Posted by EU Times
Once again, the Obama administration has violated the Bill of Rights. Earlier this month, the feds took down a free WordPress blogging platform and disabled more than 73,000 blogs. The action was completely ignored by the corporate media. The site, Blogetery.com, was told by its hosting service that the government had issued orders to shut down the site due to a “a history of abuse” related to copyrighted material.
In late June, Joe Biden and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel said the government would move to take down sites offering unauthorized movies and music. “Criminal copyright infringement occurs on a massive scale over the Internet, reportedly resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara’s office and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched “Operation In Our Sites” and executed seizure warrants against nine domain names.
Blogetery.com claimed the shut down of 73,000 blogs “was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm. This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server.”
“That seems odd,” notes Techdirt, a website that covers government policy, technology and legal issues. “If there was problematic content from some users, why not just take down that content or suspend those users. Taking down all 73,000 blogs seems… excessive.”
The DMCA’s takedown actions are a direct violation of the First Amendment under prior restraint. However, explains law professor Wendy Seltzer, because “DMCA takedowns are privately administered through ISPs… they have not received… constitutional scrutiny, despite their high risk of error.” Seltzer adds that “because DMCA takedown costs less to copyright claimants than a federal complaint and exposes claimants to few risks, it invites more frequent abuse or error than standard copyright law.”
TorrentFreak worries that the Blogetery.com case has set a precedent. “Fears remain… that this action is only the beginning, and that more sites will be targeted as the months roll on. Indeed, TorrentFreak has already received information that other sites, so far unnamed in the media, are being monitored by the authorities on copyright grounds,” writes a blogger on the site.
“They say it’s because of copyright infringement, but is it really?… it would seem that only sites/blogs which were streaming movies and TV shows were shut down initially, but upon further perusal, it seems like the Feds just arbitrarily shut down a server with several tens of thousands of bloggers on it without due process as is usual with this administration,” writes Smash Mouth Politics. “How soon before they find some reason to shut down other servers or networks? What’s probably infuriating to the bloggers who were shut down is that they have no recourse. They have no idea why the server was shut down. And the Feds are mum about it. Also, if the bloggers can even get a hold of the server admin, they’re refused any explanation of why.”
In October, 2004, more than 20 Independent Media Center websites and other internet services were taken offline, not in response to alleged copyright infringement but for political reasons. The disappearance of the Indymedia servers was shrouded in secrecy and the ISP and government would not provide an explanation. On October 20, 2004, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in Texas and argued that “the public and the press have a clear and compelling interest in discovering under what authority the government was able to unilaterally prevent Internet publishers from exercising their First Amendment rights.”
It was later discovered that the ISP had shut down IndyMedia’s websites after they were contacted by the FBI. The FBI said a particular article on the website nantes.indymedia.org contained personal information and threats regarding two Swiss undercover police officers. It was later determined that the article contained neither threats nor names or address information and contained instead photographs of police agents provocateurs masquerading as anti-globalization protesters.
The Obama administration — in step with he Bush administration before it — does not have a problem ordering the government to violate the First, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments. In its declared effort to prevent online piracy of copyrighted material, the government has trashed the Bill of Rights. It has used the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to intimidate ISPs to shut down web sites.
In June, a Senate committee approved a dictatorial cybersecurity bill that would allow Obama to shut down the internet. The bill, known as the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, would grant Obama the authority to carry out emergency actions to protect critical parts of the internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a government declared cyber-emergency. Obama would supposedly need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
French police use live ammunition against riots over police killings
By Antoine Lerougetel and Alex Lantier
20 July 2010
Over the last week, two young men were shot and killed while attempting to flee police, in the suburbs of Grenoble and the village of Saint-Aignan in central France. Police have responded to riots provoked by the killings with massive police deployments, firing live ammunition.
Police killed Karim Boudouda, 27, with a shot to the head in front of his home on the night of July 15-16, after a car chase in the neighbourhood of La Villeneuve in the Alpine city of Grenoble in southeastern France.
He was suspected of participating in the armed robbery of a casino. Police claimed to have found a bag in the back of his car containing €20,000 stolen from the casino. Police said they had come under fire from Boudouda’s car and had only fired in self-defense.
Police shot Luigi Dequenet—a member of a group of travellers who failed to stop at a police check point—near Saint-Aignan on the following night.
On Sunday, some 50 people from his community attacked Saint-Aignan’s police headquarters with hatchets and iron bars. They also cut down trees lining the streets and toppled traffic lights. The mayor of the village told Libération: “There was a settling of accounts between vagabonds and the police.”
Two helicopters and 300 law enforcement personnel were sent to the village, whose population is 3,250.
In the Grenoble area, rioting began the night after the shooting. After listening on Friday evening to the prayers of an imam for Karim in the neighbourhood park where he lived, fifty youths attacked bus shelters and a tram with iron bars and baseball bats. According to the police, between 50 and 60 cars were torched that night, as well as machines on a building site and two shops. Some 15 cars burned the following night.
At 2:30 AM on Saturday morning, police again fired live rounds in the La Villeneuve housing estate, claiming that youths had fired a handgun at them. Subsequently, they claim to have been fired upon each night—and twice on Sunday—though no policeman has been hurt.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux went to Grenoble on Saturday. He said he would “reestablish public order and the authority of the state ... by all means necessary.” He added that special police detachments would remain “as long as necessary, and until calm was restored.”
He said, “There is a simple and clear reality in this country: hooligans and delinquents have no future, because the public power always ends up winning.”
Hortefeux made a 15-minute lightning visit of La Villeneuve to threaten quick action: “When I say quick, I mean immediately, that’s how we are going to re-establish public order and the authority of the state.”
That night 300 heavily-armed police—including 240 elite anti-terrorist forces—invested La Villeneuve. Street lighting was switched off, and a police helicopter circled overhead, training a searchlight down on the neighborhood. Police forces are scheduled to control the area until at least tomorrow night.
On Sunday, Boudouda’s mother appealed for calm and told Agence France-Presse she would fight to bring to light the circumstances of her son’s death. She said, “They totally screwed up, the police, they totally screwed up. I am going to see the prosecutor and demand an investigation.”
A woman from the estate told L'Humaníté that the imam’s sermon did not provoke the riot: “Karim Boudouda was from this neighborhood, and the youth who showed their anger do not accept the conditions of the death of their friend.”
The police have arrested 20 people since Friday night. Four people were arrested on suspicion of firing on the police. On Sunday evening two were still being held, pending charges of attempted murder. Three youth were to appeal before magistrates yesterday on charges of looting shops. Fifteen houses have been searched.
Yesterday Libération quoted La Villeneuve residents, “The neighborhood took the death of the young man very badly. They let him die on the ground, they left his body on the asphalt instead of transporting him.” The paper added that it had heard the same complaints over and over in the area: “They came to shoot him down in his neighborhood ... they killed him in front of his mother.”
The police killing of two men—and the permission given to police to fire live ammunition at local residents—are not only an act of aggression against residents of Grenoble and St. Aignan, but a warning to the entire working class. Hortefeux’s “lightning” visit to La Villeneuve underscores the fact that leading government officials treat such areas not so differently from rebellious cities of an occupied country.
This is the politically criminal outcome of the deepening social inequality and the racist, law-and-order rhetoric that now permeates French politics.
Such appeals provided the basis for the media’s embrace of Nicolas Sarkozy, prior to his election as president in 2007—as well as for the campaign of his principal opponent, Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste (PS). The political establishment has backed the latest police outrage without flinching. PS spokesman Benoît Hamon criticized the government for appearing “overwhelmed” in the “struggle against insecurity”—that is, for not having deployed enough policemen against the most oppressed sections of the working class.
La Villeneuve is one of many ZUS (Sensitive Urban Zones), socially deprived areas home to 4.5 million people across France. According to a December report of the National Observatory of the ZUS, poverty is continuously increasing in these neighborhoods. Already in 2008, before the onset of the world economic crisis, unemployment in the ZUS among the 18-to-24 age bracket reached 41 percent.
The political establishment has sought to deal with rising discontent at social oppression with police repression, while disorienting other sections of the population with racist appeals against the immigrant suburbs.
Sarkozy’s racist taunts against immigrant youth, whom he called “scum,” were soon followed by the deaths of two young men—Zyad Benna and Bouna Traore—while fleeing police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. This provoked three weeks of rioting in France’s suburbs. In response, then-President Jacques Chirac imposed a three-month state of emergency, with the support of the establishment “left” parties.
In 2007 two teenagers, Larami and Moushin, were killed in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel in a collision with police, who fled the scene. This provoked three nights of rioting, during which police claimed they had been fired upon by unidentified gunmen. Youths picked up during the rioting were given stiff sentences in summary trials.
The political establishment’s easy toleration of police killings and martial-law-style mass repression is the product of the reactionary, racist climate promoted in France with the outbreak of the world economic crisis, and of mass social discontent in the population.
Sarkozy responded to mass demonstrations against the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 with proposals to ban the burqa and a racist “national identity” campaign, aimed at dividing the working class along racial and ethnic lines. These campaigns found no real opposition from any section of the political establishment. This has further inflamed racial tensions, with politicians and media personalities notably denouncing non-white members of France’s defeated World Cup football team as “scum.”
As the most recent killings and repression make clear, these initiatives lay the political basis for the officially-sanctioned use of deadly force against discontent in the working class.
20 July 2010
Over the last week, two young men were shot and killed while attempting to flee police, in the suburbs of Grenoble and the village of Saint-Aignan in central France. Police have responded to riots provoked by the killings with massive police deployments, firing live ammunition.
Police killed Karim Boudouda, 27, with a shot to the head in front of his home on the night of July 15-16, after a car chase in the neighbourhood of La Villeneuve in the Alpine city of Grenoble in southeastern France.
He was suspected of participating in the armed robbery of a casino. Police claimed to have found a bag in the back of his car containing €20,000 stolen from the casino. Police said they had come under fire from Boudouda’s car and had only fired in self-defense.
Police shot Luigi Dequenet—a member of a group of travellers who failed to stop at a police check point—near Saint-Aignan on the following night.
On Sunday, some 50 people from his community attacked Saint-Aignan’s police headquarters with hatchets and iron bars. They also cut down trees lining the streets and toppled traffic lights. The mayor of the village told Libération: “There was a settling of accounts between vagabonds and the police.”
Two helicopters and 300 law enforcement personnel were sent to the village, whose population is 3,250.
In the Grenoble area, rioting began the night after the shooting. After listening on Friday evening to the prayers of an imam for Karim in the neighbourhood park where he lived, fifty youths attacked bus shelters and a tram with iron bars and baseball bats. According to the police, between 50 and 60 cars were torched that night, as well as machines on a building site and two shops. Some 15 cars burned the following night.
At 2:30 AM on Saturday morning, police again fired live rounds in the La Villeneuve housing estate, claiming that youths had fired a handgun at them. Subsequently, they claim to have been fired upon each night—and twice on Sunday—though no policeman has been hurt.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux went to Grenoble on Saturday. He said he would “reestablish public order and the authority of the state ... by all means necessary.” He added that special police detachments would remain “as long as necessary, and until calm was restored.”
He said, “There is a simple and clear reality in this country: hooligans and delinquents have no future, because the public power always ends up winning.”
Hortefeux made a 15-minute lightning visit of La Villeneuve to threaten quick action: “When I say quick, I mean immediately, that’s how we are going to re-establish public order and the authority of the state.”
That night 300 heavily-armed police—including 240 elite anti-terrorist forces—invested La Villeneuve. Street lighting was switched off, and a police helicopter circled overhead, training a searchlight down on the neighborhood. Police forces are scheduled to control the area until at least tomorrow night.
On Sunday, Boudouda’s mother appealed for calm and told Agence France-Presse she would fight to bring to light the circumstances of her son’s death. She said, “They totally screwed up, the police, they totally screwed up. I am going to see the prosecutor and demand an investigation.”
A woman from the estate told L'Humaníté that the imam’s sermon did not provoke the riot: “Karim Boudouda was from this neighborhood, and the youth who showed their anger do not accept the conditions of the death of their friend.”
The police have arrested 20 people since Friday night. Four people were arrested on suspicion of firing on the police. On Sunday evening two were still being held, pending charges of attempted murder. Three youth were to appeal before magistrates yesterday on charges of looting shops. Fifteen houses have been searched.
Yesterday Libération quoted La Villeneuve residents, “The neighborhood took the death of the young man very badly. They let him die on the ground, they left his body on the asphalt instead of transporting him.” The paper added that it had heard the same complaints over and over in the area: “They came to shoot him down in his neighborhood ... they killed him in front of his mother.”
The police killing of two men—and the permission given to police to fire live ammunition at local residents—are not only an act of aggression against residents of Grenoble and St. Aignan, but a warning to the entire working class. Hortefeux’s “lightning” visit to La Villeneuve underscores the fact that leading government officials treat such areas not so differently from rebellious cities of an occupied country.
This is the politically criminal outcome of the deepening social inequality and the racist, law-and-order rhetoric that now permeates French politics.
Such appeals provided the basis for the media’s embrace of Nicolas Sarkozy, prior to his election as president in 2007—as well as for the campaign of his principal opponent, Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste (PS). The political establishment has backed the latest police outrage without flinching. PS spokesman Benoît Hamon criticized the government for appearing “overwhelmed” in the “struggle against insecurity”—that is, for not having deployed enough policemen against the most oppressed sections of the working class.
La Villeneuve is one of many ZUS (Sensitive Urban Zones), socially deprived areas home to 4.5 million people across France. According to a December report of the National Observatory of the ZUS, poverty is continuously increasing in these neighborhoods. Already in 2008, before the onset of the world economic crisis, unemployment in the ZUS among the 18-to-24 age bracket reached 41 percent.
The political establishment has sought to deal with rising discontent at social oppression with police repression, while disorienting other sections of the population with racist appeals against the immigrant suburbs.
Sarkozy’s racist taunts against immigrant youth, whom he called “scum,” were soon followed by the deaths of two young men—Zyad Benna and Bouna Traore—while fleeing police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. This provoked three weeks of rioting in France’s suburbs. In response, then-President Jacques Chirac imposed a three-month state of emergency, with the support of the establishment “left” parties.
In 2007 two teenagers, Larami and Moushin, were killed in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel in a collision with police, who fled the scene. This provoked three nights of rioting, during which police claimed they had been fired upon by unidentified gunmen. Youths picked up during the rioting were given stiff sentences in summary trials.
The political establishment’s easy toleration of police killings and martial-law-style mass repression is the product of the reactionary, racist climate promoted in France with the outbreak of the world economic crisis, and of mass social discontent in the population.
Sarkozy responded to mass demonstrations against the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 with proposals to ban the burqa and a racist “national identity” campaign, aimed at dividing the working class along racial and ethnic lines. These campaigns found no real opposition from any section of the political establishment. This has further inflamed racial tensions, with politicians and media personalities notably denouncing non-white members of France’s defeated World Cup football team as “scum.”
As the most recent killings and repression make clear, these initiatives lay the political basis for the officially-sanctioned use of deadly force against discontent in the working class.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Lynne Stewart sentenced to ten years in prison
BY JEFF MACKLER
(Jeff Mackler is the West Coast Director of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.)
The full force of the U.S. criminal “justice” system came down on innocent political prisoner, 30-year veteran human rights attorney and radical political activist Lynne Stewart today, July 15, 2010.
In an obviously pre-prepared one hour and twenty minute technical tour de force designed to give legitimacy to a reactionary ruling Federal District Court John Koeltl, who in 2005 sentenced Stewart to 28 months in prison following her frame-up trial and jury conviction on four counts of “conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism,” re-sentenced Stewart to 120 months or ten years. Stewart will serve her sentence in Danbury, Connecticut's minimum security prison.
The jam-packed New York Federal District Court chamber observers where Koeltl held forth let our a gasp of pain and anguish as Lynne's family and friends were stunned – tears flowing down the stricken and somber faces of many. A magnificent Stewart, ever the political fighter and organizer was able to say to her supporters that she felt badly because she “had let them down,” a reference to the massive outpouring of solidarity and defiance that was the prime characteristic of Lynne’s long fight for freedom.
Judge Koeltl was ordered to revisit his relatively short sentence when it was overturned by a two-judge majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judges Robert D. Sack and Guido Calabresi ruled that Koeltl’s sentence was flawed because he had declined to determine whether Stewart committed perjury when she testified at her trial that she believed that she was effectively operating under a “bubble” protecting her from prosecution when she issued a press release on behalf of her also framed-up client, the blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rachman. Rachman was falsely charged with conspiracy to damage New York state buildings.
Dissenting Judge John M. Walker, who called Stewart’s sentence, "breathtakingly low" in view of Stewart's "extraordinarily severe criminal conduct" deemed the Second Circuit’s majority opinion “substantively unreasonable.” Walker essentially sought to impose or demand a 30-year sentence.
The three-judge panel on Dec. 20, 2009 followed its initial ruling with even tougher language demanding that Koeltl revisit his treatment of the “terrorism enhancement” aspects of the law. A cowardly Koeltl, who didn't need this argument to dramatically increase Stewart's sentence, asserted that he had already taken it under consideration in his original deliberations.
Government prosecutors, who in 2005 sought a 30-year sentence, had submitted a 155-page memorandum arguing in support of a 15-30 year sentence. Their arguments demonstrated how twisted logic coupled with vindictive and lying government officials routinely turn the victim into the criminal.
Stewart’s attorneys countered with a detailed brief recounting the facts of the case and demonstrating that Stewart’s actions in defense of her client were well within the realm of past practice and accepted procedures. They argued that Koeltl properly exercised his discretion in determining that, while the terrorism enhancement provisions of the “law” had to be taken into consideration, the 30-year-prison term associated with it was "dramatically unreasonable, overstated the seriousness" of Stewart’s conduct and had already been factored into Koeltl’s decision.
Stewart's attorney's also argued convincingly in their brief that the Special Administrative Measure (SAM) that Stewart was convicted of violating by releasing a statement from her client to the media was well within the established practice of Stewart’s experienced and mentoring co-counsels– former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and past American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee president Abdeen Jabarra. Both had issued similar statements to the press with no government reprisal. Clark was an observer in Koeltl’s courtroom.
As worst in such matters, government officials refuse defense attorneys visiting rights with their clients until an agreement on a contested interpretation of a SAM is reached. Indeed, in Stewart’s case when the matter was brought to then Attorney General Janet Reno, the government declined to prosecute or otherwise take any action against Stewart.
But Koeltl, who had essentially accepted this view in his original sentence, reversed himself entirely and proceeded in his erudite-sounding new rendition of the law to repeatedly charge Stewart with multiple acts of perjury regarding her statements on the SAM during her trial.
Koeltl took the occasion to lecture Stewart regarding the first words she uttered in front of a bevy of media when she joyfully alighted from the courthouse following the judge’s original 28-month sentence. Said Stewart at that time, “I can do 28 months standing on my head.” A few moments earlier Stewart, with nothing but a plastic bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste and her various medications, had stood before Koeltl, who had been asked by the government to sentence Stewart to a 30 year term, effectively a dealth sentence for Lynne, aged 70, a diabetic recovering breast cancer victim and less than excellent health.
Koeltl dutifully followed the lead of the Second Circuit judges, who feigned outrage that Stewart could possibly appear joyful that her life was spared despite 28 months in prison. Koeltl insisted that Stewart’s remark was essentially contemptuous of his sentence and insufficient to convince Stewart of the seriousness of her “crime.” Lynne’s argument that while she fully understood that 28 months behind bars, separating from her “family, friends and comrades,” was a harsh penalty, she was nevertheless “relieved” that she would not die in prison. Koeltl needed a legal brick to throw at Lynne’s head and ignored her humanity, honesty and deep feeling of relief when she expressed it to a crowd of two thousand friends, supporters and a good portion of the nation’s media.
The same Judge Koeltl who stated in 2005, when he rendered the 28-month jail term, that Lynne was “a credit to her profession and to the nation,” clearly heard the voice of institutionalized hate and cruelty and responded in according with its unstated code. “Show no mercy! Thou shall not dissent without grave punishment” in capitalist America.
Lynne was convicted in the post-911 generated climate of political hysteria. Bush appointee, Attorney General John Ashcroft, decided to make an example of her aimed at warning future attornies that the mere act of defending anyone whom the government charged with “conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism,” could trigger terrible consequences.
On July 15 Judge Koeltl made the decision of his career. Known for his meticulous preparation in such matters, and already having enraged the powers that be with his “light” sentence of Stewart, he bent full tilt to the reactionary political pressures exerted on him by the court hierarchy. He had the option to stand tall and reaffirm his original decision. The “law” allowed him to do so. He could have permitted Lynne to leave prison in less than two years, recover her health, and lead a productive life. His massively extended sentence, unless overturned, will likely lead to Lynne’s demise behind bars – a brilliant and dedicated fighter sacrificed on the alter of an intolerant class-biased system of repression and war.
Courage is a rare quality in the capitalist judiciary. For every defiant decision made, usually driven by a change in the political climate driven forward by the rise of mass social protest movements, there are thousands and more of political appointees that affirm the status quo, including its punishment of all who struggle to challenge capitalist prerogatives and power.
Lynne Stewart stands tall among the latter. We can only hope that the winds of change that are stirring the consciousness of millions today in the context of an American capitalism in economic and moral crisis keeps the movement for her freedom alive and well. The fight is not over! What we do now remains critical. Lynne’s expected appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court cannot be written off as absurd and hopeless. What we do collectively to free her and all political prisoners and to fight for freedom and justice on every front counts for everything!
(Jeff Mackler is the West Coast Director of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.)
The full force of the U.S. criminal “justice” system came down on innocent political prisoner, 30-year veteran human rights attorney and radical political activist Lynne Stewart today, July 15, 2010.
In an obviously pre-prepared one hour and twenty minute technical tour de force designed to give legitimacy to a reactionary ruling Federal District Court John Koeltl, who in 2005 sentenced Stewart to 28 months in prison following her frame-up trial and jury conviction on four counts of “conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism,” re-sentenced Stewart to 120 months or ten years. Stewart will serve her sentence in Danbury, Connecticut's minimum security prison.
The jam-packed New York Federal District Court chamber observers where Koeltl held forth let our a gasp of pain and anguish as Lynne's family and friends were stunned – tears flowing down the stricken and somber faces of many. A magnificent Stewart, ever the political fighter and organizer was able to say to her supporters that she felt badly because she “had let them down,” a reference to the massive outpouring of solidarity and defiance that was the prime characteristic of Lynne’s long fight for freedom.
Judge Koeltl was ordered to revisit his relatively short sentence when it was overturned by a two-judge majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judges Robert D. Sack and Guido Calabresi ruled that Koeltl’s sentence was flawed because he had declined to determine whether Stewart committed perjury when she testified at her trial that she believed that she was effectively operating under a “bubble” protecting her from prosecution when she issued a press release on behalf of her also framed-up client, the blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rachman. Rachman was falsely charged with conspiracy to damage New York state buildings.
Dissenting Judge John M. Walker, who called Stewart’s sentence, "breathtakingly low" in view of Stewart's "extraordinarily severe criminal conduct" deemed the Second Circuit’s majority opinion “substantively unreasonable.” Walker essentially sought to impose or demand a 30-year sentence.
The three-judge panel on Dec. 20, 2009 followed its initial ruling with even tougher language demanding that Koeltl revisit his treatment of the “terrorism enhancement” aspects of the law. A cowardly Koeltl, who didn't need this argument to dramatically increase Stewart's sentence, asserted that he had already taken it under consideration in his original deliberations.
Government prosecutors, who in 2005 sought a 30-year sentence, had submitted a 155-page memorandum arguing in support of a 15-30 year sentence. Their arguments demonstrated how twisted logic coupled with vindictive and lying government officials routinely turn the victim into the criminal.
Stewart’s attorneys countered with a detailed brief recounting the facts of the case and demonstrating that Stewart’s actions in defense of her client were well within the realm of past practice and accepted procedures. They argued that Koeltl properly exercised his discretion in determining that, while the terrorism enhancement provisions of the “law” had to be taken into consideration, the 30-year-prison term associated with it was "dramatically unreasonable, overstated the seriousness" of Stewart’s conduct and had already been factored into Koeltl’s decision.
Stewart's attorney's also argued convincingly in their brief that the Special Administrative Measure (SAM) that Stewart was convicted of violating by releasing a statement from her client to the media was well within the established practice of Stewart’s experienced and mentoring co-counsels– former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and past American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee president Abdeen Jabarra. Both had issued similar statements to the press with no government reprisal. Clark was an observer in Koeltl’s courtroom.
As worst in such matters, government officials refuse defense attorneys visiting rights with their clients until an agreement on a contested interpretation of a SAM is reached. Indeed, in Stewart’s case when the matter was brought to then Attorney General Janet Reno, the government declined to prosecute or otherwise take any action against Stewart.
But Koeltl, who had essentially accepted this view in his original sentence, reversed himself entirely and proceeded in his erudite-sounding new rendition of the law to repeatedly charge Stewart with multiple acts of perjury regarding her statements on the SAM during her trial.
Koeltl took the occasion to lecture Stewart regarding the first words she uttered in front of a bevy of media when she joyfully alighted from the courthouse following the judge’s original 28-month sentence. Said Stewart at that time, “I can do 28 months standing on my head.” A few moments earlier Stewart, with nothing but a plastic bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste and her various medications, had stood before Koeltl, who had been asked by the government to sentence Stewart to a 30 year term, effectively a dealth sentence for Lynne, aged 70, a diabetic recovering breast cancer victim and less than excellent health.
Koeltl dutifully followed the lead of the Second Circuit judges, who feigned outrage that Stewart could possibly appear joyful that her life was spared despite 28 months in prison. Koeltl insisted that Stewart’s remark was essentially contemptuous of his sentence and insufficient to convince Stewart of the seriousness of her “crime.” Lynne’s argument that while she fully understood that 28 months behind bars, separating from her “family, friends and comrades,” was a harsh penalty, she was nevertheless “relieved” that she would not die in prison. Koeltl needed a legal brick to throw at Lynne’s head and ignored her humanity, honesty and deep feeling of relief when she expressed it to a crowd of two thousand friends, supporters and a good portion of the nation’s media.
The same Judge Koeltl who stated in 2005, when he rendered the 28-month jail term, that Lynne was “a credit to her profession and to the nation,” clearly heard the voice of institutionalized hate and cruelty and responded in according with its unstated code. “Show no mercy! Thou shall not dissent without grave punishment” in capitalist America.
Lynne was convicted in the post-911 generated climate of political hysteria. Bush appointee, Attorney General John Ashcroft, decided to make an example of her aimed at warning future attornies that the mere act of defending anyone whom the government charged with “conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism,” could trigger terrible consequences.
On July 15 Judge Koeltl made the decision of his career. Known for his meticulous preparation in such matters, and already having enraged the powers that be with his “light” sentence of Stewart, he bent full tilt to the reactionary political pressures exerted on him by the court hierarchy. He had the option to stand tall and reaffirm his original decision. The “law” allowed him to do so. He could have permitted Lynne to leave prison in less than two years, recover her health, and lead a productive life. His massively extended sentence, unless overturned, will likely lead to Lynne’s demise behind bars – a brilliant and dedicated fighter sacrificed on the alter of an intolerant class-biased system of repression and war.
Courage is a rare quality in the capitalist judiciary. For every defiant decision made, usually driven by a change in the political climate driven forward by the rise of mass social protest movements, there are thousands and more of political appointees that affirm the status quo, including its punishment of all who struggle to challenge capitalist prerogatives and power.
Lynne Stewart stands tall among the latter. We can only hope that the winds of change that are stirring the consciousness of millions today in the context of an American capitalism in economic and moral crisis keeps the movement for her freedom alive and well. The fight is not over! What we do now remains critical. Lynne’s expected appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court cannot be written off as absurd and hopeless. What we do collectively to free her and all political prisoners and to fight for freedom and justice on every front counts for everything!
Utah vigilante group releases undocumented immigrant hit list
By Josué Olmos
16 July 2010
In an attempt to ignite a witch-hunt, an anonymous vigilante group in Utah has begun circulating a list among media outlets, law enforcement, state, and federal agencies containing the names of 1,300 alleged undocumented immigrants. Personal information such as birthdates, Social Security numbers, workplaces, addresses, phone numbers, names of children and due dates of pregnant women are included for many of the names on the list.
The group, calling themselves “Concerned Citizens of the United States,” originally sent the list to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April 2010, but they claim they “have not observed any action.” An enclosed letter, addressed to ICE and dated April 4, indicated that the anonymous group had used “legal Mexican nationals” to infiltrate the social networks of Hispanics in order to obtain the information included in the list.
An attached cover letter called for those on the list to be “deported immediately,” along with the message:
“To the elected officials, we would ask that you remember who you work for in this country—you work for America and for the citizens in the State of Utah. You DO NOT work for illegal immigrants who have come into our country illegally and now take advantage of our system. To the media—we would ask that you show the public the names and numbers and ask the question—how much are they costing the taxpayers to continue to support their existence in this country and in this state.”
Following the lead of reactionary politicians in Arizona and around the country, the group continues to propagate the lie that immigrants are responsible for the degradation of living standards of American workers.
Local Utah news radio outlet KSL contacted several of the people appearing on the list. One woman, who did not want to be identified, told KSL, “I have my papers! Why did they put me on that list? Now, it’s been 15 years since I got my residency.” The woman said she came to the United States in 1984, she has had a green card for more than a decade, and will become a citizen next month.
Another individual, who was named by KSL but will remain anonymous here, admitted that he in fact was undocumented, and had been brought to the United States at the age of 10 by his parents. The individual expressed fear that his family could be torn apart by deportations, and that although he has worked hard to learn English, graduate high school, and get a job, this may all be taken away from him.
The Associated Press spoke with Tony Yapias, former director of the Utah Office of Hispanic Affairs, who said that he has been contacted by many of the members of the Hispanic community in Utah, all scared for their safety and that of their families. “My phone has been ringing nonstop since this morning with people finding out they’re on the list,” he said. “They’re feeling terrorized. They’re very scared.”
Co-chair of the anti-immigrant Utah Minuteman Project, Eli Cawley, justified the list, telling KSL, “It’s probably against some privacy laws…but I think in the interest of preserving our civilization, preserving our society and protecting the people of the state of Utah, I think that’s a greater interest than protecting the privacy of some individuals.”
The Salt Lake City Weekly reported that the Utah Minuteman Project founder has denied responsibility for compiling and distributing the list, despite the fact the City Weekly reported in July 2009 that members had discussed a plan to recruit sympathetic company insiders to give them personal information about undocumented workers.
The appearance of the list in Utah has not come out of the blue. The Utah Minuteman Project has been very active in the recent past, inciting anti-immigrant sentiment in supporting anti-immigration legislation in 2008-2009.
Utah State politicians have also done their share to incite vigilante groups. State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican, has begun plans to introduce legislation similar to the SB 1070 immigration law passed in Arizona. After the US Justice Department announced its lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration law, Sandstrom indicated he would carry on with plans to introduce this legislation in Utah and announced that he would like to join other legislators in filing a brief supporting the legality of the Arizona law. Sandstrom has also appeared at rallies in Arizona in support of SB 1070.
US Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, frequently parrots many of the myths being used to promote SB 1070, demonizing immigrants in the process. Hatch recently told KSL, “[In Arizona]…criminals are coming into the state…they’re bringing drugs right and left into the country, they’re trampling all over Arizona’s beautiful lands and wilderness areas. The state’s had enough of it.”
While the anonymous Utah vigilantes claim, “We are not violent nor do we support violence,” it is clear that the circulation of this list puts those included on it, as well as their families, in tremendous personal danger. Certain elements within vigilante organizations such as the Minute Men have been known to use violence against their targets. (See: “Anti-immigrant activist on trial for murder in Arizona”)
The vilification of immigrants by many in the Republican Party, in order to lay the blame for the current economic crisis at their feet, will ultimately lead to violent reactions from right-wing groups like that responsible for the distribution of this hit list in Utah.
The Democratic Party has no intention, nor desire, to mount a defense of immigrant workers. Calls by Obama and the Democrats for “immigration reform” amount to nothing more than reactionary policies aimed at attacking the democratic rights of all, and keeping immigrant workers segregated as a super-exploited section of the workforce.
16 July 2010
In an attempt to ignite a witch-hunt, an anonymous vigilante group in Utah has begun circulating a list among media outlets, law enforcement, state, and federal agencies containing the names of 1,300 alleged undocumented immigrants. Personal information such as birthdates, Social Security numbers, workplaces, addresses, phone numbers, names of children and due dates of pregnant women are included for many of the names on the list.
The group, calling themselves “Concerned Citizens of the United States,” originally sent the list to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April 2010, but they claim they “have not observed any action.” An enclosed letter, addressed to ICE and dated April 4, indicated that the anonymous group had used “legal Mexican nationals” to infiltrate the social networks of Hispanics in order to obtain the information included in the list.
An attached cover letter called for those on the list to be “deported immediately,” along with the message:
“To the elected officials, we would ask that you remember who you work for in this country—you work for America and for the citizens in the State of Utah. You DO NOT work for illegal immigrants who have come into our country illegally and now take advantage of our system. To the media—we would ask that you show the public the names and numbers and ask the question—how much are they costing the taxpayers to continue to support their existence in this country and in this state.”
Following the lead of reactionary politicians in Arizona and around the country, the group continues to propagate the lie that immigrants are responsible for the degradation of living standards of American workers.
Local Utah news radio outlet KSL contacted several of the people appearing on the list. One woman, who did not want to be identified, told KSL, “I have my papers! Why did they put me on that list? Now, it’s been 15 years since I got my residency.” The woman said she came to the United States in 1984, she has had a green card for more than a decade, and will become a citizen next month.
Another individual, who was named by KSL but will remain anonymous here, admitted that he in fact was undocumented, and had been brought to the United States at the age of 10 by his parents. The individual expressed fear that his family could be torn apart by deportations, and that although he has worked hard to learn English, graduate high school, and get a job, this may all be taken away from him.
The Associated Press spoke with Tony Yapias, former director of the Utah Office of Hispanic Affairs, who said that he has been contacted by many of the members of the Hispanic community in Utah, all scared for their safety and that of their families. “My phone has been ringing nonstop since this morning with people finding out they’re on the list,” he said. “They’re feeling terrorized. They’re very scared.”
Co-chair of the anti-immigrant Utah Minuteman Project, Eli Cawley, justified the list, telling KSL, “It’s probably against some privacy laws…but I think in the interest of preserving our civilization, preserving our society and protecting the people of the state of Utah, I think that’s a greater interest than protecting the privacy of some individuals.”
The Salt Lake City Weekly reported that the Utah Minuteman Project founder has denied responsibility for compiling and distributing the list, despite the fact the City Weekly reported in July 2009 that members had discussed a plan to recruit sympathetic company insiders to give them personal information about undocumented workers.
The appearance of the list in Utah has not come out of the blue. The Utah Minuteman Project has been very active in the recent past, inciting anti-immigrant sentiment in supporting anti-immigration legislation in 2008-2009.
Utah State politicians have also done their share to incite vigilante groups. State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican, has begun plans to introduce legislation similar to the SB 1070 immigration law passed in Arizona. After the US Justice Department announced its lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration law, Sandstrom indicated he would carry on with plans to introduce this legislation in Utah and announced that he would like to join other legislators in filing a brief supporting the legality of the Arizona law. Sandstrom has also appeared at rallies in Arizona in support of SB 1070.
US Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, frequently parrots many of the myths being used to promote SB 1070, demonizing immigrants in the process. Hatch recently told KSL, “[In Arizona]…criminals are coming into the state…they’re bringing drugs right and left into the country, they’re trampling all over Arizona’s beautiful lands and wilderness areas. The state’s had enough of it.”
While the anonymous Utah vigilantes claim, “We are not violent nor do we support violence,” it is clear that the circulation of this list puts those included on it, as well as their families, in tremendous personal danger. Certain elements within vigilante organizations such as the Minute Men have been known to use violence against their targets. (See: “Anti-immigrant activist on trial for murder in Arizona”)
The vilification of immigrants by many in the Republican Party, in order to lay the blame for the current economic crisis at their feet, will ultimately lead to violent reactions from right-wing groups like that responsible for the distribution of this hit list in Utah.
The Democratic Party has no intention, nor desire, to mount a defense of immigrant workers. Calls by Obama and the Democrats for “immigration reform” amount to nothing more than reactionary policies aimed at attacking the democratic rights of all, and keeping immigrant workers segregated as a super-exploited section of the workforce.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Remote-Controlled Killing
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth.
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.
The aim: to kill terrorists.
Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people -- Palestinians in Gaza -- who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.
The system is one of the latest “remote killing” devices developed by Israel’s Rafael armaments company, the former weapons research division of the Israeli army and now a separate governmental firm.
According to Giora Katz, Rafael’s vice-president, remote-controlled military hardware such as Spot and Shoot is the face of the future. He expects that within a decade at least a third of the machines used by the Israeli army to control land, air and sea will be unmanned.
The demand for such devices, the Israeli army admits, has been partly fuelled by a combination of declining recruitment levels and a population less ready to risk death in combat.
Oren Berebbi, head of its technology branch, recently told an American newspaper: “We’re trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield … We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk.”
Rapid progress with the technology has raised alarm at the United Nations. Philip Alston, its special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, warned last month of the danger that a “PlayStation mentality to killing” could quickly emerge.
According to analysts, however, Israel is unlikely to turn its back on hardware that it has been at the forefront of developing – using the occupied Palestinian territories, and especially Gaza, as testing laboratories.
Remotely controlled weapons systems are in high demand from repressive regimes and the burgeoning homeland security industries around the globe.
“These systems are still in the early stages of development but there is a large and growing market for them,” said Shlomo Brom, a retired general and defence analyst at the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The Spot and Shoot system -- officially known as Sentry Tech -- has mostly attracted attention in Israel because it is operated by 19- and 20-year-old female soldiers, making it the Israeli army’s only weapons system operated exclusively by women.
Female soldiers are preferred to operate remote killing devices because of a shortage of male recruits to Israel’s combat units. Young women can carry out missions without breaking the social taboo of risking their lives, said Mr Brom.
The women are supposed to identify anyone suspicious approaching the fence around Gaza and, if authorised by an officer, execute them using their joysticks.
The Israeli army, which plans to introduce the technology along Israel’s other confrontation lines, refuses to say how many Palestinians have been killed by the remotely controlled machine-guns in Gaza. According to the Israeli media, however, it is believed to be several dozen.
The system was phased-in two years ago for surveillance, but operators were only able to open fire with it more recently. The army admitted using Sentry Tech in December to kill at least two Palestinians several hundred metres inside the fence.
The Haaretz newspaper, which was given rare access to a Sentry Tech control room, quoted one soldier, Bar Keren, 20, saying: “It’s very alluring to be the one to do this. But not everyone wants this job. It’s no simple matter to take up a joystick like that of a Sony PlayStation and kill, but ultimately it’s for defence.”
Audio sensors on the towers mean that the women hear the shot as it kills the target. No woman, Haaretz reported, had failed the task of shooting what the army calls an “incriminated” Palestinian.
The Israeli military, which enforces a so-called “buffer zone” -- an unmarked no-man’s land -- inside the fence that reaches as deep as 300 metres into the tiny enclave, has been widely criticised for opening fire on civilians entering the closed zone.
In separate incidents in April, a 21-year-old Palestinian demonstrator was shot dead and a Maltese solidarity activist wounded when they took part in protests to plant a Palestinian flag in the buffer zone. The Maltese woman, Bianca Zammit, was videoing as she was hit.
It is unclear whether Spot and Shoot has been used against such demonstrations.
The Israeli army claims Sentry Tech is “revolutionary”. And that will make its marketing potential all the greater as other armies seek out innovations in “remote killing” technology.
Rafael is reported to be developing a version of Sentry Tech that will fire long-range guided missiles.
Another piece of hardware recently developed for the Israeli army is the Guardium, an armoured robot-car that can patrol territory at up to 80km per hour, navigate through cities, launch “ambushes” and shoot at targets. It now patrols the Israeli borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Its Israeli developers, G-Nius, have called it the world’s first “robot soldier”. It looks like a first-generation version of the imaginary “robot-armour” worn by soldiers in the popular recent sci-fi movie Avatar.
Rafael has produced the first unmanned naval patrol boat, the “Protector”, which has been sold to Singapore’s navy and is being heavily marketing in the US. A Rafael official, Patrick Bar-Avi, told the Israeli business daily Globes: “Navies worldwide are only now beginning to examine the possible uses of such vehicles, and the possibilities are endless.”
But Israel is most known for its role in developing “unmanned aerial vehicles” – or drones, as they have come to be known. Originally intended for spying, and first used by Israel over south Lebanon in the early 1980s, today they are increasingly being used for extrajudicial executions from thousands of feet in the sky.
In February Israel officially unveiled the 14 metre-long Heron TP drone, the largest ever. Capable of flying from Israel to Iran and carrying more than a ton of weapons, the Heron was tested by Israel in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in winter 2008, when some 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
More than 40 countries now operate drones, many of them made in Israel, although so far only the Israeli and US armies have deployed them as remote-controlled killing machines. Israeli drones are being widely used in Afghanistan.
Smaller drones have been sold to the German, Australian, Spanish, French, Russian, Indian and Canadian armies. Brazil is expected to use the drone to provide security for the 2014 World Cup championship, and the Panamanian and Salvadoran governments want them too, ostensibly to run counter-drug operations.
Despite its diplomatic crisis with Ankara, Israel was reported last month to have completed a deal selling a fleet of 10 Herons to the Turkish army for $185 million.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
Nazareth.
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.
The aim: to kill terrorists.
Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people -- Palestinians in Gaza -- who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.
The system is one of the latest “remote killing” devices developed by Israel’s Rafael armaments company, the former weapons research division of the Israeli army and now a separate governmental firm.
According to Giora Katz, Rafael’s vice-president, remote-controlled military hardware such as Spot and Shoot is the face of the future. He expects that within a decade at least a third of the machines used by the Israeli army to control land, air and sea will be unmanned.
The demand for such devices, the Israeli army admits, has been partly fuelled by a combination of declining recruitment levels and a population less ready to risk death in combat.
Oren Berebbi, head of its technology branch, recently told an American newspaper: “We’re trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield … We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk.”
Rapid progress with the technology has raised alarm at the United Nations. Philip Alston, its special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, warned last month of the danger that a “PlayStation mentality to killing” could quickly emerge.
According to analysts, however, Israel is unlikely to turn its back on hardware that it has been at the forefront of developing – using the occupied Palestinian territories, and especially Gaza, as testing laboratories.
Remotely controlled weapons systems are in high demand from repressive regimes and the burgeoning homeland security industries around the globe.
“These systems are still in the early stages of development but there is a large and growing market for them,” said Shlomo Brom, a retired general and defence analyst at the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The Spot and Shoot system -- officially known as Sentry Tech -- has mostly attracted attention in Israel because it is operated by 19- and 20-year-old female soldiers, making it the Israeli army’s only weapons system operated exclusively by women.
Female soldiers are preferred to operate remote killing devices because of a shortage of male recruits to Israel’s combat units. Young women can carry out missions without breaking the social taboo of risking their lives, said Mr Brom.
The women are supposed to identify anyone suspicious approaching the fence around Gaza and, if authorised by an officer, execute them using their joysticks.
The Israeli army, which plans to introduce the technology along Israel’s other confrontation lines, refuses to say how many Palestinians have been killed by the remotely controlled machine-guns in Gaza. According to the Israeli media, however, it is believed to be several dozen.
The system was phased-in two years ago for surveillance, but operators were only able to open fire with it more recently. The army admitted using Sentry Tech in December to kill at least two Palestinians several hundred metres inside the fence.
The Haaretz newspaper, which was given rare access to a Sentry Tech control room, quoted one soldier, Bar Keren, 20, saying: “It’s very alluring to be the one to do this. But not everyone wants this job. It’s no simple matter to take up a joystick like that of a Sony PlayStation and kill, but ultimately it’s for defence.”
Audio sensors on the towers mean that the women hear the shot as it kills the target. No woman, Haaretz reported, had failed the task of shooting what the army calls an “incriminated” Palestinian.
The Israeli military, which enforces a so-called “buffer zone” -- an unmarked no-man’s land -- inside the fence that reaches as deep as 300 metres into the tiny enclave, has been widely criticised for opening fire on civilians entering the closed zone.
In separate incidents in April, a 21-year-old Palestinian demonstrator was shot dead and a Maltese solidarity activist wounded when they took part in protests to plant a Palestinian flag in the buffer zone. The Maltese woman, Bianca Zammit, was videoing as she was hit.
It is unclear whether Spot and Shoot has been used against such demonstrations.
The Israeli army claims Sentry Tech is “revolutionary”. And that will make its marketing potential all the greater as other armies seek out innovations in “remote killing” technology.
Rafael is reported to be developing a version of Sentry Tech that will fire long-range guided missiles.
Another piece of hardware recently developed for the Israeli army is the Guardium, an armoured robot-car that can patrol territory at up to 80km per hour, navigate through cities, launch “ambushes” and shoot at targets. It now patrols the Israeli borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Its Israeli developers, G-Nius, have called it the world’s first “robot soldier”. It looks like a first-generation version of the imaginary “robot-armour” worn by soldiers in the popular recent sci-fi movie Avatar.
Rafael has produced the first unmanned naval patrol boat, the “Protector”, which has been sold to Singapore’s navy and is being heavily marketing in the US. A Rafael official, Patrick Bar-Avi, told the Israeli business daily Globes: “Navies worldwide are only now beginning to examine the possible uses of such vehicles, and the possibilities are endless.”
But Israel is most known for its role in developing “unmanned aerial vehicles” – or drones, as they have come to be known. Originally intended for spying, and first used by Israel over south Lebanon in the early 1980s, today they are increasingly being used for extrajudicial executions from thousands of feet in the sky.
In February Israel officially unveiled the 14 metre-long Heron TP drone, the largest ever. Capable of flying from Israel to Iran and carrying more than a ton of weapons, the Heron was tested by Israel in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in winter 2008, when some 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
More than 40 countries now operate drones, many of them made in Israel, although so far only the Israeli and US armies have deployed them as remote-controlled killing machines. Israeli drones are being widely used in Afghanistan.
Smaller drones have been sold to the German, Australian, Spanish, French, Russian, Indian and Canadian armies. Brazil is expected to use the drone to provide security for the 2014 World Cup championship, and the Panamanian and Salvadoran governments want them too, ostensibly to run counter-drug operations.
Despite its diplomatic crisis with Ankara, Israel was reported last month to have completed a deal selling a fleet of 10 Herons to the Turkish army for $185 million.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
American imperialism and the Haitian catastrophe
13 July 2010
The six-month anniversary of the earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti was observed Monday, with media coverage admitting there has been virtually no progress in rebuilding the devastated country or rehousing the 1.5 million made homeless by the worst natural disaster of the new century.
The US government gave only the most perfunctory notice to the anniversary. Obama mentioned Haiti in passing in the course of a brief press appearance with the visiting president of the Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispaniola.
Obama has not visited Haiti since the earthquake, a decision that underscores his indifference to the staggering death toll and the continuing human suffering. The country can be reached in a brief plane flight on Air Force One, and is closer to Washington than any number of fundraising dinners addressed by the Democratic president.
The Obama administration mobilized some 12,000 soldiers and sailors to seize control of key points in the capital city, Port-au-Prince, in the immediate aftermath of the quake. This military incursion, which had the effect of disrupting rather than facilitating relief efforts, was brought to an end once Washington was confident there would be no popular uprising against its stooge president, René Préval, and the tiny elite of Haitian multimillionaires.
It is more than a symbolic coincidence that the last major US combat force withdrew from Haiti June 1, the date that marks the official beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. The people of Haiti, both the 1.5 million still living in tents and millions more in rickety slum dwellings just as unlikely to survive a hurricane, are being left to fend for themselves.
One veteran aid worker noted the contrast between the vast pile of smashed concrete that is Port-au-Prince and the heavy equipment brought into the country by the US military and then withdrawn, without ever being used except to clear the port and airport, the key access points for military supply operations. Meanwhile, hand removal of rubble by wheelbarrows and bucket brigades is the principal employment of those left homeless and jobless by the disaster.
As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, what has happened to Haiti is a social as well as a natural disaster. Well before the earthquake struck, the country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, with the lowest per capita GDP, the lowest life expectancy, the lowest level of literacy, and the worst prospects for the future of its children. That poverty was not the product of “nature,” but of Haiti’s long history of colonial and semi-colonial exploitation.
Haiti is endowed by nature with a tropical climate and fertile soil. It was as prosperous, per capita, as the United States when the slave population revolted and drove out the French slave-owners in the great revolution that culminated in independence in 1803. But for two centuries the Haitian population has been afflicted by foreign economic domination and the misrule of a rapacious and brutal elite, closely tied economically and politically to Washington, particularly in the last century.
In the course of the past 100 years, the United States has intervened militarily in Haiti five times, occupying the country directly for a combined total of nearly 25 years: 1914, 1915-1934, 1994-95, 2004 and 2010. The protracted occupation of 1915-34 left power in the hands of a US-trained military force that turned its guns against the Haitian people and became the main prop of the Duvalier family dictatorship that ruled barbarically for 30 years.
The 23 years since the collapse of the Duvalier regime have seen repeated US interventions to change governments and dictate economic policies that have served US corporate interests, while devastating the agricultural and manufacturing base of the country. With the possible exceptions of Iraq and Afghanistan, no country in the world has been so despoiled by Washington’s aggression, subversion and economic domination as Haiti.
This relationship continues in the so-called rebuilding effort sponsored by the United Nations. The commission established in March to oversee use of the $5.3 billion pledged to Haitian reconstruction is co-chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, but real power lies in the hands of the American co-chair, former president Bill Clinton, and the Obama administration.
It is Washington that calls the shots on the use of the aid money, despite the fig leaf of Haitian participation. The commission did not even meet officially until June 17, more than five months after the earthquake, and then only because the onset of hurricane season made it necessary to approve a mere $31 million in projects to build hurricane shelters for a small fraction of the population.
Former president Clinton has repeatedly declared that his main goal is to encourage private investment in Haiti, and toward that end he has systematically promoted policies to ensure the profits of the banks and corporations of the United States and other imperialist powers.
In an op-ed column in the New York Times this weekend, co-authored with Prime Minister Bellerive, Clinton declares, “[T]here are ample opportunities for investments with longer-term dividends—in agriculture, construction, tourism, manufacturing, service industries and clean energy, especially solar.”
The reconstruction of this oppressed and suffering country is an urgent humanitarian task, but American imperialism has absolutely nothing to offer the people of Haiti. It is the American and international working class—including the Haitian working class, both on the island and in the diaspora—that must take the lead in this struggle.
The international working class must demand immediate and massive assistance to the people of Haiti, including the deployment of construction equipment and skilled construction workers, and emergency medical and other technical assistance. These resources will not be provided by the imperialist powers and could not be put to use by the semi-criminal Haitian ruling elite.
The reconstruction of Haiti requires the mobilization of the working class internationally on the basis of socialist policies, uniting Haitian workers with their class brothers and sisters throughout the Caribbean and the entire hemisphere, including, above all, the United States.
Patrick Martin
The six-month anniversary of the earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti was observed Monday, with media coverage admitting there has been virtually no progress in rebuilding the devastated country or rehousing the 1.5 million made homeless by the worst natural disaster of the new century.
The US government gave only the most perfunctory notice to the anniversary. Obama mentioned Haiti in passing in the course of a brief press appearance with the visiting president of the Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispaniola.
Obama has not visited Haiti since the earthquake, a decision that underscores his indifference to the staggering death toll and the continuing human suffering. The country can be reached in a brief plane flight on Air Force One, and is closer to Washington than any number of fundraising dinners addressed by the Democratic president.
The Obama administration mobilized some 12,000 soldiers and sailors to seize control of key points in the capital city, Port-au-Prince, in the immediate aftermath of the quake. This military incursion, which had the effect of disrupting rather than facilitating relief efforts, was brought to an end once Washington was confident there would be no popular uprising against its stooge president, René Préval, and the tiny elite of Haitian multimillionaires.
It is more than a symbolic coincidence that the last major US combat force withdrew from Haiti June 1, the date that marks the official beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. The people of Haiti, both the 1.5 million still living in tents and millions more in rickety slum dwellings just as unlikely to survive a hurricane, are being left to fend for themselves.
One veteran aid worker noted the contrast between the vast pile of smashed concrete that is Port-au-Prince and the heavy equipment brought into the country by the US military and then withdrawn, without ever being used except to clear the port and airport, the key access points for military supply operations. Meanwhile, hand removal of rubble by wheelbarrows and bucket brigades is the principal employment of those left homeless and jobless by the disaster.
As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, what has happened to Haiti is a social as well as a natural disaster. Well before the earthquake struck, the country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, with the lowest per capita GDP, the lowest life expectancy, the lowest level of literacy, and the worst prospects for the future of its children. That poverty was not the product of “nature,” but of Haiti’s long history of colonial and semi-colonial exploitation.
Haiti is endowed by nature with a tropical climate and fertile soil. It was as prosperous, per capita, as the United States when the slave population revolted and drove out the French slave-owners in the great revolution that culminated in independence in 1803. But for two centuries the Haitian population has been afflicted by foreign economic domination and the misrule of a rapacious and brutal elite, closely tied economically and politically to Washington, particularly in the last century.
In the course of the past 100 years, the United States has intervened militarily in Haiti five times, occupying the country directly for a combined total of nearly 25 years: 1914, 1915-1934, 1994-95, 2004 and 2010. The protracted occupation of 1915-34 left power in the hands of a US-trained military force that turned its guns against the Haitian people and became the main prop of the Duvalier family dictatorship that ruled barbarically for 30 years.
The 23 years since the collapse of the Duvalier regime have seen repeated US interventions to change governments and dictate economic policies that have served US corporate interests, while devastating the agricultural and manufacturing base of the country. With the possible exceptions of Iraq and Afghanistan, no country in the world has been so despoiled by Washington’s aggression, subversion and economic domination as Haiti.
This relationship continues in the so-called rebuilding effort sponsored by the United Nations. The commission established in March to oversee use of the $5.3 billion pledged to Haitian reconstruction is co-chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, but real power lies in the hands of the American co-chair, former president Bill Clinton, and the Obama administration.
It is Washington that calls the shots on the use of the aid money, despite the fig leaf of Haitian participation. The commission did not even meet officially until June 17, more than five months after the earthquake, and then only because the onset of hurricane season made it necessary to approve a mere $31 million in projects to build hurricane shelters for a small fraction of the population.
Former president Clinton has repeatedly declared that his main goal is to encourage private investment in Haiti, and toward that end he has systematically promoted policies to ensure the profits of the banks and corporations of the United States and other imperialist powers.
In an op-ed column in the New York Times this weekend, co-authored with Prime Minister Bellerive, Clinton declares, “[T]here are ample opportunities for investments with longer-term dividends—in agriculture, construction, tourism, manufacturing, service industries and clean energy, especially solar.”
The reconstruction of this oppressed and suffering country is an urgent humanitarian task, but American imperialism has absolutely nothing to offer the people of Haiti. It is the American and international working class—including the Haitian working class, both on the island and in the diaspora—that must take the lead in this struggle.
The international working class must demand immediate and massive assistance to the people of Haiti, including the deployment of construction equipment and skilled construction workers, and emergency medical and other technical assistance. These resources will not be provided by the imperialist powers and could not be put to use by the semi-criminal Haitian ruling elite.
The reconstruction of Haiti requires the mobilization of the working class internationally on the basis of socialist policies, uniting Haitian workers with their class brothers and sisters throughout the Caribbean and the entire hemisphere, including, above all, the United States.
Patrick Martin
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Censorship and cover-up in the Gulf oil disaster
The Obama administration has intensified its cover-up of the BP oil disaster. On July 1 it issued an order barring the public and the news media from coming within 65 feet of clean-up operations without permission from the Coast Guard. The transparent aim of the order, which purports to protect the safety of clean-up workers, is to prevent the population from viewing the devastation wrought by the BP oil blowout.
The gag order states that that anyone not authorized by the Coast Guard “must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.” The wording—“oil spill response operations”—could be construed as covering the entire affected region, which stretches from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida Panhandle.
Journalists who “willfully” defy the White House order could be prosecuted as Class D felons and face up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine. Exceptions to the ban will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans.
In defending the order, Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen stated that the measure aims to protect clean-up workers, but he failed to cite a single incident of safety being compromised by “unauthorized personnel.”
The real concern the White House has is that clean-up workers might reveal something about the dangerous conditions under which they work and the real scale of the environmental devastation—defying a gag order imposed by BP. An unknown number of these workers—likely hundreds, perhaps thousands—have become sick from exposure to oil and toxic dispersants and may well face a lifetime of chronic ailments.
The new effort to gag the media continues a campaign launched three weeks ago by the administration to reach what Obama adviser David Axlerod called an “inflection point” in the Gulf crisis. In a string of public relations events from June 11 through June 17, President Obama visited the Gulf for two days, gave a nationally televised Oval Office speech on the blowout, and met in the White House with BP CEO Tony Hayward and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.
That meeting resulted in the announcement that BP would finance a $20 billion settlement fund, which would be “independently” administered. This was presented by Obama as a major concession wrenched from the oil company and a boon to the many thousands of Gulf residents whose livelihoods have been destroyed as a result of BP’s actions.
In reality, the deal was a boon to BP, effectively placing a cap over its major liabilities—for a disaster whose total costs will be reckoned in the hundreds of billions of dollars—and shielding it from lawsuits and damage claims.
“Investors in BP should know that there’s now an alternative to the litigation system in place,” Independent Claims Facility administrator Kenneth Feinberg told CNBC. “I think that’s a really helpful sign if you’re an investor.”
Feinberg has already declared that the fund will be off limits to the majority of those affected by the blowout—people in the tourism industry, fishermen who operate on a cash basis, Gulf coast homeowners whose property values will plunge.
The carefully scripted and orchestrated series of events in mid-June was meant to signal a halt to the anti-BP posturing by the government and begin a tamping down of media coverage of the catastrophe. In effect, the American people were told the poisoning of the Gulf, with all of its consequences, would continue at least until BP completed its relief wells some time in August—and they should get used to it!
The latest move to censor coverage of the Gulf crisis is in keeping with this strategy and is in line with the Obama administration’s policy ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers. The primary concern of both BP and the White House has been to cover up the gravity of the pollution of vast parts of the Gulf of Mexico and beaches and wetlands in at least four US states.
At stake is not only the population’s right to know what is happening to the seas, shores and wildlife that are now treated as the private property of BP, it is quite simply impossible to formulate an adequate response outside of an independent assessment of the extent of the damage.
There are by now countless reports of journalists and citizens being ordered away from beaches or blocked from viewing the spill from the land, air and sea by BP, the Coast Guard and hired security agents. In mid-June, the White House banned airplanes from flying over the spill zone at altitudes below 3,000 feet, and helicopters below 1,500 feet, without a special exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported last week that journalists have been repeatedly barred from a government mobile hospital in Venice, Louisiana that is treating clean-up workers.
BP and its supplier Nalco, have even refused to reveal to scientists the chemical composition of Corexit, the dispersant that has been dumped by the hundreds of thousands of gallons into the Gulf to break up the oil, because, they say, it is a trade secret. BP simply defied an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) order issued one month ago, to cease use of Corexit pending further testing. Obama decided not to pursue the matter.
For nearly two months, BP and government stonewalling made it impossible even to assess how big the blowout was. Insisting from the first that BP was “in charge” of the clean-up, the administration colluded with the oil giant to block independent analysis of the gusher one mile beneath the surface of the Gulf. Only under steady criticism from scientists did the administration repeatedly revise upward the rate of the oil erupting from the sea floor. The spill is now, by all accounts, the largest in history.
All of this underscores the necessity to take the response to the oil disaster out of the hands of BP and the Obama administration.
The Gulf disaster requires a mass response. It is first of all necessary to bring together the best scientists and engineers in the world, give them full and unfettered access to all information related to the disaster, and place them in charge of hundreds of thousands of well-trained, well-equipped and well-paid workers.
The resources necessary for this undertaking can be realized by nationalizing BP and the entire oil industry and converting the industry into a public utility, democratically run by the working population in the interests of society as a whole.
This, in turn, requires the mass mobilization of the working class, independently of both parties of big business, based on a socialist program that rejects the “right” of corporations and financiers to unfathomable wealth at the expense of the people and the environment of the planet.
Tom Eley
The gag order states that that anyone not authorized by the Coast Guard “must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.” The wording—“oil spill response operations”—could be construed as covering the entire affected region, which stretches from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida Panhandle.
Journalists who “willfully” defy the White House order could be prosecuted as Class D felons and face up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine. Exceptions to the ban will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans.
In defending the order, Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen stated that the measure aims to protect clean-up workers, but he failed to cite a single incident of safety being compromised by “unauthorized personnel.”
The real concern the White House has is that clean-up workers might reveal something about the dangerous conditions under which they work and the real scale of the environmental devastation—defying a gag order imposed by BP. An unknown number of these workers—likely hundreds, perhaps thousands—have become sick from exposure to oil and toxic dispersants and may well face a lifetime of chronic ailments.
The new effort to gag the media continues a campaign launched three weeks ago by the administration to reach what Obama adviser David Axlerod called an “inflection point” in the Gulf crisis. In a string of public relations events from June 11 through June 17, President Obama visited the Gulf for two days, gave a nationally televised Oval Office speech on the blowout, and met in the White House with BP CEO Tony Hayward and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.
That meeting resulted in the announcement that BP would finance a $20 billion settlement fund, which would be “independently” administered. This was presented by Obama as a major concession wrenched from the oil company and a boon to the many thousands of Gulf residents whose livelihoods have been destroyed as a result of BP’s actions.
In reality, the deal was a boon to BP, effectively placing a cap over its major liabilities—for a disaster whose total costs will be reckoned in the hundreds of billions of dollars—and shielding it from lawsuits and damage claims.
“Investors in BP should know that there’s now an alternative to the litigation system in place,” Independent Claims Facility administrator Kenneth Feinberg told CNBC. “I think that’s a really helpful sign if you’re an investor.”
Feinberg has already declared that the fund will be off limits to the majority of those affected by the blowout—people in the tourism industry, fishermen who operate on a cash basis, Gulf coast homeowners whose property values will plunge.
The carefully scripted and orchestrated series of events in mid-June was meant to signal a halt to the anti-BP posturing by the government and begin a tamping down of media coverage of the catastrophe. In effect, the American people were told the poisoning of the Gulf, with all of its consequences, would continue at least until BP completed its relief wells some time in August—and they should get used to it!
The latest move to censor coverage of the Gulf crisis is in keeping with this strategy and is in line with the Obama administration’s policy ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers. The primary concern of both BP and the White House has been to cover up the gravity of the pollution of vast parts of the Gulf of Mexico and beaches and wetlands in at least four US states.
At stake is not only the population’s right to know what is happening to the seas, shores and wildlife that are now treated as the private property of BP, it is quite simply impossible to formulate an adequate response outside of an independent assessment of the extent of the damage.
There are by now countless reports of journalists and citizens being ordered away from beaches or blocked from viewing the spill from the land, air and sea by BP, the Coast Guard and hired security agents. In mid-June, the White House banned airplanes from flying over the spill zone at altitudes below 3,000 feet, and helicopters below 1,500 feet, without a special exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported last week that journalists have been repeatedly barred from a government mobile hospital in Venice, Louisiana that is treating clean-up workers.
BP and its supplier Nalco, have even refused to reveal to scientists the chemical composition of Corexit, the dispersant that has been dumped by the hundreds of thousands of gallons into the Gulf to break up the oil, because, they say, it is a trade secret. BP simply defied an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) order issued one month ago, to cease use of Corexit pending further testing. Obama decided not to pursue the matter.
For nearly two months, BP and government stonewalling made it impossible even to assess how big the blowout was. Insisting from the first that BP was “in charge” of the clean-up, the administration colluded with the oil giant to block independent analysis of the gusher one mile beneath the surface of the Gulf. Only under steady criticism from scientists did the administration repeatedly revise upward the rate of the oil erupting from the sea floor. The spill is now, by all accounts, the largest in history.
All of this underscores the necessity to take the response to the oil disaster out of the hands of BP and the Obama administration.
The Gulf disaster requires a mass response. It is first of all necessary to bring together the best scientists and engineers in the world, give them full and unfettered access to all information related to the disaster, and place them in charge of hundreds of thousands of well-trained, well-equipped and well-paid workers.
The resources necessary for this undertaking can be realized by nationalizing BP and the entire oil industry and converting the industry into a public utility, democratically run by the working population in the interests of society as a whole.
This, in turn, requires the mass mobilization of the working class, independently of both parties of big business, based on a socialist program that rejects the “right” of corporations and financiers to unfathomable wealth at the expense of the people and the environment of the planet.
Tom Eley
Cuba’s Fidel Restates Alert on Iran
by HAVANA TIMES
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, the top advisor to his brother Raul’s government, reiterated his recent warning Sunday that the United States and Israel are planning an attack soon against Iran.
Castro said last week that under the cover of the euphoria over the World Cup Soccer tournament, a new conflict is brewing with US and Israeli warships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
“The people of Iran, a nation with ancient cultural traditions, will undoubtedly defend itself from the aggressors. It’s hard to understand that Obama may seriously believe that it would yield to his demands,” writes Fidel Castro.
“The president of Iran and its religious leaders will resist, drawing inspiration from the Islamic Revolution headed by Ruhollah Khomeini, the creator of the Guardians of Revolution, the modern Armed Forces and the new State of Iran,” he noted.
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, the top advisor to his brother Raul’s government, reiterated his recent warning Sunday that the United States and Israel are planning an attack soon against Iran.
Castro said last week that under the cover of the euphoria over the World Cup Soccer tournament, a new conflict is brewing with US and Israeli warships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
“The people of Iran, a nation with ancient cultural traditions, will undoubtedly defend itself from the aggressors. It’s hard to understand that Obama may seriously believe that it would yield to his demands,” writes Fidel Castro.
“The president of Iran and its religious leaders will resist, drawing inspiration from the Islamic Revolution headed by Ruhollah Khomeini, the creator of the Guardians of Revolution, the modern Armed Forces and the new State of Iran,” he noted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
