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Paul Merrell

Report reveals 9 Israel lobby tactics to silence students | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...lobby-tactics-silence-students

war & peace Israel BDS anti-BDS student-faculty-retaliation

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Lawyers have responded to nearly 300 incidents of “censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for Palestinian rights” filed by Palestine solidarity activists on more than 65 US campuses in the last year and a half. Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) detail the assault in a new 124-page report, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.” “As the movement for Palestinian rights is growing in the US, so too are concerted efforts to silence any and all criticism of Israel,” said Radhika Sainath, staff attorney with Palestine Legal and cooperating counsel with CCR. A video featuring students and members of faculty who have experienced silencing, repression and intimidation was also released by Palestine Legal and CCR and can be viewed above.
  • The report, which is the first of its kind, documents the suppression of Palestine advocacy in the US and identifies nine separate tactics Israel lobby groups use to crush Palestine solidarity activism — especially on campuses. The groups say that 85 percent of the hundreds of incidents to which Palestine Legal has responded since 2014 involving the targeting of students and scholars “include baseless legal complaints, administrative disciplinary actions, firings, harassment and false accusations of terrorism and anti-Semitism.” Such tactics have a chilling effect on speech, the report says. “These strategies … [result in] intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from speaking out. The fear of punishment or career damage discourages many activists from engaging in activities that could be perceived as critical of Israel,” the report says. Sainath told The Electronic Intifada that “on the one hand, we’ve seen that peoples’ lives and reputations have been destroyed because of speaking out critically about Israel’s policies — one example is professor Steven Salaita, [whose story] is covered in the report.” Salaita was fired from the University of Illinois after he expressed his criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014.
  • Meanwhile, lawyers and students say they are bracing for an array of dirty tactics being planned by Israel lobby groups. Earlier this year, Republican party mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, along with Haim Saban, billionaire supporter of the Democratic party, poured tens of millions of dollars into Israel lobby groups on campus with the explicit intent of suppressing Palestine rights-based organizing. “One of the things that we’re concerned about and preparing for is a wave of anti-boycott legislation,” Sainath said, “as well as increased efforts to stop students from introducing referendums or resolutions for Palestinian rights.”
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  • Also today, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) released a 79-page report, “Stifling Dissent: How Israel’s Defenders Use False Charges of Anti-Semitism to Limit the Debate over Israel on Campus.” It lays out in detail the methods that Israel lobby groups use to stifle debate about Palestine. It also includes numerous case studies and accounts of employment discrimination against US professors who have been targeted for their political views on Israel. Tallie Ben-Daniel, academic advisory council coordinator for JVP, told The Electronic Intifada that the report grew out of concerns over “the climate of repression” around speech critical of Israel, especially following Salaita’s firing.
  • Ben-Daniel said that young Jews “are more critical of Israeli state policy than ever before, and are building coalitions through their Palestine solidarity work — and yet are silenced by the very organizations that are supposed to represent them on campus.” One section of JVP’s report “details how Jewish students are subjected to a political litmus test on Israel in order to participate in Jewish institutional life on campus.” Organizations such as Hillel, JVP points out, demand that their members abide by guidelines which prohibit co-sponsoring or supporting events of speakers who are critical of Israeli policies and who support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. Ben-Daniel added that JVP’s report “only tallies the cases that gained national attention — there are innumerable more Jewish students who in all probability do not participate in institutional Jewish campus life because of this litmus test.” JVP says that the report is meant to educate and provide resources to students and faculty alike who may be facing repression or silencing on campus and in classrooms.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 15
     
    A sign that BDS is beginning to make Israeli government truly worried about economic impacts, the Adelson/Saban big donations for anti-BDS work on U.S. college campuses. 
Paul Merrell

Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Propose... - 0 views

truepundit.com/drone-strike-on-julian-assange

war & peace Wikileaks Assange assassination-plot Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Clinton’s State Department was getting pressure from President Obama and his White House inner circle, as well as heads of state internationally, to try and cutoff Assange’s delivery of the cables and if that effort failed, then to forge a strategy to minimize the administration’s public embarrassment over the contents of the cables. Hence, Clinton’s early morning November meeting of State’s top brass who floated various proposals to stop, slow or spin the Wikileaks contamination. That is when a frustrated Clinton, sources said, at some point blurted out a controversial query. “Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department sources. The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assange’s previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said. At that time in 2010, Assange was relatively free and not living cloistered in in the embassy of Ecuador in London. Prior to 2010, Assange focused Wikileaks’ efforts on countries outside the United States but now under Clinton and Obama, Assange was hammering America with an unparalleled third sweeping Wikileaks document dump in five months. Clinton was fuming, sources said, as each State Department cable dispatched during the Obama administration was signed by her.
  • Following Clinton’s alleged drone proposal, another controversial remedy was floated in the State Department to place a reward or bounty for Assange’s capture and extradition to the United States, sources said. Numbers were discussed in the realm of a $10 million bounty. A State Department source described that staff meeting as bizarre. One minute staffers were inquiring about the Secretary’s blue and black checkered knit sweater and the next minute, the room was discussing the legalities of a drone strike on Assange and financial bounties, sources said. Immediately following the conclusion of the wild brainstorming session, one of Clinton’s top aides, State Department Director of Policy Planning Ann-Marie Slaughter, penned an email to Clinton, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and aides Huma Abebin and Jacob Sullivan at 10:29 a.m. entitled “an SP memo on possible legal and nonlegal strategies re Wikileaks.” “Nonlegal strategies.” How did that phrasing make it into an official State Department email subject line dealing with solving Wikileaks and Assange? Why would the secretary of state and her inner circle be discussing any “nonlegal strategies” for anything whatsoever? Against anyone? Shouldn’t all the strategies discussed by the country’s top diplomat be strictly legal only? And is the email a smoking gun to confirm Clinton was actually serious about pursuing an obvious “nonlegal strategy” proposal to allegedly assassinate Assange? Numerous attempts were made to try and interview and decipher Slaughter’s choice of email wording, however, she could not be reached for comment.
  • Slaughter’s cryptic email also contained an attached document called “SP Wikileaks doc final11.23.10.docx.” That attachment portion of Slaughter’s “nonlegal strategies” email has yet to be recovered by federal investigators and House committee investigators probing Clinton’s email practices while at State. Even Wikileaks does not have the document. Slaughter, however, shed some light on the attachment: “The result is the attached memo, which has one interesting legal approach and I think some very good suggestions about how to handle our public diplomacy.” But did it also include details on the “nonlegal strategies” teased in the subject line? Sources confirm Clinton took the email and attachment with her to the White House for an afternoon meeting with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon prior to an additional evening meeting at the White House. President Obama, sources said, did not attend the early meeting with Gates as he was traveling with Vice President Joe Biden. President Obama did attend the second meeting, however, and Wikileaks and Assange’s planned release of secret cables were discussed at length, sources said. Attending this meeting were President Obama, Clinton, Gates, Donilon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral “Mike” Mullen, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright as well as a half dozen or more various policy aides, sources confirmed. Did Clinton also share her alleged morning query of droning Assange with the members of the National Security Council and the President? Was it discussed among the top secret subjects in the meeting? Or was Clinton planning to conduct or hatch her own secret foreign policy in defiance of the President, a likely violation of the Logan Act?
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  • The FBI’s 302 report from Clinton’s email investigation interview, again, specified that Clinton had “many discussions” related to “nominating” drone strikes on individuals: “Clinton could not recall a specific process for nominating a target for a drone strike and recalled much debate pertaining to the concurrence process. Clinton knew there was a role for DOD, State and the CIA but could not provide specifics as to what it was. Due to a disagreement between these agencies, Clinton recalled having many discussions related to nominating an individual for a drone strike. When Clinton exchanged classified information pertaining to the drone program internally at State, it was in her office or on a secure call. When Clinton exchanged classified information pertaining to the drone program externally it was at the White House. Clinton never had a concern with how classified information pertaining to the drone program was handled.” Sources said Clinton’s comments on neutralizing Assange fits a pattern of callousness when combined with the FBI testimony that she often considered droning individuals and then coupled with her reaction to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s death in Oct. 2011.
  • Unable to legally counter or stop Wikileaks, and likely abandoning any and all legal and “nonlegal strategies,” Clinton and her staff were forced to weather the collateral damage of CableGate. In fact, just five days after Clinton’s meetings on Mahogany Row in the State Department and the White House, Wikileaks began releasing cables to news outlets globally on Sunday November 28, 2010. Shortly after CableGate, the WikiLeaks founder sought refuge from authorities and threats by hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Now 45, Assange is in his fifth year living quarantined inside the embassy. Clinton remains the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.
  • Perhaps Democratic political operative Bob Beckel wasn’t a party outlier during this controversial Fox broadcast. Likely, Beckel was projecting what others, including Clinton, had already privately proposed.
Paul Merrell

Canadian government attempts to end free speech and silence this list | The Fifth Column - 0 views

thefifthcolumnnews.com/...e-speech-and-silence-this-list

tyranny free-speech BDS anti-BDS Zionists Harper CBC

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Canadian government, under Prime Minister Harper, is signaling that it intends to use Hate Crime laws against those that would boycott Israel, meanwhile the blockade of Gaza remains intact and this empty suit says nothing.  What this boils down to is the fact that the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) coalition has been too effective in placing pressure on Israel for their actions in the occupied territories.
  • For a government to bar its citizens from peacefully asking other citizens to not shop at a location is nothing short of tyrannical. It is an affront to free speech. It is an attack on the natural rights of every Canadian. No free nation can exist without the right to express an opinion, even if it is a negative opinion about a lobby that provides you with money
  • You wanted to craft a legacy on the back of Israel. Well, you’re going to be able to do that. You will succeed in bringing media outlets around the world together to accomplish two things: to publicize the list of companies that should be boycotted that you want suppressed so badly and to mock the arrogant wannabe dictator that believes he has the authority to tell people where they can shop. Your political handlers didn’t think this one through. Banning free speech only fans the flames of its message as it spreads. It’s a unwritten rule of publishing that if a book is banned, it becomes a best-seller. You’ve succeeded in making a list that is relatively unknown outside of the activist community into dinner conversation for every Canadian and every American.
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  • The staff of The Fifth Column will spend the day contacting every media outlet in our phone books to make this the story of the day. We will do our best make the list of companies to be boycotted viral on every social media outlet in existence. Instead of silencing free speech, you’re going to learn what it is. The companies currently on the BDS list are listed below:
Paul Merrell

Memo to Potential Whistleblowers: If You See Something, Say Something | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5385860

transparency whistle-blowers resources ExposeFacts.org

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing creates a moral frequency that vast numbers of people are eager to hear. We don’t want our lives, communities, country and world continually damaged by the deadening silences of fear and conformity. I’ve met many whistleblowers over the years, and they’ve been extraordinarily ordinary. None were applying for halos or sainthood. All experienced anguish before deciding that continuous inaction had a price that was too high. All suffered negative consequences as well as relief after they spoke up and took action. All made the world better with their courage. Whistleblowers don’t sign up to be whistleblowers. Almost always, they begin their work as true believers in the system that conscience later compels them to challenge. “It took years of involvement with a mendacious war policy, evidence of which was apparent to me as early as 2003, before I found the courage to follow my conscience,” Matthew Hoh recalled this week.“It is not an easy or light decision for anyone to make, but we need members of our military, development, diplomatic and intelligence community to speak out if we are ever to have a just and sound foreign policy.”
  • Hoh describes his record this way: “After over 11 continuous years of service with the U.S. military and U.S. government, nearly six of those years overseas, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as positions within the Secretary of the Navy’s Office as a White House Liaison, and as a consultant for the State Department’s Iraq Desk, I resigned from my position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of war in 2009.” Another former Department of State official, the ex-diplomat and retired Army colonel Ann Wright, who resigned in protest of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, is crossing paths with Hoh on Friday as they do the honors at a ribbon-cutting — half a block from the State Department headquarters in Washington — for a billboard with a picture of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Big-lettered words begin by referring to the years he waited before releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. “Don’t do what I did,” Ellsberg says on the billboard.  “Don’t wait until a new war has started, don’t wait until thousands more have died, before you tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. You might save a war’s worth of lives.
  • The billboard – sponsored by the ExposeFacts organization, which launched this week — will spread to other prominent locations in Washington and beyond. As an organizer for ExposeFacts, I’m glad to report that outreach to potential whistleblowers is just getting started. (For details, visit ExposeFacts.org.) We’re propelled by the kind of hopeful determination that Hoh expressed the day before the billboard ribbon-cutting when he said: “I trust ExposeFacts and its efforts will encourage others to follow their conscience and do what is right.” The journalist Kevin Gosztola, who has astutely covered a range of whistleblower issues for years, pointed this week to the imperative of opening up news media. “There is an important role for ExposeFacts to play in not only forcing more transparency, but also inspiring more media organizations to engage in adversarial journalism,” he wrote. “Such journalism is called for in the face of wars, environmental destruction, escalating poverty, egregious abuses in the justice system, corporate control of government, and national security state secrecy. Perhaps a truly successful organization could inspire U.S. media organizations to play much more of a watchdog role than a lapdog role when covering powerful institutions in government.”
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  • Overall, we desperately need to nurture and propagate a steadfast culture of outspoken whistleblowing. A central motto of the AIDS activist movement dating back to the 1980s – Silence = Death – remains urgently relevant in a vast array of realms. Whether the problems involve perpetual war, corporate malfeasance, climate change, institutionalized racism, patterns of sexual assault, toxic pollution or countless other ills, none can be alleviated without bringing grim realities into the light. “All governments lie,” Ellsberg says in a video statement released for the launch of ExposeFacts, “and they all like to work in the dark as far as the public is concerned, in terms of their own decision-making, their planning — and to be able to allege, falsely, unanimity in addressing their problems, as if no one who had knowledge of the full facts inside could disagree with the policy the president or the leader of the state is announcing.” Ellsberg adds: “A country that wants to be a democracy has to be able to penetrate that secrecy, with the help of conscientious individuals who understand in this country that their duty to the Constitution and to the civil liberties and to the welfare of this country definitely surmount their obligation to their bosses, to a given administration, or in some cases to their promise of secrecy.”
  • Right now, our potential for democracy owes a lot to people like NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Kirk Wiebe, and EPA whistleblower Marsha Coleman-Adebayo. When they spoke at the June 4 news conference in Washington that launched ExposeFacts, their brave clarity was inspiring. Antidotes to the poisons of cynicism and passive despair can emerge from organizing to help create a better world. The process requires applying a single standard to the real actions of institutions and individuals, no matter how big their budgets or grand their power. What cannot withstand the light of day should not be suffered in silence. If you see something, say something.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14
     
    While some governments -- my own included -- attempt to impose an Orwellian Dark State of ubiquitous secret surveillance, secret wars, the rule of oligarchs, and public ignorance, the Edward Snowden leaks fanned the flames of the countering War on Ignorance that had been kept alive by civil libertarians. Only days after the U.S. Supreme Court denied review in a case where a reporter had been ordered to reveal his source of information for a book on the Dark State under the penalties for contempt of court (a long stretch in jail), a new web site is launched for communications between sources and journalists where the source's names never need to be revealed. This article is part of the publicity for that new weapon fielded by the civil libertarian side in the War Against Ignorance.  Hurrah!
Paul Merrell

Chicago students get death threat over Palestine protest | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...-threat-over-palestine-protest

war & peace Israel BDS anti-BDS student-faculty-retaliation

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Students in Chicago received a death threat after taking part in a Palestine solidarity protest. Another student activist in Santa Barbara, California, was physically assaulted during an argument with an Israel supporter. These are just two of dozens of on-campus incidents reported across the United States over the last four weeks, according to Palestine Legal.
  • Five days later, one of the students received a threatening email message directed at Students for Justice in Palestine. The message stated: “If there is one more demonstration in the quad from your petty organization, consider it to be your real bodies falling next time. What you did was downright anti-Semitism. Don’t underestimate the Jewish presence on campus. #jewhater.”
  • Meanwhile, a member of SJP at the University of California at Santa Barbara was physically assaulted during a peaceful protest as part of the international day of action. Daniel Mogtaderi said he was filming the demonstration on his phone as a matter of protocol, so that SJP can document any harassment or violence it might encounter. A young man who appeared to be another student began arguing with Mogtaderi about the 13-year-old Palestinian boy who was accused of a stabbing attack and critically injured and taunted by Israeli settlers as he lay bleeding on the ground two weeks ago. The assailant became aggressive when he realized Mogtaderi was recording the encounter. “At that point he forcibly took hold of the phone, held on to the phone for some time, and shoved Mogtaderi two times before returning the phone and leaving the scene,” SJP stated. Mogtaderi’s video recording of the argument between himself and the assailant can be viewed here.
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  • University spokesperson Bill Burton told The Electronic Intifada that the matter is under investigation and had no further comment. Saadeh said that although the death threat is frightening and is being taken seriously, SJP members will not stop organizing. “They’re not going to shut us up with this,” she said. She said that students have created ways to protect each other on campus, such as making sure members of SJP do not have to walk alone to class, or sit alone at the library.
  • Mogtaderi told The Electronic Intifada that when he filed a report, campus police blamed him for “escalating the situation” and claimed that he could have avoided being assaulted if he hadn’t argued with the assailant. He added that campus police insist they cannot find the assailant and have not contacted Mogtaderi for additional information. UC Santa Barbara told The Electronic Intifada that the matter is being investigated. “There are so many stories around the country [of attempts] to try and silence people as much as possible,” Mogtaderi said. “My voice won’t be silenced, nor will the voices of other SJPers.”
  • Palestine Legal stated last week that it has responded to more than 35 campus incidents over the last month. “The pattern persists: with a rise in activism comes a rise in suppression,” the group said. Flush with new injections of cash, Israel-aligned organizations are stepping up their efforts to smear and intimidate students involved in Palestine activism. Palestine Legal says it has responded to more than 300 incidents of “censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy” reported by Palestine solidarity activists on more than 65 US campuses in the last 18 months. The legal group calls on university administrations to protect the speech rights and physical safety of students who speak out in favor of Palestinian rights.
Paul Merrell

US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...gnores-cia-cover-up-on-torture

war & peace torture CIA Feinstein VIPS

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • MEMORANDUM FOR: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT: U.S. Media Mum On How Your Committee Faced Down Both CIA and Obama We write to thank you for your unwavering support for your extraordinarily courageous and tenacious staff in (1) investigating CIA torture under the Bush/Cheney administration and (2) resisting CIA/White House attempts under the Obama administration to cover up heinous torture crimes like waterboarding.
  • With well over 400 years of intelligence experience under our collective belt, we wondered how you managed to get the investigation finished and the executive summary up and out (though redacted). We now know the backstory – thanks to the unstinting courage of the committee’s principal investigator Daniel Jones, who has been interviewed by Spencer Ackerman, an investigative reporter for The (UK) Guardian newspaper. The titanic struggle depicted by Ackerman reads like a crime novel; sadly, the four-part series is nonfiction: I. “Senate investigator breaks silence about CIA’s ‘failed coverup’ of torture report” II. “Inside the fight to reveal the CIA’s torture secrets” III. ” ‘A constitutional crisis’: the CIA turns on the Senate” IV. “No looking back:  the CIA torture report’s aftermath“
  • Remarkably, a full week after The Guardian carried Ackerman’s revelations, none has been picked up by U.S. “mainstream” newspapers. Not the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post – not even The Hill. (As for alternative media, Charles P. Pierce’s timely piece for Esquire whetted his readers’ appetite for the gripping detail of the Guardian series, explaining that it would be “unfair both to Ackerman’s diligence and Jones’s courage” to try to summarize even just the first installment. “Read the whole damn thing,” Pierce advises.)
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  • And so, the culprits who should be hanging their heads in shame are out and about, with some still collecting book royalties and some blithely working for this or that candidate for president. As if nothing happened. Sadly, given the soporific state of our mainstream media – particularly on sensitive issues like these – their silence is nothing new, although it does seem to have gotten even worse in recent years. The late William Colby, CIA director from 1973 to 1976, has been quoted as saying: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Whether or not Colby was quoted correctly, the experience of the past several decades suggests it is largely true. Better sourced is a quote from William Casey, CIA director from 1981 to 1987: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
  • In these circumstances, we know from sad experience that there is no way any of us can get on any of the Sunday talk shows, for example – despite our enviable record for getting it right. Nor does it seem likely that any of the “mainstream” media will invite you to discuss the highly instructive revelations in The Guardian. We respectfully suggest that you take the initiative to obtain media exposure for this very important story.
Gary Edwards

Saul Alinsky Leaves the White House | The American Spectator - 0 views

spectator.org/alinsky-leaves-the-white-house

Obama

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jan 17
     
    "When Barack Obama leaves the White House tomorrow, he leaves with his worst dreams unrealized. Still, what he leaves behind is awful. Thank goodness he'll be gone. The very day after Obama was elected in 2008, I predicted in this space that his team would steal the Senate by hook and crook (see: Al Franken); nuke the filibuster at least for judicial nominees; liberalize voting laws (or enforcement thereof) to make fraud easier while charging opponents with "vote suppression"; drum up spurious allegations of civil rights violations; punish anti-abortion protesters; enact "copious new regulations, especially environmental, to be used selectively to ensnare other conservative malcontents"; invasively use the IRS to harass conservative organizations; and tacitly encourage civil unrest in furtherance of Obamite goals. All those predictions of course came true. Obama and company also waged bureaucratic war against independent inspectors general; tried their hardest (even illegally) to hobble fossil fuels industries; evaded Congress's intent by sending cash and uranium to a near-nuclear-ready Iran; fumbled and stumbled while veterans suffered virtually criminal neglect; wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on projects that were not "shovel-ready" and did not create many jobs; oversaw an economy in which the workforce participation rate dropped to historically low levels while real median household income also fell and personal debt rose, and in which food stamp rolls grew to a number larger than the population of Spain; horrendously politicized the Justice Department; and saw race relations worsen for the first time in decades. In what should have been treated by the media as major scandals (or more major than the media represented them), the Obama administration encouraged illegal gun-running to Mexican cartels, with untold numbers of resultant deaths; failed to provide adequate security before or rescue during the Benghazi tragedy; provide
Gary Edwards

One Year of Silence on Hillary Clinton Uranium Deal - Breitbart - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...e-hillary-clinton-uranium-deal

Clinto Uranium

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 May 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 May 16
     
    "For more than a year, the mainstream media has failed to ask Hillary Clinton some very basic questions about a series of extremely troubling deals. Why? Last Spring, my book Clinton Cash was released and it initially set off a media maelstrom. It began on April 19, 2015, with a leaked copy of the book going to the New York Times. The copy was not sent by me or my publisher. If the Clintons leaked the book with the hope of having it prematurely dismissed, that proved to be a mistake. The paper called the book "the most anticipated and feared book" of the political season. The Times went on to note that the book was hardly a hysterical attack on the Clintons, but rather, "mainly in the voice of a neutral journalist" who "meticulously documents his sources, including tax records and government documents." Things got worse for the Clintons a few days later when two New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters, Jo Becker and Mike McIntire, took two of the most explosive chapters in the book and did their own digging. What they found confirmed what I had reported. They ran a 3,000-word, front-page article in the paper confirming that: -Bill and Hillary Clinton had helped a Canadian financier named Frank Giustra and a small Canadian company obtain a lucrative uranium mining concession from the dictator in Kazakhstan; -The same Canadian company, renamed Uranium One, bought uranium concessions in the United States; -The Russian government came calling and sought to buy that Canadian company for a price that would mean big profits for the Canadian investors; -For the Russians to buy that Canadian company, it would require the approval of the Obama administration, including Hillary's State Department, because uranium is a strategically important commodity; -Nine shareholders in Uranium One just happened to provide more than $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation in the run-up to State Department approval; -Some o
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases

Clinton-Body-Count

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

news.google.com/?ar=1378752090

Obama-Muslim-Brotherhood Obama-Bribes

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Sep 13
     
    An incredible story is unfolding in Egypt where the new military government is digging through volumes of documents seized in raids on the Muslim Brotherhood. The documents are said to show that Barak Obama has been funneling Billions of dollars into the Muslim Brotherhood. excerpt: "Bare Naked Islam has done extensive reporting on the "bribes." The ... Evidence we have obtained lends credibility to the charges of "gifts" (bribes) being taken in U.S. dollars from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo" that were distributed to top ministerial level officials in the Mursi government. Via Almesryoon: "A judicial source stated that over the past few days, a number of complaints have beenfiled with the Attorney General Hisham Barakat. These complaints accuse the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders of the centrist party of receiving gifts from the American embassy in Cairo. The sponsors of these complaints stated that among these leaders are Mohamed Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat Al-Shater, deputy leader and businessman, Mohamed Beltagy leading the group, Essam el-Erian, deputy head of the Freedom and Justice Party of, and Abu Ela Mady, head of the Wasat Party, Essam Sultan, deputy head of the Wasat Party." The strength of these allegations is seemingly bolstered by another case alluded to by the newspaper in which a document is referenced. This document reportedly reveals monthly "gifts" being paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Mursi government. These monthly payments were said to be denominated in U.S. dollars to each leader. Evidence for such allegations are substantiated by a document we have obtained. It includes the names of several recipients of funds and even includes their signatures acknowledging receipt of the funds. This ledger, obtained from inside the Mursi government, lends additional credibility to the rep
Paul Merrell

CIA torture architect breaks silence to defend 'enhanced interrogation' | World news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...chitect-enhanced-interrogation

war & peace CIA torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The psychologist regarded as the architect of the CIA's “enhanced interrogation” program has broken a seven-year silence to defend the use of torture techniques against al-Qaida terror suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.
  • But Mitchell, who was reported to have personally waterboarded accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains unrepentant. “The people on the ground did the best they could with the way they understood the law at the time,” he said. “You can't ask someone to put their life on the line and think and make a decision without the benefit of hindsight and then eviscerate them in the press 10 years later.”
  • He said the context in which the program was developed, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, was being ignored in the current debate: “The big fear was some sort of a radiological device … It's really easy, 13 years later, when there's been no device, when all those people who were trying to build them were either killed or captured … to come along later and say 'I could have done it better, this stuff was illegal.' It was not illegal based on the law at the time.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 14
     
    Re: "It was not illegal based on the law at the time." The Fourth Geneva Convention, since its adoption in the late 1940s, has granted prisoners the right to remain silent other than providing their name, rank, service number, and contact information for relatives to be notified of their capture and imprisonment. U.S. Dept. of Defense General Order No. 1, first issued by President Dwight Eisenhower, forbids captured U.S. personnel from giving any other information to their captors.  
Paul Merrell

War Gear Flows to Police Departments - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ows-to-police-departments.html

war & peace politics of fear police-militarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.
  • As the nation’s wars abroad wind down, many of the military’s surplus tools of combat have ended up in the hands of state and local law enforcement. Totals below are the minimum number of pieces acquired since 2006 in a selection of categories.
  • Congress created the military-transfer program in the early 1990s, when violent crime plagued America’s cities and the police felt outgunned by drug gangs. Today, crime has fallen to its lowest levels in a generation, the wars have wound down, and despite current fears, the number of domestic terrorist attacks has declined sharply from the 1960s and 1970s.Continue reading the main story Police departments, though, are adding more firepower and military gear than ever. Some, especially in larger cities, have used federal grant money to buy armored cars and other tactical gear. And the free surplus program remains a favorite of many police chiefs who say they could otherwise not afford such equipment.
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  • The number of SWAT teams has skyrocketed since the 1980s, according to studies by Peter B. Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who has been researching the issue for decades.The ubiquity of SWAT teams has changed not only the way officers look, but also the way departments view themselves. Recruiting videos feature clips of officers storming into homes with smoke grenades and firing automatic weapons.
  • The Pentagon program does not push equipment onto local departments. The pace of transfers depends on how much unneeded equipment the military has, and how much the police request. Equipment that goes unclaimed typically is destroyed. So police chiefs say their choice is often easy: Ask for free equipment that would otherwise be scrapped, or look for money in their budgets to prepare for an unlikely scenario.
  • Pentagon data suggest how the police are arming themselves for such worst-case scenarios. Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementIn the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.
  • The police in 38 states have received silencers, which soldiers use to muffle gunfire during raids and sniper attacks.
Paul Merrell

Kurdish Question - Two Thousand Turkish Special Forces in ISIS - 0 views

kurdishquestion.com/...sh-special-forces-in-isis.html

war & peace ISIL Turkey Special-Forces

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP Demir Celik stated in a press conference in Parliament that the majority of ISIS’ fighting force was formed of around two thousand Turkish Special Force officers, who in the 1990s were cutting off the noses and ears of Kurdish (PKK) fighters.   “Hundreds of years ago states would fight each other but now their subcontracted organisations are fighting on their behalf,” remarked Celik, before adding, “the war in the Middle East is not fate, the war that is being imposed on us by imperialist forces must be put to an end.”
  • Stating that it was not clear who was friend or foe at a time when all political relationships rested on vested interests and that today’s friend could be tomorrow’s foe, Celik said, “Turkey has taken a side in this dirty and complicated war. The USA has been a spectator to developments in Syria for the past four years and has only intervened at the moment ISIS spun out of control. However Turkey’s silence on the matter has yet to be accounted for. We want to know why Turkey is still silent on this matter. We have received information from reliable sources and this information clearly shows that the developments are contrary to what the AKP government has been telling us.” Celik said:   “It is being said that there are different reasons for the AKP’s silence surrounding the 49 Turkish hostages taken by ISIS from the Turkish Consulate in Mosul in July. At the top of the list of reasons is that the AKP has become involved in secret operations and relations and has engaged in the war in Syria; this is backed up by the trucks that were upheld following the December operations (by the Gulen Movement against the AKP) and contained military equipment and arms, which were on there way to Syria. The group being presented to us as ISIS is not just formed of jihadist militants. We have information that the majority of ISIS’s fighting forces are formed of Turkish Special Forces who were cutting off the ears and noses of Kurdish fighters in the 1990s. These Special Forces have been staying in hotels and safe houses in Mosul for months and have travelled from Mosul to Makhmour, from Makhmour to Sinjar and are in Kobane now commanding and determining the strategy of ISIS. There are said to be around two thousand of them.
  • We all know of the train-line between Turkey and Syria. Our sources have told us that these Turkish Special Forces are being provided tanks, artillery and missiles through this train-line. The real reason for Turkey not joining the coalition against ISIS is that the Turkish state wants to prevent and stop the revolution in Rojava (Northern Syria); even though they might seem willing to resolve the Kurdish issue democratically within Turkey, the Turkish state’s real intention is to resolve it militarily.”
Paul Merrell

The Dark Side of Development: Displacement, Eviction in World Bank Projects and Ethiopi... - 0 views

www.newsecuritybeat.org/...world-bank-projects-ethiopia-2

globalization banksters World-Bank population-displacement

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 May 15 - No Cached
  • With the help of international aid, foreign land grabs in the Gambella region of Ethiopia have resulted in environmental degradation, more severe economic and social inequality, and human rights abuses, according to a new study by the Oakland Institute. We Say The Land Is Not Yours collects testimony from victims of “villagization,” a policy of forced displacement started under the military Derg dictatorship and, according to many, continued to this day under the guise of land investment. The ultimate aim, according to the report, is to resettle up to 1.5 million people. Land cultivated for generations is being degraded by industrialized agriculture in hopes that foreign currency entering the economy will improve infrastructure, create jobs, and “have beneficial trickle-down effects,” the authors say. Communication between the government and locals has been limited to false promises of employment and compensation, according to the report, and victims are silenced out of fear of torture, imprisonment, or death. The Ethiopian government responded to the report, saying the accusations don’t provide sufficient detail to be verified and the “vast majority of Ethiopians have benefitted from the growth and sustainable development program.”
  • A new project from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) critically analyzes the World Bank’s safeguards to protect marginalized populations from the negative impacts of its own projects. The result of a year’s worth of research by 50 journalists from 21 countries, the collection of stories claims World Bank-funded projects have displaced an estimated 3.4 million people over the last decade and “financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations such as rape, murder, and torture.” In Ethiopia, ICIJ claims officials siphoned millions of dollars from the bank’s investments in health and education to fund mass eviction campaigns. Citing current and former Bank employees, ICIJ says a new safeguard policy released in 2014 would actually “give governments more room to sidestep the Bank’s standards and make decisions about whether local populations need protecting.” Oxfam’s Land Rights Policy Lead Kate Geary said in a response that these findings are supported by the Bank’s internal audits which reveal they “simply lost track of people who had to be ‘resettled.’” She called for the Bank to provide grant funding to those who have been displaced and negatively impacted, and implement fundamental reforms to live up to its own commitments to protect people.
Gary Edwards

Stop the Fed Takeover of the Internet! Citizens Petition to stop Obama and the FCC - 0 views

www.grassfire.com/...petition.asp

Fed-take-over-of-the-Internet Federal-censorship Obammunism OpenWeb FCC-Obama

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Sep 11
     
    The Issue:  President Obama and his liberal cohorts are set to takeover the Internet beginning November 20 unless freedom-loving Americans demand this illegal assault on Free Speech in America end. Back on December 21, 2009, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) power-grab, illegally imposed strict, job-killing restrictions on the Internet. The move was no doubt fueled by Tea Party successes, and a growing fear among liberals that conservatives needed to be silenced. That said, the FCC move wasn't widely reported. In fact, many are unsure as to what the new Net Neutrality rules actually mean. What is certain, however, is that in seizing the Internet Obama has also muzzled the greatest mechanism of growth in our history (under the guise of promoting "freedom" for all), and taken one giant step closer to controlling the unfettered access to news and information that we read. The Action:  Without the support of the American people and requiring no votes in Congress, the so-called Net Neutrality rules didn't require any Congressional action. Now with the federal government seizing control, Grassfire Nation is moving quickly to amass at least 150,000 petitions demanding Congress to reverse the Net Neutrality ruling through legislation.  
Paul Merrell

Sorry for letting them snoop? Dell apologizes for 'inconvenience' caused by NSA backdoo... - 0 views

rt.com/...ell-appelbaum-30c3-apology-027

surveillance state NSA NSA-methods backdoors NSA-backdoors hardware

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum dropped a bombshell of sorts earlier this week when he accused American tech companies of placing government-friendly backdoors in their devices. Now Texas-based Dell Computers is offering an apology. Or to put it more accurately, Dell told an irate customer on Monday that they “regret the inconvenience” caused by selling to the public for years a number of products that the intelligence community has been able to fully compromise in complete silence up until this week. Dell, Apple, Western Digital and an array of other Silicon Valley-firms were all name-checked during Appelbaum’s hour-long presentation Monday at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As RT reported then, the 30-year-old hacker-cum-activist unveiled before the audience at the annual expo a collection of never-before published National Security Agency documents detailing how the NSA goes to great lengths to compromise the computers and systems of groups on its long list of adversaries.
  • Spreading viruses and malware to infect targets and eavesdrop on their communications is just one of the ways the United States’ spy firm conducts surveillance, Appelbaum said. Along with those exploits, he added, the NSA has been manually inserting microscopic computer chips into commercially available products and using custom-made devices like hacked USB cables to silently collect intelligence. One of the most alarming methods of attack discussed during his address, however, comes as a result of all but certain collusion on the part of major United States tech companies. The NSA has information about vulnerabilities in products sold by the biggest names in the US computer industry, Appelbaum said, and at the drop off a hat the agency has the ability of launching any which type of attack to exploit the flaws in publically available products.
  • The NSA has knowledge pertaining to vulnerabilities in computer servers made by Dell and even Apple’s highly popular iPhone, among other devices, Appelbaum told his audience. “Hey Dell, why is that?” Appelbaum asked. “Love to hear your statement about that.”
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  • Appelbaum didn’t leave Dell off the hook after revealing just that one exploit known to the NSA, however. Before concluding his presentation, he displayed a top-secret document in which the agency makes reference to a hardware implant that could be manually installed onto Dell PowerEdge servers to exploit the JTAG debugging interface on its processor — a critical circuitry component that apparently contains a vulnerability known to the US government. “Why did Dell leave a JTAG debugging interface on these servers?” asked Appelbaum. “Because it’s like leaving a vulnerability in. Is that a bugdoor, or a backdoor or just a mistake? Well hopefully they will change these things or at least make it so that if you were to see this, you would know that you have some problems. Hopefully Dell will release some information about how to mitigate this advance persistent threat.” Appelbaum also provoked Apple by acknowledging that the NSA boasts of being able to hack into any of their mobile devices running the iOS operating system. “Either they have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products — meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems American companies product and sabotaging them — or Apple sabotages it themselves,” he said.
  • @DellCares @dellcarespro Inconvenience? You got to be F*ckin kidding me! You place an NSA bug in our servers and call it an inconvenience? — Martijn Wismeijer (@twiet) December 31, 2013
  • TechDirt reporter Mike Masnick noticed early Tuesday that Dell’s official customer service Twitter account opted to issue a cookie-cutter response that drips of insincerity. “Thanks you for reaching out and regret the inconvenience,” the Dell account tweeted to Wismeijer. “Our colleagues at @DellCaresPro will be able to help you out.” “Inconvenience? You got to be F*ckin kidding me!” Wismeijer responded. “You place an NSA bug in our servers and call it an inconvenience?”
  • Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum dropped a bombshell of sorts earlier this week when he accused American tech companies of placing government-friendly backdoors in their devices. Now Texas-based Dell Computers is offering an apology. Or to put it more accurately, Dell told an irate customer on Monday that they “regret the inconvenience” caused by selling to the public for years a number of products that the intelligence community has been able to fully compromise in complete silence up until this week. Dell, Apple, Western Digital and an array of other Silicon Valley-firms were all name-checked during Appelbaum’s hour-long presentation Monday at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As RT reported then, the 30-year-old hacker-cum-activist unveiled before the audience at the annual expo a collection of never-before published National Security Agency documents detailing how the NSA goes to great lengths to compromise the computers and systems of groups on its long list of adversaries.
Paul Merrell

Letters from 9/11 Family Group to Obama Go Unanswered | 28 Pages.org - 0 views

28pages.org/...y-group-to-obama-go-unanswered

war & peace 9-11-Truth 28-pages Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • On three separate occasions, 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism has sent letters to President Obama, asking him to declassify the 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers. Each letter takes a slightly different approach to pleading for the release of the redacted section of a joint House/Senate intelligence study, but one thing they share in common is the response from the president and the White House: complete silence. One would think an organized group of 9/11 family members would at least merit the courtesy of a presidential reply—if only to say he had received their letter and would give due consideration to their request. Instead, Obama has opted to ignore them, despite the fact that he has reportedly twice promised 9/11 families he would declassify the 28 pages. The group sent its first letter on June 20, 2013, and never heard back. The group tried again on May 9, 2014—just ahead of the dedication of the 9/11 Museum in New York. Again, silence. Still determined, the organization sent a third letter on June 24 of this year that has likewise gone unanswered.
  • The letters remind the president of his promises to 9/11 families, and point to the large and growing number of credible experts—including former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry that created the 28 pages, and both the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission—who say there’s no valid national security reason for the continued secrecy. Indeed, even past and present Secretaries of State in the Obama White House Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are on record urging the declassification of the 28 pages; they did so as senators in a letter to George W. Bush. You can read the group’s most recent letter here. It was delivered to the White House by North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones, who introduced and continues to champion H.Res.428, which urges the president to declassify the 28 pages.
Paul Merrell

Breaking the Silence about Colombia and Ourselves | Opinion | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...d-Ourselves-20150306-0030.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Colombia

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The USA’s human rights record at home is terrible in some important (and quickly worsening) ways, but if one includes its victims beyond its borders then it is indisputably the most dangerous rogue state in the world. According to the UNHCR’s latest figures, there are about 200,000 Colombians living in Venezuela as refugees – but less than 237 Venezuelans living in Colombia as refugees.[1] It you rely on the international media, you can be forgiven for assuming it was the other way around – that Colombia must be hosting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled their country.[2] Ever since the early 1990s, if one considers only crimes perpetrated within its own borders, Colombia has consistently had, by far, the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere (contrary to Ken Roth’s lunatic assertion that Venezuela and other ALBA bloc countries are the “most abusive”).  The Colombian military, and right wing paramilitaries with whom it is closely allied, have perpetrated the vast majority of atrocities in a civil war that has raged for decades.  In private, US officials have estimated hundreds of thousands of people killed by them. These killings have reached truly genocidal levels in the case of numerous indigenous groups who have been nearly wiped out. Colombia’s population of internally displaced people is almost 6 million, the highest in the world as of 2012.
  • If you follow Daniel Kovalik’s diligent work, you’ll understand why Colombia’s human rights record is so horrific and, at the same time, so widely ignored. Colombia has been lavishly funded and supported by the US government – and therefore depicted as one of the “good guys” by the international media. In September of last year, the New York Times editors singled out Colombia as a country that should “lead an effort to prevent Caracas from representing the region when it is fast becoming an embarrassment”. The NYT editors registered zero “embarrassment” when US General John Kelly recently told Congress “The beauty of having a Colombia – they’re such good partners, particularly in the military realm, they’re such good partners with us. When we ask them to go somewhere else and train the Mexicans, the Hondurans, the Guatemalans, the Panamanians, they will do it almost without asking. And they’ll do it on their own. They’re so appreciative of what we did for them. And what we did for them was, really, to encourage them for 20 years and they’ve done such a magnificent job.” General Kelly should add the international corporate media to his list of “magnificent partners”. It has kept most people ignorant of the mass murderers that US (and UK and Canadian) governments have been supporting for many years.
Paul Merrell

Frightening People into Silence by Andrew P. Napolitano -- Antiwar.com - 0 views

original.antiwar.com/...chilling-governmental-behavior

surveillance state 1st Amendment chill Obama Holder Napolitano COINTELPRO

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • by Andrew P. Napolitano, July 17, 2014 Print This | Share This “Chilling” is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them. Classic examples of “chilling” occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S. Army soldiers, in business suits with badges displayed or in full uniform, showed up at anti-war rallies and proceeded to photograph and tape record protesters. When an umbrella group of protesters sued the government, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the protesters lacked standing – meaning, because they could not show that they were actually harmed, they could not invoke the federal courts for redress. Yet, they were harmed, and the government knew it. Years after he died, longtime FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover was quoted boasting of the success of this program. The harm existed in the pause or second thoughts that protesters gave to their contemplated behavior because they knew the feds would be in their faces – figuratively and literally. The government’s goal, and its limited success, was to deter dissent without actually interfering with it. Even the government recognized that physical interference with and legal prosecutions of pure speech are prohibited by the First Amendment. Eventually, when this was exposed as part of a huge government plot to stifle dissent, known as COINTELPRO, the government stopped doing it.
  • Until now. Now, the government fears the verbal slings and arrows of dissenters, even as the means for promulgating one’s criticisms of the government in general and of President Obama in particular have been refined and enhanced far beyond those available to the critics of the government in the 1970s. So, what has the Obama administration done to stifle, or chill, the words of its detractors? For starters, it has subpoenaed the emails and home telephone records of journalists who have either challenged it or exposed its dark secrets. Among those journalists are James Risen of The New York Times and my colleague and friend James Rosen of Fox News. This is more personal than the NSA spying on everyone, because a subpoena is an announcement that a specific person’s words or effects have been targeted by the government, and that person continues to remain in the government’s crosshairs until it decides to let go.
  • This necessitates hiring legal counsel and paying legal fees. Yet, the targeting of Risen and Rosen was not because the feds alleged that they broke the law – there were no such allegations. Rather, the feds wanted to see their sources and their means of acquiring information. What journalist could perform his work with the feds watching? The reason we have a First Amendment is to assure that no journalist would need to endure that.
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  • And just last week, Attorney General Eric Holder, while in London, opined that much of the criticism of Obama is based on race – meaning that if Obama were fully white, his critics would be silent. This is highly inflammatory, grossly misleading, patently without evidential support and, yet again, chilling. Tagging someone as a racist is the political equivalent of applying paint that won’t come off. Were the Democrats who criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice racists? Is it appropriate for government officials to frighten people into silence by giving them pause before they speak, during which they basically ask themselves whether the criticism they are about to hurl is worth the pain the government will soon inflict in retaliation? The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to permit, encourage and even foment open, wide, robust debate about the policies and personnel of the government. That amendment presumes that individuals – not the government – will decide what language to read and hear. Because of that amendment, the marketplace of ideas – not the government – will determine which criticisms will sink in and sting and which will fall by the wayside and be forgotten.
  • Surely, government officials can use words to defend themselves; in fact, one would hope they would. Yet, when the people fear exercising their expressive liberties because of how the governmental targets they criticize might use the power of the government to stifle them, we are no longer free. Expressing ideas, no matter how bold or brazen, is the personal exercise of a natural right that the government in a free society is powerless to touch, directly or indirectly. Yet, when the government succeeds in diminishing public discourse so that it only contains words and ideas of which the government approves, it will have succeeded in establishing tyranny. This tyranny – if it comes – will not come about overnight. It will begin in baby steps and triumph before we know it. Yet we do know that it already has begun.
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