, especially in the talk radio circuit, in which a sordid nationalism combined with a hypermilitarism and masculinity that scorned not merely reason but also all those who fit into the stereotype of other--which appeared to include everyone who was not white and Christian. Dialogue, reason, and thoughtfulness slowly disappeared from the public realm as every encounter was framed within circles of certainty, staged as a fight to the death. As the civic and moral center of the country disappeared under the Bush administration, the language of the marketplace provided the only referent for understanding the obligations of citizenship and global responsibility, undeterred by a growing war machine and culture that produced jobs and goods and furthered the war economy.

The war abroad entered a new phase with the release of the photos of detainees being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison. War as organized violence was stripped of its noble aims and delusional goal of promoting democracy, revealing state violence at its most degrading and dehumanizing moment. State power had become an instrument of torture, ripping into the flesh of human beings, raping women, and most abominably torturing children. Democracy had become something that defended the unthinkable and inflicted the most horrible mutilations on both adults and children deemed to be the enemies of democracy. But the mutilations were also inflicted against the body politic as politicians such as former vice president Dick Cheney defended torture while the media addressed the question of torture not as a violation of democratic principles or human rights but as a strategy that might or might not produce concrete information. The utilitarian arguments used to defend a market-driven economy that only recognized cost-benefit analyses and the priority of exchange values had now reached their logical end point as similar arguments were used to defend torture, even when it involved children. The pretense of democracy was stripped bare as it was revealed over and over again that the United States had become a torture state, aligning itself with infamous dictatorships such as those in Argentina and Chile during the 1970s. The U.S. government under the Bush administration had finally arrived at a point where the metaphysics of war, organized violence, and state terrorism prevented leaders in Washington from recognizing how much they were emulating the very acts of terrorism they claimed to be fighting. The circle had now been completed, as the warfare state had been transformed into a torture state. Everything became permissible both at home and abroad, just as the legal system along with the market system legitimated a punishing and ruthless mode of economic Darwinism that viewed morality, if not democracy itself, as a weakness to be either scorned or ignored. Markets not only drove politics, they also removed ethical considerations from any understanding of how markets worked or what effects they produced on the larger social order. Self-regulation trumped moral considerations and became the primary force driving the market, while narrowly defined individual interests set the parameters of what was possible. The public collapsed into the private, and social responsibility was reduced to the arbitrary desires of the hermetic, asocial self. Not surprisingly, the inhuman and degrading entered public discourse and shaped the debate about war, state violence, and human rights abuses; it also served to legitimate such practices. The United States unabashedly entered into a moral vacuum that enabled it to both justify torture and state violence and to mobilize successfully a war culture and public pedagogy in the larger culture that convinced, as a Pew Research Center poll indicated, 54 percent of the American people that "torture is at least sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists."[1] Torture was normalized and duly accepted by the majority of the American people while the promise of an aspiring democracy was irreparably damaged.

Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror examines how the United States under the Bush administration embarked on a war on terror that not only defended torture as a matter of official policy but also furthered the conditions for the emergence of a culture of cruelty that profoundly altered the political and moral landscape of the country. As torture became normalized under Bush, it corrupted American ideals and political culture, and the administration passed over to the dark side in sanctioning the unimaginable and unspeakable--the torture of children. Although the rise of the torture state has been a subject of intense controversy, too little has been said by intellectuals, academics, artists, writers, parents, and politicians about how state violence under the Bush administration set in motion a public pedagogy and political culture that legitimated the systemic torture of children and did so with the complicity of dominant media that either denied such practices or simply ignored them. The focus on children here is deliberate because young people provide a powerful referent for the long-term consequences of social policies, if not the future itself, and also because they offer a crucial index to measure the moral and democratic values of a nation. Children are the heartbeat and moral compass of politics because they speak to the best of its possibilities and promises, and yet they have, since the 1980s, become the vanishing point of moral debate, either deemed irrelevant because of their age, discounted because they are largely viewed as commodities, or scorned because they are considered a threat to adult society. I have written elsewhere that how a society educates its youth is connected to the collective future the people hope for. Actually, how youth were educated became meaningless as a moral issue under the Bush administration because youth were not only devalued and considered unworthy of a decent life and future (one reason they were denied adequate health care), they were also reduced to the status of the inhuman and depraved and were subjected to cruel acts of torture in sites that were as illegal as they were barbaric. In this instance, youth became the negation of politics and of the future itself.

But more is at stake here than making such crimes visible: there is also the moral and political imperative of raising serious questions about the challenges the Obama administration must address in light of this shameful period in American history, especially if it wants to reverse such policies and make a claim on restoring any vestige of American democracy. Of course, when a country makes torture legal and extends the disciplinary mechanisms of pain, humiliation, and suffering to children, it suggests that far too many people looked away while this was happening and in doing so allowed conditions to emerge that made the unspeakable act of justifying the torture of children a matter of state policy. It is time for Americans to face up to these crimes and engage in a national dialogue about the political, economic, educational, and social conditions that allowed such a dark period to emerge in American history and to hold to account those who were responsible for such acts. The Obama administration is under fire for its embrace of many of Bush's policies, but what is most disturbing is its willingness to make war, secrecy, and the suspension of civil liberties central features of its own policies. Obama, in his desire to look ahead and embrace a depoliticizing and morally empty notion of postpartisan politics, recycles a dangerous form of historical and social amnesia, while overlooking the political and civic pathology he inherited. Hopefully, this book will remind us that memory at its best is unsettling and sometimes even dangerous in its call for individuals to become moral and political witnesses; to take risks; and to embrace history not merely as a critique but also as a warning about how fragile democracy is and what will often happen when the principles, ideals, and elements of the culture that sustain it are allowed to slip away, overtaken by forces that embrace death rather than life, fear rather than hope, insularity rather than solidarity. Robert Hass, the American poet, has suggested that the job of education, its political job, "is to refresh the idea of justice going dead in us all the time."[2] Justice is slipping away, once again, under the Obama administration, but it is not just the government's job to keep it from "going dead": it is also the job of all Americans--as parents, citizens, individuals, and educators--not merely as a matter of social obligation or moral responsibility but as an act of politics, agency, and possibility.

This book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter analyzes the emergence of a set of predatory economic, social, and political conditions that were intensified, particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, setting the stage for the transformation of the welfare state into the warfare and torture state. As democratic values were increasingly subordinated to market values and as a culture of fear replaced a culture of compassion, restraints previously placed on the play of market and financial forces were removed. Public issues now collapsed into private concerns, and people became more vulnerable to those economic and political forces promoting uncertainty, instability, and insecurity. As any notion of the common good and the institutions that supported it were increasingly viewed with disdain, the culture became more self-absorbed, mean-spirited, competitive, and ruthless in its unwillingness to show compassion for the other, especially those who were most vulnerable to uncertain timesóthe young, the elderly, immigrants, poor minorities, and Muslims. As the culture of fear and competitiveness seemed to spin out of control, the punishing state replaced the social state, and politics was largely reduced to protecting the benefits of the rich and expanding those policing apparatuses that were used to contain and punish the poor. As more and more social problems were criminalized, the punishing state became the sole source of legitimation for a state weakened by the forces of a destructive globalization and the free-floating forces of capital and finance. As the laws of the market, an excessive individualism, and an unchecked notion of self-interest became the most important principles shaping society, democratic values, identities, and relations were subordinated to the interests of an economic formation that had freed itself from all constraints. The conditions were now developing in which matters of justice, human rights, and truth were sacrificed to the forces of political and economic expediency. In the second chapter of the book, I analyze how torture became state policy through a series of "illegal legalities" concocted by various members of the Bush administration and how the media, in collusion with the government, refused to acknowledge that torture was not something that simply emerged in the aftermath of 9/11 but had been practiced by the U.S. government for decades. In the third chapter, I analyze how the debate about torture seemed to free itself from human rights abuses committed by the United States historically and also how the Bush administration actively promoted new forms of torture in violation of every major international treaty dealing with torture as an illegal and criminal act. The fourth chapter details the government denial of state-legitimated torture and the gruesome acts of violence and abuse committed on numerous detainees in various U.S.-controlled sites and prisons. Chapter 5 provides ample evidence of how these various conditions along with numerous violations of human rights ultimately resulted in the unthinkable--the torture of children. This chapter is as detailed as it is shocking, invoking both testimony from third parties and testimony from children who were actually tortured. The final chapter of the book raises a series of questions about whether Obama will challenge the horrible legacy of the Bush administration by redefining American democracy or whether he will simply become another victim of the culture of cruelty and suffering that is the legacy of the Bush-Cheney years.

Footnotes:

[1] Heather Maher, "Majority of Americans Think Torture Sometimes Justified," CommonDreams.org (December 4, 2009).

[2] Hass cited in Sarah Pollock, "Robert Hass," Mother Jones (March-April 1992), p. 22.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has taught at Boston University, Miami University of Ohio, and Penn State University. His most recent books include: Youth in a Suspect Society (Palgrave, 2009); Politics After Hope: Obama and the Crisis of Youth, Race, and Democracy (Paradigm, 2010); Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror (Paradigm, 2010). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com.

NY court upholds Fla. doc's terrorism conviction

2011-02-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press
Friday, February 4, 2011; 4:57 PM

NEW YORK -- The conviction of a doctor who prosecutors said assisted terrorists by offering to treat injured al-Qaida fighters was upheld Friday by a federal appeals court, although one of three judges who decided the case said he believes one charge should have been tossed out.

The panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued its 2-to-1 decision affirming Dr. Rafiq Sabir's conviction on a charge of conspiring to attempt to provide material support to a terrorist organization and its unanimous affirmation on a charge that he conspired to provide material support.

Sabir, 56, of Boca Raton, Fla., was sentenced in November 2007 to 25 years in prison after his conviction at a Manhattan trial. The government said he had agreed to treat injured al-Qaida members so they could return to Iraq to fight Americans, though Sabir insisted throughout that he was innocent.

The jury was shown evidence that the Columbia University-trained doctor swore an allegiance to al-Qaida in May 2005 and promised to treat wounded members of the group in Saudi Arabia.

Sabir's lawyers had challenged his conviction on the grounds that the law used to convict him was unconstitutionally vague and too broad, there was insufficient evidence, prosecutors exhibited racial bias in their exclusion of some jurors during jury selection and the judge made incorrect rulings.

In its written opinion, the appeals court said it rejected the arguments and concluded Sabir received a fair trial.

In a dissent, Judge Raymond Dearie said his fellow judges seemed to go too far by allowing Sabir to be convicted on a charge that he tried to provide material support when he only pledged to work under the direction of al-Qaida.

"This conclusion is without precedent and hinges upon what is, in my view, a seriously flawed interpretation of the material support statutes," he wrote.

Dearie said he agreed that Sabir conspired to provide medical support to wounded al-Qaida members in Saudi Arabia in a meeting with a co-conspirator and an undercover FBI agent.

But he said evidence that he actually tried to provide the support was insufficient.

"Regardless of Sabir's inclination, as a matter of law, any step he took toward that end was insubstantial and any support he furnished unquestionably immaterial," Dearie said. "In the end, a man stands guilty, and severely punished, for an offense that he did not commit."

Edward Wilford, a lawyer for Sabir, said he believes Dearie was correct but that the entire conviction should have been overturned for lack of evidence.

"We'll do everything we can to appeal this case and pursue his liberty," he said.

At his sentencing, Sabir blamed a co-defendant - jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah - for his plight, saying he had duped him into taking an oath with an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter, never explaining that he was pledging loyalty to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.

"I'm an extremely gullible man," he said.

Shah was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a deal with the government. A Brooklyn bookstore owner who pleaded guilty was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Human Rights Groups Announce Bush Indictment for Convention Against Torture Signatory States

2011-02-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

No Immunity for Former Presidents Under Law

Geneva, 7 February 2011 – Today, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints, with more than 2,500-pages of supporting material, in Geneva against former U.S. President George W. Bush, who was due to speak at an event there on 12 February. Swiss law requires the presence of the torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be opened. When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next. The Indictment serves as the basis on which to prepare country-specific, plaintiff-specific indictments, with additional evidence and updated information. According to international law experts at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), former presidents do not enjoy special immunity under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

“Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”

While the U.S. has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the U.S. fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.

In a statement this weekend, the groups who organized the complaints said, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear – If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans.”

The complaints that had been scheduled to be filed on Monday asked that the General Prosecutor of the Canton of Geneva investigate allegations that men were tortured as part of the Bush administration’s well-documented torture program. Bush proudly recounted in his recently published memoir that when asked in 2002 to if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture – he replied “damn right.”

Monday, 7 February, is the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘enemy combatants.’

According to the Bush Indictment, which was written on behalf of torture victims by CCR and ECCHR, former President Bush bears individual and command responsibility for the acts of his subordinates which he ordered, authorized, condoned or otherwise aided and abetted, as well as for the violations committed by his subordinates which he failed to prevent or punish.

“Bush is a torturer and deserves to be remembered as such,” said Gavin Sullivan, Solicitor and Counterterrorism Program Manager, ECCHR. “He bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the torture of thousands of individuals at places like Guantánamo and secret CIA ‘black sites’ around the world. As all states are obliged to prosecute such torturers, Bush has good reason to be very worried.”

CCR, ECCHR and FIDH were joined by more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals who signed on to support the call for George W. Bush’s prosecution, including former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations which signed on are facing the on-going harms of the “counterterrorism” policies advanced under the Bush administration and then adopted or employed in their own countries.. The complaint included 2500 pages of supporting materials.

Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), was to submit an expert opinion on the complaints concluding that the conduct to which both plaintiffs were subjected constitutes torture, that Switzerland had an obligation to open a preliminary investigation, and that George W. Bush enjoys no immunity.

The Bush Torture Indictment, the official “letter of denunciation” summarizing the case and other materials are available here: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/bush-torture-indictment.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to filing the first cases representing men detained at Guantánamo, has filed universal jurisdiction cases seeking accountability for torture by Bush administration officials in Germany, France and submitted expert opinions and other documentation to ongoing cases in Spain in collaboration with ECCHR. The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is an independent, non-profit legal organization that enforces human rights by holding state and non-state actors to account for egregious abuses through innovative strategic litigation. For more information visit www.ecchr.eu

The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for 164 human rights organizations. FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Its priority areas include protecting human rights defenders and fighting impunity. For more information on FIDH, see www.fidh.org.

UE: FBI Investigation Hindered 2009 Bank Protest

2011-02-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

By Kari Lydersen

Union workers at the Quad City Die Casting plant in central Illinois expected their planned protest outside a Wells Fargo Bank in July 2009 to be calm and civil. They had already talked with local Rock Island police and made it clear they “had no beef,” in UE Midwest director Carl Rosen’s words, with the police or the municipality, but wanted to make a statement about the bank which was cutting the plant’s financing.

So when the day of the protest came, workers and their supporters were surprised to see a heavy and relatively combative police presence. At the time they didn’t know what to make of it, and figured maybe Wells Fargo had pressured the department to come out in force.

The plant was organized by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the same union which eight months earlier had carried out the famous Republic Windows occupation. Protesters heard a police officer say the FBI had alerted them that “terrorists” were coming to Rock Island for the action, but union reps didn’t believe it.

“It seemed fantastical that the FBI would be interested in us,” said Rosen. It wasn’t until more than a year later that they understood what had happened.

The union members coming from Chicago in solidarity that day included Joe Iosbaker, who, as it turns out, was the target of an ongoing FBI investigation that became public in September 2010 when agents raided his home and the homes of 13 other labor and anti-war activists in Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota.

As described in a statement adopted by the UE’s general executive board at their national meeting January 27-28, union leaders now believe the FBI had been spying on communications of Iosbaker and other activists, and called the Rock Island police to tip them off about the Chicagoans’ plans to go to the protest.

Iosbaker is an executive board member and chief steward of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago, and an outspoken labor activist in general. He directly participated in the UE’s Republic Windows and Doors occupation.

A number of unions and labor groups have passed resolutions or made statements condemning the FBI investigations as a violation of civil rights and free speech. The UE statement points out how the FBI’s actions not only targeted activists for their anti-war views, but also as a side effect infringed upon the Quad City Die Casting members’ right to peacefully protest regarding their own situation.

“We’re supposed to be living in a democracy, and a democracy means elections, but also the ability of people to speak out about issues they’re concerned about, whether popular or unpopular,” Rosen said. “People need to have a right to address their grievances to the government and the public at large—that’s what our members were doing. They’d conferred in advance with the local police so everything could run smoothly and minimize the resources of the local police.”

He added that the FBI, rather than taxpayers, should have been billed for the overtime or extra staff resources utilized by the Rock Island police that day.
Rosen noted that even “under the wild speculation that any of these folks that they‘re investigating did something improper with someone overseas,” it was unnecessary and inappropriate for the FBI to have called the local police.
“They’re labor activists, one thing you do as a labor activist is practice solidarity,” Rosen said. “Nothing could have indicated these people would in any way pose any danger here.”

Iosbaker and other people targeted by the FBI think the investigation stemmed from their involvement in protests around the 2008 Republican National Convention, and expanded to focus on their solidarity work with Palestine and Colombia. Iosbaker said he doubts the FBI is specifically targeting labor activists, but nonetheless the investigation could affect labor struggles like Quad City Die Casting.

“Right now the main focus of repression is the anti-war movement and international solidarity work," Iosbaker says. This was likely "a bleed-over from an operation they had been doing deep undercover on the anti-war movement,” he added, noting the Quad City Die Casting protest was publicized through the Fight Back! newspaper listserv he helps maintain. “But this stemmed from that. They disrupted a protest action organized by the UE. They harassed and intimidated them.”

As the UE statement notes, their members have a particular interest in addressing civil rights violations and overzealous FBI surveillance, since the union was a target of anti-Communist counterintelligence and covert repression in the McCarthy era.

The UE statement says:

Our own union’s history has taught us that infringement on basic freedoms is a matter of life and death to the workers’ movement. During the “red scare” of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the combined forces of the corporations, the federal government, both major political parties, the media, and opportunistic business unions nearly succeeded in destroying UE and crushing progressive trade unionism.

Because of the persecution that our union suffered and barely survived in that era, we in UE have a continuing obligation to speak out forcefully whenever civil liberties are endangered by political hysteria and repression.

Last September, it was revealed the UE was among about 200 civil rights, women’s rights and labor groups spied upon by Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security office, which reported to local law enforcement on groups they considered terrorist threats. When the operation was exposed it created widespread outrage and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell demanded the program halted.

Rosen and Iosbaker said continued publicity and expressions of support by labor activists and others is important to make sure the FBI doesn’t over-reach and violate civil liberties as part of the “war on terror.”

“The lessons of history are that when people don’t speak up about the civil liberties of others being taken away, more civil liberties get taken away from more and more people,” Rosen said. “The sooner and the louder that more people speak out, the more likely it is these things will stop and we’ll get that element of democracy back.”

The statement from the UE concludes:

From the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) fight for free speech in the 1910s, to the major labor-inspired civil liberties court decisions of the 1930s, the labor movement has often been in the forefront of defending the right to speak and protest. Unionists have understood that without the ability to speak out, union efforts would be crushed.

The Conservative Class War, Continued

2011-02-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

by: Eric Alterman | The Nation | Op-Ed

It was a terrible tabloid tale. While New York City was buried under a blizzard, widows and orphans freezing and starving in their apartments, union fat cats swigged brewskis and chuckled to themselves as sanitation workers conspired to stage a slowdown to gain leverage in their contract negotiations. “The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear,” screamed Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. From there, the story ricocheted across the media, to Investor’s Business Daily to Fox News (naturally), and even to Saturday Night Live. The Washington Times ran an op-ed that began, “Cross us and people will die.”

Alas, it never happened. The source of all this hysteria was a sketchy story told by Daniel Halloran, a rookie councilman and Tea Party Republican—who is also an adherent of the neo-pagan religion Theodicism. A New York Times investigation weeks later found no evidence to support the allegation, and it turns out that Halloran isn’t so sure about what he thought he heard after all. But the damage is done. (Murdoch properties are not exactly famous for correcting their errors; though, to be fair, if they did, there would hardly be time or space for anything else.)

Can it be mere coincidence that the right-wing media promoted this phony-baloney story at a moment when, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, points out, conservatives are “readying a massive assault” on the pensions and benefits of these same employees?

Led by Newt Gingrich, conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations to firefighters, cops, teachers and, yes, sanitation workers. Gingrich called on House Republicans “to move a bill in the first month or so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy.” This was followed by a plea in The Weekly Standard by University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel titled “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt.” Skeel later told a reporter that he had “never had anything I’ve written get as much attention as that piece.” He said he had been contacted by lawmakers from all over.

Depending on the audience, this discussion serves multiple purposes. Most obviously it is intended to blame the unions for local fiscal woes and garner support from the public for the coming assault on their pensions. Second, it serves to intimidate the unions and encourage givebacks lest these same officials be forced to go before taxpayers with a plan to cut services, raise taxes or both—making public unions the culprit in any of those options. Third, it weakens the unions’ appeal to new workers, for if they can’t protect the pensions of their workers, what’s the point of joining in the first place? Given that public unions provide the lion’s share of poll workers, envelope stuffers and other volunteers for Democratic campaigns, this is hardly an ancillary benefit, from the right’s perspective. With private union membership now in single digits, public unions remain just about the only institutions with sufficient financial and organizational muscle to make a difference in close elections at the state and local levels or to organize progressive pushback against corporate malfeasance.

The assault on public employee unions is the next phase of a forty-year class war in America by the rich against the rest of us. It is of a piece with the steady dismantling of our progressive taxation system and the explosion of economic inequality. Total income going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans has risen from about 8 percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today. As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate in their recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics, this is the result of deliberate policy choices made by politicians in the service of those who fund their campaigns. Congress has repeatedly cut tax rates on top earners, along with capital gains and estate taxes. And as Robert Lieberman, writing in Foreign Affairs, recalls, during the 1990s the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which regulates accounting practices, attempted to put a stop to the practice of allowing corporate CEOs to compensate themselves with massive stock-option packages, correctly predicting that it would lead to an epidemic of deceptive accounting practices. “But Congress, spurred on by the lobbying efforts of major corporations, stopped the FASB in its tracks.” The result? For the past twenty years we’ve allowed CEOs to enrich themselves at the expense of employees and stockholders “through the mutual back-scratching habits of corporate boards.”

In the meantime, statistics demonstrate the speciousness of the conservative case for states facing budget crises to default on their public pension obligations. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report recently demonstrating that, in fact, they have “adequate tools and means to meet their obligations.” To the degree that some states appear to be in real trouble, explains a June report by two Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco analysts, this the result of a “profound macroeconomic shock” rather than pension obligations. Yet another recent study—this one from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research—found that while many state pension funds may be “substantially underfunded,” they account for just 3.8 percent of state and local spending and could be covered with an increase to just 5 percent.

Yet snowjobs like those promoted by Murdoch, Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie are painting a bull’s-eye on the back of public unions. “People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” Marie Corfield, a New Jersey art teacher who found herself on the other end of Christie’s antiunion rant, told the New York Times. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.”

Protest Threats Derail Bush Speech in Switzerland

2011-02-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — A planned trip by former President George W. Bush to Switzerland this week has been canceled in the face of threatened large-scale protests and calls for an investigation into whether his administration committed human rights abuses in the fight against terrorism.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush said Saturday that the trip was canceled after the United Israel Appeal, an international Jewish charity organizing the Geneva event where he had been scheduled to speak next Saturday, told him on Friday that it was canceling the speech because of security concerns.

“We regret that the speech has been canceled,” said David Sherzer, a spokesman for Mr. Bush. “President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office.”

The visit to Geneva was to have been Mr. Bush’s first trip to Europe since his memoir, “Decision Points,” was published in November, and the first since he publicly stated in interviews on his book tour that he had personally authorized the use of waterboarding in the questioning of terrorism detainees.

As a result, international human rights groups, including Amnesty International, seized on the scheduled visit to petition the Swiss authorities to open an investigation of Mr. Bush while he was in the country. The groups argued that he had admitted to torture and thus could be prosecuted in Switzerland and other countries that have signed on to the international convention banning torture.

“For a long time at Amnesty International, we have been calling for the Obama administration to investigate human rights abuses at Guantánamo, the C.I.A. black sites, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is clear that’s not happening,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s senior director for international law and policy. “When we heard that he was traveling to Geneva, we wrote to the national authorities in Switzerland and the local prosecutor in Geneva to ask them to investigate Bush for torture.”

Amnesty International sent Swiss authorities documents detailing their case for prosecuting Mr. Bush for torture, based on his admissions and other evidence concerning the waterboarding of two members of Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.

Swiss officials told human rights groups recently that they had no plans to try to prosecute Mr. Bush, Ms. Brown said. But the prospect of large demonstrations at the site of Mr. Bush’s speech remained, and the event’s organizers feared that protests could turn violent. Protest organizers were said to have asked demonstrators to carry shoes to the event, recalling how an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at Mr. Bush in 2008 to protest his visit to Baghdad.

While Mr. Bush does not face any legal sanctions in Switzerland, this is not the first time officials from his administration have faced the threat of legal action in Europe for involvement in possible human rights abuses in the war on terror. Prosecutors and judges in several European countries, notably Spain and Germany, have in the past proved willing to pursue long-shot international legal cases against foreign leaders based on war crimes evidence, and in recent years some of them have turned their attention toward Bush administration officials.

In 2009, for instance, a Spanish court began a criminal investigation of six former administration officials, on grounds that they had violated international law in connection with the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration was apparently so concerned about the investigation that it pressured the Spanish government to make sure the case was derailed, according to State Department cables made public by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

As early as 2005, Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense at the time, faced the threat of war crimes prosecution in Germany over human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Eventually, German prosecutors decided not to pursue the case, but only after Mr. Rumsfeld publicly said that he might not attend an international defense conference in Munich because of the legal threat he faced.

The fear of “Nile fever” in China

2011-02-05T14:41:00.000-08:00

By John Chan
5 February 2011

The scenes of mass protests of Egyptian workers and youth in Cairo demanding democratic rights and decent living standards have obviously been a chilling reminder to the Chinese regime of the events two decades ago in Tiananmen Square. Fearful that the revolutionary disease might spread from Egypt, Beijing has ordered its Internet police to filter out the word “Egypt” from microblogging sites to prevent active discussion among China’s millions of Internet users.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post declared that the similarity of the current Egyptian unrest and the 1989 events in China was “too obvious to be ignored”. Explaining the sentiment in Chinese ruling circles, political scientist Liu Junning told the newspaper: “It is unbelievable to imagine that autocracies controlled by political strongmen can easily become unstable and be overthrown almost overnight.”
At first sight, China and Egypt appear to be poles apart—geographically, culturally and economically. But as Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman noted, “there are some elements in the Egyptian uprising that might ring a few bells in Beijing: popular fury at corruption, the destabilising effect of rising food prices, youth unemployment, the ability of the Internet to mobilise popular protest, the gap between a ruling elite and the people they are trying to govern.”

Rachman sought to reassure his readers that “it is highly unlikely that the political contagion that has spread from Tunisia to Egypt will leap across continents to Asia.” But what Rachman identifies is precisely the deep social divide, class antagonisms and popular alienation from the political establishment that is characteristic of the situation in country after country around the world—including in China. The prospect of an Egyptian-style uprising in China, with its highly concentrated working class of 400 million, strikes terror in the hearts not only of the Chinese ruling elites but of the world’s financial aristocracy, which depends so heavily on the Chinese cheap labour.

The Wall Street Journal was well aware that China was not “immune” to the contagion of “Nile fever”. It explained what it meant by citing a recent animation video made in China showing the masses, depicted as rabbits, rising up in anger over corruption and killing Communist Party bureaucrats. If inflation continued to worsen, the mouthpiece of Wall Street wrote, “history suggests China’s stability could prove to be a mirage.”
In many ways, the class tensions in China are just as acute as in Egypt. China boasts the world’s second largest group of billionaires—up by 69 to 189 in 2010—after the US, while its per capita GDP is only two-thirds that of Egypt. The gulf between rich and poor has been exacerbated by sharply rising prices for food and other basic necessities. Young people, including university graduates, are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain a job. Like the Egyptian youth, young Chinese workers form the bulk of the country’s 384 million Internet users, providing them with a global outlook and far greater social aspirations than previous generations.
The working class has always been an international class facing the same forms of class oppression. However, the global integration of the processes of production over the past three decades has drawn together workers around the world to an unprecedented extent. In many cases, Chinese and Egyptian workers are exploited by the same global corporations, as well as the similar oppressive regimes that serve the corporate elite. That is why the revolutionary upheavals in Egypt strike a chord among Chinese workers and youth—and terror into the ruling establishment.

The Wall Street Journal’s reference to “Nile fever” is reminiscent of the panicked fear of “Bolshevik infection” that struck the bourgeoisie around the world following the seizure of power by the Russian working class in October 1917 under the Bolshevik leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. Just as workers now are beginning to draw inspiration from Egypt, the Russian revolution met an enthusiastic response among workers around the world, including in China.

The tragic defeat of the 1925-27 Chinese revolution holds great lessons for workers in Egypt and internationally. The Bolsheviks had led the Russian working class to power on the basis of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, which insists on the political independence of the proletariat from all sections of the perfidious national bourgeoisie. In China, Stalin subordinated the working class to the bourgeois Kuomintang, claiming it was leading the Chinese revolution. The result was the Kuomintang massacre of workers and peasants.

The events in China in June 1989 contain similar lessons. At the height of the upsurge, as workers joined protesting students in Tiananmen Square and other cities, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping appeared powerless. He feared the army would split, he would be placed under house arrest and the regime would collapse. But the protest movement lacked a revolutionary leadership. Rather than take the political initiative, the leaders of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation tailed behind the petty bourgeois “democrats” of the student movement who promoted the fatal illusion that reformers in the Communist Party leadership would make “democratic” concessions. Deng used the breathing space to mobilise troops and tanks from the remote provinces to bloodily crush the protests.

Egyptian youth and workers should draw the necessary conclusions from these terrible defeats of the Chinese working class. The fight for basic democratic rights is intimately bound up with the struggle against capitalism. No faith should be put in the bourgeois opposition parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders like Mohamed ElBaradei who, no less than the Mubarak dictatorship, defend the present social order. The working class must rely on its own independent strength and start to build its own organisations, above all a political party that will fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies.

Chinese workers and youth, who took the first steps in the strike wave of last April and May, can draw inspiration from the determination and courage of their counterparts in Egypt. The struggles in China and Egypt for democracy cannot be separated from the fight for international socialism. It is an urgent necessity for workers in Egypt, China and around the world to build sections of International Committee of Fourth International, which alone embodies all the strategic experiences of the working class of the past century. It is the only revolutionary tendency on the planet capable of leading the international working class to take power and establish a social order based on genuine social equality and democracy.

"The Arab World Is on Fire"

2011-02-04T07:35:00.001-08:00

by: Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed

Egyptian protesters march the streets of Cairo during demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on January 28, 2011. (Photo: Ed Ou / The New York Times)
“The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported on Jan. 27, while throughout the region, Western allies “are quickly losing their influence.”

The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a Western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.

Observers compared the events to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences.

Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless it is properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the East European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased.

That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo Hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure that a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path.

The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist Gen. Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt’s vice president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. In the Arab world, the U.S. and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological center of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan’s dictators and President Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a program of radical Islamization (with Saudi funding).

“The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control,” says Marwan Muasher, former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. “With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground.”

Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalizes worldwide, to U.S. home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.

The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against “a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems,” ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. This was the assessment by U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.

Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks “documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren’t asleep at the switch” – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of U.S. policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)

“America should give Assange a medal,” says a headline in the Financial Times. Chief foreign-policy analyst Gideon Rachman writes that “America’s foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the U.S. on any given issue is usually the private position as well.”

In this view, WikiLeaks undermines the “conspiracy theorists” who question the noble motives that Washington regularly proclaims.

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Godec’s cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec’s information in hand, Washington provided $12 million in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most U.S. military aid in the hemisphere.

Heilbrunn’s Exhibit A is Arab support for U.S. policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.

Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and Western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10 percent. In contrast, they regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats (77 percent; 88 percent).

Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington’s policies that a majority (57 percent) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, “there is nothing wrong, everything is under control” (as Marwan Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.

Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington’s nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of “legal and constitutional issues surrounding the June 28 forced removal of President Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya.”

The embassy concluded that “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.” Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.

Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.

The cables reveal that the U.S. embassy is well aware that Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state” and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn’s words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.

(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is “Gaza in Crisis.” Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)

Truthout has licensed this article; it may not be reproduced or reprinted by any other source.

Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

Could it happen here?

2011-02-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

On National Public Radio last Saturday, host Scott Simon opined that a “central shutdown” of the Internet as occurred in Egypt was “unthinkable if not impossible” in the United States given the “thousands of Internet routes and providers” here.

Simon noted that Egypt’s four primary Internet service providers could be shut down “with just a few phone calls.” Yet 95 percent of US broadband users have only a cable or telephone to choose from. Only five companies – AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox – control 75 percent of this access.

There was a time in the late 1990s when we could claim “thousands” of ISPs, but they disappeared last decade after the FCC refused to extend “common carrier” rules, governing dial-up Internet, to broadband access.

Common-carrier protection is the essence of what today we call “open Internet” or “net neutrality” rules. Their absence allowed the centralized control of America’s broadband Internet access. Bush-era policies also enabled the reconsolidation of the eight Baby Bells into just three companies: AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest.

Despite this consolidation, Simon is correct that a “central shutdown” of Internet access in the US would be difficult to pull off. But centralized control can also turn the Internet into a dragnet. China and Iran are using the Internet and social media to track down and prosecute dissidents. On Jan. 24, Iran hanged two dissidents for posting video of the 2009 pro-democracy protests on the Internet.

In December of 2005, the New York Times exposed the Bush administration’s warrant-less wiretapping program. The next month, a veteran AT&T engineer named Mark Klein walked into the offices of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation with evidence of a “secret room” in AT&T’s San Francisco facility housing Mae West, a West Coast exchange for AT&T and other providers’ Internet and voice traffic.

This secret room, and others like it around the country, contained government-sanctioned “deep packet inspection” (DPI) technologies for real-time monitoring of voice and data traffic flowing in and out of the US. A 2006 Wired magazine report entitled “The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool” noted that DPI technologies “can keep track of, analyze and record nearly every form of internet communication, whether e-mail, instant message, video streams or VOIP phone calls that cross the network.”

One expert cited by EFF observed, “This isn’t a wiretap, it’s a country-tap.” We may never know the extent of this surveillance program. In July 2008, Congress passed a law granting retroactive and future immunity to ISPs engaging in warrantless wiretaps at government behest.

Governments, whether democratic or despotic, benefit from centralized control over telecommunications writes legal scholar Tim Wu in his book, “Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.” Wu says Bush-era approval of telecom mergers may have “fundamentally enabled” the sweeping wiretap effort. As in Egypt’s shutdown of the Internet, “the need to involve so few companies in the conspiracy made things much easier,” Wu writes.

Last summer, as the FCC took public comment on chairman Julius Genachowski’s vow to approve “open Internet” rules, a spate of news stories appeared quoting former-intelligence-officials-turned-industry-lobbyists trumpeting a growing threat of “cyber-war” and “cyber-terrorism.” Coincidentally, FCC officials began holding closed-door meetings with telecom lobbyists.

Last fall, Genachowski reversed course on his plan to approve open Internet rules before the mid-term elections. Instead, on Dec. 21 the FCC approved rules widely believed to lack enforcement authority.

As a former Constitutional law professor, President Obama is no doubt aware of the risks to democracy from centralized control of the Internet. Last June he signed an executive order to free up 500 MHz of the public airwaves for broadband access. Wireless broadband is the only Internet access technology which could still elude centralized control. This may explain his singular focus on wireless broadband in the State of the Union address.

As events in Tunisia and Egypt unfold, cyber-libertarians are working around the clock to create open-source tools and applications to prevent the “central shutdown” of the Internet by despotic regimes and to protect tomorrow’s Sons and Daughters of Liberty from unwarranted government surveillance.

Congress and the FCC are now drafting policies to determine who will control wireless Internet as new spectrum is made available. It’s imperative that Americans dispel any illusions that “It can’t happen here.” It already has. And if we are not vigilant, it could get worse.

Crashing the Koch's Billionaire Caucus

2011-02-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 01 February 2011
by: Lindsay Beyerstein

Oil barons Charles and David Koch held their annual billionaires' summit in Palm Springs on Sunday, Nancy Goldstein reports in The Nation. Every year, the Kochs gather with fellow plutocrats, prominent pundits, and Republican legislators to plan their assault on government regulation and the welfare state. This is the first year that the low-profile gathering has attracted protesters.

The Kochs are best known for pumping millions into the ostensibly grassroots Tea Party movement. At TAPPED, Monica Potts points to Jane Mayer's famous 2010 profile of the Koch brothers that made their name synonymous with vast right wing conspiracy. Her colleague Jamelle Bouie questions whether the Koch brothers really deserve their bogeyman status--no single cabal of funders can single-handedly sway public opinion, he argues.

That's true, but $30 million can go a long way. That's the amount the event's organizers expect to raise for the GOP, according to Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, who also notes the event was off-limits to the mainstream media.

David Dayen reports at AlterNet that about 800 to 1,000 protesters rallied outside Sunday's summit at the Rancho Las Palmas resort. Twenty-five protesters were arrested for trespassing. Police in full riot gear carted the protesters away. To add a surreal note to the proceedings, conservative provocateur Andrew Brietbart emerged from the summit on roller skates to argue with the protesters.

Several progressive organizations collaborated to draw the crowd including Common Cause, the California Courage Campaign, CREDO, MoveOn.org, 350.org, the California Nurses Association, and the United Domestic Workers of America. The Media Consortium's own Jim Hightower was a featured speaker at the rally.

Debts Should Be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People

2011-02-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

Monday 31 January 2011
by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

This seems to be the lesson that our nation's leaders are trying to pound home to us. According to The New York Times, members of Congress are secretly running around in closets and back alleys working up a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy.

According to the article, a main goal of state bankruptcy is to allow states to default on their pension obligations. This means that states will be able to tell workers, including those already retired, that they are out of luck. Teachers, highway patrol officers, and other government employees, some of whom worked decades for the government, will be told that their contracts no longer mean anything. They will not get the pensions that they were expecting.

Depending on the specific circumstances, they may find their pensions cut back 20 percent, 30 percent, perhaps even 50 percent. There would be no guarantees if a state goes into bankruptcy.

There has been a concerted effort to bash public-sector employees by either highlighting the few instances where pensions actually are exorbitant, or just making things up. Untruths about Goldman Sachs, General Electric, or any other major company rarely appear in the media and are usually quickly corrected when they do. However, exaggerations or outright fabrication are a standard practice for those who report on state and local budgets when it comes to public employees.

The public has been bombarded with stories of public employees retiring with six-figure pensions while still in their early 50s. There may be some instances of such inflated pensions, but that is far from the typical story. If we look to New York State, the hotbed of bloated public budgets, we find that the state's main retirement system pays an average pension of $18,300 a year. For many workers, this is their whole retirement income since they were not covered by Social Security.

This is the general story of public pensions. Public-sector workers are often better situated than their private-sector counterparts, in that they even have pensions. But study after study shows that these workers paid for their pensions with lower wages than their private-sector counterparts. It is tragic that so many private-sector workers cannot count on a secure retirement, but it won't help them to make workers in the public sector equally insecure.

And, there is the matter of paying debts. State governments are legally obligated to pay retirees the pensions they worked for just like any other debt. It is fascinating to see the interest by many pro-business conservative types in defaulting on this debt.

Many of these same people have been determined to argue that homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages should pay their debts. They certainly have not been offering them any assistance in staying in their homes.

In fact, back in 2005, some of the same crew were busy rewriting the bankruptcy law. They wanted to make it harder for individuals to get out of their debt through bankruptcy. They felt it was so important the people paid their debts to credit card companies and other lenders that they actually applied the law retroactively. People who took out debt under one set of bankruptcy rules suddenly found that Congress had changed the rules after the fact and they would now be subjected to a much harsher set of bankruptcy rules.

Let's see if we can find a pattern here. When families take out a mortgage in the middle of a housing bubble, which may have been misrepresented at the time of sale, the homeowner has an obligation to repay the money to the bank. When people take on credit card debt, they absolutely have an obligation to repay the bank - even if it means changing the rules after the fact.

However, when the government signs a contract with workers, it doesn't have to pay the workers' pensions if it proves to be inconvenient. Of course, we may also throw in the fact that when the flood of bad mortgage loans issued by the banks threatened to push them into bankruptcy, the Treasury and the Fed give them trillions of dollars of loans at below market interest rates.

There certainly seems to be a pattern here. The story has nothing to do with preferences for the market or government intervention. The picture here is very simple: the rules get changed whenever it is necessary to make sure that money flows upward from ordinary workers to the rich. In 21st century America, upward redistribution seems to be the guiding principle.

Bankers lay down the law at Davos

2011-01-31T15:49:00.000-08:00

By Nick Beams
31 January 2011

In 2009 they were conspicuous by their absence. The following year they were still keeping their heads down. But at this year’s just concluded annual World Economic Forum meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, it was a different story.

Two years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, having been bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, their bonuses and salary packages restored, and having taken the measure of governments around the world, the bankers were not only back in force, they were laying down the law.

In a series of speeches at open sessions and in closed-door discussions, leading bank chiefs made clear they would not tolerate restrictions on their activities and that, notwithstanding the fact that their actions had triggered the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, they would continue exactly as before.

The tone was set early in the five-day meeting by Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn. Criticising the imposition of new rules on traditional institutions, Cohn warned that the “unregulated sector will grow at an exponential rate”.

“What I most worry about is that in the next cycle, as the regulatory pendulum swings, we are going to have to use taxpayer money to bail out unregulated businesses that, unlike the banks in the last crisis, may not be able to repay them,” Cohn said.
But the so-called “unregulated sector”—comprising organisations such as hedge funds and special purpose vehicles—and the banks are not separate organisations. They are two sides of the same financial system. The “unregulated” organisations could not function for a day without the massive supply of credit from the banks.

Viewed in this context, Cohn’s “warning” was a rather thinly-veiled blackmail threat: give us what we demand or we will find another way to do what we want and set off another financial crisis.

The chief executive of Standard Chartered, Peter Sands, took a different tack, insisting that regulations could have no real impact. “The current regulatory debate,” he declared, “is a bit like discussing having better seat belts on planes. It’s hard to argue against, but when the plane crashes, it’s all a bit marginal.”
Not that Cohn and Sands and their fellow banking chiefs needed to worry about the impact of regulation. The meagre regulations put in place since 2008 have been almost completely diluted.

International regulations are embodied in the Basel III accords that have been set up over the past 18 months. However, as Liam Halligan, a columnist for the British Telegraph, noted, referring to the Basel rules: “[T]he actual document is so full of fudges and escape hatches that it amounts to very little. The only concrete policy—requiring banks to hold more capital against potential losses—doesn’t kick in until 2018. Other measures designed to prevent future crises … have been postponed, allowing banks to carry on pretty much as before. In truth, the Basel accord, amid dire warnings of lower lending and job losses, has been eviscerated by the all-powerful banking lobby.”

According to Halligan, backroom meetings at the Davos summit ensured that new Basel rules requiring regulators to impose higher capital requirements on “systemically important financial institutions” were heavily diluted and even “relatively minor regulatory changes that have been put in place since sub-prime are being gradually stripped away”.

Having begun with an attack on regulation, the banking executives stayed on the front foot throughout the summit, with executives from JP Morgan, Barclays, Credit Suisse and others calling a meeting of finance ministers and officials to demand that “bank bashing” cease. To reinforce the point, they insisted that “over-indebtedness of countries,” not just of banks, was responsible for the crisis.

The aggressive character of the bankers’ campaign came as something of a shock for the reform-minded critic Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Interviewed from Davos, Johnson said: “I knew it was a parallel universe, and I wanted to observe it, but I’m just shocked by the temerity of these bankers. Not only are they showing no remorse, they’re saying, ‘Oh, all that regulation you’ve infused or tried slightly to push on us is irrelevant or bad or dangerous and damaging and you should let us have our bucks now.’ And the rest of the Davos elite seems to be buying into this. It’s quite extraordinary. And rather disturbing.”

The activities of the bankers will only come as a shock to those who have failed to examine the historical evolution of the capitalist economy and the ever-increasing parasitism of its leading financial components.

The bankers’ response will only surprise those who have consoled themselves with the belief that “democratic” governments will, in the final analysis, be able to take remedial action. They are unable or unwilling to see that in every country, these governments, whatever their political colouration, do not represent “the people” and are nothing but an organising committee for carrying out the demands of the financial elite.
This year’s Davos summit, the third since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in September-October 2008, was a gathering of the ruling elites of a corrupt regime increasingly under siege. While the bankers laid down their demands, however, a more powerful social force was announcing its re-emergence on the streets of the Middle East.

In a guest post from Davos, published by Time, business author Don Tapscott pointed to the wider significance of the events in Cairo.“The world is a powder keg as a demographic tidal wave of young people enter a jobless workforce and societies that need deep political and social reform,” he wrote.

Upon entering a “world that is broken,” Tapscott commented, young people increasingly do not believe that their governments can or are willing to bring about economic, social and political reform and are “looking to various forms of mass action to bring about change”.

Events in the Middle East made it into discussions at Davos but, as Tapscott noted, behind the professions of support for reform there were deep concerns. In one session, he reported that a famous academic argued: “Sure it’s positive that a new generation wants reform but we need to consider the security consequences of a deepening wave of protests in the Mideast.” Another remarked that the youth radicalisation was not about the poor rising up: “These youth are educated people. They have high expectations that are conflicting with reality.”

On the eve of the summit, World Economic Forum founder and chief executive Klaus Schwab wrote an article in which he warned his super-rich membership that they had to set self-interest aside and “take the long-term global public interest to heart”. While that might prove difficult, he continued, “We can’t keep doing the same old thing in a new era that requires new responses.”

The Davos summit demonstrated that, like the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary France, the global ruling elite is organically incapable of making such a change. The present ruling order, in which the interests of humanity are subordinated to the dictates of a super-rich elite, cannot be “reformed” but must be swept away. The events in Tunisia and now Egypt point the way forward.

Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington

2011-01-29T20:07:00.000-08:00

Saturday 29 January 2011
by: Jeff Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned US military interventions against progressive movements in the Third World by invoking a JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Were he alive to witness the last three decades of US foreign policy, King might update that quote by noting: "Those who make secular revolution impossible will make extreme Islamist revolution inevitable."

For decades beginning during the Cold War, US policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left.

In these dictatorships, often the only places where people had freedom to meet and organize were mosques - and out of these mosques sometimes grew extreme Islamist movements. The Shah's torture state in Iran was brilliant at cleansing and murdering the left - a process that helped the rise of the Khomeini movement and ultimately Iran's Islamic Republic.

In a pattern growing out of what King called Washington's "irrational, obsessive anti-communism," US foreign policy also backed extreme Islamists over secular movements or government that were either Soviet-allied or feared to be.

In Afghanistan, beginning BEFORE the Soviet invasion and evolving into the biggest CIA covert operation of the 1980s, the US armed and trained native mujahedeen fighters - some of whom went on to form the Taliban. To aid the mujahedeen, the US recruited and brought to Afghanistan religious fanatics from the Arab world - some of whom went on to form Al Qaeda. (Like these Washington geniuses, Israeli intelligence - in a divide-and-conquer scheme aimed at combating secular leftist Palestinians - covertly funded Islamist militants in the occupied territories who we now know as Hamas.)

This is hardly obscure history.

Except in US mainstream media.

One of the mantras on US television news all day Friday was: Be fearful of the democratic uprisings against US allies in Egypt (and Tunisia and elsewhere). After all, we were told by Fox News and CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, it could end up as bad as when "our ally" in Iran was overthrown and the extremists came to power in 1979.

Such talk comes easy in US media where Egyptian victims of rape and torture in Mubarak's jails are never seen. Where it's rarely emphasized that weapons of repression used against Egyptian demonstrators are paid for by US taxpayers. Where Mubarak is almost always called "president" and almost never "dictator" (unlike the elected president of Venezuela).

When US media glibly talk about the Egyptian and Tunisian "presidents" being valued "allies in the war on terror," it's no surprise that they offer no details about the prisoners the US has renditioned to these "pro-Western" countries for torture.

The truth is that no one knows how these uprisings will end.

But revolution of some kind, as King said, seems inevitable. Washington's corrupt Arab dictators will come down as surely (yet more organically) as that statue of Saddam, another former US ally.

If Washington took its heel off the Arab people and ended its embrace of the dictators, that could help secularists and democrats win hearts and minds against extreme Islamists.

Democracy is a great idea. Too bad it plays almost no role in US foreign policy.

Activism Is Not a Crime: Why I Will Not Testify Before This Federal Grand Jury

2011-01-26T06:26:00.000-08:00

by Maureen Murphy

I have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on January 25. But I will not testify, even at the risk of being put in jail for contempt of court, because I believe that our most fundamental rights as citizens are at stake.

I am one of 23 anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in Chicago and throughout the Midwest who are facing a grand jury as part of an investigation into "material support for foreign terrorist organizations." No crime has been identified. No arrests have been made. And when it raided several prominent organizers' homes and offices on Sept. 24, the FBI acknowledged that there is no immediate threat to the American public. So what is this investigation really about?

The activists who have been ensnared in this fishing net work with different groups to end the US wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end US military aid for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and US military aid to Colombia, which has a shocking record of repression and human rights abuses. All of us have publicly and peacefully dedicated our lives to social justice and advocating for more just and less deadly US foreign policy.

I spent a year and a half working for a human rights organization in the occupied West Bank, where I witnessed how Israel established "facts on the ground" at the expense of international law and Palestinian rights. I saw the wall, settlements and checkpoints and the ugly reality of life under Israeli occupation which is bankrolled by the US government on the taxpayer's dime. Many of us who are facing the grand jury have traveled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Colombia to learn about the human rights situation and the impact of US foreign policy in those places so we may educate fellow Americans upon our return and work to build movements to end our government's harmful intervention abroad.

Travel for such purposes should be protected by the first amendment. But new legislation now allows the US government to consider such travel as probable cause for invasive investigations that disrupt our movements and our lives.

The June 2010 US Supreme Court decision Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project expanded even further the scope of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to include first amendment activity such as political speech and human rights training.

Even former President Jimmy Carter feels vulnerable under these laws because of his work doing elections training in Lebanon where one of the main political parties, until earlier this month a member of the ruling coalition, is listed as a "foreign terrorist organization" by the US State Department. "The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom," Carter has said.

Former FBI officer Mike German, who now works with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the television program Democracy Now! that the subpoenas, search warrants and materials seized from activists' homes make it clear that the government is interested in "address books, computer records, literature and advocacy materials, first amendment sort of materials." He added, "unfortunately, after 9/11, [investigation standards] have been diluted significantly to where the FBI literally requires no factual predicate to start an investigation."

The US government doesn't need to call me before a grand jury to learn my activities and my beliefs. I have often appealed to my elected representatives to take a principled stand on foreign policy issues, protested outside federal buildings and have written countless articles over the years that can be easily found through a Google search.

Witnesses called to testify to a grand jury have no right to have a lawyer in the room and the jury is hand-picked by government prosecutors with no screening for bias. It is the ultimate abuse of power for a citizen to be forced to account to the government for no other reason than her exercise of constitutionally-protected freedoms of speech and association.

This is why these grand jury proceedings are a threat to the rights of all Americans, and why those of us who have been targeted, and others in the movements we work with, call them a witch hunt. And, even though it means I risk being jailed for the life of the grand jury, I will not be appearing before it.

The grand jury has been scrapped in virtually all countries and more than half the states in this country. There is a long American history of abusing grand juries to launch inquisitions into domestic political movements, from the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement to labor activists advocating for an eight-hour work day to the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years.

We have done nothing wrong and risk being jailed because we have exercised our rights to free speech, to organize and hold our government accountable. It is a dark day for America when people face jail for exercising the rights that we hold so dear.
Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist who lives in Chicago.

US use of DU: A war crime

2011-01-13T11:00:00.001-08:00

By Mujahid Kamran

While American scientists and scholars have played a key role in the intellectual evolution of mankind, its wealthy elite and agents - the rulers of the US - have committed the greatest crimes against humanity.

These horrific crimes continue unabated with silent intensity. With some exceptions, the “free” US media has maintained complete silence on these crimes. The reason for this silence has to do with the vested interests of media owners - their interests lie in suppressing humanity.

Many conscientious and aware Americans do raise their voice against these crimes, but the torment and agony of these American citizens does not seem to have any effect on the pet journalists of media owners. This insensitivity is drowning the United States of America and with it the rest of the world.

One of the most diabolical advances in weaponry is the use of uranium that can no longer be used in reactors.

This is known as depleted uranium. It is radioactive. After a certain processing, it can be converted into the hardest material on earth. A steel bullet will not penetrate a steel tank. However, a bullet made of depleted uranium will penetrate through the steel body of the tank and explode inside the tank. Uranium has the property that when heated it burns intensely. In powder form, uranium automatically catches fire when heated.

Nuha al-Radi, an artist and author of Baghdad Diaries, shortly before her death due to leukaemia wrote in 2004: “Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over 30 percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukaemia. The depleted uranium left by the US bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.”

The US has used depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wherever depleted uranium is used in warfare, it generates radioactivity. Burnt uranium will keep radiating for billions of years.

Radiation emitted from uranium does not travel far from the source. But if, perchance, these radioactive particles happen to enter your body either through inhalation or through contaminated water intake, then till your dying day they will keep on disrupting basic structures in your body such as DNA, etc.

Their effect is to produce deadly disorders such as cancer, which eventually leads the exposed individual to his grave. US authorities have spread this radioactive debris in various parts of the world and concealed this fact from its people.

Calif. Supreme Court approves warrantless data seizures by police

2011-01-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

By Stephen C. Webster

If you're arrested in California, data stored on your mobile phone, tablet or other portable computing devices could be seized by police without so much as a search warrant.

That's thanks to a recent decision by the state's highest court, which declared on Monday that any and all expectations of privacy are lost once a defendant is in state custody.

By a vote of 5-2, the court said police may "rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer," according to the dissenting opinion of Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.

Werdegar was joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in opposing the decision.

"The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Werdegar continued. "As a commentator has noted, '[i]f courts adopted this rule, it would subject anyone who is the subject of a custodial arrest, even for a traffic violation, to a preapproved foray into a virtual warehouse of their most intimate communications and photographs without probable cause.'"

The dissenting justices suggested that before rummaging through a suspect's mobile device, police should be required to convince a judge of the likelihood that evidence of a crime would be uncovered.

The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, disagreed, arguing that decisions by the US Supreme Court in the 1970s, permitting the searches of items seized during arrests, was enough precedent to allow warrantless searches of computing devices.

The majority of justices did give credence to the argument that emerging technology amplifies the invasive nature of such a search, but the concurring voices summarized that it would be up to the nation's highest court to reevaluate its prior decisions.

Though highly disappointing to civil libertarians, the California Supreme Court's move is likely to be received with cheers of approval from software developers that specialize in mobile security. Products like Lookout Mobile Security, available for Android devices, allow remote users to wipe out all data on their smartphone simply by logging into a website.

If such software begins to pose a significant obfuscation to police efforts at probing seized devices, it could also lead to a technological arms race of sorts. Authorities could one day acquire products that can take instant snapshots of a mobile device's internal memory before they can be erased, which would be followed by private industry countermeasures to block that, and so on.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko noted that the Ohio Supreme Court reached an opposite verdict at the end of 2009, but they were unable to secure a Supreme Court review.

"The Ohio-California split could prompt the nation's high court to take up the issue, said Deputy Attorney General Victoria Wilson, who represented the prosecution in Monday's case," he wrote.

"This has an impact on the day-to-day jobs of police officers, what kind of searches they can conduct without a warrant when they arrest someone," Wilson was quoted as saying. "It takes it into the realm of new technology."

In other significant Fourth Amendment-related decisions recently, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the Obama administration may not obtain information about a cell phone user's location without a court-issued search warrant. Similarly, Delaware Judge Jan R. Jurden ruled against the warrantless placement of a global positioning system on suspects' vehicles, warning that with the rise and spread of computing power, "an Orwellian state is now technologically feasible."

The California Supreme Court's decision in The People v. Gregory Diaz was available online (PDF).

Notions postulate of tyranny

2011-01-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

By Dan Bluemel

In the 1960s and ’70s, and even before that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran a counter-intelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, where federal agents spied on, infiltrated and disrupted anti-war, civil rights and social justice organizations.

In 1975, after COINTELPRO was revealed in a congressional hearing, Congressman Don Edwards of California said, in reference to the Bureau’s program, that there must be no exceptions to our constitutional safeguards, “regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of some private citizens or organizations.”

“The philosophy supporting COINTELPRO,” he said, “is the subversive notion that any public official, the President or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the Constitution whenever he thinks the public interest, or ‘national security’ warrants it. That notion is postulate of tyranny.”

Some say, since 9/11, those notions postulate of tyranny have crept back into America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

***

Activism is terrorism

Since September 2010, 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists have been subpoenaed by the FBI as part of a growing terrorism investigation. The Bureau said it is looking for evidence concerning material support for terrorist organizations.

It started on Sept. 24, when the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted a series of raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Computers, cell phones, mailing lists, documents, videos, books and passports were seized by agents. Thirteen activists from Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan were ordered to appear before federal grand juries.

The FBI was seeking documents concerning the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah – organizations the State Department has labeled terrorist groups.

Carlos Montes was one of several people named on the FBI’s Minneapolis search warrant concerning the Anti-War Committee, a Minnesota-based peace group, and their alleged material support of terrorist organizations. Montes is an organizer for the Southern California Immigration Coalition in Los Angeles. Though named on the warrant, the FBI has not contacted him.

Montes assumes he was on the warrant for helping the Anti-War Committee organize protests for the 2008 Republican National Convention. The organization was instrumental in organizing the actions, which he endorsed and later participated in.

“Historically, the FBI has attacked and harassed progressive movements – the black civil rights movement, the peace movement,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “I see this as a continuation of that repression against people who take a strong stand against the status quo.”

Since then more have received subpoenas. Most recently, on Dec. 21, Maureen Murphy, managing editor for the website Electronic Intifada, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Her involvement in the Chicago-based Palestine Solidarity Group appears to be the basis of the investigation.

Jim Fennerty, one of the lead attorneys who is working with the subpoenaed activists, describes the raids and subpoenas as an “attack on the solidarity movement.” He told LA Activist that the activists have refused to testify before the grand juries, though some have been called back, and none have been indicted for any crime or found in contempt.

According to Fennerty, the situation for these activists can become difficult if the government grants them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. In these situations a witness loses their Fifth Amendment rights and not testifying could mean imprisonment for the duration of the grand jury – which could be months long.

“They say it is coercion, not punishment,” he said. “If you are sitting in jail, I still think it is punishment.”

Peter Bibring, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said constitutionally protected speech should not be the basis of an investigation – something the FBI denies doing – and fears such raids will cause people to pause before getting involved in political dissent.

“If there is no link to criminal activity, the government shouldn’t be using these kinds of aggressive investigatory powers,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “It creates an enormous chilling effect on people who want to exercise their First Amendment rights.”

The FBI’s actions may seem strange at first glance. Peace activists, for instance, do not have a reputation for international terrorism. However, it is a newly constructed legal language and a fear-infused political climate that has allowed peaceful citizens to get in the crosshairs of the Bureau.

“There is a reasonable indication that programs and investigative techniques, that have been instituted in the name of fighting terrorism, have suffered from a kind of ‘mission creep’ where they’ve been more broadly deployed against individuals who may not be involved in terrorism, but may just be involved in First Amendment activity,” said Bibring.

***

A ‘pall’ over dissent

In June 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute that bans material support of foreign terrorist organizations. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect citizens who assist terrorist groups, even if they are assisting organizations in obtaining peaceful settlements to conflicts.

Jim Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, called the Supreme Court decision a “draconian” ruling that has “cast quite a pall” over the peace movement and the First Amendment rights of Americans.

“If we really care about terrorism, we should be applauding [efforts to broker peace], not saying that it would be a crime because you would be giving material support to a terrorist organization,” he told LA Activist.

Former President Jimmy Carter said the work of his humanitarian organization, the Carter Center, is threatened by the decision. According to The Washington Post, he said the statute “inhibits the work of human rights and conflict resolution groups.”

“The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom,” he said.

Lafferty admits that politics affects the Supreme Court and that recent decisions are a product of the nation’s current political climate, one that doesn’t take kindly to dissent.

“It’s hard to believe that a lot of what we’ve seen post-9/11 we would have seen pre-9/11,” he said. “When the country is at war, the courts are going to act differently than when the country isn’t at war.”

Material support for terrorists is just one way in which activists have been swept up into the war on terror.

Ironically, just four days prior to the FBI raids in the Midwest, a Justice Department report criticized the Bureau for inappropriately targeting left-leaning activist groups between 2001 and 2006.

According to The Washington Post, the Bureau was criticized for investigating the environmental group Greenpeace. Agents monitored the organization for three years, and even put some Greenpeace members on terrorist watch lists.

The FBI also spied on PETA and a Catholic organization that advocates peace. The department report stopped short of accusing the FBI of targeting these groups because of their politics.

Similar stories have surfaced recently concerning the Department of Homeland Security.

In September 2010, it was revealed that a Pennsylvania DHS intelligence bulletin warned of environmental extremism. The report listed dates of interest that consisted of demonstrations, governmental hearings concerning environmental issues and even the screening of a documentary.

The bulletin borrows from an FBI report that warns “extremists will continue to commit criminal activity against not only the energy companies, but against secondary or tertiary targets.” However, when asked by ProPublica about extremist criminal activity, Joseph Elias, a captain with the Pennsylvania State Police Domestic Security Division, had no knowledge of such crimes.

“We haven’t had any incidents of any significance to date where we have identified a problem, or any environmental extremists,” he said.

As a result of the report being made public, the Pennsylvania Homeland Security director resigned and apologized to those who felt their rights had been violated.

In October 2010, Fox News reported that an office within the DHS, called Fraud Detection and National Security, had been encouraging its agents to befriend people on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to spy on them. Agents were also told to target websites such as NPR and the political commentary site DailyKos.

“There is a deep concern that both local and federal law enforcement are aiming their resources at innocuous activity,” said Bibring.

Behind the government targeting its civilians in the war on terror is the broad language of the PATRIOT Act. According to a 2002 ACLU statement, the law “expanded the definition of terrorism to cover ‘domestic,’ as opposed to international, terrorism.”

“The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations,” said the ACLU. “Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism.”

The effects of wide-ranging legal language manifested itself clearly in 2009 when it was discovered that the Dept. of Defense was telling its employees that protests were an example of a “low-level terrorism activity.”

It appears that activists can only expect more of the same in coming years. In September 2010, the directors of the FBI and DHS and the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center told Congress that America faced a rising threat from “homegrown terrorists.”

“What a lot of us fear,” said Lafferty, “[is that the law] isn’t going to be restricted simply to what we’ve come to think of as terrorism – people who try to bomb a bus or shopping center – that it could refer to people … who have too radical an idea about how to change America.”

***

Déjà vu all over again

Now that activists are once again being targeted, it leaves some to believe that COINTELPRO has returned.

“I think we are way past [COINTELPRO],” said Lafferty. “You have the FBI doing exactly what it did during Vietnam and, in the case of the Muslim community and the FBI infiltration of the mosques, you’ve got them doing it openly.”

“Now the government makes no secret about the fact that it’s spying on, wiretapping and infiltrating everybody,” he added. “Nobody doubts that anymore, and they have better tools to do it with. So we are way past that.”

Blase Bonpane, a long-time human rights advocate and director of Office of the Americas, an LA-based peace and international justice advocacy group, said the FBI’s behavior in recent years is “tantamount to COINTELPRO.”

“I remember it well,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “[The FBI] was very active then and we were all impacted by it. And yes, it’s back. It doesn’t make any difference what they call it.”

If COINTELPRO-style tactics are again being used against political dissent, then activists may have more to fear than their 1960s counterparts like Lafferty suggests. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the U.S. government spent billions of dollars expanding its already significant intelligence apparatus. As the war on terror began to target U.S. citizens, so followed the prying eyes of America’s numerous spy agencies.

The Washington Post reported as part of an ongoing investigation that the U.S. has “some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies” working on counterterrorism, homeland security and various intelligence-gathering projects in roughly 10,000 locations across the country. There are now nearly one million people in America that have top-secret security clearances, with intelligence analysts publishing 50,000 reports a year.

Before 9/11, there were 35 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces like the ones that raided the anti-war activists in the Midwest. Today, there are 106.

Los Angeles County is home to the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, the first regional counter-terrorism “fusion center” in the country. It houses intelligence analysts from the FBI, the LAPD, LA County Sheriffs Department and other agencies. According to the Los Angeles Times, at the facility’s opening in 2006, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said the center would focus on domestic terrorism.

There are 72 local fusion centers across the U.S. that were created after 9/11. Fusion centers now obtain “suspicious activity reports” from local authorities and feed them into national databases.

It was the LAPD that invented “suspicious activity reports” in early 2008. According to USA Today, the program provided officers with a system of reporting “the smallest levels of suspicious behavior and activities that could actually reveal terrorist ‘dry runs’ that might have previously been overlooked.”

The program, which is aimed at both criminal and non-criminal activity, includes trespassing or noticing suspicious packages.

“It includes activities such as taking photographs of no apparent aesthetic value,” said Bibring. “If that is suspicious activity, according to the judgment of an LAPD officer, then there are a lot of people in Los Angeles who are in trouble.”

The program quickly got the attention of police departments around the country. Today, the program is national. According to the Los Angeles Times, “More than two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in areas now covered by such reporting, which is designed to take note of behavior that is not illegal.”

Along with a beefed up intelligence infrastructure, critics say the FBI has little to no restrictions on its spying. According to the Attorney General’s guidelines for domestic operations, the Bureau investigates federal crimes, threats to national security and anything related to foreign intelligence.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an recent interview with the International Socialist Review that the government has over the years steadily removed restrictions from the agency’s intelligence operations.

“After you read [the current guidelines] and you compare them to the earlier ones, you realize now the FBI can do anything it wants,” he said “It can target anyone. The FBI can be, and probably is, everywhere.”

***

Fighting back

Activists are concerned that government surveillance, infiltration and prosecution of political activities will have a negative impact on people’s willingness to dissent – a cornerstone of democracy. Since the FBI raids in September there have been demonstrations against the Bureau around the country. Also, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression was formed, which seeks to cease the government attacks on peace activists.

Despite the overwhelming shift to a police state in recent years, there is still an occasional difference of opinion still found at the highest levels of government. According to The Washington Post, after the decision was made on Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Justice Stephen G. Breyer read his summary of dissent from the bench.

“Our decisions must reflect the Constitution’s grant of foreign affairs and defense powers to the president and to Congress but without denying our own special judicial obligation to protect the constitutional rights of individuals,” he said. “That means that national security does not always win.”

In the meantime, however, national security continues to win. In early December, the DHS announced the incorporation of its “If You See Something, Say Something” program in more than 230 Walmart stores across the country. The program, which is already employed by other institutions, encourages citizens to report “indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a news release.

The DHS intends to expand this program to help Americans “remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe.”

“The manipulation of fear, which is the lowest form of corrupt politics, has its impact,” said Bonpane. “Probably the reason for the raids is to create fear.”

“We are in a very bad situation,” he added. “We are in a situation where it seems that the only workable projects at this time are civil disobedience, mass mobilization and non-cooperation.”

Although Lafferty said there isn’t much “breathing space” anymore for citizens to exercise their rights, he still finds hope if the citizenry mobilizes in defense of itself.

“We still do have a enough room where if we had the inclination and the backbone to do it we could have a huge protest and a huge pressure being brought [upon the government],” he said. “If you really want to defend the Bill of Rights, the best way to defend it is to get out in the streets and do so, and to exercise those rights. That’s the best defense against this and that has always been true.”

HONORING DR. KING MEANS SUPPORT FOR TODAY'S LABOR, PEACE ACTIVISTS

2011-01-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

By Anthony D. Prince

January 15, 2011 marks the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though many speeches will be made, few will address the troubling parallels between the role played by the FBI then and its current campaign to intimidate, smear and even imprison those who continue to hold aloft Dr. King's banner. Today, as federal agents continue to serve grand jury subpoenas and raid the homes of labor and peace activists in Illinois and Minnesota, some 23 people including local union officers and stewards from AFSCME, SEIU, Teamsters and other segments of organized labor find themselves in the crosshairs.

The government persecution echoes that perpetrated against Dr. King by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI which used wiretaps, tails, the planting of false stories in the press, blackmail and other sordid tactics. The harassment intensified after King publicly condemned the war in Vietnam, denouncing the U.S. involvement as irreconcilable with economic and social justice for America's poor. "There is but one way out for you," threatened the FBI in an anonymous letter suggesting suicide. Undeterred, King's last days were spent supporting the striking sanitation workers of Memphis. His assassination came on the heels of an internal FBI report that labeled King a "direct threat to American security." Today, that same false pretext -- now termed "America's war on terror" -- is being used to justify the recent FBI raids. Yet, a close examination of the items demanded from the targeted activists unmasks the government's true intent.

Included in the documents seized by federal agents, for example, are private letters to and from persons in various foreign countries, including Colombia, a South American nation where over 3,000 union leaders have been assassinated since the mid-1980s. Many of those served with the subpoenas -- such as Minneapolis Teamster Mick Kelley -- belong to unions with a history of solidarity with the embattled labor movement in Colombia. In 2002, the Teamsters, which represents thousands of Coca-Cola workers in the U.S., picketed Coke's annual stockholders meeting to protest the multinational's links to death squads responsible for the plant gate assassination of Isidro Gil, chief negotiator for Coca-Cola workers in Colombia. As recently as August of last year, 500 Teamster-represented Coke workers in Seattle went on strike, resisting widespread surveillance and intimidation in their fight for a just contract. The Teamsters is just one of dozens of U.S. trade unions that have hosted tours of persecuted Colombian workers. Aware of the company's brutal policies south of the border, the Teamsters had no intention of letting that war come home.

One can only imagine the volume of correspondence that has facilitated the solidarity movement between American unions and their embattled comrades in Colombia and other countries where repressive regimes permit U.S. multinationals to operate with impunity. Now, as a result of the recent grand jury subpoenas and FBI raids, that correspondence is now in the hands of the federal government. Lurking behind the "anti-terrorist" justification is the government's real mission: to stifle the growing international union, solidarity and peace movements of which Martin Luther King was a martyred architect.

Those who draft search warrants to silence opponents of U.S. military policy have no right to speak of a man who worked "to see the fervor of the civil rights movement imbued into the peace movement." Those who empanel grand juries to investigate critics of Haliburton, Blackwater and other war profiteers ignore King's indictment of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism" and his demand for "the reconstruction of society, itself."

On this day, we best honor King by supporting those who continue his long march to justice.

Obama administration preparing executive order to authorize indefinite detentions

2011-01-05T09:26:00.001-08:00

By John Burton

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order, scheduled for release early in 2011, which authorizes indefinite detention without charge of prisoners currently held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new order means that the prison will remain open, or that these prisoners will be transferred to permanent locations in the US.

The prisoners would be given a “periodic review” of their imprisonment in a procedure that makes a mockery of due process and basic democratic rights.

According to reports first published Tuesday evening by the Washington Post and ProPublica, unnamed US officials have revealed that the executive order, which will for the first time establish indefinite detention as an Obama administration policy, has “been in the works for more than a year.”

With typical contempt for the democratic rights of the population, the announcement was released through anonymous backdoor channels on the eve of the Winter holidays. It is aimed at preparing public opinion for yet another extension of the anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration.

Guantánamo Bay has grown into an internationally despised gulag since the first jail, Camp Delta, was opened by the Bush administration in early 2002 under the pretext of jailing “enemy combatants” in the so-called “war on terror.” The “enemy combatant” category had no precedent either in domestic or international law, and was adopted solely for the purpose of placing people in legal limbo―stripped of protection under both the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

Guantánamo Bay has become synonymous with the most flagrant attacks on core democratic rights, including denials of habeas corpus, detention without legal authority, denial of counsel, sensory deprivations, abusive interrogations and outright torture.

During his campaign for president, Obama repeatedly pledged to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camps, promising shortly after his inauguration to complete the task by January 2010. With the proposed new order, there is no closure in sight.

More Guantánamo inmates are facing lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed the reports on December 22, announcing “There are some prisoners that will require indefinite detention,” although closing the Guantánamo prisons, according to Gibbs, “remains the president’s goal.”

Some of the prisoners transferred might be transferred from Guantánamo to prisons in the United States. There is no indication that the executive order would not continue to apply―meaning that Obama would be vastly expanding the scope of indefinite detention.

“If the Obama administration succeeds in establishing indefinite detentions on US soil,” according to a statement by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization that has represented a number of Guantánamo prisoners, “it will be difficult to hold the line at the 48 men at Guantanamo.

“This proposal lays the groundwork for US prisons to become places where people from around the world are brought and imprisoned without charge or trial, eroding our Constitution and adherence to international law beyond recognition,” according to the CCR statement.

As usual, anonymous administration sources claim that Obama’s hand is being forced because the still Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill that bans transferring Guantánamo prisoners to the United States for trial, a crucial component of Obama’s earlier plan to close the concentration camps. The provision was added quietly to the bill during negotiations over repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The administration, however, has never sought to overturn the content of the anti-democratic policies implemented by Bush. Sections of the political establishment have favored closing Guantánamo because of its international reputation, while keeping the essence of the policy intact.

According to reports, the new executive order directly affects 48 prisoners the Obama administration has classified as too dangerous to be released but who cannot be put on trial. According to the Washington Post, “unnamed officials” said that the prisoners cannot face trial because torture was used to obtain the evidence against them. Without the torture evidence, the cases against them “would not meet legal standards.”

There are at least 126 other prisoners incarcerated at Guantánamo whose status remains uncertain.

The anonymous administration sources claim that the executive order will expand the rights of prisoners by establishing a “detainee review process” which will allow limited access to evidence and lawyers for hearings at designated intervals, perhaps once a year. A New York Times report characterized the executive order as setting up “something like a parole board to evaluate whether each detainee poses a continued threat, or whether he can be safely transferred to another country.”

Under the Constitution, however, parole boards, which are usually stacked with political employees and give very limited consideration to the cases before them, come into play only after someone is convicted of a crime. Under the Obama administration plan, prisoners can be held for the rest of their lives without a civilian trial, or even a military commission.

There is no reason to believe that the executive order will be limited only to current Guantánamo prisoners. For more than a year the Obama administration has insisted it has the power to hold anyone it designates as a “terror suspect” indefinitely and without judicial review based on the congressional Authorization to Use Military Force that came in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. This is the same rationale used by the Bush administration.

The news of the proposed executive order has been denounced by advocates of civil liberties.

Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the executive order would “normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies,” set in place by the Bush administration. Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, added, “Our Constitution requires that we charge and prosecute people who are accused of crimes. You cannot sell an indefinite detention scheme by attaching a few due-process baubles and expect that to restore the rule of law.”

The executive order is an extension of the attack on democratic rights carried out by the Obama administration since it first came to office.

While refusing to initiate a single criminal prosecutions for any of the war crimes committed, the Obama administration has intervened in court proceedings to block civil lawsuits against Bush administration officials for torture and domestic spying. Recently released WikiLeaks documents show that the administration collaborated with governments in Spain and Germany to prevent legal challenges to these same policies.

Obama has signed a death warrant for US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki, and used Catch-22 arguments to prevent his father from challenging the extra-judicial assassination order in court.

Obama administration lawyers have authorized FBI raids of the homes and offices of antiwar activists on the basis that by opposing US imperialism they are providing “material support” for terrorist organizations.

2011: A Brave New Dystopia

2010-12-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

by Chris Hedges

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass.

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to itstotal impression.”

The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.

“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com . Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning , What Every Person Should Know About War , and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle .

Obama’s Liberty Problem: Why Indefinite Detention by Executive Order Should Scare the Hell Out of People

2010-12-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

by Bill Quigley and Vince Warren

The right to liberty is one of the foundation rights of a free people. The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the Courts by issuing an Executive Order setting up a new legal system for indefinite detention of people should rightfully scare the hell out of the American people.

Advisors in the Obama administration have floated the idea of creating a special new legal system to indefinitely detain people by Executive Order. Why? To do something with the people wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo. Why not follow the law and try them? The government knows it will not be able to win prosecutions against them because they were tortured by the US.

Guantanamo is coming up on its ninth anniversary – a horrifying stain on the character of the US commitment to justice. President Obama knows well that Guantanamo is the most powerful recruitment tool for those challenging the US. Unfortunately, this proposal for indefinite detention will prolong the corrosive effects of the illegal and immoral detentions at Guantanamo rightly condemned world-wide.

The practical, logical, constitutional and human rights problems with the proposal are uncountable.

Our system provides a simple answer developed over hundreds of years – try them or release them. Any other stop gap measure like the one proposed merely pushes the problem back down the road and back into the courts again. While it may appear to be a popular political response, the public will soon enough see this for what it is – an unconstitutional usurping of power by the Executive branch and a clear and present danger to all Americans

The US government has never publicly said who can be prosecuted and who they have decided to hold indefinitely because they think they cannot successfully charge them. Now, after holding people for years and years, they think they can create a new set of laws by Executive Order which will justify their actions?

Recall that dozens of the very same people who would now be subject to indefinite detention have already been cleared for release by the government. How can indefinite detention of people we already cleared to go home possibly be legal?

The government proposes essentially to detain people for being a potential member or friend of the enemy force – a standard that is too open ended and inconsistent with the US and international laws of war.

Our criminal process, requiring charge, conviction and other safeguards, is the primary means by which the government may deprive a person of liberty, with carefully limited exceptions.

“Freedom from bodily restraint has always been at the core of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause from arbitrary governmental action.” The Supreme Court has “always been careful not to “minimize the importance and fundamental nature of the individual’s right to liberty.” Foucha v Louisiana, 504 US 71 (1992).

The liberty of all persons is protected by the criminal process guarantees, among other rights: the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; probable cause for arrest; right to counsel, right to indictment by grand jury; right to trial by an impartial jury; the right to a speedy public trial; the presumption of innocence; the right that government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact necessary to make out the charged offense; a privilege against self-incrimination; the right to confront and cross examine witnesses; the right to present witnesses and use compulsory process; the duty on the government to disclose exculpatory evidence; prohibition against double jeopardy; prohibition against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws; and a prohibition against selective prosecution.

For hundreds of years judges and legislatures and advocates for justice have struggled to create protections for our liberty. People who suggest bypassing all of these protections of our liberty in the name of safety or politics do our people and our history a grave disservice.

Some wrongfully suggest that preventive detention by the Executive would be allowed because the law already allows civil confinement. But there are only very narrow circumstances when limited civil confinement is allowed by law. It is clear government cannot use civil detention or anything like it to effect punishment or to escape the comprehensive constraints of the criminal justice system. Kansas v Crane, 534 US 407, 412 (2002) (noting that civil commitment must not “become a mechanism for retribution or general deterrence.

Further, preventive detention also violates international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 9.

The proposal to create a special new legal system by Executive Order is an end run around Congress and the Judiciary. It will lengthen the illegal detentions in Guantanamo and will force this entire system back into the courts for years. It will further damage US efforts to portray itself as a fair country of laws, and will threaten the liberty of every single US citizen who is not in Guantanamo because it will damage the due process guarantees which have built up over the years to protect each one of us.

Vince is the Executive Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Bill is Legal Director of CCR and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at Quigley77@gmail.com

U.S. Ordered to Pay Group of Muslims

2010-12-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ordered the government on Tuesday to pay nearly $2.6 million in lawyers’ fees and damages to officials with a shuttered Islamic charity in Oregon who the judge said were wiretapped without a court order under the surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The ruling by Vaughn R. Walker, the chief federal judge in San Francisco, punctuates a years-long lawsuit that tested the balance between civil liberties and the president’s authority.

The Justice Department did not immediately say whether it would appeal the ruling.

The dollar amount of damages is relatively insignificant for the government. But the principle the judge first laid out in a March ruling and expanded on Tuesday was critical to all parties.

For charity officials and their lawyers, the ruling offered vindication in a case that the Justice Department fought largely by relying on the president’s executive power and the government’s claim to keep certain “state secrets” out of the judiciary.

“We brought this case to try and get a declaration from the judiciary that the executive branch is bound by the law,” said Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer who represented the charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.

The judge awarded more than $2.5 million in legal expenses accrued by lawyers for Asim Ghafoor and Wendell Belew, officials with Al-Haramain’s Oregon affiliate who the judge said were wiretapped, and he awarded the two officials each $20,400 in damages.

Judge Walker refused to grant punitive damages based on the claim that the wiretapping under the National Security Agency program showed “reckless or callous indifference” to the plaintiffs’ rights. Judge Walker said that the government “had reason to believe” that Al-Haramain supported acts of terrorism.

However, he criticized the way that Bush officials went about approving in secret a wiretapping program that operated outside the bounds of judicial scrutiny and in conflict with surveillance rules set by Congress.

Washington Post details vast growth of US domestic spying

2010-12-21T19:54:00.000-08:00

By Patrick Martin
21 December 2010
The Washington Post published Monday the second installment of an investigation into the enormous scale of the US domestic intelligence apparatus built up since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The article brings together valuable information about the police buildup, presented in both written and graphical form, including an interactive web-based map. (See: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/)
While authorized and funded in the guise of a response to terrorism, the network of agencies at the federal, state and local levels represents an enormous threat to the democratic rights of the American people. It is the scaffolding for the construction of a police state.
The Post survey is well worth careful examination, along with the first article in the series, which profiles the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies devoted to domestic spying. (See: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/)
Some of the most important revelations include the following:
The federal government is carrying out the collection and integration of personal information on hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of Americans, most of whom have committed no criminal offense and are certainly not engaged in anything that could reasonably be considered “terrorism.”
A total of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations now have “counterterrorism” functions, with one quarter of these either newly created since 9/11 or involved in counterterrorist activities for the first time since then.
US police agencies are deploying technologies tested on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and using them to monitor and target American citizens.
State and local police agencies are monitoring legal political activities, including protests over environmental, immigration and other issues, and filing reports with counterterrorism “fusion centers” in the 50 states.
The Obama administration is spearheading the expansion of domestic counterterrorism well beyond the level carried out under the Bush administration. In 2010 alone, the Department of Homeland Security provided $3.8 billion in counterterrorism grants to state and local agencies.
Uses of military technology include biometric facial recognition equipment, now used in Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) to record 9,000 digital mug shots each month, as well as the use of Predator drones along both the Mexican and Canadian borders.
In one of the most chilling passages, the Post notes: “The special operations units deployed overseas to kill the al-Qaeda leadership drove technological advances that are now expanding in use across the United States.” In other words, the same methods used by military and CIA hunter-killer squads in the mountains of Afghanistan are being transferred to domestic policing operations inside the United States.
The Post gives a picture of what the integration of military technology and law enforcement, as well as local, state and federal information databases, means in a typical American city, Memphis, Tennessee.
Memphis police now use hand-held, wireless fingerprint scanners, first developed for US troops patrolling insurgent neighborhoods in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, to provide instant ID checks on anyone detained by police. These scanners allow police to “instantly call up a mug shot, a Social Security number, the status of the driver’s license and any outstanding warrants.”
Many police cars are equipped with military-grade infrared cameras that move robotically, taking digital images of every license plate in view and checking each one against various databases, alerting the police when there is a “hit” on a driver with an outstanding warrant.
The Department of Homeland Security helped the city buy surveillance cameras that are posted near housing projects, busy street corners, bridges and other “sensitive” locations. Data mining technology allows police to rapidly cross-reference biometric data, driver’s licenses and license plates and credit card information.
This has been supplemented through the collaboration of private corporations with the government. The Memphis police “persuaded the local utility company” to provide “a daily update of the names and addresses of customers,” so that police executing warrants would have a better chance of finding those they were seeking.
All the data accumulated through these operations is uploaded automatically to the Memphis Real Time Crime Center, “a command center with three walls of streaming surveillance video and analysis capabilities that rival those of an Army command center,” according to the Post. The data is “geocoded” to produce what are in effect police battle maps for the city.
The data is further uploaded to the FBI’s central data campus in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where it is integrated into the existing store of fingerprints, now approaching 100 million, and including data collected from US military prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which collaborate extensively with US counterterrorism operations.
This year, for the first time, according to a federal spokeswoman, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense are able to share fingerprint records. This means that the line between domestic policing and military action has been effectively erased.
The goal of a new Obama administration operation, called the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or SAR, is for every local police department in the United States to have its data files integrated with the FBI’s, in a gigantic central database on a large proportion of the American population.
The definition of what is suspicious activity—“observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity”—is so broad as to cover virtually any activity that arouses police interest, no matter how innocent.
The Post gave an example of how an SAR file would be generated by a local cop seeing “a suspicious subject” taking a photograph of an Orange County, California ferry boat with his cell phone camera, even though the individual was later joined by two other adults and two small children, and all of them boarded the ferry for what was obviously a pleasure trip.
This report would be uploaded to the Los Angeles fusion center, one of 60 or so regional facilities established with funds from the DHS to collect and integrate information. From there, it could be forwarded to the FBI for further investigation, or for storage for a period as long as five years, the Post noted, “during which time many other pieces of information about the man photographing a boat on a Sunday morning could be added to his file: employment, financial and residential histories; multiple phone numbers; audio files; video from the dashboard-mounted camera in the police cruiser at the harbor where he took pictures; and anything else in government or commercial databases ‘that adds value,’ as the FBI agent in charge of the database described it.”
The Pentagon has access to this classified database, known as the Guardian system, which had 161,948 suspicious activity files as of this month. There is also an unclassified section of the database, to which state and local police contribute data and have access.
The entire structure detailed by the Post account has the most ominous political implications, since it is quite clear, although the newspaper is careful not to say so, that information on political opposition to US government policies, particularly from the left, is being incorporated into these databases. While a handful of individual “infractions” have been exposed, as recently in Pennsylvania , this can only be considered the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to the vast increase in data collection and integration, there is the rightwing and antidemocratic character of the personnel charged with running the entire system. The Post account treats this as an aberration, or perhaps an excess, describing the vitriolic anti-Muslim racism of many of those engaged in providing “training” in terrorism for local and state government agencies.
Former military operatives now engaged in training routinely describe all Muslims in the United States as potential enemies who want to impose sharia law on the United States and forcibly convert the entire population to Islam. They advise infiltration of mosques and Muslim student groups and systemic phone tapping in the Muslim community.
Perhaps most important from a political standpoint is the leading role played by Obama administration officials like Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona, now secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano has publicly enlisted Wal-Mart, Amtrak, the major sports leagues and hotel chains in a campaign to promote reporting “suspicious activity” and generating “terror tips.”
The Post notes, “In her speeches she compares the undertaking to the Cold War fight against communists.” Precisely: the Obama administration is embracing a form of McCarthyism, with “terrorism” supplanting the “Red menace” as the object of demonization.
The virtue of this approach, from the standpoint of the American ruling class, is that any form of domestic social upheaval—strikes, sit-ins, mass demonstrations against war, struggles against eviction, foreclosure and utility shutoff—can be branded “terrorism” and those engaged in it targeted for police repression.

Is WikiLeaks the Beginning of a New Form of Media?

2010-12-12T19:29:00.000-08:00

By Mathew Ingram Dec. 10, 2010, 9:22am PDT 8 Comments

As WikiLeaks continues to release classified diplomatic cables, and fights to remain online and solvent, it’s becoming increasingly clear what’s happening has less to do with WikiLeaks itself, and more to do with what seems to be a new form of media emerging: not a news or journalism entity specifically, but a kind of media middleman that exposes secret or undiscovered information, which can then become a source of news. Could WikiLeaks — and similar efforts it appears to be spawning — become a crucial new part of the digital media ecosystem?

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen WikiLeaks attacked by the U.S. government — now apparently considering espionage charges against leader Julian Assange for publishing the cables — and shut down by companies such as PayPal and Amazon (which seems to see no irony in selling a book including excerpts from WikiLeaks cables). Both of those companies have in turn come under attack by Anonymous, a rogue group of hackers who targeted their websites as part of what the group called Operation Payback, although the group appears to be moving away from denial-of-service attacks to less destructive attention-getting strategies.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has been making itself so distributed — by setting up over a thousand mirror sites through which it can publish documents automatically, as well as moving servers to several different hosts — that it seems almost unassailable, even if Assange is found guilty of something. The WikiLeaks founder has said that in addition to the mirror sites, BitTorrent archives of the cables have been provided to 10,000 sources who could continue to publish them even if WikiLeaks was somehow taken offline.

WikiLeaks' leader Julian Assange
It’s not just WikiLeaks any more: A new spin-off group called OpenLeaks, formed in part by a splinter faction from within WikiLeaks, says it’s launching a new service with much the same mandate as its predecessor — to make documents public whether governments and companies want them to be or not — although it plans to be just a distribution point rather than a publisher itself. Another group calling itself BrusselsLeaks is apparently also looking to create the kind of document clearinghouse that WikiLeaks has set up, but it will be focused on information about the European Union.

As political analyst Evgeny Morozov notes in a piece written for the New York Times, and in a summary of that piece on his blog at Foreign Policy magazine, WikiLeaks has come to serve as a kind of middleman for media outlets such as the NYT and The Guardian. Although these entities have investigative teams, they can’t possibly find everything, and there is so much more information out there to comb through. What agencies such as WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks could provide is a single source for such documents, as well as a way of publicizing that these secrets have been revealed, something that WikiLeaks has done very well.

Do newspapers and other media need WikiLeaks? Some would argue that the sources who went to Assange could just as easily have gone to the NYT or The Guardian directly. So why didn’t they? Possibly because they wanted the information to be spread more widely than just one media outlet, or were worried that one newspaper might not report on the cables properly if they were the only ones with that information. In a sense, as my former colleague Doug Saunders — the European bureau chief for Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail — has noted, WikiLeaks is not that different from the brown envelope that the leaker behind the Watergate scandal delivered documents in.

In this era of real-time publishing and the ubiquitous web, however, the power of that brown envelope has been amplified a thousandfold, and its reach is far broader than was ever possible before — and that changes the game entirely.

Justice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of "Anti-Terrorism" Law Targeting Activists

2010-12-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

by: Michael Deutsch, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court's 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy "coordinated with" or "under the direction of" a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as "terrorist" was a crime.

The search warrants and grand jury subpoenas make it clear that the federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public nonviolent political organizers, many of whom are affiliated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), of providing "material support" through their public advocacy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Secretary of State has determined that both the PLFP and the FARC "threaten US national security, foreign policy or economic interests," a finding not reviewable by the courts, and listed both groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).

In 1996, Congress made it a crime - then punishable by 10 years, which was later increased to 15 years - to anyone in the US who provides "material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization or attempts or conspires to do so." The present statute defines "material support or resources" as:

... any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel and transportation except medicine or religious materials.

In the Humanitarian Law Project case, human rights workers wanted to teach members of the Kurdistan PKK, which seeks an independent Kurdish state, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought an independent state in Sri Lanka, how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes and obtain relief from the United Nations and other international bodies for human rights abuses by the governments of Turkey and Sri Lanka. Both organizations were designated as FTOs by the Secretary of State in a closed hearing, in which the evidence is heard secretly.

Despite the nonviolent, peacemaking goal of the Humanitarian Law Project's speech and training, the majority of the Supreme Court nonetheless interpreted the law to make such conduct a crime. Finding a whole new exception to the First Amendment, the Court decided that any support, even if it involves nonviolent efforts towards peace, is illegal under the law since it "frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," and also helps lend "legitimacy" to foreign terrorist groups. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts, despite the lack of any evidence, further opined that the FTO could use the human rights law to "intimidate, harass or destruct" its adversaries, and that even peace talks themselves could be used as a cover to re-arm for further attacks. Thus, the Court's opinion criminalizes efforts by independent groups to work for peace if they in any way cooperate or coordinate with designated FTOs.

The Court distinguishes what it refers to as "independent advocacy," which it finds is not prohibited by the statute, from "advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization," which is, for the first time, found to be a crime under the statute. The exact line demarcating where independent advocacy becomes impermissible coordination is left open and vague.

Seizing on this overbroad definition of "material support," the US government is now moving in on political groups and activists who are clearly exercising fundamental First Amendment rights by vocally opposing the government's branding of foreign liberation movements as terrorist and supporting their struggles against US-backed repressive regimes and illegal occupations.

Under the new definition of "material support," the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to monitor the elections in Lebanon and coordinate with the political parties there, including the designated FTO Hezbollah, could well be prosecuted as a crime. Similarly, the publication of op-ed articles by FTO spokesmen from Hamas or other designated groups by The New York Times or The Washington Post, or the filing of amicus briefs by human rights attorneys arguing against a group's terrorist designation or the statute itself could also now be prosecuted. Of course, the first targets of this draconian expansion of the material support law will not be a former president or the establishment media, but members of a Marxist organization who are vocal opponents of the governments of Israel and Colombia and the US policies supporting these repressive governments.

In his foreword to Nelson Mandela's recent autobiography "Conversations with Myself," President Obama wrote that "Mandela's sacrifice was so great that it called upon people everywhere to do what they could on behalf of human progress. … The first time I became politically active was during my college years, when I joined a campaign on behalf of divestment, and the effort to end apartheid in South Africa." At the time of Mr. Obama's First Amendment advocacy, Mr. Mandela and his organization the African National Congress (ANC) were denounced as terrorist by the US government. If the "material support" law had been in effect back then, Mr. Obama would have been subject to potential criminal prosecution. It is ironic - and the height of hypocrisy - that this same man who speaks with such reverence for Mr. Mandela and recalls his own support for the struggle against apartheid now allows the Justice Department under his command to criminalize similar First Amendment advocacy against Israeli apartheid and repressive foreign governments.

The Truth Will Always Win

2010-12-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

by Julian Assange

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Copyright 2010 News Limited
Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

In defence of WikiLeaks

2010-12-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

WHILE fascinating in their own right, these WikiLeaks document dumps are also fascinating in the way they draw out fairly fundamental intuitions about the rights and privileges of the American state. Earlier today I attempted to draw up a taxonomy of different ideological/character types elicited by WikiLeaks, but quickly became mired in the complexity of it all. Rather than diagnose the world, I'll just diagnose myself in contrast to my colleague.

In this morning's post, my worldly co-blogger characterises the content of the tens of thousands classified diplomatic cables as mere "gossip", and maintains "that grabbing as many diplomatic cables as you can get your hands on and making them public is not a socially worthy activity". I strongly disagree.

Greg Mitchell's catalogue of reactions to the leaked cables is a trove of substantive information. For example, drawing on the documents made available by WikiLeaks, the ACLU reports that the Bush administration "pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers responsible for the kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture of German national Khaled El-Masri", a terrorism suspect dumped in Albania once the CIA determined it had nabbed a nobody. I consider kidnapping and torture serious crimes, and I think it's interesting indeed if the United States government applied pressure to foreign governments to ensure complicity in the cover-up of it agents' abuses. In any case, I don't consider this gossip.

I think we all understand that the work of even the most decent governments is made more difficult when they cannot be sure their communications will be read by those for whom they were not intended. That said, there is no reason to assume that the United States government is always up to good. To get at the value of WikiLeaks, I think it's important to distinguish between the government—the temporary, elected authors of national policy—and the state—the permanent bureaucratic and military apparatus superficially but not fully controlled by the reigning government. The careerists scattered about the world in America's intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.

As Scott Shane, the New York Times' national security reporter, puts it: "American taxpayers, American citizens pay for all these diplomatic operations overseas and you know, it is not a bad thing when Americans actually have a better understanding of those negotiations". Mr Shane goes on to suggest that

Perhaps if we had had more information on these secret internal deliberations of governments prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we would have had a better understanding of the quality of the evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
I'd say providing that information certainly would have been a socially worthy activity, even if it came as part of a more-or-less indiscriminate dump of illegally obtained documents. I'm glad to see that the quality of discussion over possible US efforts to stymie Iran's nuclear ambitions has already become more sophisticated and, well, better-informed due to the information provided by WikiLeaks.

If secrecy is necessary for national security and effective diplomacy, it is also inevitable that the prerogative of secrecy will be used to hide the misdeeds of the permanent state and its privileged agents. I suspect that there is no scheme of government oversight that will not eventually come under the indirect control of the generals, spies, and foreign-service officers it is meant to oversee. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy. Some folks ask, "Who elected Julian Assange?" The answer is nobody did, which is, ironically, why WikiLeaks is able to improve the quality of our democracy. Of course, those jealously protective of the privileges of unaccountable state power will tell us that people will die if we can read their email, but so what? Different people, maybe more people, will die if we can't.

The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange

2010-12-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

By David Samuels

December 03, 2010 "The Atlantic" -- Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors.

Assange, the organizing brain of Wikileaks, enjoys a higher degree of freedom living as a hunted man in England under the close surveillance of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies -- but probably not for long. Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan - "a vicious antiwar type," an enraged Nixon called him on the Watergate tapes -- has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration.

Published reports suggest that a joint Justice Department-Pentagon team of investigators is exploring the possibility of charging Assange under the Espionage Act, which could lead to decades in jail. "This is not saber-rattling," said Attorney General Eric Holder, commenting on the possibility that Assange will be prosecuted by the government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Wikileaks disclosures "an attack on the international community" that endangered innocent people. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested in somewhat Orwellian fashion that "such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."

It is dispiriting and upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we won't soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names.

Unwilling to let the Democrats adopt Nixon's anti-democratic, press-hating legacy as their own, Republican Congressman Peter King asserted that the publication of classified diplomatic cables is "worse even than a physical attack on Americans" and that Wikileaks should be officially designed as a terrorist organization. Mike Huckabee followed such blather to its logical conclusion by suggesting that Bradley Manning should be executed.

But the truly scandalous and shocking response to the Wikileaks documents has been that of other journalists, who make the Obama Administration sound like the ACLU. In a recent article in The New Yorker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll sniffed that "the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day" while depicting Assange as a "self-aggrandizing control-freak" whose website "lacks an ethical culture that is consonant with the ideals of free media." Channeling Richard Nixon, Coll labeled Wikileaks' activities - formerly known as journalism - by his newly preferred terms of "vandalism" and "First Amendment-inspired subversion."

Coll's invective is hardly unique, In fact, it was only a pale echo of the language used earlier this year by a columnist at his former employer, The Washington Post. In a column titled "WikiLeaks Must Be Stopped," Mark Thiessen wrote that "WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise," and urged that the site should be shut down "and its leadership brought to justice." The dean of American foreign correspondents, John Burns of The New York Times, with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, contributed a profile of Assange which used terms like "nearly delusional grandeur" to describe Wikileaks' founder. The Times' normally mild-mannered David Brooks asserted in his column this week that "Assange seems to be an old-fashioned anarchist" and worried that Wikileaks will "damage the global conversation."

For his part, Assange has not been shy about expressing his contempt for the failure of traditional reporting to inform the public, and his belief in the utility of his own methods. "How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined?" he told The Sydney Morning Herald. "It's disgraceful."

Assange may or may not be grandiose, paranoid and delusional - terms that might be fairly applied at one time or another to most prominent investigative reporters of my acquaintance. But the fact that so many prominent old school journalists are attacking him with such unbridled force is a symptom of the failure of traditional reporting methods to penetrate a culture of official secrecy that has grown by leaps and bounds since 9/11, and threatens the functioning of a free press as a cornerstone of democracy.

The true importance of Wikileaks -- and the key to understanding the motivations and behavior of its founder -- lies not in the contents of the latest document dump but in the technology that made it possible, which has already shown itself to be a potent weapon to undermine official lies and defend human rights. Since 1997, Assange has devoted a great deal of his time to inventing encryption systems that make it possible for human rights workers and others to protect and upload sensitive data. The importance of Assange's efforts to human rights workers in the field were recognized last year by Amnesty International, which gave him its Media Award for the Wikileaks investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, which documented the killing and disappearance of 500 young men in Kenya by the police, with the apparent connivance of the country's political leadership.

Yet the difficulties of documenting official murder in Kenya pale next to the task of penetrating the secret world that threatens to swallow up informed public discourse in this country about America's wars. The 250,000 cables that Wikileaks published this month represent only a drop in the bucket that holds the estimated 16 million documents that are classified top secret by the federal government every year. According to a three-part investigative series by Dana Priest and William Arkin published earlier this year in The Washington Post, an estimated 854,000 people now hold top secret clearance - more than 1.5 times the population of Washington, D.C. "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive," the Post concluded, "that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

The result of this classification mania is the division of the public into two distinct groups: those who are privy to the actual conduct of American policy, but are forbidden to write or talk about it, and the uninformed public, which becomes easy prey for the official lies exposed in the Wikileaks documents: The failure of American counterinsurgency programs in Afghanistan, the involvement of China and North Korea in the Iranian nuclear program, the likely failure of attempts to separate Syria from Iran, the involvement of Iran in destabilizing Iraq, the anti-Western orientation of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and other tenets of American foreign policy under both Bush and Obama.

It is a fact of the current media landscape that the chilling effect of threatened legal action routinely stops reporters and editors from pursuing stories that might serve the public interest - and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or lying. Every honest reporter and editor in America knows that the fact that most news organizations are broke, combined with the increasing threat of aggressive legal action by deep-pocketed entities, private and public, has made it much harder for good reporters to do their jobs, and ripped a hole in the delicate fabric that holds our democracy together.

The idea that Wikileaks is a threat to the traditional practice of reporting misses the point of what Assange and his co-workers have put together - a powerful tool that can help reporters circumvent the legal barriers that are making it hard for them to do their job. Even as he criticizes the evident failures of the mainstream press, Assange insists that Wikileaks should facilitate traditional reporting and analysis. "We're the step before the first person (investigates)," he explained, when accepting Amnesty International's award for exposing police killings in Kenya. "Then someone who is familiar with that material needs to step forward to investigate it and put it in political context. Once that is done, then it becomes of public interest."

Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press. The likely arrest of Assange in Britain on dubious Swedish sex crimes charges has nothing to do with the importance of the system he has built, and which the US government seems intent on destroying with tactics more appropriate to the Communist Party of China -- pressuring Amazon to throw the site off their servers, and, one imagines by launching the powerful DDOS attacks that threatened to stop visitors from reading the pilfered cables.

In a memorandum entitled "Transparency and Open Government" addressed to the heads of Federal departments and agencies and posted on WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama instructed that "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing." The Administration would be wise to heed his words -- and to remember how badly the vindictive prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg ended for the Nixon Administration. And American reporters, Pulitzer Prizes and all, should be ashamed for joining in the outraged chorus that defends a burgeoning secret world whose existence is a threat to democracy.

David Samuels is a regular contributor to The Atlantic.

Court Dismisses Targeted Killing Case On Procedural Grounds Without Addressing Merits

2010-12-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

Judge Acknowledges ACLU And CCR Case Raises Important Questions About Legality Of Obama Administration’s Claimed Authority To Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones

A federal court today acknowledged the serious issues raised by a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s targeted killing policy, but dismissed the case on the grounds that the plaintiff did not have legal standing to challenge the targeting of his son, and that the case raised “political questions” not subject to court review. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in August, charging that the administration's asserted authority to execute U.S. citizens outside combat zones who do not pose an imminent threat violates the U.S. Constitution and international law. The judge did not rule on the merits of the case.

Despite granting the government’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called the case “unique and extraordinary,” said it presented “[s]tark, and perplexing, questions” and found that the merits “present fundamental questions of separation of powers involving the proper role of the courts in our constitutional structure.” Ultimately, however, he dismissed the case on procedural grounds and found that “the serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day…”

“If the court’s ruling is correct, the government has unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation,” said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU. “It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution or more dangerous to American liberty. It’s worth remembering that the power that the court invests in the president today will be available not just in this case but in future cases, and not just to the current president but to every future president. It is a profound mistake to allow this unparalleled power to be exercised free from the checks and balances that apply in every other context. We continue to believe that the government’s power to use lethal force against American citizens should be subject to meaningful oversight by the courts.”

The ACLU and CCR were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi. The lawsuit asked the court to rule that, outside the context of armed conflict, the government can carry out the targeted killing of an American citizen only as a last resort to address an imminent threat to life or physical safety. The lawsuit also asked the court to order the government to disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.

Judge Bates did not decide these issues, however, because he found that the plaintiff did not have the right to assert his son’s interests in court, and “that there are circumstances in which the Executive's unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is ‘constitutionally committed to the political branches’ and judicially unreviewable.” Regarding the latter “political question” issue, the judge acknowledged “the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion.”

"The court refused to hear a claim on behalf of a U.S. citizen under threat of death by his own government that his personal constitutional rights have been violated – exactly what the court itself acknowledges it appears no court has ever done,” said CCR attorney Pardiss Kebriaei. “The court's holding on the political question doctrine is indeed 'unsettling.'"

Judge Bates asked but did not answer the troubling question, “How is it that judicial approval is required when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but that, according to defendants, judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?”

The lawsuit was filed against CIA Director Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Barack Obama in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Attorneys on the case are Jaffer, Ben Wizner, Jonathan Manes and Jennifer Turner of the ACLU; Kebriaei, Maria LaHood and Bill Quigley of CCR; and Arthur B. Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation's Capital. Co-counsel in Yemen is Mohammed Allawo of the Allawo Law Firm and the National Organization for Defending Human Rights (HOOD).

In response to a related case challenging regulations that prohibited the ACLU and CCR from bringing a lawsuit on behalf of Nasser al-Aulaqi without first obtaining a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Treasury today issued significant amendments to its regulations. Among other changes, the new regulations mean that uncompensated attorneys will no longer be required to apply for a license in order to represent individuals before any domestic courts or administrative agencies.

Today’s decision and other documents related to the targeted killing case are available online at:
www.ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings and www.aclu.org/targetedkillings. For a PDF of the decision, click here. Documents related to the OFAC case are available online at: www.aclu.org/ofac

Hackers take down website of bank that froze WikiLeaks funds

2010-12-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

By Daniel Tencer

A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks.

Announcing its successful hack on a Twitter account, the group declared, "We will fire at anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks."

Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that it had frozen 31,000 euro ($41,000 US) in an account set up as a legal defense fund for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The bank said it had frozen the account because, in opening it, Assange had claimed residency in Geneva.

"Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance," the bank said.

As of Monday evening, the PostFinance website was unavailable.

Operation Payback also promised a hack attack on PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks, denying the group a major tool for collecting donations from supporters.

With the financial noose tightening around WikiLeaks even as a legal one tightens around its founder's neck, Operation Payback has effectively declared war on the organizations working to hobble WikiLeaks.

"In these modern times, Internet access is fast becoming a basic human right," the group says in a video posted to YouTube. "Just like any other basic human right, we believe it is wrong to infringe upon it."

The video continues: "To move to censor content on the Internet based on your own prejudice is, at best, laughably impossible. The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster, and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny."

WikiLeaks has in recent days been under a deluge of cyber-attacks that led to its DNS registration for its .org URL being taken down, but by mid-Monday the site had reappeared on more than 500 different domains.

News sources in Britain reported late Monday that Assange has arranged to meet with British police on Tuesday, and will likely face a court hearing over an international warrant issued by Sweden in connection with accusations of sexual assault. The criminal probe does not allege non-consensual sex, only that Assange had sex with two women without a condom.

Supporters of the secret-spilling organization argue that the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks -- from the unusual criminal probe against Assange, to banks freezing their funds -- are part of a global campaign to shut down a website that has embarrassed world leaders on numerous occasions.

Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”

2010-12-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

Posted by zunguzungu on November 29, 2010

“To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”

Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”

The piece of writing (via) which that quote introduces is intellectually substantial, but not all that difficult to read, so you might as well take a look at it yourself. Most of the news media seems to be losing their minds over Wikileaks without actually reading these essays, even though he describes the function and aims of an organization like Wikileaks in pretty straightforward terms. But, to summarize, he begins by describing a state like the US as essentially an authoritarian conspiracy, and then reasons that the practical strategy for combating that conspiracy is to degrade its ability to conspire, to hinder its ability to “think” as a conspiratorial mind. The metaphor of a computing network is mostly implicit, but utterly crucial: he seeks to oppose the power of the state by treating it like a computer and tossing sand in its diodes.

He begins by positing that conspiracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand, arguing that since authoritarianism produces resistance to itself — to the extent that its authoritarianism becomes generally known — it can only continue to exist and function by preventing its intentions (the authorship of its authority?) from being generally known. It inevitably becomes, he argues, a conspiracy:

Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

The problem this creates for the government conspiracy then becomes the organizational problem it must solve: if the conspiracy must operate in secrecy, how is it to communicate, plan, make decisions, discipline itself, and transform itself to meet new challenges? The answer is: by controlling information flows. After all, if the organization has goals that can be articulated, articulating them openly exposes them to resistance. But at the same time, failing to articulate those goals to itself deprives the organization of its ability to process and advance them. Somewhere in the middle, for the authoritarian conspiracy, is the right balance of authority and conspiracy.

His model for imagining the conspiracy, then, is not at all the cliché that people mean when they sneer at someone for being a “conspiracy theorist.” After all, most the “conspiracies” we’re familiar with are pure fantasies, and because the “Elders of Zion” or James Bond’s SPECTRE have never existed, their nonexistence becomes a cudgel for beating on people that would ever use the term or the concept. For Assange, by contrast, a conspiracy is something fairly banal, simply any network of associates who act in concert by hiding their concerted association from outsiders, an authority that proceeds by preventing its activities from being visible enough to provoke counter-reaction. It might be something as dramatic as a loose coalition of conspirators working to start a war with Iraq/n, or it might simply be the banal, everyday deceptions and conspiracies of normal diplomatic procedure.

He illustrates this theoretical model by the analogy of a board with nails hammered into it and then tied together with twine:

First take some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into a board at random. Then take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail to nail without breaking. Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken twine means it is possible to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and intermediary nails…Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy…

Conspirators are often discerning, for some trust and depend each other, while others say little. Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information through others. So we expand our simple connected graph model to include not only links, but their “importance.”

Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since its true value depends on the outcome of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.

Such a network will not be organized by a flow chart, nor would it ever produce a single coherent map of itself (without thereby hastening its own collapse). It is probably fairly acephalous, as a matter of course: if it had a single head (or a singular organizing mind which could survey and map the entirety), then every conspirator would be one step from the boss and a short two steps away from every other member of the conspiracy. A certain amount of centralization is necessary, in other words (otherwise there is no conspiracy), but too much centralization makes the system vulnerable.

To use The Wire as a ready-to-hand example, imagine if Avon Barksdale was communicating directly with Bodie. All you would ever have to do is turn one person — any person — and you would be one step away from the boss, whose direct connection to everyone else in the conspiracy would allow you to sweep them all up at once. Obviously, no effective conspiracy would ever function this way. Remember Stringer Bell’s “is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?” To function effectively, the primary authority has to be disassociated from all other members of the conspiracy, layers of mediation which have to be as opaque as possible to everyone concerned (which a paper trail unhelpfully clarifies). But while the complexity of these linkages shield the directing authority from exposure, they also limit Avon Barksdale’s ability to control what’s going on around him. Businesses run on their paperwork! And the more walls you build around him, the less he might be able to trust his lieutenants, and the less they’ll require (or tolerate) him.

This, Assange reasons, is a way to turn a feature into a bug. And his underlying insight is simple and, I think, compelling: while an organization structured by direct and open lines of communication will be much more vulnerable to outside penetration, the more opaque it becomes to itself (as a defense against the outside gaze), the less able it will be to “think” as a system, to communicate with itself. The more conspiratorial it becomes, in a certain sense, the less effective it will be as a conspiracy. The more closed the network is to outside intrusion, the less able it is to engage with that which is outside itself (true hacker theorizing).

His thinking is not quite as abstract as all that, of course; as he quite explicitly notes, he is also understanding the functioning of the US state by analogy with successful terrorist organizations. If you’ve seen The Battle of Algiers, for example, think of how the French counter-terrorist people work to produce an organizational flow chart of the Algerian resistance movement: since they had overwhelming military superiority, their inability to crush the FLN resided in their inability to find it, an inability which the FLN strategically works to impede by decentralizing itself. Cutting off one leg of the octopus, the FLN realized, wouldn’t degrade the system as a whole if the legs all operated independently. The links between the units were the vulnerable spots for the system as a whole, so those were most closely and carefully guarded and most hotly pursued by the French. And while the French won the battle of Algiers, they lost the war, because they adopted the tactics Assange briefly mentions only to put aside:

How can we reduce the ability of a conspiracy to act?…We can split the conspiracy, reduce or eliminating important communication between a few high weight links or many low weight links. Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination, have cut high weight links by killing, kidnapping, blackmailing or otherwise marginalizing or isolating some of the conspirators they were connected to.

This is the US’s counterterrorism strategy — find the men in charge and get ’em — but it’s not what Assange wants to do: such a program would isolate a specific version of the conspiracy and attempt to destroy the form of it that already exists, which he argues will have two important limitations. For one thing, by the time such a conspiracy has a form which can be targeted, its ability to function will be quite advanced. As he notes:

“A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since the actions themselves can not be dealt with.”

By the time a cancer has metastasized, in other words, antioxidents are no longer effective, and even violent chemotherapy is difficult. It’s better, then, to think about how conspiracies come into existence so as to prevent them from forming in the first place (whereas if you isolate the carcinogen early enough, you don’t need to remove the tumor after the fact). Instead, he wants to address the aggregative process itself, by impeding the principle of its reproduction: rather than trying to expose and cut particular links between particular conspirators (which does little to prevent new links from forming and may not disturb the actual functioning of the system as a whole), he wants to attack the “total conspiratorial power” of the entire system by figuring out how to reduce its total ability to share and exchange information among itself, in effect, to slow down its processing power. As he puts it:

Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to outthink the same group of individuals acting alone Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass through the conspirators and then act on the result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information about the environment), a computational network (the conspirators and their links to each other) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain the environment).

Because he thinks of the conspiracy as a computational network, he notes in an aside that one way to weaken its cognitive ability would be to degrade the quality of its information:

Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage out. Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism is sometimes called “the Fox News effect”.

I’m not sure this is what he means, but it’s worth reflecting that the conspiracy’s ability to deceive others through propaganda can also be the conspiracy’s tendency to deceive itself by its own propaganda. So many people genuinely drink the Kool-Aid, after all. Would our super-spies in Afghanistan ever have been so taken in by the imposter Taliban guy if they didn’t, basically, believe their own line of propaganda, if they didn’t convince themselves — even provisionally — that we actually are winning the war against Talibothra? The same is true of WMD; while no one in possession of the facts could rationally conclude that Saddam Hussein then (or Iran now) are actually, positively in pursuit of WMD’s, this doesn’t mean that the people talking about ticking time bombs don’t actually believe that they are. It just means they are operating with bad information about the environment. Sometimes this works in their favor, but sometimes it does not: if Obama thinks Afghanistan is winnable, it may sink his presidency, for example, while the belief of his advisors that the economy would recover if the government rescued only the banks almost certainly lost the midterm elections for the Democrats (and was the death-knell for so many of the Blue Dogs who were driving that particular policy choice). Whether this actually hurts the conspiracy is unclear; those Blue Dogs might have lost their seats, but most of them will retire from public service to cushy jobs supported by the sectors they supported while they were in public service. And lots of successful politicians do nothing but fail.

This is however, not where Assange’s reasoning leads him. He decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire:

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy. As he puts it:

If total conspiratorial power is zero, then clearly there is no information flow between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy. A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the conspiracy to think, act and adapt…An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces.

In this sense, most of the media commentary on the latest round of leaks has totally missed the point. After all, why are diplomatic cables being leaked? These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency? And we all probably knew that this was more or less the case; anyone who was surprised that our embassies are doing dirty, secretive, and disingenuous political work as a matter of course is naïve. But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something, precisely because no one is all that scandalized by such things any more. Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.

Early responses seem to indicate that Wikileaks is well on its way to accomplishing some of its goals. As Simon Jenkins put it (in a great piece in its own right) “The leaks have blown a hole in the framework by which states guard their secrets.” And if the diplomats quoted by Le Monde are right that, “we will never again be able to practice diplomacy like before,” this is exactly what Wikileaks was trying to do. It’s sort of pathetic hearing diplomats and government shills lament that the normal work of “diplomacy” will now be impossible, like complaining that that the guy boxing you out is making it hard to get rebounds. Poor dears. If Assange is right to point out that his organization has accomplished more state scrutiny than the entire rest of the journalistic apparatus combined, he’s right but he’s also deflecting the issue: if Wikileaks does some of the things that journalists do, it also does some very different things. Assange, as his introductory remarks indicate quite clearly, is in the business of “radically shift[ing] regime behavior.”

If Wikileaks is a different kind of organization than anything we’ve ever seen before, it’s interesting to see him put himself in line with more conventional progressivism. Assange isn’t off base, after all, when he quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s words from his 1912 Progressive party presidential platform as the epigraph to the first essay; Roosevelt realized a hundred years ago that “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people,” and it was true, then too, that “To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.” Assange is trying to shit all over this unholy alliance in ways that the later and more radical Roosevelt would likely have commended.

It’s worth closing, then, by recalling that Roosevelt also coined the term “muckraker,” and that he did so as a term of disparagement. Quoting from Pilgrim’s Progress, he cited the example of the “Muck-Raker” who could only look down, whose perspective was so totally limited to the “muck” that it was his job to rake, he had lost all ability to see anything higher. Roosevelt, as always, is worth quoting:

In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muckrake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor…the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is s vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil. There are, in the body politic, economic, and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful…

Roosevelt was many things when he uttered those words, but he was not wrong. There is a certain vicious amorality about the Mark Zuckerberg-ian philosophy that all transparency is always and everywhere a good thing, particularly when it’s uttered by the guy who’s busily monetizing your radical transparency. And the way most journalists “expose” secrets as a professional practice — to the extent that they do — is just as narrowly selfish: because they publicize privacy only when there is profit to be made in doing so, they keep their eyes on the valuable muck they are raking, and learn to pledge their future professional existence on a continuing and steady flow of it. In muck they trust.

According to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary.

Chicago activists protest latest round of FBI subpoenas

2010-12-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

Posted by kszremski

A group of about 100 activists braved frigid temperatures to protest the latest round of FBI subpoenas in front of the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago Monday night.

The FBI issues summons to appear before a federal grand jury to three college students Friday. They are scheduled to appear on Jan. 25, said their attorney Jim Fennerty of the National Lawyers Guild. The women are being targeted because they traveled to the Palestinian occupied territory of the West Bank, he added.

The new subpoenas bring to 17 the number of activists throughout the Midwest that have been targeted by the FBI for their Palestinian and Colombian solidarity work.

On Sept. 24, the FBI raided several homes in Minnesota, Chicago and Michigan and issued to subpoenas to 14 people.

To date, all 14 have refused to testify, causing Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to withdraw the summons. However, he has since reissued subpoenas to three Minnesota women, who are facing “indeterminate imprisonment” if they refuse to testify again, said Maureen Murphy of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

The national committee was formed in response to the Sept. 24 FBI raids.

Grand juries are used to determine whether to charge a person with a crime. They differ from juries in criminal trials in that they are not screened for bias, according to the website Grand Jury Resistance Project. In addition, grand juries are conducted in secret without a judge and defense lawyers are not allowed into the room with their clients. However, they may confer with their clients outside the courtroom.

Many people claim that grand juries are misused to silence political opposition.

“Because of their broad subpoena powers and secretive nature, grand juries have been used by the government to gather information on political movements and to disrupt those movements by causing fear and mistrust,” the Grand Jury Resistance Project website states.

That’s a stance the National Lawyers Guild takes. According to its website, the Guild denounces the recent FBI actions.

“The Guild denounces the attacks on free speech, freedom of association, and the right to dissent that these actions represent,” the website states. “The raids and summonses reflect escalating hostility toward individuals and groups working in solidarity with the Palestinian and Colombian people and are blatantly political attacks on peaceful activists.”

The NLG has established a hotline for activists contacted by the FBI and has issued a Know Your Rights brochure and other information.

Murphy was upbeat about the event. The “push back” against the government has show results. Rallies and demonstrations have taken place in at least 60 cities nationwide, she said.

The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan

2010-12-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

By Jeremy Scahill

Despite sustained denials by US officials spanning more than a year, US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in north and south Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to secret cables released as part of the Wikileaks document dump. According to an October 9, 2009 cable [1] classified by Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, the operations were "almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of [Pakistan's] Chief of Army Staff General Kayani." The operations were coordinated with the US Office of the Defense Representative in Pakistan. A US special operations source told The Nation that the ! US forces described in the cable as "SOC(FWD)-PAK" were "forward operating troops" from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the most elite force within the US military made up of Navy SEALs, Delta Force and Army Rangers.

The cables also confirm aspects of a Nation story from November 2009, The Secret US War in Pakistan [2], which detailed offensive combat operations by JSOC in Pakistan. In response to The Nation story, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell called it [3] "conspiratorial" and explicitly denied that US special operations forces were doing anything other than "training" in Pakistan. More than a month after the October 2009 cable from the US embassy in Pakistan confirming JSOC combat missions, Morrell told reporters: "We have basically, I think, a few dozen forces on the ground in Pakistan who are involved in a train-the-trainer mission. These are Special Operations Forces.&nbs! p; We’ve been very candid about this. They are — they have been for months, if not years now, training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military on how to — on certain skills and operational techniques. And that’s the extent of our — our, you know, military boots on the ground in Pakistan." According to the October 2009 cable, Morrell's statement was false.

In one operation in September 2009, four US special operations forces personnel "embedded with the [Pakistani] Frontier Corps (FC)… in the FATA," where the Americans are described as providing "ISR:" intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The support from the US forces, according to the cable, "was highly successful, enabling the FC to execute a precise and effective artillery strike on an enemy location." A month later, according to the cable, the Pakistan Army again "approved deployment of U.S. special operation elements to support Pakistani military operations." To the embassy staff, this was documented in the cable as a "sea change" in Pakistan's military leaders' thinking, saying they had previously been "adamantly opposed [to] letting us embed" US special ops forces with Pakistani forces. According to the cable, "U.S. special operation elements have been in Pakistan for more than a year! , but were largely limited to a training role," adding that the Pakistani units that received training from US special operations forces "appear to have recognized the potential benefits of bringing U.S. SOF personnel into the field with them."

In another operation cited in the cables, the US teams, led by JSOC, were described as providing support to the Pakistani Army's 11th Corp and included "a live downlink of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) full motion video." Whether the drones were used for surveillance or as part of a joint offensive is unclear from the documents. While the US government will not confirm US drone strikes inside the country and Pakistani officials regularly deride the strikes, the issue of the drones was discussed in another cable from August 2008 [4]. That cable describes a meeting between Ambassador Patterson and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. When the issue of US drone strikes came up, according to the cable, Gillani said, "I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then! ignore it."

The ability of US special operations forces to operate in Pakistan is clearly viewed as a major development by the US embassy. "Patient relationship-building with the military is the key factor that has brought us to this point," according to the October 2009 cable. It also notes the potential consequences of the activities leaking: "These deployments are highly politically sensitive because of widely-held concerns among the public about Pakistani sovereignty and opposition to allowing foreign military forces to operate in any fashion on Pakistani soil. Should these developments and/or related matters receive any coverage in the Pakistani or U.S. media, the Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance."

Such statements might help explain why Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lied to the world when he said [5] bluntly in July 2010: "People think that the US has troops in Pakistan, well, we don't."

A US special operations veteran who worked on Pakistan issues in 2009 reviewed the Wikileaks cables for The Nation. He said he was taken aback that the cable was not classified higher than "SECRET" given that it confirms the active involvement of US soldiers from the highly-secretive, elite Joint Special Operations Command engaging in combat--not just training-- in Pakistan. And offensive combat at that. JSOC operations are compartmentalized and highly classified.

Pentagon spokespeople have repeatedly insisted that the US military's activities in Pakistan are restricted to training operations. Even after the October 2009 cable and multiple JSOC operations in Pakistan, US and Pakistani officials continued to hold official meetings to discuss "potential" joint operations. In January 2010 in Washington DC, US and Pakistani military officials gathered under the umbrella of the "U.S.-Pakistan Land Forces Military Consultative Committee." According to notes from the meeting, they discussed US military operations in Pakistan aiming to "enhance both U.S. and Pakistan Army COIN [counterinsurgency] capabilities" and "potential US COIN Center/Pakistan Army interactions." Among the participants were representatives of the Special Operations Command, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs--Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell, the Office of Defense Representative--Pakistan and a Pakistan delegation led ! by Brigadier General Muhammad Azam Agha, Pakistan's Director of Military Training.

A special operations veteran and a former CIA operative with direct experience in Pakistan have told The Nation that JSOC has long engaged in combat in Pakistan which raises a question: How in-the-loop is the US embassy about the activities of JSOC in Pakistan? Just because Ambassador Anne Patterson approves a cable saying that US special ops forces have only done two operations with Pakistani forces and plays this up as a major league development doesn't make it true. JSOC has conducted operations across the globe without the direct knowledge of the US ambassador. In 2006, the US military and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. JSOC has struck multiple times inside Pakistan over the years regardless of what Ambassador Patterson's cables may say.

In 2006, 12 "tactical action operatives" from Blackwater were recruited for a secret JSOC raid inside Pakistan, targeting an al Qaeda facility. The operation was code-named "Vibrant Fury [6]." Which raises another issue: the activities described in the October 2009 cable very closely align with what a US military intelligence source, a US special forces source and a former Blackwater executive told [2] The Nation in November 2009, namely that JSOC was running an operation in Pakistan where "members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch ! and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan… The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes." The arrangement, which involved a web of subcontractors, allowed the Pakistani Frontier Corps--the force cited in the cable--to work with JSOC operators while simultaneously denying that Americans were involved. From The Nation article, "The Secret US War in Pakistan [2]," in November 2009:

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

[…]

According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

[…]

Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've ! got BW guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."

***

In November 2009, Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. Captain Kirby told The Nation if it published the story it would "be on thin ice." The US embassy and Pakistan's interior Minister Rehman Malik both denied Blackwater was operating in Pakistan.

In January 2010, on a visit to Pakistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appeared to contradict that line, telling a Pakistani TV station, "They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan," according to a DoD transcript [7] of the interview. As Gates's comments began to make huge news in Pakistan, US defense officials tried to retract his statement. As the Wall Street Journal reported [8], "Defense officials tried to clarify the comment… telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn't employ [Blackwater] in Pakistan." The next day, Pakistan's sen! ior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, said that Blackwater was operating in Pakistan's frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan's Express News TV that Blackwater's activities were taking place with the "consent and permission" of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.

Since The Nation story originally ran, Blackwater has continued to work [9] under the Obama administration. In June, the company won a $100 million global contract with the CIA and continues to operate in Afghanistan where it protects senior US officials and trains Afghan forces. Earlier this year, Blackwater's owner Erik Prince put the company up for sale and moved to the Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Whether Blackwater or former Blackwater operatives continue to work in Pakistan is not known. What is clear is that there is great reason to believe that the October 2009 cable from Ambassador Anne Patterson describing US special operations forces activities in Pakistan represents only a tiny glimpse into one of the darkest corners of current US policy in Pakistan.

Like this blog post? Read all Na! tion blogs on the Nation's free iPhone App, NationNow. [10]
[10]

Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156765/not-so-secret-anymore-us-war-pakistan
Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/229065
[2] http://www.thenation.com/article/secret-us-war-pakistan
[3] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4520
[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/167125
[5] http://www.commondreams.org/headline! /2010/02/05-9
[6] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mercenaries-cia-expanded-role- contractors-legitimate/story?id=9302651'
[7] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid= 4542
[8] http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB10001424052748704509704575018334096246888.html
[9] http://www.thenation.com/blog/36756/blackwaters-new-sugar-daddy-obam

FBI Delivers Subpoenas to More Anti-War, Solidarity Activists

2010-12-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

The FBI has informed a lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) that at least three subpoenas to appear before a Grand Jury have been delivered in the Chicago area.

Attorney Jim Fennerty confirmed that FBI agent Robert Parker informed him just before 1:00 pm today that the subpoenas were being delivered at that moment.

This is a continuation of the assault on the anti-war movement that began on September 24th. This case began with 14 subpoenas delivered to anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in coordinated raids that swept the Midwest, involving scores of federal agents. “The FBI is continuing their campaign to intimidate the movement,” stated Joe Iosbaker of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Iosbaker was one of those raided and subpoenaed in September.

Fennerty is one of the lead NLG attorneys from the legal team for the activists. According to Fennerty, “The new subpoenas are summoning people for grand jury dates. At least one of the three has been told to appear before the grand jury Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.”

Three of the original 14 are awaiting new grand jury court dates as well. Iosbaker explained, “If the three women who have been called back – Sara Martin, Tracy Molm and Anh Pham - refuse to take part in the fishing expedition carried on by the U.S. Attorney, they can expect to be cited for contempt and jailed for the life of the grand jury.”

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges supporters to contact U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and condemn the use of the grand jury to repress the anti-war and solidarity movements. Call Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.