It’s true: I do think all the signs in Portuguese are a problem for those who wish to understand the protests that are taking place in my country. I hope this article will be useful to shed some light on what is actually happening in Brazil today.
You have maybe already heard the superficial reasons for the recent wave of protests as the media has announced them. A rise of 20 cents in R$ for a bus ticket, leading to a ticket price of 3,20 R$, which is the equivalent of a modest 1,14 Euro.
The pictures that have decorated the international news pages of most of the world’s important newspapers, images of burning trash cans in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, mass mobilization in São Paulo, tear gas grenades fired by the police, overall just images of violence, do raise the question : all of that for 20 cents ? There are many people who have already asked themselves this question.
My answer to all of them is : No, “all” of this not just for 20 cents.
Brazil is still a poor country, inhabited by a population that is generally poor by global standards. The minimum wage, despite successive wage increases over the last years, is still a bad joke : 678 R$, which makes 242 Euros. Many workers live very far away from their workplace, which means they have to buy numerous tickets to get there. At the end of a month, another 20 cents can make the difference between eating and not eating. A number of low-paid workers, when they were interviewed by the media, have effectively admitted that due to the bus fare increase, they would have to go to sleep without eating more often than before.
Nonetheless, the revolt has not started for 20 cents and will not end as soon as the price is lowered again. Similar to the movement of Gezi Park in Istanbul, which has not really erupted because of the decision to build a shopping mall, or the demonstrations in Tunisia, which were not really caused by the suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi, no one in Brazil is revolting because of 20 cents. All of these uprisings share a set of deep-seated causes, which accumulate over the years, followed by a symbolic event which serves as the first spark that ultimately lights the fire.
“If the price doesnt fall, the city will come to a halt”
Like many countries today, Brazil lives through a civil war between the State and the people. This war, up until a few weeks ago, was happening without much noise but in no way more peaceful than now. For way more than a century, Brazil has been governed by politicians who see the revenue from taxes payed by their citizens – those who they ought to represent – as a mere bank account. Whole states (regions) belong to a certain group or a political dynasty, families who, before being elected to office, had already been the feudal lords of enormous latifundios, with family trees as old as the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil. In Brazil, more than anywhere else in the world, the oppressors of today are the oppressors of tomorrow.
The foundation of Brasília, in 1960, has not improved anything. In fact, the passage from the old capital Rio de Janeiro to the new one in the middle of the country, planned and constructed within five years, an apotheosis of modernity, has only reaffirmed the odious tendencies of Brazilian politics. Rio de Janeiro was a cosmopolitan center in those days, inhabited by more than one million people, the heart of a very active workers’ and citizens’ movement. Brasília, in contrast, an artificial capital, did not even have any population before its foundation; even if this has changed over time, it continues to be primarily inhabited by an army of bureaucrats, who will not criticize the government very often, as they depend on it and are well-paid. None of the other metropoles of Brazil has the same political importance and the majority of them is too far away from Brasília for the population to travel there and directly show their indignation to our President.
Brazil is living through a special moment today, it’s true. Some well-applied political programs over the last decade have brought impressive results: economic inequality – a real cancer of which Brazil was practically world champion – has been reduced notably. The program Bolsa Família has had much success to reduce poverty and the investments in higher education for the poor as well as for ethnic minorities have shown encouraging results.
This is not about questioning the things that have worked well. These experiences of the last 10 years under the administration of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party) must be protected and enlarged if one wants to create a more just society, with less poverty and exploitation from the forces of the past, like the feudal lords from the Sarney family. This is not just about protesting against the government of the PT, against the President Dilma, or against Geraldo Alckmin, Fernando Haddad or Eduardo Paes. This is about freeing the country from its authoritarian, dictatorial, and cruel heritage.
If, at the end of these protests, the political class of Brazil – a class for itself more than any other – and its army of capitalist crétins who enrich themselves not through work but thanks to their personal connections, its journalists who prostitute themselves in the interest of an elite, its policemen who kill without hesitation, if all these oppressors are removed from power and forced to recognize that an era of true democracy is arriving, then I will be very happy to pay 20 cents more.
Here’s something curious: In Brazil, demonstrations are traditionally seen as something for the “bo-bos,” an entertainment for the children of the rich who have nothing productive to do, an excuse to paint one’s face and to shout in the street.
If the demonstrations are seen like this, then it’s because, to a certain degree, it’s correct. The majority of people who participate in the protests are effectively young people coming from rich families (sometimes very rich) who have a rather leftist political vision that is considered by some as incompatible with their social class. The strange combination of protest chants inspired by worker movements of the 20th century and the not-at-all-worker-like upbringing of the protesters is very often ridiculed by the media and this perspective ends up being internalized by a large part of the Brazilian population, a country where fatalistic cynicism has been lifted to the level of art.
But here’s an interesting situation: When I participated in a demonstration of the “movement of the 20 cents” (using this name seems, at least for the moment, more practical than “movement to reduce the bus ticket price by 20 cents again”), we were stopped near the Central do Brasil, the famous train station which you probably know from the movie of the same name. The demonstration up to this point had been entirely peaceful, a real party of democracy. The majority of us were, in fact, university students from wealthy families, but already then one could see that this movement had a social base that was more heterogeneous: we also had numerous people from independent professions, retirees, and poor workers among us who were dissatisfied by this fare increase. It’s very rare for a protest in Rio de Janeiro to attract more than 200 people but we were around two thousand from several social classes. I began to realize that it was something different this time. The Brazilian people was waking up from its long sleep – and it was furious.
The calm was not there to stay. Special forces from the police, with their shields, their black uniforms, frightening looks, and “non-lethal” weapns had just arrived and started to make a line in front of us. Our group stopped. The songs fell silent. The situation almost seemed like a duel from a Western movie.
All of a sudden, something happened. The people coming out of the Central do Brasil joined us. They were street side vendors, selling fries, or mothers with four children, the children in the street, or hobos and beggars. The poor, the poorest of the city of Rio, came together and positioned themselves right between us and the police.
A few minutes later, the riot police shot at us and arrested 40 people, among them a friend of mine. On the run, as I was trying to seek refuge in the closest metro stop, I saw a man who was crying and seemed weak. He was bleeding – a victim of “non-lethal” arms.
These scenes have repeated themselves innumberale times, at all places where the people have had the courage to lift their voice against a decision which directly affects the majority of the population without ever being consulted. An authoritarian way of doing politics, and a type of politics which is only interested to benefit a cartel of bus companies, well-known for ther connections with the electoral campaigns of the mayor of Rio and other important figures. Bellow all of this: a deaf-mute federal state that takes the people hostage for private companies, financed by public money. The resultats are: bad services, high fares, revolt.
In São Paulo, the police shot at demonstrators who were carrying flowers. Just a couple of days later, they forbade carrying vinegar in the city because it could be used against the effects of tear gas; they simply allowed themselves to search people, looking for it. In Minas Gerais, all demonstrations were banned during the FIFA Confederations Cup 2013. One project that is being discussed in the Chamber of Deputies is a bill that would characterize all demonstrations during the World Cup 2014 as “terrorist,” including similarly grave punishments. In Rio de Janeiro, in the wake of a new confrontation with the police on June 16, close to Stade du Maracanã, certain demonstrators tried to flee from the fight by hiding at a friend’s house. The police, then, started to invade the houses in search of these “criminals.” The mask of our democracy is falling and the authoritarian roots of our political establishment have become visible – roots originating in a compromise with the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, which ended by bringing those who had fought for democracy closer to the old major figures of authoritarianism.
The symbolic alliance between Lula, the hero of the labor movement of the 70s and 80s, and Paulo Maluf, the last presidential candidate of the moribund military regime, shows that the political class is just interested in power itself and does not have an actual political project to offer. But thanks to them and their watchdogs from the police, the “Movement of the 20 cents” is becoming a movement to say what one thinks, the right to say that one wishes to live in a real democracy.
This is what is happening in Brazil. But this doesn’t stop at our borders – it’s a global struggle, against all dictators, may they come from a Unity Party, that of Moscow or that of Capital. Our world is interconnected and so will be the global resistance against those who believe they can govern us with their orders.
It is winter in Brazil at the moment but, figuratively speaking, we are living through our spring, a spring of popular action and mobilization against injustices. I hope that spring will last – otherwise, it might be the last spring before an eternal winter.
Solidarity from Turkey: “Resist Brazil: We are together in this fight”
Thank you for your article, Franco! Solidarity from France and Germany!
The Giant Is Waking Up:”
Interview with Gonzalo
Gonzalo G. is a friend of our group at “Truth is a Beaver” and an undergraduate student of the social sciences at Sciences Po’s Latin American campus in Poitiers. He comes from Rio de Janeiro.
1) Why are the recent protests in Brazil something new ?
Despite all the big changes in Brazil over the last years, what is still missing is a true social change! This conformism which has haunted the country for a long time has to go, the people have to revolt, go to the street, protest – but nothing of this sort had been done before, the Brazilian continued his day on the sofa, watching Novelas and complaining each time a protest arises that it will make him be late to work. But corruption was always present, just as much as sleeping children in the street has been a normal part of our everyday life. Hospitals in Brazil have still always had a lack of medicine, equipment, and places.
Overall, Brazil is a conservative country. The values of Brazil are still the same as fifty years ago and the old Brazilian thinks like he did in his youth – and a large part of the youth of today thinks the same way as well, unfortunately. I read an article the other day that said all of the recent protests have given back the ability to dream to those older generations who had forgotten how to do it : dream of a better country, of social justice, of equality for all.
These protests started with the bus fare increase of 20 cents and was organized by the the movement Passe livre (Free fare movement). It developed step by step (a bit like in Turkey, which started with a simple demonstration for a park and ended up in a movement demanding the removal of the prime minister) – into a social movement that no one had seen coming! These 20 cents were the drop that finally spilled the cup.
Many journalists have been attacked or arrested.
2) How do the protesters organize ?
How did they actually get started ? Another time : Facebook ! It’s the tool, the tripping divice, of social movements (I won’t go up to the point to draw a direct line between the Arab Spring and this Brazilian Spring in Winter but the principle is the same). Through Facebook, everyone shares information on the protests, even the central slogans on the signs are chossen through Facebook groups with the option to make a survey etc. Also, Facebook has become an important tool to pass videos of police violence along, to share advice on how to protect oneself against tear gas, how to reach doctors or lawyers.
3) What is the role of the police in the development of the movement?
What is funny and another time very comparable to Turkey is the fact that the police agression is the actual source of all of these demonstrations. Brazil has a fascist police, corrupted and badly trained, especially for situations like these, up to the point that people in the streets call Brazil a dictatorship (in Rio they call it “Ditadura Paes,” after the prefect of the Rio region, Eduardo Paes). The protests had, at the beginning, a pacifist strategy and, in principle, still do today but the numerous cases of police violence against the protestors have just re-affirmed their case and given reason to more and more people to not only demand the decrease of public transport fares but also to get involved to change the whole country, which, despite the general belief, still works very badly for most. Look at the videos from Rio or São Paulo and you will see the absurdity of the scenes, the unnecessary force used by the military police, the agressions against journalists, who are there to do their job but end up being shot with rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. Numerous journalists have been injured and hundreds of people arrested.
What’s curious is that a large part of the arrests were made on the 4th day of protest when the cops had the order to arrest all people who were carrying vinegar – a useful tool against the effects of tear gas – in their backpacks or pockets! The absurdity of the situation, the fact that people get arrested for the possession of vinegar – please!) has been widely commented in the media and the response of the people lived up to the same level of absurdity as police and government: they organized a “Marcha para legalizaçao do Vinagre” (a parody of the “Marcha para legalizaçao da maconha” for the legalization of cannabis).
4) What social class is pushing the protest forward?
The rich really don’t care about this question since the public transport system is almost not used by them at all and the poor do not have any time to lose for such questions either, since watching a football match is still a thousand times more important than going to the street to defend one’s rights. Marx said that religion is the opium of the people – in Brazil, it’s football. So it’s the middle class that actually defends the civic rights of Brazilians but it’s not always easy. On one side, you face the manipulative media (O Globo, Rede Record, etc.) and on the other side, you have a conformist population who is not interested in political life. They still try to do their best, showing that one can change a country, and that they want the peace, which has been destroyed multiple times by the military police. Humour is very present in their banners and chants and many people bring flowers to the protests to give them to policemen as a symbol of peace.
5) What can we expect for the time to come?
I don’t have an answer to this, and I don’t think there are many specialist who actually do. The days of action against the fare increase continue, the next one is June 17 and more and more people will be there. Even if the fare increase will not be taken back, at least Brazil will have understood one thing: the people have the power – a power they did not know about but one that becomes more and more present in the mentality of young Brazilians. One cannot foresee how a government could possibly counteract such a process because if a country of more than 200 million people is waking up, that’s going to make noise, a lot of noise. So for once, in a long time, the Brazilian people has an actual reason to be proud of itself.
Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.
For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’.Its enemies include the Lebanese Hizballah, the Alawite Shiite regime in Damascus and, of course, Iran. And Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power. Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad. The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power. Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained. Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army. The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side and has been blamed for atrocities including the execution of Syrian government prisoners of war and the murder of a 14-year old boy for blasphemy. They will be able to take new American weapons from their Free Syria Army comrades with little effort.From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus – every war crime committed by the rebels – will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration. This terrible irony can only be exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adament refusal to tolerate any form of Sunni extremism. His experience in Chechenya, his anti-Muslim rhetoric – he has made obscene remarks about Muslim extremists in a press conference in Russian – and his belief that Russia’s old ally in Syria is facing the same threat as Moscow fought in Chechenya, plays a far greater part in his policy towards Bashar al-Assad than the continued existence of Russia’s naval port at the Syrian Mediterranean city of Tartous. For the Russians, of course, the ‘Middle East’ is not in the ‘east’ at all, but to the south of Moscow; and statistics are all-important. The Chechen capital of Grozny is scarcely 500 miles from the Syrian frontier. Fifteen per cent of Russians are Muslim. Six of the Soviet Union’s communist republics had a Muslim majority, 90 per cent of whom were Sunni. And Sunnis around the world make up perhaps 85 per cent of all Muslims. For a Russia intent on repositioning itself across a land mass that includes most of the former Soviet Union, Sunni Islamists of the kind now fighting the Assad regime are its principal antagonists.Iranian sources say they liaise constantly with Moscow, and that while Hizballah’s overall withdrawal from Syria is likely to be completed soon – with the maintenance of the militia’s ‘intelligence’ teams inside Syria – Iran’s support for Damascus will grow rather than wither. They point out that the Taliban recently sent a formal delegation for talks in Tehran and that America will need Iran’s help in withdrawing from Afghanistan. The US, the Iranians say, will not be able to take its armour and equipment out of the country during its continuing war against the Taliban without Iran’s active assistance. One of the sources claimed – not without some mirth — that the French were forced to leave 50 tanks behind when they left because they did not have Tehran’s help.It is a sign of the changing historical template in the Middle East that within the framework of old Cold War rivalries between Washington and Moscow, Israel’s security has taken second place to the conflict in Syria. Indeed, Israel’s policies in the region have been knocked askew by the Arab revolutions, leaving its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopelessly adrift amid the historic changes.Only once over the past two years has Israel fully condemned atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and while it has given medical help to wounded rebels on the Israeli-Syrian border, it fears an Islamist caliphate in Damascus far more than a continuation of Assad’s rule. One former Israel intelligence commander recently described Assad as “Israel’s man in Damascus”. Only days before President Mubarak was overthrown, both Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Washington to ask Obama to save the Egyptian dictator. In vain. If the Arab world has itself been overwhelmed by the two years of revolutions, none will have suffered from the Syrian war in the long term more than the Palestinians. The land they wish to call their future state has been so populated with Jewish Israeli colonists that it can no longer be either secure or ‘viable’. ‘Peace’ envoy Tony Blair’s attempts to create such a state have been laughable. A future ‘Palestine’ would be a Sunni nation. But today, Washington scarcely mentions the Palestinians.Another of the region’s supreme ironies is that Hamas, supposedly the ‘super-terrorists’ of Gaza, have abandoned Damascus and now support the Gulf Arabs’ desire to crush Assad. Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets.In Arab eyes, Israel’s 2006 war against the Shia Hizballah was an attempt to strike at the heart of Iran. The West’s support for Syrian rebels is a strategic attempt to crush Iran.
Top story
Blood on your hands: Putin attacks Cameron over SyriaRussian President rounds on Britain at a Downing Street press conference over support for Syrian rebels, and says his country will continue to arm ‘legitimate government’
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Europe Union is taking seriously PRISM spying program, they know well that this could very well be use to spy on EU officials.
Now nobody is sure of the extent of this intrusion, and more important, they should be concerned with the Anonymous collective and the other hackivists that could get their keyboards in these mass of information.
Could be Government secrets, private emails, satellite images, memos just name it, all the governments are in shock, not because they did not know, but because they were exposed as well. This is not US only surveillance program, this is a global enterprise spying program. They might call it with different code names, but they all have their own spying on their citizens programs. They could all be coordinating with US and Israel, knowing to be The spying entity number One in the world.
Thomas Drake is one of the few people who understands from personal experience what the future may hold for Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who exposed the U.S. government’s top secret phone and Internet surveillance.
In an video interview with Tomas Drake ex-NSA official, Andrea Elsal-Esa defense correspondent for Reutter, she asked the hard questions to Mr. Drake.
Drake, a 56-year-old former intelligence official at the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act in 2010 for allegedly revealing classified information about the agency’s sweeping warrantless wire-tapping program. The government later dropped all but a misdemeanor charge.
He said that Snowden is a whistle-blower and not a traitor. There is no room in a democracy for these types of secrets, he said.
Saying that the government data can be used for purposes that have nothing to do with terrorism. It’s being used to silenced persons like dissidents, activists,and those who become enemies of the state, he said.
AVAAZ.org, EFF, and other online petitions sites had started a massive campaign of support for Edward Snowden, and at the same time to demand to the US government to stop its NSA’s PRISM spying program. Organizations, social groups, and head of states are demanding answers to the Obama administration.
Snowden leak had awaken the people and now are demanding answers, asking the government to terminate this intrusive program.
There has not been so much outrage from the people against the US government since 2004 when CBS News and the New Yorker published photos and stories that introduced the world to devastating scenes of torture and suffering inside the decrepit prison in Iraq.
Not since the Abu Grabi scandal people had not shown its outrage and depiction of the US practices and policies.
AVAAZ.org had collected close to a million signatures in its online petition website, that since 2007 had collected more signatures than any other online petition site, surpassing Electronic Frontier Foundation.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
UN Declaration on Human Rights
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberg has also requested Holder for information about the legal foundation of the Prism program.
Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to raise Germany’s concerns about U.S government surveillance with President Barack Obama when he visits Berlin next week. Her government also sent a list of questions to the U.S. government as well as Internet companies following reports of wide-scale American spying, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said yesterday.
Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society. Tim Berners Lee Wired
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. Senator Frank Church, 1975
Now all the congressmen, the president, his cabinet, lobbyist and others know that the snooping is global, and this means that everyone is in this mass of information collected. Just anybody with access of this data can chose and pick and create an scenery that can be used to charge somebody with what ever they want to, to remove somebody from their job, even to remove a President. Every body that is everybody has something hidden in their closet, and the others the less important are used to create diversion, or simply to send messages of fear to others.
Comes to mind former former CIA Director David Petraeus (peh-TRAY’-uhs) over an extramarital affair, and defending the agency’s performance over the attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
How do we know that they did not build the case of Petraeus out of thin air to take him out of the CIA, after all Benghazi fiasco still floating with answering questions. Obviously he was being spied on also.
Carefully watch the videos I m posting here, assimilate every word you hear, tied the lose ends and see how outrageous this program is, and it needs to go. The citizens of the world, we all need to work diligently in every one of our countries to make sure this programs and others disguise spying programs go, they are unnecessary surveillance programs that need to be scraped from the government agenda. This PRISM spying program makes all vulnerable in little or big scale.
Nothing New is going on, Whistleblowers come and go, some get indicted some don’t. Some are rotten in Jail, some are walking free making conferences in Universities and other public forums, others are hiding and making public conferences and others just underground.
I had been thinking lately really thinking about whistleblowers. We know that every government, not just the US, but every government that exist in the world had thugs, mercenaries, private eyes, private contractors, private guards,secret service, Able to do ANYTHING..
I mean a real army of snoopers and mercenaries working to protect the interest of the corporations that use the government officials to draw laws and policies that allows them to keep pillaging the nations. ABLE TO DO ANYTHING they want. Harassed, scare, employ, terminate, indict, incarcerated, set you free, impeach , coup,sit presidents, crown kings. I mean E V E R Y T H I N G
Saying that, I wonder if, ….just if…..the same government OR the people behind the curtain “unleash” once and while these whistleblowers to “expose” the secret of the governments, juts to show the governments WHO IS THE BOSS and the “smart’ ones are walking free and the real heroes are rotten in jail.???????? Whats going on? Are the governments OR THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE CURTAIN ARE testing the will of the people?, or they spreading false information to divert the attentio, or to confuse the already confused people. I do not know if write in first or third person because I m confused as well. Just like the rest…It is hard being journalist where you are obliged to write what other said, never talk in first person because the article lose “credibility”, I was told by my journalist teacher that being a blogger was not being journalist, because our “sources” are not credible.
So, what you think.
Be the opinion makers, where the truth is the news and you are the Opinion Makers.
The revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.
Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.
The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.
Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.
This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.
We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:
Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
US Citizens
This letter was accompanied by the launch of StopWatching.us, a global petition calling on Congress to provide a public accounting of the United States’ domestic spying capabilites and to bring an end to illegal surveillance.
Sign your name to the petition to demand the government to stop spying on us
Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act the National Security Letter (NSL) power under 18 U.S.C. § 2709 as expanded by PATRIOT Section 505 is one of the most frightening and invasive. These letters served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens’ private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review. Recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from ever revealing the letters’ existence to their coworkers to their friends or even to their family members much less the public.
EFF has fought for years to spread awareness of National Security Letters and add accountability and oversight to the process.
In 2007 EFF filed Freedom of Information Act litigation seeking documentation of National Security Letter misuse by the FBI. Thousands of pages of documents were released over a period of four years leading to repeated revelations of governmentabuses of power. An EFF report based on these documents led to tough questions for the FBI before Congress. The documents also helped prompt the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress.
In 2008 EFF defended the Internet Archive from an inappropriate National Security Letter. Because NSLs come with a gag order most recipients are unable to ever reveal their existence. However with the help of EFF and the ACLU the Internet
Archive fought back and won the right to speak publicly about the letter. As a result it’s become one of the few well-documented and publicly-known cases of NSL use.
And in 2013, EFF won a landmark decision in the Northern District of California in which Judge Susan Illston declared one of the statutes unconstitutional in its entirety. EFF’s petition, brought on behalf of an unidentified telephone service provider, challenged both the underlying authority to obtain customer records as well as the concurrent gag provision that prevented the recipient from disclosing even that it had receiving an NSL.
EFF has been fighting in Congress for legislative reform of National Security Letters since 2005. In 2009 many hoped that President Obama having run for office promising to reform Bush-era surveillance abuses would work with Congress to curb NSL abuse. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has instead continued to block reform and has even sought to expand NSL powers.
Mr. Snowden, please send your 41 PRISM slides and other information to less easily cowed and overly coddled commercial outlets than Washington Post and Guardian. Their arm-waving, self-aggrandizing verbosity, after conspiring to obey official demand (below) to censor your information is a pattern well-documented by unfettered disclosure sites. Their piecemealing release is hoary dramatization, diverting cover-up, of failure to deliver untampered material. Your valor is yet to be fully disclosed, do not settle for being seduced by false promises portending being kicked under the bus. Heed this under-bus-kick published today by Secrecy News:
EDWARD SNOWDEN, SOURCE OF NSA LEAKS, STEPS FORWARD… “When you are subverting the power of government– that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
“I’m willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity [of these disclosures]. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this,” he said of his disclosures.
In the history of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, a voluntary admission of having committed such disclosures is the exception, not the norm. And it confers a degree of dignity on the action. Yet it stops short of a full acceptance of responsibility. That would entail surrendering to authorities and accepting the legal consequences of “subverting the power of government” and carrying out “a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
Whistle-blowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What’s important here are government programs and methods, not data about individuals. I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior. Do it carefully and do it safely, but — and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs — do it.
High officers and rhetoricians convene safe at base to wargame, destined by history, to praise and send youngsters into harm’s way to protect high privilege, then crow about leadership, sacrifice, pretending remorse, gloating in amply-pensioned retirement. Bear in mind, fodder for their ambitions is how they see you imprisoned for disobedience, emblazoned in by-lined headlines, warehoused in vet hospitals, or best, flag-draped in coffins disappearing into vote-rigged databanks.
To effect his plan, Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish – within 72 hours – the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley companies. He also asked that The Post publish online a cryptographic key that he could use to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the document’s source.
Gellman told him the Post would not make any guarantee about what the Post published or when. The Post broke the story two weeks later, on Thursday. The Post sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication and decided to reproduce only four of the 41 slides, Gellman wrote in his story about their communications.
Laura Poitras, an American documentary film director and producer, made public her video interview with Edward Snowden CIA leaker of the bomb shell Prims spying program taking place in the US since 2007, and Anonymous made binpasted a series of documents exposing even further 35 countries spying programs including Gig and Prism.
When people speaks of free speech, we speak passionately about a subject matter, or an issue that interest us. It is not only about yelling in the street of what I like to say or what I love to do, but about what everyone’s right to say what they like and and defending everyone’s audacity to do thing. The audacity to be let to do what they like. Not necessarily speaking hate language that insult others, or walking naked in the street expressing my willingness to take the world with clean face, with no makeup, no disguises of any kind. Free speech is more than just that.
Free speech encompasses absolutely everything. No matter how outrageous you think it is. No matter how insulting it sounds for some. No matter how immoral looks like to others. Free speech is about freedom, and freedom has no boundaries. The world of the free. The state of feeling free, the domain of freedom.
When whistle-blowers uncover information that needs to be made public because it is in the best interest of the people, then they are exercising their right of free speech. If this contravene their contract with the agency that contracted them, they have the right to quit, or the agency has the right to terminate the subject that had broken the contract. Should be easier as that.
We live in a free society where censorship is against the law, where spying is against the law, where invasion of privacy is against the law. We live in a free society in all the extent of the word.
So, why is the big deal when a person speaks rightfully his mind?
Why it is a big deal? When a person disclosure information he deems important to the others to know. Should be in the free exercise of his domain of freedom of speech. On this terrain our free society is walking in a thin line of interpretations, a shaky ground of definitions, where laws are interpreted to convenience, where laws are enacted to convenience of certain groups.
Our free society, it is not more free than a dog in a leash. A dog that has the freedom to eat from its bowl when it choses to, to bark at its pleasure, to drink from his water when thirsty, to enter his mini jail shelter anytime it wants to, and to walk the three meters around his post.
Is this what free society looks like to you?, hypothetically speaking we have the protection of the constitution of the United States of America. Why when it comes to expose dirty secrets of the people ruling our government, free speech become treasonous act?
Snowden, a former CIA technical assistant, said he had been working at the super-secret NSA as an employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and decided to break his silence after becoming disenchanted with Obama, whom he said had continued the policies of predecessor George W. Bush.
Snowden speaks in a video interview with Glenn Greenwald from his Hong Kong’s hotel, saying that he chose Hong Kong for being an autonomous territory that is famous for its protests in the street and free speech, he said.
The Guardian and the Washington Post recently published a ‘leaked’ information from a CIA whistleblower, news that went viral around the globe for their controversial content.
In their initial reporting neither of the two newspapers disclosed the source of their information, but three days later a video has emerged with the Self Proclaim CIA leaker, Edward Snowen, a 29 years old former technical assistant for the Central Intelligence Agency being interviewed by Gleen Greenwald for a film by Laura Poitras an American documentary film director and producer.
Snowden said that he came public with this information because he does not want to live this way, he went on to say that when you are in a position of privileged access like a system administrator, you are exposed to disturbing things, and recognized that this things need to be known by the public. National Security Agency takes information from where ever it can, and spying is one way to do it, he says.
I think that the public its own an explanation of the motivation behind the people who makes this disclosure that are outside of the democratic model, when you are subverting the power of the government, that is a fundamentalist dangerous thing to do democracy, Snowden said.
Responding as why he decided to come public as a whistleblower, that people working for the government, continuously do this things in secret, he said. When the government wants to benefit from a secret action that it took. It is a kind of given to its officials the mandate to tell the press about this, this thing or that thing just to have the public in our side, he said.
He said that he is just another guy without special skills and he thinks that the public is the ones that needs to decide on important issues not the government. He said that he is willing to go in the record to prove the authenticity of these documents.
“I did not change this, I did not modify the story, this is the truth, this is whats happening, you should decide whether we should be doing this”
Also Anonymous posted in Pastebin on Friday a series of documents exposing Gig and Prism programs, both programs saying that 35 countries are spying on their citizens,
Anonymous had obtained and binpasted some documents that “they” do not want you to see, they said, and much to “their” chagrin, we have found them, and are giving them to you, anonymous said.
“These documents prove that the NSA is spying on you, and not just Americans. They are spying on the citizens of over 35 different countries.
These documents contain information on the companies involved in GiG, and Prism.
Whats GiG you might ask? well…
The GIG will enable the secure, agile, robust, dependable, interoperable data sharing environment for the Department where warfighter, business, and intelligence users share knowledge on a global network that facilitates information superiority, accelerates decision-making, effective operations, and Net-Centric transformation.
Like we said, this is happening in over 35 countries, and done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners world wide.
We bring this to you, So that you know just how little rights you have. Your privacy and freedoms are slowly being taken from you, in closed door meetings, in laws buried in
bills, and by people who are supposed to be protecting you.
Download these documents, share them, mirror them, don’t allow them to make them disappear. Spread them wide and far. Let these people know, that we will not be silenced, that we will not be taken advantage of, and that we are not happy about this unwarranted, unnecessary, unethical spying of our private lives, for the monetary gain of the 1%.” Anonymous
Published on Jun 9, 2013
Laura Poitras made the video public in the interest of society. She published it under the Fair Use Notice Act.
To close this article let me remind you of a guy name Pellicano, is serving a 15 years sentence for wiretapping people in behalf of his clients. Does Mr Pellicano did something worse that our US government did with PRISM Spying Program?… I don’t think so. What do you think?.
“to find me guilty “means just about every other private eye in the country is also a criminal enterprise, And maybe even some of these journalists out there.” Anthony Pellicano in his trial for wiretapping and racketing.
Laura Poitras
Director/Producer/Cinematographer
Laura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award®, an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy for My Country, My Country (POV 2006). She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for Flag Wars (POV 2003), made with Linda Goode Bryant. Poitras is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation/Tribeca Film Institute. She has attended the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Edit and Story Lab as both a fellow and creative advisor. She is currently working on the third part of a trilogy about America post 9/11. Before making documentaries, Poitras worked as a professional chef. She lives in New York City.
Yesterday, we learned that the NSA received all calling records from Verizon customers for a three-month period starting in April. That’s everything except the voice content: who called who, where they were, how long the call lasted — for millions of people, both Americans and foreigners. This “metadata” allows the government to track the movements of everyone during that period, and a build a detailed picture of who talks to whom. It’s exactly the same data the Justice Department collected about AP journalists.
The Guardian delivered this revelation after receiving a copy of a secret memo about this — presumably from a whistle-blower. We don’t know if the other phone companies handed data to the NSA too. We don’t know if this was a one-off demand or a continuously renewed demand; the order started a few days after the Boston bombers were captured by police.
We don’t know a lot about how the government spies on us, but we know some things. We know the FBI has issued tens of thousands of ultra-secret NationalSecurityLetters to collect all sorts of data on people — we believe on millions of people — and has been abusing them to spy on cloud-computer users. We know it can collect a wide array of personal data from the Internet without a warrant. We also know that the FBI hasbeenintercepting cell-phone data, all but voice content, for the past 20 years without a warrant, and can use the microphone on some powered-off cell phones as a room bug — presumably only with a warrant.
We know that the NSA has many domestic-surveillance and data-mining programs with codenames likeTrailblazer, Stellar Wind, andRagtime — deliberately using different codenames for similar programs to stymie oversight and conceal what’s really going on. We know that the NSA is building an enormous computerfacility in Utah to store all this data, as well as faster computer networks to process it all. We know the U.S. Cyber Command employs 4,000 people.
We know that the DHS is also collecting a massive amount of data on people, and that local police departments are running “fusion centers” to collect and analyze this data, and covering up its failures. This is all part of the militarization of the police.
Remember in 2003, when Congress defunded the decidedly creepy Total Information Awareness program? It didn’t die; it just changed names and split into many smaller programs. We know that corporations are doing an enormousamount of spying on behalf of the government: all parts.
We know all of this not because the government is honest and forthcoming, but mostly through three backchannels — inadvertent hints or outright admissions by government officials in hearings and court cases, information gleaned from government documents received under FOIA, and government whistle-blowers.
There’s much more we don’t know, and often what we know is obsolete. We know quite a bit about the NSA’s ECHELON program from a 2000 European investigation, and about the DHS’s plans for Total Information Awareness from 2002, but much less about how these programs have evolved. We can make inferences about the NSA’s Utah facility based on the theoretical amount of data from various sources, the cost of computation, and the power requirements from the facility, but those are rough guesses at best. For a lot of this, we’re completely in the dark.
And that’s wrong.
The U.S. government is on a secrecy binge. Itoverclassifiesmoreinformationthanever. And we learn, again and again, that our government regularly classifies things not because they need to be secret, but because their release would be embarrassing.
Knowing how the government spies on us is important. Not only because so much of it is illegal — or, to be as charitable as possible, based on novel interpretations of the law — but because we have a right to know. Democracy requires an informed citizenry in order to function properly, and transparency and accountability are essential parts of that. That means knowing what our government is doing to us, in our name. That means knowing that the government is operating within the constraints of the law. Otherwise, we’re living in a police state.
We need whistle-blowers.
Leaking information without getting caught is difficult. It’s almost impossible to maintain privacy in the Internet Age. The WikiLeaks platform seems to have been secure — Bradley Manning was caught not because of a technological flaw, but because someone he trusted betrayed him — but the U.S. government seems to have successfully destroyed it as a platform. None of the spin-offs have risen to become viable yet. The New Yorker recently unveiled its Strongboxplatform for leaking material, which is still new but looks good. This link contains the best advice on how to leak information to the press via phone, email, or the post office. The National Whistleblowers Center has a page on national-security whistle-blowers and their rights.
Leaking information is also very dangerous. The Obama Administration has embarked on a waronwhistle-blowers, pursuing them — both legally and through intimidation — further than any previous administration has done. Mark Klein, Thomas Drake, and William Binney have all been persecuted for exposing technical details of our surveillance state. Bradley Manning has been treated cruelly and inhumanly — and possibly tortured — for his more-indiscriminate leaking of State Department secrets.
The Obama Administration’s actions against the Associated Press, its persecution of Julian Assange, and its unprecedented prosecution of Manning on charges of “aiding the enemy” demonstrate how far it’s willing to go to intimidate whistle-blowers — as well as the journalists who talk to them.
But whistle-blowing is vital, even more broadly than in government spying. It’s necessary for good government, and to protect us from abuse of power.
We need details on the full extent of the FBI’s spying capabilities. We don’t know what information it routinely collects on American citizens, what extra information it collects on those on various watch lists, and what legal justifications it invokes for its actions. We don’t know its plans for future data collection. We don’t know what scandals and illegal actions — either past or present — are currently being covered up.
We also need information about what data the NSA gathers, either domestically or internationally. We don’t know how much it collects surreptitiously, and how much it relies on arrangements with various companies. We don’t know how much it uses password cracking to get at encrypted data, and how much it exploits existing system vulnerabilities. We don’t know whether it deliberately inserts backdoors into systems it wants to monitor, either with or without the permission of the communications-system vendors.
And we need details about the sorts of analysis the organizations perform. We don’t know what they quickly cull at the point of collection, and what they store for later analysis — and how long they store it. We don’t know what sort of database profiling they do, how extensive their CCTV and surveillance-drone analysis is, how much they perform behavioral analysis, or how extensively they trace friends of people on their watch lists.
We don’t know how big the U.S. surveillance apparatus is today, either in terms of money and people or in terms of how many people are monitored or how much data is collected. Modern technology makes it possible to monitor vastly more people — yesterday’s NSA revelations demonstrate that they could easily surveil everyone — than could ever be done manually.
Whistle-blowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What’s important here are government programs and methods, not data about individuals. I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior. Do it carefully and do it safely, but — and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs — do it.
If you see something, say something. There are many people in the U.S. that will appreciate and admire you.
For the rest of us, we can help by protesting this war on whistle-blowers. We need to force our politicians not to punish them — to investigate the abuses and not the messengers — and to ensure that those unjustly persecuted can obtain redress.
Our government is putting its own self-interest ahead of the interests of the country. That needs to change.
When I tell people I study social media, politics and social movements, I often get a version of the question: “But there were protests before Facebook.” Sure, I say, but how did people hear about it? Word-of-mouth is, of course, one way but [in the modern era] it’s almost never fast enough to spread protest of news quickly enough–remember, a political protest is a strategic game with multiple actors including a state which often wants to shut them down. Too slow diffusion of information, and your people will get arrested faster than they can show up at all. History of modern revolutions is always mixed up with the history and the structure of the communicative infrastructure of technology.
That is why the speed of the initial response curve is crucial to whether a protest will survive or not. In Egypt, activists protested for many years on January 25 before 2011. But there were too few of them (100-150 per year) to sustain against the repression. On 2011, the initial day, there were about 5000-10000 people in Tahrir. It was too many, and it wasn’t the usual suspects (“It wasn’t just your usual activist friends, it was your Facebook friends”, an activist told me explaining how he knew it was different that time) and the movement was able to roll out from there. [Added: See footnote. I’m clarifying one aspect of a complex story. This is, of course, not the whole story!]
Turkey, my home country, is known for big demonstrations. After the Arab Spring, there were demonstrations of about a million people in Diyarbakir (a predominantly Kurdish region) and people asked me if this was Turkish spring. I laughed. Diyarbakır can have a million people to have party to sneeze together. The Kurdish opposition is well-organized and has always been able to bring large numbers to streets. May Day celebrations in Taksim, Turkey are legendary (they alternate between lethal and joyous and are often quite large). But they are also always organized by trade-unions and political parties.
Turkey has has a variety of large demonstrations over the years. Not a single large, widespread spontaneous one, though.
The last somewhat organic, widespread demonstrations I can remember in the 1980, post-coup era are the “1989 Spring” workers’ strikes and actions which were widespread and which culminated in the Zonguldak mine workers strike. And those were also somewhat- to completely-led by the trade unions.
Pretty much every other large, impact-full political gathering in Turkey I know of has been organized by a traditional institutions.
So, Turkey has been a NAACP country, not Tahrir.
That is, until yesterday.
So, let’s get some of the Tahrir/Taksim comparisons out of the way. Turkey’s government, increasingly authoritarian or not, is duly elected and fairly popular. They have been quite successful in a number of arenas. They were elected for the third time, democratically, in 2011. The economy has been doing relatively well amidst global recession, though it has slowed a bit recently and there are signs of worrisome bubbles. So, Turkey is not ruled by a Mubarak.
But it’s also not Sweden. The government has been displaying an increasingly tone-deaf, majoritarian-authoritarian tendency in that they are plowing through with divisive projects. (I should add that the opposition parties are spectacularly incompetent and should share any blame that goes around).
The government has also revolutionized Turkey’s government” services through the expansion of a spectacular level of e-government–which has greatly eased many people’s lives as bureaucracy is a major quality of life issue in countries like Turkey. This, in turn, has altered power relations between civic servants (who form the majority of the secular middle-class which does not vote for AKP) and the mass of citizens (many of whom do vote for AKP).
However, the expansion of e-government has also enabled and been accompanied by expansion of state surveillance. [So, in many ways Turkey is both more free and less free].
There has also been great pressure on media to self-censure (to be honest, most Turkish mainstream media is not lining up for press courage awards, either, so most have been compliant and cowardly to the degree that CNN Turkey was showing cooking shows while CNN international was showing the protests in Turkey as a major news story yesterday). Further, the government has been moving to legally “mandate” lifestyle choices regarding alcohol, Internet content, etc. to create obligatory behaviors rather than recognizing that there are large swaths of the country that does not agree with its views on what one should drink or watch (ironically, also among its own voters.)
So, what’s the underling structure of the protests? It’s an increasingly tone-deaf, majority government who is relatively popular but is pursuing unpopular, divisive projects; an incompetent opposition; a cowardly, compliant mass media scene PLUS widespread, common use of social media.
In Turkey, especially in large cities, almost everyone has at least one cell phone, and many of them are Internet enabled. (You must provide your citizen ID number to get one which also means that the surveillance capacity is also broad although the amount of data means that the surveillance is likely targeted rather than just broad and random). Facebook is very common, with more than 30 million users. (It’s in the top ten worldwide). About 16% of the Interet population also uses Twitter and, as in here, Twitter is very important exactly because who those 16% are. (In fact, probably more important because it is not everyone and creates a somewhat more exclusive space though that is eroding).
One area that has been creating increasing tension between the Turkish government and many citizens in Istanbul has been the urban renewal projects undertaken by AKP. Some, for sure, are popular like the “metrobus” that zips between the two continents in a dedicated lane, bypassing the torturous traffic jams. Others, like the “renewal” of the wonderful, unique tapestry of Tarlabaşı near Taksim, home to Roma, transexuals, urban poor and other misfits, by bulldozing this area to throw up soulless, concrete and glass structures to be built and sold, helpfully, by the prime-minister’s son-in-law, are largely unpopular ,both among the people who live in these areas or who inhabit the beautiful, vibrant areas around Taksim, Beyoglu, Cihangir.
So, it is not a coincidence that the latest incident was sparked by attempts to resist renewal of the “Gezi park” area of Taksim which has the last teeny-tiny bit of green in a very concrete, overbuilt part of Istanbul, historic Taksim. There was some long and complicated back-and-forth about this which ended with the government announcing that all or parts of the park might be replaced with a … shopping mall.
(Disclosure, I personally think most shopping malls are the secret 11th circle of hell, as described in the lost copy of the Dante’s Inferno that will be revealed in Don Brown’s next bestseller book!)
So, when a small –I repeat a very small, especially for Turkey– group of people tried to resist the bulldozers uprooting of the trees in Gezi to begin the construction, I did not think that much of it.
Here’s how small the protests were, from Aaron Stein’s tweet stream.
What happened next was a horrific, disproportionate police response which included a lot of tear gas and beating up of protesters. However, I should note that this, too is not unprecedented. Not at all. This Reuters image, which rang around the world, makes the situation fairly clear.
Reuters / Osmn Orsal
Then, the incompetent and cowardly media coverage started acting as usual–which meant a general blackout of crucial news. This, too, is not unprecedented. Many major news events, recently, have been broken on Twitter including the accidental bombing of Kurdish smugglers in Roboski (Uludere in Turkish) which killed 34 civilians, including many minors. That story was denied and ignored by mainstream TV channels while the journalists knew something had happened. Finally, one of them, Serdar Akinan, was unable to suppress his own journalist instincts and bought his own plane ticket and ran to the region. His poignant photos of mass lines of coffins, published on Twitter, broke the story and created the biggest political crisis for the government. Serdar, unfortunately, got fired from his job as a journalist.
Here’s Serdar’s Twitter pictures breaking the news about the biggest political scandal in Turkey in years, in face of mass media silence on the topic. (Twitter search failing me in finding his original tweet but here he is telling people he is going to the area, by himself, as the silence about the bombings continues on media).
Serdar Akinan’s groundbreaking photos from Roboski (Uludere)
It was after the Gezi protesters were met with the usual combination of tear-gas and media silence something interesting started happening. The news of the protests started circulating around social media, especially on Twitter and Facebook. I follow a sizable number of people in Turkey and my Twitter friends include AKP supporters as well as media and academics. Everyone was aghast at the idea that a small number of young people, trying to protect trees, were being treated so brutally. Also, the government, which usually tends to get ahead of such events by having the prime minister address incidents, seemingly decided to ignore this round. They probably thought it was too few, too little, too environmental, too marginal.
On that, it seems they were wrong. Soon after, I started watching hashtags pop-up on Twitter, and established Twitter personas –ranging from media stars to political accounts– start sharing information about solidarity gatherings in other cities, and other neighborhoods in Istanbul. Around 3am, I had pictures from many major neighborhoods in Turkey –Kadıköy, Bakırköy, Beşiktaş, Avcılar, etc– showing thousands of people on the streets, not really knowing what to do, but wanting to do something. There was a lot of banging of pots, flags, and slogans. There were also solidarity protests in Izmit, Adana, Izmir, Ankara, Konya, Afyon, Edirne,Mersin, Trabzon, Antalya, Eskişehir, Aydın and growing.
So, as far as I can remember, these are the first protests in Turkey in the post-80 coup era that are less like NAACP-organized civil rights protests, and more like social-media fueled Tahrir protests. (Just so people don’t get confused, there are significant differences between Egypt 2011 and Turkey starting with the fact that AKP is a duly elected, relatively popular government that has been growing tone-deaf and authoritarian/majoritarian).
So, is there a social-media style of protest? I think we have enough examples now to say there seems to be, and here are some of their common elements. (Examples include Egypt and Tunisia, M15 in Spain, Occupy, Gezi in Turkey, Greece, etc).
1- Lack of organized, institutional leadership. This also makes it hard for anyone to “sell out” the movement because nobody can negotiate on behalf of it. (For hilarious versions, read Wael Ghonim’s version of how Mubarak officials tried to convince him to call of the protests in return for concessions as he tried to explain that he had no such power!)
On the other hand, this means that the movement cannot negotiate gains either because.. Well, because it cannot negotiate.
2- A feeling of lack of institutional outlet. In the case of Egypt, this was because elections were rigged and politics banned. In Turkey, media has been cowered and opposition parties are spectacularly incompetent. In Occupy in US, there was a feeling that the government and the media are at the hands of the moneyed interests and corrupt.
3- Non-activist participation. I think this is crucial. Most previous big demonstrations in Turkey are attended by people who have attended demonstrations before. Tahrir protests 2011, Tunisia December 2010, Gezi 2013 drew out large numbers of non-activists.
4- Breaking of pluralistic ignorance. I have made this argument before but revolutions, political upheavals, and large movements are often result of breaking of “pluralistic ignorence”–ie the idea that you are the only one, or one of few, with a view. Street demonstrations, in that regard, are a form of social media in that they are powerful to the degree that allow citizens to signal a plurality to their fellow citizens, and help break pluralist ignorance. (Hence, the point isn’t whether the signalling mechanism is digital or not, but whether how visible and social it is).
5-Organized around a “no” not a “go.” Existing social media structures allow for easier collective action around shared grievances to *stop* or *oppose* something (downfall of Mubarak, stopping a government’s overreach, etc) rather than strategic action geared towards obtaining political power. This is probably the single biggest weaknesses of these movements and the reason why they don’t make as much historical impact as their size and power would suggest in historical comparison. However, in the end, politics happens where politics happens and staying out or being unable to join results in a tapering, whimpering out effect as the movement slowly dissipates as it runs out of tactical moves and goas.
6-External Attention. Social media allows for bypassing domestic choke-points of censorship and reach for global attention. This was crucial in the Arab Spring (and we know many people tweeting about it were outside the region which makes Twitter more powerful in its effects, not less.
Here’s CNN International showing Turkey protests while CNN Turkey shows a cooking show. (Image widely circulated on social media):
CNN International covers the Gezi protests while CNN Turkey shows cooking shows.
Through social media, protesters learned that the whole world, or at least some portions of it, was indeed watching. Since protests are as much about signaling more than they are about force (as protesters are almost never more powerful than state security forces), this is a crucial dynamics.
7- Social Media as Structuring the Narrative. Here and in other protests, we saw that social media allows a crowd-sourced, participatory, but also often social-media savvy activist-led structuring of the meta-narrative of what is happening, and what shape the collective grievances should take. Stories we tell about politics are incredibly important in shaping that very politics and social media has opened a new and complicated novel path in which meta-narratives about political actions emerge and coalesce.
8-Not Easily Steerable Towards Strategic Political Action. This we have seen again and again and is related to point number 5. Social-media fueled collective action lacks the affordances of politics an institutional arrangement –political party, NGO, etc– can provide.
Where is this going? I can’t offer predictions but I do emphasize that this is not going to topple the Turkish government by itself. This is not Tahrir, 2011, but it is an interesting inflection point among the frustrated but powerful segments of the Turkish society who believe that the current government has decided to run roughshod over them and cannot find efficacious outlets for their opposition.
Here’s a striking example of what media cowardice and self-censorship looks like. New York Times covered the Turkey protests on the front page of its online site. Sabah, a major newspaper in Turkey, did not put one of the biggest protests in Turkey on its front page at all.
(Image circulating on social media)
What happens next depends on many factors including the government response and the depth of the feeling among the Gezi protesters. I doubt, however, that this is the last social-media fueled protest we have seen.
OBLIGATORY FOOTNOTE:
*** It should be needless to say at this point but just so someone who thinks this is somehow a profound comment doesn’t feel like they have to point it out fifty times in the comments section: OF COURSE REVOLUTIONS ARE MULTI-CAUSAL, COMPLEX EVENTS AND THE COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE DOES NOT CAUSE THE UNDERLYING GRIEVANCES BUT RATHER IT HELPS STRUCTURE WHAT KIND OF, IF ANY, COLLECTIVE ACTION IS ORGANIZED AROUND THE GRIEVANCES.
(Sorry for the all-caps but I spent the 2011 “Arab Spring” year having to respond to people who felt compelled to keep saying political uprisings are about social, economic and cultural grievances as if there were actual serious people who claimed otherwise–and as if that fact meant the communicative infrastructure was irrelevant which is either the view of a naive person who has never lived under a censorship regime where it becomes blindingly obvious why communication infrastructure matters–yes, all the way back to 1848 and even the French revolution as those stories are intertwined with the development of print, telegraph, railroads (which carry news and newspapers), etc.)
**** (Also, I wrote this very fast in an otherwise very busy week. I will correct typos(!), update links, as I get a chance!) This is a “fast and dirty” analysis, not meant to be comprehensive, include every factor, does not list every misstep by the government or by the protesters, nor does it provide the exhaustive or complete list of every factor!
Zeynep Tufekci- She is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I was previously a fellow at Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and an assistant professor of sociology at UMBC
With God’s help and that blessed the efforts of dedicated volunteers, has been the arrival of ambulances and medical equipment to port door fancy border, and entered the Syrian camps inside Syrian territory.
After more than 36 hours, the convoy of humanitarian relief of the Libyan Red Crescent that drove more than 2,000 kilometers inside Turkish territory, categorically distance From port “Abeslh” the Turkish-Greek border passing Abralrev the Turkish down to the Turkish border Syrian port to the door of fancy, a trip although Amishqtha began enjoyable and after the historic deliver of aid to its people, a trip in order do our Humanitarian work, we had been awake in this the whole time, we did not stop to sleep or rest. The weather is summer and there is humidity present in the air, we stopped only to refuel in Awasalah and to eat Maphozatna of snacks prepared for this trip, we raced against time, and we put solutions to every obstacle that disrupted the continuance of our journey.
A sweeping attack, and a different kind of fire.
I remember that on the day that we were waiting for the completion of procedures for a group of ambulances coming to us from Britain, we waited a long time from midday to dawn the next day, despite the difficulty of waiting, but we were surprised after sunset on that day by a barricade of soldiers of different sizes and weapons coming in every direction …Mosquitoes
A different kind of army, that you can not be overcome, therefore, it was “the law” which tire us, tougher abuse with nuisance, and this attack which continues for several hours , but leaves our bodies after sucked our blood, the leave a traces like we had a rash of disease “smallpox” God, we go back to our trip, which for the major part of the trip included 25 Ambulance and medical equipment are important, came across Europe to enter into Syrian territory from several outlets across the organization and supervision of the Libyan Red Crescent, a journey fraught with dangers were threatening stumbled trip, but thanks to Almighty God has things better, and we saw in the port “door fancy” part of the the suffering of the Syrian people beloved, pictures and events I think it needs to stops and days to write it … it’s a humanitarian crisis every Matany word meaning ….. GOD Aadri the how to carry my heart Mashahdh … but the stage will come out of them remain of the Syrian strong Maafah the people … are preparing to return to the “Libya” national … who lived La Paz portion of those suffering and waiting for a big and great benefits to be helpful to his sons and his brothers. Conclusion:
I thank all those who helped in this convoy of humanity, and each of the month and dedication to deliver aid may alleviate the humanitarian suffering of the displaced and internally displaced people within Syrian territory, I also thank the Libyan Red Crescent honoring me to be a member of the trip humanitarian confirm that the charitable work of the limitless him.
This is the original message, if you can help with a better translation, please do so, send the translation to message box in Akashma Web Blogs or send to
Akashmanews@gmail.com any help it is appreciated. Thanks
رحلة عنوانها الامل .
بقلم محمد مصطفى المصراتى
بعون الله ثم الجهود المباركة من المتطوعين المخلصين تم وصول سيارات الاسعاف والمعدات الطبية منفذ باب الهوى الحدودى ،ودخلت الى المخيمات السورية داخل التراب السورى.
فبعد أكثر من36 ساعة قطعت فيها قافلة الاغاثة الانسانية للهلال الاحمر الليبى اكثر من 2000 كيلو متر داخل الاراضى التركية،قاطعة المسافة انطلاقا من منفذ “ابصلة” بالحدود التركية اليونانية مارة عبرالريف التركى وصولا الى الحدود التركية السورية الى منفذ باب الهوى ،رحلة رغم مشقتها بدات ممتعة وتاريخية بعد ايصال المساعدات الى اهلها ،رحلة من اجل العمل الانسانى، رحلة ظللنا فيها مستيقظين فلا نوم ولا راحة والطقس كان صيفى والرطوبة حاضرة ،ولا استراحة الا للتزود بالوقود اوالصلاة وتناول مابحوزتنا من اطعمة خفيفة معدة لهذه الرحلة، كنا نسابق الزمن ،ونضع الحلول لاى عائق يعطل تواصل الرحلة .
هجوم كاسح ،ونيران من نوع مختلف.
اذكر انه فى اليوم الذى كنا ننتظر اتمام اجراءات خروج دفعة من سيارات الاسعاف القادمة لنا من بريطانيا،انتظرنا طويلا من منتصف النهار الى فجر اليوم التالى ،رغم صعوبة الانتظار الا اننا فوجئنا بعد غروب شمس ذلك اليوم بارتال من جنود مختلفى الاحجام والاسلحة تطردنا فى كل اتجاه …جيش من نوع مختلف ،لايمكنك ان تتغلب عليه ،انه “الناموس” الذى نكل بنا اشد التنكيل فمع ازعاجها ،وهجومه المكثف الذى تواصل لعدة ساعات ابى الا ان يترك فى اجسادنا اثر امتصاصه لدمائنا،اثار جعلت وكاننا تعرضنا لطفح من داء “الجدرى” عافاكم الله…نعود الى رحلتنا ،والتى كانت جزء من رحلة كبرى ضمت 25 سيارة اسعاف ومعدات طبية هامة، جائت عبر اوربا لتدخل الى الاراضى السورية من عدة منافذ عبر تنظيم واشراف من الهلال الاحمر الليبى،رحلة محفوفة بمخاطر كانت تهدد تعثر الرحلة ،ولكن بفضل الله تعالى تمت الامور على خير،وشاهدنا فى منفذ”باب الهوى” جزء من معاناة الشعب السورى الحبيب،صور واحداث اعتقد انها تحتاج الى وقفات وايام للكتابة عنها…انها ازمة انسانية بكل ماتعنى الكلمة من معنى…..ياالله لاادرى كيف تحمل قلبى ماشاهده…ولكن تظل مرحلة سيخرج منها الشعب السورى قويا معافة…نستعد للعودة الى “ليبيا” وطنى …الذى عاش جزءا لاباس به من تلك المعاناة وتنتظره استحقاقات كبيرة وعظيمة ليكون عونا لابناءه واشقائه .
خاتمة:
اشكر كل من ساهم فى هذه القافلة الانسانية ،ولكل من سهر وتفانى لايصال مساعدات قد تخفف من المعاناة الانسانية للمهجرين والنازحين داخل الاراضى السورية،كما اشكر للهلال الاحمر الليبى تشريفه لى ان اكون عضوا فى رحلة أنسانية تؤكد ان العمل الخيرى لاحدود له.
Three convoys converged in Turkey to deliver much needed aid to the people of Syria suffering a three years internal violence.
Omar Karem, 30 years old from Gaza with an uncertain future. He it is a refugee himself but regardless of his precarious situation, his humanitarian heart does not allow him to stay idle, he is adding his helping hands around in the Aleppo Halab Syrian Refugee Camp. He is stranded without visa, but this does not stop him from helping others in need.
Refugee Camp set up by UN on the border of Turkey/Syria receiving every day people running from the violence inside Syria.
It is very difficult to be Palestinian, he said. You have no rights in your land, and you have no rights in other people’s land.
The Palestinian Nabka since 1948 had left Palestinian without rights. They are denied visas to work, or to visit other countries on the ground of being Palestinian. Omar said, that most of the times they refuse to grant them visa just because they are Palestinians.
The word refugee is not new for Palestinians. The refugee status of Palestinians, it is wore as stigma. A painful one, that follows them every where they go.
“All Arab governments and specially the ones called national government are unchanged. Omar, said. They filled history with revolutionary slogans. They said that they will liberate Palestine, they set up thousands of festivals. Printed millions of posters and after 65 years of Nakba, nothing changed one meter of Palestine’s land, he said.
Omar, that victoriously broke Gaza siege last year had seen the end of his triumph. Now stranded in the border of Turkey/Syria in Aleppo Syria in a refugee camp for displaced people forgetting his own struggles and his uncertain future, he moves around in Halab refugee camp helping and documenting the atrocities of the war.
He better than anybody knows the horrors of the war, he lived the Israel occupation all his life. He knows the terror in the eyes of a child after a bomb had destroyed half of his home. Israel did not spared the terror of the bombs, the white phosphorous, the sonar bombs, the drones flying every day above their heads. Omar knows the aftermath of war, now he sees himself as a refugee in a foreign land, but still hoping for a better tomorrow, and helping Syrian refugees to cope with the lost.
What to do, when you are Palestinian? Add your voice to the Palestinian Struggle, he said, let’s help to end the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. Now witnessing the horror of the Syrian violence that does not forgive, women, children and elderly, he said, “Syria will be free.”
thousands miles away from their Land, Omar Karem and Ebrahim Musaji Aleppo Syrian Refugee Camp
From all the oddities of life, Ebrahim Musaji, 27 Mavi Marmara survivor and humanitarian peace activist from the UK comes to Syria in a convoy to bring Aid, and find Omar Karem from Gaza, Palestine, stranded yet in another no man’s land. When Ebrahim went to Gaza 2 years ago, Omar still in Gaza was part of those in need, now circumstances had changed. They both meet in another country, with conditions similar to Gaza. Undoubtedly the times changed but the situation is the same.
In a skype interview, Ebrahim Musaji, speaks of his many humanitarian enterprises. He has been in Gaza in three occasions, With Viva Palestine convoy, Road to Hope, and the attempted Mavi Marmara organized by İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri İnsani Yardım Vakfı – İHH. He had been in Syria as volunteer 2 times, the first time he stayed 3 months inside Syria helping displaced people. This would be his third time in a convoy from UK delivering aid to the people inside Syria.
Ebrahim Musaji, Omar Karem with members of the Libyan Red Crescent delegation arriving to Istanbul in their way to Syria.
Ebrahim spent 3 months in Syria on January, delivering the ambulances and donated aid and cash to school inside Syria and in the refugee camps.
25 ambulances from Libya crossed Thursday Turkish territory, loaded with tools and medical supplies, to the Syrian territory. The Ambulances were accompanied by 14 people, including three doctors, that crossed the Syrian-Turkish border from the crossing Gelovaguzo the “Gate of fancy”, in Rihaniyya area city Turkish Hataa. The coordinator of the Red Crescent in Libya, “Nasser Mohammed Dou,” said, that Libya provided so far 235 ambulance to Syria since the start of the crisis, and to support the Libyan humanitarian aid will continue on an ongoing basis to the Syrians. He explained, “Dou” that three doctors came with the delegation, in order to provide medical services to the Syrian refugees who were forced to leave their homes and stay in tents and camps inside Syrian territory.
Omar Karem and Ebrahim Musaji meet in Aleppo refugee camp on May 27, and made their way back to Istanbul to welcome the Libyan Red Crescent delegation arriving with 25 ambulances, and the group from IHH, once they all meet they started their journey to Syria.
Circumstances unite people more than they can imagine.
The humanitarian relief campaign organized by the Libyan Red Crescent to help the affected people in Syria, arrived today in Istanbul, they will be heading to Syrian border to deliver medicine and other aid.
Mohammed Mustafa Masrati, head of media and information for the Libyan Red Crescent Society
said, that the organization had conducted 14 humanitarian relief convoys for the Syrian people, campaign targeted to people living inside Syrian territory affected by the violence that is in its second year, after the Arab Spring fired up a series of uprisings that toppled Egyptian President Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, and Tunisian PresidentZine El Abidine Ben Ali, that flared up violence in the region that lead to the murder of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafee by NATO and its allies.
This campaign for which it was formed to continue the works of the committee of the Red Crescent Association delegation leading the campaign and to facilitate the legal and administrative procedures for the arrival of emergency aid to the Syrian people who suffers woes because of the internal situation, and a big shortage of medicines and basic needs.
The team of the convoy of the Libyan Red Crescent has arrived in Turkish territory this morning, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, in preparation for transfer to Syria, and containing such relief are 25 ambulance that will be driven to the border to be transferred to Syrian territory, as well as some medical equipment necessary for the treatment and ambulance many cases Alansanbh.
The head of delegation Mr. Nasser Dou Alwani, said that the aid, which will be presented during this convoy will be the best support for humanitarian efforts carried out by the Libyan Red Crescent to the aid of our brothers in Syria, said al-Alwani that this convoy is the fourteenth and thus bringing the total Libyan Red Crescent during those humanitarian campaigns they had delivered 235 ambulances. And number 7 field hospitals made into Syria. International humanitarian appeal to withstand the Arab humanitarian organizations and international humanitarian towards the Syrian people, and called for the mobilization of all potential relief to be able to deliver emergency aid to areas of displacement. In order to contribute to pain relief for people in Syria, he said.
Mr Al-Alwani explained, that the Libyan Red Crescent will not fall short in his humanitarian duty, but the needs of the Syrian people at home or refugees in neighboring countries and many come in the forefront of relief health and telemedicine, humanitarian relief, and continues the efforts of institutions relief unable to cover the minimum necessities, stressing that it is important to continue such campaigns relief and diversity of sources and non-stop, especially in light of the continued human tragedy and the continuing influx of refugees and the fall of a large number of civilian casualties and the majority of them women and children.
These convoy, which contributed to a number of branches Libyan Red Crescent Society in addition to the Association Yes Soeriaoahl charity inside Libya and abroad to confirm that the humanitarian need makes it imperative for everyone to extend a helping hand to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people, especially who did not leave Syria and witness the continuing armed conflict in the region.
Dear friends from around the world. Sadly we are driven to be even more polarized with the recent events. Here is a summary of what is happening in Turkey.
For the past few days, peaceful Turkish citizens have been protesting the demolition of Taksim Gezi Park, one of the few green areas left in the center of Istanbul. The plan by the Erdogan-run AKP government is to build a large shopping center instead, benefiting his own interests and filling his own pockets.
What started with a mere 100 protestors turned into tens of thousands over the course of a few days. People camped out in the park, sang songs, read books, danced. I was there yesterday and it was heartwarming.Prime Minister Erdogan made a public announcement two days ago stating, ‘We have made up our minds’, and that nothing will stop his plans to destroy the park.
He subsequently ordered his police forces to attack protestors in the park using water cannons and tear gas without warning in the early hours of the morning. This has been happening for the past two days, and continues as I write these words. Tents were burned, innocent citizens were dragged away and people had tear gas sprayed directly into their faces.
Innocent people are being attacked, injured and hospitalized. There are unofficial reports of one person being dead with his ID confiscated by officials (an eerie replay of the May 1 attacks when an innocent young girl was put into a coma due to tear gas attacks. This girl was later labeled by the government as a terrorist)
This has become a matter about more than just saving trees. This is an ‘I can do whatever I damn well want’, fascist mentality that not only suppresses but attacks its own people.
To make matters worse, media channels are being censored so as not to display the news.
#direngeziparki is now the 2nd worldwide trending topic on Twitter.
Please be aware and spread the word, It is very important to get international support for us. The message below is a summary of what’s happening in my country since 3 days. And this is only one example of how the current government created a country of horror with its police force.
International Human Rights Organizations and Dear Friends, Comrades, Press Members from all over the world;
This is an urgent call from human rights defenders, activists, NGOs, professional chambers, grassroots, neighborhood associations and Istanbulites.
Since the 27th of May, Istanbulites from all social and political backgrounds and ages and from all over the city had been continuing a peaceful resistance in Gezi Park, the city’s largest public park, soon to be demolished due to a so-called renewal project. This Project foresees the erection of a big mall (designed as the replica of the once Ottoman Artillery Barracks) in the place of those trees.
Against this inhumanity and extreme violence, the reaction was the occupation of the park, this time by thousands.
And this morning proved to be the culmination of violence and barbarism that no words can describe, with an disproportional use of force. The exit of the park was blocked by the police, thus locking the group in the park. The protester were then taken under crossfire of tear gas and pepper bombs, nearly getting choked to death. The only way out was by breaking the walls and many were wounded during this escape.
At the moment, brutal intervention against the protestors continues. The group has been pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed once more as they were leaving the area after reading their press call! At the moment, some are in Divan Hotel at Elmadag, having taken refuge there from the effect of the gas attacks.
Literally, almost all of Taksim Area, where Gezi Park is, is tear-gassed and
pepper gas-sprayed; especially the side streets around Taksim Square are under clouds of gas.
Dear friends, we believe we need nothing else to add; the scenes talk for themselves.
The resistance for democracy and human rights will not be terminated; we are determined to continue our struggle against a government determined to crush each and every opposition, a government that cannot tolerate even a peaceful opposition for saving trees. The present Turkish government has violated all international human rights conventions and mechanisms it is a party to.
Your valuable support and solidarity will indeed fortify our determination and resistance. Please share this news, name it and shame and blame the responsible so that this insanity and brutality practiced against human rights defenders can be terminated through international pressure.
Please help us to share this message and stop Erdogan’s ruthless, inhumane acts.
As our friends overseas, we need your help. Send this message to everyone you know. Create awareness internationally about our plight, or matters are going to get much, much worse. We want all international media channels – social media – to report these news.
What you can do:
– Forward this message to everyone you know
– Send your support messages through twitter with the #direngeziparki hashtag
– Tag @bbc @cnn @reuters and other large media channels in these posts
– Post this message on facebook
– Let your local and national media channels know
In the name of solidarity and friendship
Urban Movements Istanbul / Habitat International Coalition
6 months ago, my mother-in-law Hanifa died in Palestine, she was 89 years old, from Haifa, then Palestine.
Her family as well as millions of Palestinians were forced out of their homes in 1947, when Palestine, then a mandate of Britain was partitioned by Resolution 181 by the United Nations giving the new founded Jew State minority of Israel a 70 percent of the land and the rest 30 percent to the majority of Palestinians, which were millions.
I started my article with this lede, out of anger and frustration, for what we can and cannot write on the newspaper .
On May 06, during our budget day (Coast Report) journalists and teacher/adviser for our journalism class, staff editors and staff writers, decided what is going to be published in Coast Report for the following week for the college student newspaper; On Monday we gathered in the journalism building and discussed issues of interest–sports news, opinion and any other issue we think is worth to be investigated and write an article on it.
It seemed that being the last weeks of our publication and ending the semester the class is out of stories to print, so, our adviser asked us, what we are passionate about it?, what we want to write about. I promptly raised my hand and I said, “Divesting from Israel”, excuse me she said, so I repeated, I want to write about Boycott and Divesting Sanctions against Israel, my teacher opened her eyes so wide and become livid-I could tell she got bothered by my request- and asked to the class, if anybody have an opposing view to mine, I heard someone said, “I do not want to write about Israel”.
I immediately told the class, that colleges’ campuses and universities across the US were considering boycotting Israel, to what she said, NO! only Berkley University had boycotted Israel, to what I told her, that more than one campus had added their voice to the BDS, and I wanted to write about it. Our teacher/adviser, after seeing that nobody else wanted to write about Israel, she said with a slow tone of voice, but loud enough for everyone to hear, “There is no Palestine,” and they went ahead to put my name in the board in Views, in the budget for next week newspaper. I’ m pretty sure my teacher will not run the story. So I decided to print this article and distribute it around OCC campus, and publish it in this blog.
Over the years, the UN had adopted more than 300 resolutions calling for Israel to abide by International law and to respect the human rights of Palestinians, as well to withdraw from territories, that according to the Geneva convention, were taken illegally on the aftermath of the 1967 war. Israel had ignored every one of the UN resolutions. In light of the inactivity of the UN, the civil society of Palestine had made a call to the world to help in a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and academy boycott against Israel. Colleges and universities across the US are answering that call.
Orange Coast College should add its voice to the growing non violent BDS movement, and academy boycott growing rapidly. Other colleges and universities across the US are taking the lead in a non violent way.
Hampshire was the first US college to divest from the apartheid regime of South Africa in the late 1970s, now, 43 years later leading again the campaign against a non grata entity, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has become the first of any college or university in the US to divest from Israeli companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Hampshire college is not the only player in this fight against Israel, other campuses around the country are adding their efforts to bring Israel to comply with international resolutions voted in the floor of the United Nations.
On 2 June 2010, students at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, made history by passing two resolutions supporting human rights, upholding international law, and promoting a just peace in the Palestine/Israel conflict.
1. The first resolution calls for The Evergreen State College Foundation to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, as part of instituting a socially responsible investment policy.
2. The second resolution calls on the College to ban the use of Caterpillar, Inc. equipment from campus. (Equipment used widely in Israel, in the construction of illegal settlement and to destroy Palestinians homes.)
The Associated Students at the University of California, San Diego (ASUCSD) voted 20-12, in favor of divesting from companies that engage in business with Israel, during their meeting on March 13
On April 17, UC Berkeley announced the passing of bill 160, 11-9, the Senate voted to divests ASUC funds from companies affiliated with the Israeli military and encourages the UC system to do the same.
In a telephone interview with Columbia Professor Katherine Franke, the spokeperson for a group of over 100 faculty members, she said their endorsement to the academic boycott of Israel is solid.
“As faculty and officers of Columbia University we look to TIAA-CREF(Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association) to invest our retirement account funds wisely and ethically,” she added, “We cannot tolerate the idea that one day we may live on retirement income that finds its source in the profitability of the illegal occupation.”
The BDS movement and academic boycott is growing and will not stop until UN forces Israel to comply with its international obligations. she said.
In the mean time, the clock is ticking, add your voice and side with truth, justice and peace.
On Wednesday 08, when the Coast Report publication run its edition, my article ‘Divesting from Israel’, was nowhere to be found. On Wednesdays, after we pick up the print edition of the newspaper, the Coast Report; staff writers and our teacher/adviser change views on the newspaper edition, needless to say, I was very mad because my article was not published. The teacher said that some articles were not run, because they did not have space.
I did not mention anything and waited until next Monday to ask, if the last week articles were going to be printed on the next publication. Immediately she said, “If you talking about the Israel article, she said, it won’t be published, because it is to insensitive. She said that there are tons of facts that need to be corroborated, to which I said, I credited the sources, and I made a telephone interview with Professor Katherine Franke, from Colombia University, and all the information was verified.
My teacher was not too happy about my article, then she asked me, where did I took the other information?, I said, from their respective News papers (Universities and colleges).
She told me, that there were facts, that need to be corroborated. I told her everything is factual to the truth, to which she said, “The conflict, the Israel/Palestinian conflict needs to be corroborated, she said that there are conflicting opinions. To which I told her, that I was writing this article for the Views Section, which it is my opinion, but she said, we cannot run it, and that’s it.
At this point of the argument I was super mad and told her that she did not want to run it because it was about Israel, she said she never said that the article was not going to be run because it was about Israel, but there is no other reason why she would not even consider to publish it and let the readers decide if it is controversial, or insensitive. Needless to say that she is Jew, not that should matter, but in this case it did. Her being Jew, should be about of the question, should not matter.
This is the college student newspaper, we should be able to choose the topic, but she has the control of what can be published and what not.
Any way she did not run my article but instead the Editorial section of May 15 of the Coast Report published something that seems very personal, seems directed to me. I could be wrong, but she knows that I maintain a blog and she knows that I write about Middle Eastern issues, she knows that I m Palestinian Activist, and by now, she knows that I m working tirelessly in the BDS and Academic Boycott campaign against Israel.
Read the following Editorial and be the opinion maker.
Editorial: Trust the news, not the views, Published in The Editorial of Coast report on the May 15, issue.
The press is often vilified as biased and unprofessional. A common accusation is that reporters selectively filter what to put into a story based on what supports their various political agendas, and that they skew facts to slant public opinion one way or the other.
You see it on Fox and MSNBC all the time. Fox is notoriously conservative, and MSNBC infamously left-leaning. But these institutions were created to pander to their audiences’ political views, and should not be taken seriously as real journalists.
They do not represent most members of the news media. It’s true that we filter what goes into our articles, but not because of any political bias or agenda. Any story has a matter of inches to fit full coverage in.
Larger organizations such as the Los Angeles Times publish longer articles, but the average at most publications is less than 500 words. Those 500 words need to convey what happened, when it happened, where it happened, how it happened, what it means and why it’s important, who was involved, all the sides of it and what’s next.
That’s why stories are filtered. Journalists strive to present objective, accurate reporting, and agonize over which facts readers need to know and which can be left out so the story can fit. Coverage of a government meeting, for example, would include arguments or decisions involving the budget, but leave out the debate on which brand of water tastes best.
Reporters take volumes of notes before submitting a story. They put those into a story based on what’s most important, and will thoroughly check for inaccuracies. Once an article is written, it goes through a stringent editing process, often being reviewed by multiple editors for content, objectivity, accuracy and grammar.
There will always be writers who abuse the position they’re in, but most regard themselves as gatekeepers for the flow of information and take that seriously. We are our own biggest critics, and abhor unfair, inaccurate reporting. Rely on Facebook and bloggers, who often have no code of ethics, and see how reliable the news becomes. [end]
The editorial at Coast Report, should know, that mostly, all the information published on facebook and in blogs, it is borrowed, clipped, reprinted from “Trust worthy and credible media”. Where their reporters take tons of notes. Any way the editorial is somehow deliberately misleading the readers, in its first paragraph; ” A common accusation is that reporters selectively filter what to put into a story based on what supports their various political agendas, and that they skew facts to slant public opinion one way or the other.”.
The reporters are not the ones who filter the story, the reporters are assigned the stories. The editors decide what is going to be published, based on what supports their various political agendas. Even after we take the notes back, and write our articles, the editors purge every word they don’t like, at the end, the story depends on the editor approval.
I know I m going to be in problems in my college, at least in my journalism class, but truth to the truth. This is a small college newspaper, should be unbiased, should be run by the students, should be fair. If this happen in a small newspaper, I just imagine what happens in a commercial big news paper.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) in the United States for its principled support for the cause of justice in Palestine by adopting, at its annual meeting in Seattle on 20 April 2013, a resolution
PACBI and the entire BDS movement around the world celebrated what commentators described as a “crushing defeat” of legal efforts by Israel and its powerful lobby groups to delegitimize BDS and anti-Zionist activism in general. This month, a British employment tribunal dismissed a lawsuit against BDS
It is with great disappointment that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has learned that you will be accepting the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University Award ‘the Key of Knowledge Award’ on May 6, 2013 [1]. We hope that a personal appeal from us, a….
It is hard to describe in words what Anonymous really is. To most, it is a group of hackers who disrupt web pages and steal data. However, some think that they are doing good things for society.
The irony of the situation is that Anonymous is not a group that can be traced to a building or to a country. They are dispersed around the world — they have no offices, no leaders, they do not follow a strategy.
With its ever growing popularity, it has become a case of whether or not they can actually be considered criminals.
At Orange Coast College, most haven’t heard of it, but the students who had agreed that while they are hackers, they do things that benefit society.
Jairo Navarete, 24, computer science major at OCC, said Anonymous is a group of Internet activists and it is good when the group exposes bad information about certain companies.
“The government should not punish them with long sentences, because what they do not affect the company’s people — only the money,” he said.
Another student said the group usually has the people in mind.
“They are a group that speaks in favor of society’s best interest and only mean well,” said Garret Smith, 19, a video-game science major.
Some students said releasing confidential information can be valuable for society.
“I know they expose information that would be valuable for the public to know, that otherwise is kept secret to fulfill the government’s agenda,” said 20-year-old Jimmy Wakem.
The Obama administration says organizations such as WikiLeaks and hacking group LulzSec may conduct economic
espionage against U.S. companies.
In fact, Anonymous members work independently but when they finish, they leave their calling card where they use their famous quote, “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”
Anonymous has millions of followers on the Internet. Their Youtube videos have millions of views and they have become a type of cyber heroes.
Heroes or villains, the government has doubled its efforts to stop Anonymous’ activities, but it seems that the hacktivists are multiplying and Anonymous is growing every day.
Disclaimer: This article belongs to Coast report. The article was published on their print and online edition on April 3, 2013.
Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.
Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval described it as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.
Hawking’s decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.
In April the Teachers’ Union of Ireland became the first lecturers’ association in Europe to call for an academic boycott of Israel, and in the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first national academic group to do so.
In the four weeks since Hawking’s participation in the Jerusalem event was announced, he has been bombarded with messages from Britain and abroad as part of an intense campaign by boycott supporters trying to persuade him to change his mind. In the end, Hawking told friends, he decided to follow the advice of Palestinian colleagues who unanimously agreed that he should not attend.
Hawking’s decision met with abusive responses on Facebook, with many commentators focusing on his physical condition, and some accusing him of antisemitism.
By participating in the boycott, Hawking joins a small but growing list of British personalities who have turned down invitations to visit Israel, including Elvis Costello, Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox and Mike Leigh.
However, many artists, writers and academics have defied and even denounced the boycott, calling it ineffective and selective. Ian McEwan, who was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011, responded to critics by saying: “If I only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out of bed … It’s not great if everyone stops talking.”
Noam Chomsky, a prominent supporter of the Palestinian cause, has said that he supports the “boycott and divestment of firms that are carrying out operations in the occupied territories” but that a general boycott of Israel is “a gift to Israeli hardliners and their American supporters”.
Hawking has visited Israel four times in the past. Most recently, in 2006, he delivered public lectures at Israeli and Palestinian universities as the guest of the British embassy in Tel Aviv. At the time, he said he was “looking forward to coming out to Israel and the Palestinian territories and excited about meeting both Israeli and Palestinian scientists”.
Since then, his attitude to Israel appears to have hardened. In 2009, Hawking denounced Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza, telling Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera that Israel’s response to rocket fire from Gaza was “plain out of proportion … The situation is like that of South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue.”
Israel Maimon, chairman of the presidential conference said: “This decision is outrageous and wrong.
“The use of an academic boycott against Israel is outrageous and improper, particularly for those to whom the spirit of liberty is the basis of the human and academic mission. Israel is a democracy in which everyone can express their opinion, whatever it may be. A boycott decision is incompatible with open democratic discourse.”
In 2011, the Israeli parliament passed a law making a boycott call by an individual or organisation a civil offence which can result in compensation liable to be paid regardless of actual damage caused. It defined a boycott as “deliberately avoiding economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another factor only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage”.
• This article was amended on 8 May 2013. The original described Hawking as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He stepped down in 2009.
Nationalist Buddhist monk U Wirathu inspects the injuries of a farmer who was injured during a land dispute in Maupin Township, Irrawaddy Delta last month. (Photo: Jpaing / The Irrawaddy)
U Wirathu is a 45-year-old Buddhist monk from Mandalay’s Masoeyein Monastery who has acquired notoriety for spreading anti-Muslim sentiments under his nationalist “969” campaign. It encourages Burmese Buddhists to shun Muslim businesses and communities.
U Wirathu was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2003 for inciting religious conflicts, but was released in January 2012. In October, he organized protests against the international Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s plan to open a Burma office.
In a recent interview with The Irrawaddy’s Thalun Zaung Htet he blames some of the communal violence in Meikhtila on March 20-22 on the Islamic community, and claims his campaign played no role in the anti-Islamic unrest.
QUESTION: According to government figures, the death toll of the conflict in Meikhtila is 42. You went there to stop the rioters, why have there been so many deaths?
ANSWER: The death toll was highest on the second day of the unrest and most victims were Muslims who were stuck inside a mosque, mainly Muslim students from the madrassa and some civilians. Local village officials had hid them there to protect them.
After that, at 4 am early morning when the police guards were gone, the hidden Muslims became agitated and shouted slogans in unison. So the townspeople found out the Muslims are there and then they were surrounded. To the left of the group was a mosque and at the right side there was a burned area and in front there was a field, so there was no place for them to run. Then, one of the Muslims shot a slingshot at one of the Buddhist monks and the crowd became angry. Then they [the Muslims] threw bags containing acid at the crowd, which had just stood and watched the situation. The Muslims stayed inside but continued to throw things. I was there on the night of 20th March and [88 Generation Student leader] Min Ko Naing and [dissident monk] Shwe Nya Wah Sayadaw, were also there. Then, 20 Muslim people came out and fought with the Burmese crowd outside. Then people died there, almost 10, 11 deaths occurred. Security personnel saved the rest of the persons in hiding. These were the most deaths that occurred at one spot in Meikhtila. Other casualties were burned in fires. The only group killing was this case, the other deadly incidents involved just one or two people.
Q: The UN secretary-general’s special rapporteur on Burma Vijay Nambiar and international media outlets have said the Meikhtila riots were acts of planned violence. What do you think of these allegations?
A: On the first and second day, there was no systematic violence. Actually, on first day, people living in the kalar [derogatory term for Muslim] quarter were systematically [attacking]. They were carrying knives, sticks and other weapons and attacked the Burmese. When the crowd heard that one monk was killed during the unrest, they went to the kalar quarter without weapons. Only one Burmese person out of ten carried a stick from the ruined houses, and no other weapons. When they clashed Muslims used knives and many were hurt. Two died and 16 were injured. The injuries were from severe knife cuts. So, the planned attacks came from the Muslim quarters. Until the second day nothing was planned.
Q: Currently, international media report that “Buddhist extremists” are leading the “969” campaign. Can you tell us more about your campaign?
A: Sure. The first 9 stands for the nine special attributes of the Lord Buddha and the 6 for the six special attributes of his Dhamma, or Buddhist Teachings, and the last 9 represents the nine special attributes of Buddhist Sanga [monks]. Those special attributes are the three Gems of the Buddha. In the past, the Buddha, Sangha, Dhamma and the wheel of Dhamma were Buddhists’ sign. And the same goes for 969; it is another Buddhist sign.
Now people blame 969, saying it is involved in the atrocities because they cannot find the real culprits. [But] the 969 leaflets were not found and no one distributed it in Meikthila. When I came and made a sermon there, I shared 25 stickers and it says “Save Our Future”. The 969 campaign was made the culprit, but actually it is innocent as it only represents the special attributes of the Buddha.
Q: Houses, shops and mosques were destroyed in Pegu Division and the 969 was spray-painted on damaged cars and Muslim buildings in Gyobingauk Township. What can you say about the fact that your symbol was painted there?
A: I don’t have any contacts in Pegu. So I have no idea. There was no problem in the place where I have formed and organized my campaign and it goes in accordance with my rules. And, I have been told about many cases, such as cases of fighting between Burmese and Muslims and rape cases of 4 and 7-grade girls. Most rape victims are students. Other cases are physically attacks and insulting to Buddhism—to tell you the truth, there was a case of verbal abuse of monks. Other cases include illegal mosques; mosques and Muslim graveyards constructed without government permission. I’m received over 50 such cases and I provided suggestions in over 100 cases. I told them to solve the cases in accordance with the law and most take my advice, even the senior monks. Everything is fine as I deal with the cases within the law. In our community, the real 969 [campaigners] do not use violence.
Q: The Ministry of Religion in Naypyidaw said 969 is not officially recognized as a Buddhist symbol. Can I ask for your views on this matter?
A: Sure. We share it in ways that we can. We don’t register it to distribute it legally. For example, some prepare the symbol, and others donate and distribute it. We don’t register it as our official trademark symbol for our movement.
Q: In your sermon “Don’t take nationalism lightly”, you preached that Min Ko Naing and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could not achieve much [for Burmese Buddhists] and that the National League for Democracy is not a real fighting peacock [the NLD’s symbol], but it is a peacock fighting for Muslims. Can you comment on this sermon?
A: I have been supporting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi through the years, but she was not a reliable leader during the Arakan State [sectarian] unrest. I think it is because of the people around her. And also, nearly every NLD township office is operated by Muslims. Because of them, Burmese coming there are turned back. In some towns, as the NLD offices are rented from Muslim house owners, the NLD members don’t offer meals to monks on the day of General Aung San [Burma’s Martyr’s Day] as it is prohibited by the house owners.
So I said the symbol of the NLD peacock is becoming a symbol for Muslims. I rely so much on the [88 Generation Students] group of Min Ko Naing as the second biggest opposition force and I have much hope for them in the future. But they are not very reliable in supporting the public in the case of the Arakan State riots. They don’t stand on the side of the public. After helping refugees in Arakan they made a press conference on the issues. That’s all. They don’t issue a specific statement to say that Rohingyas [Muslims] are not a recognized national minority [in Burma] and they should condemn the killing of Arakanese [Buddhists] by Bengalis [Muslims]. So as a man who is supposed to stand for justice and against injustice, Min Ko Naing was not standing up for justice in the Arakan unrest. This is what I said in my sermon.
Q: In your sermons, you said that people must not support Muslim business marked with the sign “786” (a numeral used by Muslims on the Indian subcontinent representing a phrase in the Quran). Does it create discrimination, hatred and mistrust between communities?
A: Well, it is not the Burmese way, but a Muslim way and do they practice this [marking their shops with “786”]. So go around the town and see how many Muslims are visiting Burmese shops. If they support their own shops, why won’t we Buddhist [Burmese] do the same? If we support our Burmese shops, we will not have problems and it cannot be that bad. Look what happened in Meikhtila, if people support the Burmese gold shops then there would not have been an argument. [The unrest in Meikthila supposedly began as a fight between a Muslim gold shop owner and a Buddhist customer.] This kind of buying behavior doesn’t mean its discrimination. It can protect our people’s interests.
Q: Now conflict and fear is spreading in the communities. How can it be stopped?
A: After I was released from prison I always suggested to Muslim communities that we all should work and solve things together. Muslim communities should form their own groups and Burmese communities should form their own too. Those two communities must take actions for their own people when there are problems.
Q: President Thein Sein said in his recent speech that the government will take effective actions against those who exploit the noble teachings of these religions and have tried to plant hatred among people of different faiths for their own self-interest. What do you think of his words?
A: Of course, the government has to do it. But it would be more effective to take action against those who are behind the riots than just taking action on the ground. For example, like [taking actions against] imams. They brainwash children with hate speech against Buddhism. Their children look at Buddhist monks as if we were their enemy. They look at the Burmese people in the same way. That’s what’s really happening. So, the authorities have to try to take action against these instigators.
More on Burma
“Burmese monks have taken part in protests in the past, against British colonial rule and against a half-century of rule by military dictatorship. The most notable recent occasion was in 1990.
Their militant resistance to the British produced the most prominent political martyr of Burmese Buddhism, U Wisara, who died in prison in 1929 after a 166-day hunger strike.
The silence of the United Nations, EU, US and the elite keep a complete silence for more than 50 years. The question is why?. Now, US parade Aung San Suu Yi. Why?. The world ignores the sacrifice of the Buddhist Monks. Now, is no different than 50 years ago. What’s had changed?. Why the Elite insists on dividing Burma in slices of religious blocks. They always had fought together as an oppressed nation, during the 1962, 1988, 2005, 2007 uprising was never a sectarian divide. Ask yourself Burma, ask yourself peace activists, ask yourself political activist in Burma, in whose interest is served when the Media feeds a war between Muslims and Buddhists. Why Aung San Suu Yi sided with the dividers? These questions need to be ask before we make any judgements. In 1988 Aung San Suu Yi asked for unity of the Nation against the Military Boot, because of her standing against the Junta she become an instant hero, remember her words: “Reverend monks and people! This public rally is aimed at informing the whole world of the will of the people. Therefore at this mass rally the people should be disciplined and united to demonstrate the very fact that they are a people who can be disciplined and united. Our purpose is to show that the entire people entertain the keenest desire for a multi-party democratic system of government.”
Check every picture, search the stories. Misinformation is the best way to create chaos. At the end of the end, the community, the regular citizens, they are the ones going to bed without bread. They are the ones crowded in infested “Refugee Camps”. Starvation is part of their reality. The United Nations had failed the people. The UN and the government are leaving the job to the NGOs, which most of them are notorious to be driven by greed.
They collect the grants from the governments and they use the funds and trips and advertisement, leaving little for the real cause.
The respective governments had been waging political campaign against their opposition using the people as pawns. Buddhists vs Muslims in Burma, Shiites vs Shias in Iraq, Kurds vs Arabs, all leaders using peoples religions to stir their own fights to position themselves in power.
Social Media networks are platforms to share news, but also has been used to spread lies. Muslims are being scapegoated lately, not only since Bush wars but when it is convenient to stir the people’s emotions. Passions run wild and are used against the people.
People always lose, government leaders and the elite always win. Had this clear in your mind.
We the people are not apart for the ruling elite, and it is not in our best interest to be divided by sectarians and/or religion violence.
The United Nations it is a body that suppose to help the people, to help the countries to avert wars, but had failed in its role of peace maker, on the other hand, since it is was founded we had seen more wars and conflicts financed by the countries that formed the Security Council of the United Nations, the countries that had the power of veto.
Never underestimate the power of information, but also, never underestimate the power of misinformation.
The collective anonymous group announced on Friday, that next Monday, the internet will go black as a protest for the passing in the senate of CISPA, another draconian law, which passed the House on Thursday. If signed into law, CISPA would make it legal for websites to give your personal information to the U.S. government without your permission.
A subset of Anonymous, posting on a site titled Anon Insiders, posted the following:
We are going dark on MONDAY April 22nd at 6 AM GMT for 24 hours to protest your illogical and terrorizing bill against the Internet itself. Even with the whole Internet crying out to stop this BILL, the US House of Representatives failed to do so blinded by lobbyist’s money and cum in your eyes. So we will take action ourselves and open your eyes. Every popular/mainstream websites will be black until you, Mr. DronObama promise us to use your VETO power to stop this bill at Senate. Take this as a protest or a warning, as you wish. One thing is for certain, neither you or anyone else in this world can control the Internet, so don’t even try.
The plan doesn’t involve shutting down or attacking the Internet in any way, it just wants all websites to go dark in protest for 24 hours on Monday. It is not yet known which websites will participate in this blackout. The popular Anonymous Twitter feed YourAnonNews echoed the message on Friday:
The YouTube account “anonops” published a video (above) as well calling for support. Various Anonymous-related accounts are attempting to get the hashtag #CISPABlackout to trend on Twitter, in order to spread awareness of the cause.
The House has passed a controversial cybersecurity bill co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, left, and Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press / October 8, 2012)
Everyone don't get distracted by the MIT shooting, stay focused on the government trying to pass cispa through the senate #Distractions
Remember Aaron Swartz, he fought for our internet rights, do not allow his dead to be in vane.
Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who wrote key parts of early RSS code, helped establish Reddit, opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act, and pushed hard for open access to information like U.S. case law and academic journals. Information that should be freely available to the public.
“I don’t want to go into the specifics of how we combated this attack, but suffice it to say, we were successful in neutralizing the threat. We have been taking all measures to protect the site since last week, in advance of the anticipated attacks by Anonymous.” JPost announced today in its web site.
Today’s attacks is one of many of Anonymous attempts to disrupt Israel governmental and civilians websites. Since the winter of 2011, Israel had received hundreds of cyber attacks.
Israel had been DDS-denial of service ……..
The people’s liberation front, formed in Cambridge, Mass. in 1985. Founded on the principle that electronic communications networks belong to the people.
PLF in its February 19, 2011 public release, announces the launch of “Operation Freedom Star”. The mission of this Op is simple. The Peoples Liberation Front is entering the Hacker Space Race that was initiated with the announcement by the Chaos Computer Club that they intended to launch three communications satellites of their own to help circumvent internet censorship. The PLF states that we are in this race to win, and that WE firmly intend to be the first hackers in space.” they said.
Our plan for this involves the purchase of one of the many used communications satellites that are in orbit already, and are beyond their commercial usefulness. Many of these birds are low on fuel and have other issues related to their age, but are otherwise serviceable and useful for the purpose we intend – which is to provide broadband satellite communications to areas of the world that are in great need. We are currently looking at several possibilities, and whichever bird we chose – it will be called the “Freedom Star”. The purpose of the Freedom Star Satellite will be to provide broadband internet connections using commercially available downlink hardware.
UPDATED: Newly released information End of the page
Anonymous had sent a warning for Israel to stop its attacks against the people of Gaza. A video had emerged announcing the biggest attack ever planned in history against Israel servers.
Hackers have threatened to disrupt Internet operations in Israel in a major cyber attack planned for Sunday, Facebook Event announced
As a part of operation code named OpIsrael, notorious hacking group Anonymous and similar collectives from Indonesia, and Albania had in recent days been exchanging information, via social media and other websites, on Israeli the government and corporate websites they plan to target.
On Thursday, Anonymous warned that it was poised to launch “the largest internet battle in the history of mankind,” Gulf News reports.
“We will once again be fighting for freedom. Freedom from tyranny, oppression, persecution, and from annihilation,” the group warned in a Facebook posting.
According to the report, in a YouTube video, Anonymous said that Israel had “crossed a line in the sand” by threatening to sever all Internet and telecommunications links out of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli radio reported that a number of large organizations had closed their websites to prevent hackers from sabotaging them.
Remember people are risking his/her freedom to hack in behalf of Palestine, all we need to do is share wide the information, a social media page said.
The web site said , “You do not need to be hacker, or need to carry any cyber attacks, but the distribution of the information is imperative to send a strong message to Zionist Entity of Israel and its supporters.”
This is a translation of the invitation event in a social media page:
Hello all. Here you had been invited for all those who want to contribute to #OPISRAEL ! Should be fair to cyber attack?.
OPIsrael as an organization, but is also in collaboration with other foreign groups and Albanian groups that had planned to undertake cyber attacks against the Jewish state servers.
The cyber attacks are to be carried out against Israeli servers, they said, but Israel government servers are the main target, the group said
Remember Israel had been continuously attacking the innocent population of Gaza and West bank. And when we say attacking, they are killing, burning alive, torturing innocent, they added.
They said, “Our cyber attacks will be carried out with the purpose of sending a message to Israel that the world is united to help Palestinians to regain their land and their freedom.”
“This is a boycott against Israel apartheid State, remember that only a world united can defeat a tyrant”, they said.
By the day brake Sunday #OpIsrael campaign have hit around 700 Israeli websites including high-profile government systems such as Israeli President’s official website and the Foreign Ministry. Official sources of Israel State reported around 44 million unique attacks on government websites, principal websites of the country suffered DDoS attacks and hacker also obtained personal data related to Israeli officials.
#OPIsrael Event Planned for Sunday announced in a facebook page
Operation Israel the devastating hacking rampage continues and becoming more and more venturesome for the Israeli cyber space. In the last week of March, it was dangerous hacker collective group Anonymouswho called the operation also dubbed #OpIsrael, where the hacker group vows to erase Israel from the Internet. Muslim liberation Army and Kosova Hacker Security added their effort to the collective Anonymous
The biggest attack as of now has been the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s international development program, titled Mashav. Anonymous announced on Twitter they’ve hacked into the program’s database, with the website remaining inaccessible at the moment. Server Leaks
The following statement by Samer Issawi was posted on his Facebook page by his lawyer Fawwaz Shloudy. It was translated from Arabic to English by Shahd Abusalama.
“Regarding the Israeli Occupation offer to deport me to Gaza, I affirm that Gaza is undeniable part of my homeland and its people are my people. However, I will visit Gaza whenever I want or I feel like it as it is within my homeland Palestine which I have the right to wander whenever I like from the very north to the very south. I strongly refuse to be deported to Gaza as this practice will just bring back bitter flashbacks from the expulsion process which our Palestinian people were subjected to during 1948 and 1967.
We are fighting for the sake of freedom of our land and return of our refugees in Palestine and exile, not to add more deportees to them. This systematic practice which Israel aims to empty Palestine from Palestinians through and bring strangers in their place is but a crime. Therefore, I refuse being deported and I will only agree to be released to Jerusalem as I know that the Israeli Occupation is aiming to empty Jerusalem of its people and turn Arabs to become a minority group of its population. The issue of deportation is no longer a personal decision. It is rather a national principle. If every detainee agrees to be deported outside Jerusalem under pressure, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.
I would prefer to die on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my soul and my life. If I was uprooted from there, my soul would be uprooted from my body. My life is meaningless away from Jerusalem. No land on earth will be able to embrace me other than Jerusalem. Therefore, my return will be only to Jerusalem but nowhere else. I advise all Palestinians to embrace their land and their villages and never succumb to the Israeli Occupation’s wishes. I don’t see this issue as a personal cause that is related to Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a conviction and a principle that every Palestinian who loves his homeland’s sacred soil should hold. Finally, I reaffirm for the thousands time that I continue my hunger strike until either freedom and return to Jerusalem or martyrdom!”
PAKISTAN: A couple was abducted from Nepal, arrested and tortured in India to confess that they were agents of the ISI and were planning to assassinate chief minister of Gujrat
ISSUES: Torture; arbitrary detention; women rights; impunity; rule of law
Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a newlywed Pakistani couple was abducted from Nepal by agents of the Indian intelligence agencies while they were leaving for Pakistan. They were quickly shifted to India where they were kept in a private torture cell for 17 days where they suffered severe torture before being transferred to Tihar Jail, New Delhi. They were charged for being spies from Pakistan, sent to assassinate Mr. Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat where the police also claimed they were arrested from. The groom was severely tortured which resulted in the disability of one leg, signs of electrical shocks were still visible on his back and his genitalia had been burned with cigarettes. The bride was beaten for several days by the women police officials. The couple was forced to confess that they were from Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency, the ISI.
The couple has now been enlarged on bail but cannot leave India before the decision of the case. They have no funds with which to survive and most of the time remains outside different mosques in Ahmadabad, Gujrat following Friday prayers to beg but people refuse to help the couple as they have been accused of being Pakistan agents. The couple is surviving on charity from different philanthropist organizations and shrines but the amount they receive is insufficient for the whole day.
The Pakistan High Commission (PHC) has flatly refused to help the couple as it would be dangerous for the couple in reference to the continual strained relationship between the two countries.
CASE NARRATIVE:
The Delhi police crime branch claims to have foiled an alleged plan of a Pakistan spy agency, the ISI, to settle its spies in India. The police said they recently arrested two fresh recruits of the spy agency, including a woman, from the New Delhi railway station. This announcement came on 12 December 2011 but in the same announcement police said that the couple was arrested on 5 December when they arrived at New Delhi railway station with a plan to kill the chief minister of Gujrat. The Indian media was so biased that it has not enquired from the police as to when were they were arrested and why the police took one week time to produce them before the court? This act of police is against the Indian law according to the section 57 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc). The police is bound to produce an accused person within 24 hours of arrest. The Indian media has still not contacted the couple to get their side of the story but in its so called nationalism scandalized the couple as Pakistani agents.
According to the details received through the victims and legal documents Mr. Imran Yousaf Chippa, son of Mohammad Yousaf and Sofia Kanwal were married in October 2011 in Karachi, Pakistan. They went to Nepal for their honey moon on 17 November 2011 with the return ticket of 24 November. On the departure day as the couple were going to Katmandu air port in a taxi, a Suzuki gypsy jeep cut them off and four persons from the jeep asked their identity. As the police saw the Pakistani passports they were taken to a nearby police station. They were forcefully pushed into the jeep and their hands were chained and their eyes were blindfolded with the dopatta (a piece of cloth which generally women in south Asia use for covering the front portion of the body).
After 30 hours of the drive they were locked in a room and later on after several days of detention they came to know that it was a farm hours near the New Delhi airport. The officers sitting in the jeep were taking the names of each other in numbers like one two, three and whenever they were contacted to their center through the wireless they told that a Pakistani couple has been arrested from Nepal. The couple was kept there up to 12 December 2011 and were severely tortured to confess that they were working for the ISI and had planned to kill Mr. Modi, the chief minister of Gujrat state.
Imran, the victim, was tortured continuously for all the days of his illegal captivity, his legs were tortured to the point where he cannot walk or sit properly. His right leg was injured with a knife and it is almost paralysed. His back still bears visible signs of electric shocks. His genitalia also has signs of cigarette burning. When he was hung upside down alcohol was poured into his anus. The nerves of the legs were damaged during the interrogation which was taken by many intelligence agencies including the notorious Indian agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). During the interrogation, it was told to the couple that they were arrested from Nepal by the agents of RAW. Sofia, the wife, was beaten with fists and kicked to confess. At many times she was threatened with raped if she did not confess.
On 12 December, early in the morning, the couple was told that they are going to release them as the agencies did not find any evidence of them being agents of the ISI. They were taken in a jeep to an unknown place and after a one hour long drive at 4 PM the couple found themselves before the Tis Hazari court at New Delhi. When they were taken out from the jeep a heavy contingent of media people arrived and was estimated to be not less than 200 persons. For further information, please read the report published in the Hindustan Times and an audiovisual report broadcast in News24 TV regarding this case.
The couple was produced before the court of Mr. Vinod Yadev, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) who immediately sent them for judicial remand and couple was lodged in Tihar Jail. After court proceedings the police addressed the media and claimed that the couple was arrested from Delhi railway station and had the plan to assassinate the chief minister of Gujrat. The media have not asked to interview the couple. The media and journalists ran many concocted stories against the couple without listening to their side of the story when they were produced in the court. During the court proceeding through the evidences it was proved that they were arrested from Nepal but the media have never covered this fact and totally ignored it in an effort to spread sensationalism and hatred against the neighbouring country.
In the month of March 2012, Imran took off his clothes before the judge and revealed the torture marks on his body and asked the judge to listen to the actual facts from them. The judge finally agreed to do so. He took his statement in his chamber and for the next six days he continuously asked the couple to come and record statements with all evidence. On 20 March 2012, the judge granted interim bail to the couple for two days and it continued every two days for some time. Finally on April 13 the couple received bail and was released. The couple lives in Gujrat as it was Imran’s place of birth place but his relatives and friends do not want to associate with him as he has been declared by the media as an agent of Pakistan. Please see the attachment of the court decision for their bail.
After release on interim bail, Imran has also written many letters to presidents, prime ministers and concerned ministries including the High Commission of Pakistan in New Delhi for help in the case which was totally false and cooked up by RAW. The couple has also written to international human rights organizations including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan but is still waiting for action from these organizations. He also approached the National Human Rights Commission of India who has written letters to the ministry for interior in the month of July 2012, but no reply has yet been received by the couple or NHRC.
The couple has also written and contacted the High Commission of Pakistan at New Delhi several times and it was told to them not to contact the commission because it would be said that Pakistan was involved in their case. The authorities have flatly refuse to help them and even asked the couple not make contact by telephone otherwise India would blame Pakistan.
SUGGESTED ACTION: Please write the letters to the authorities in Pakistan and India calling for the release and safe repatriation of Mr. Imran and Sofia who were arrested from Nepal, taken to India and tortured and arrested on the false charges of entering India illegally with the plan to kill the chief minister of Gujrat state. Please urge the authorities in India to initiate a judicial enquiry of the case of Imran and Sofia and prosecute all those officials of the intelligence agencies who fabricated charges of espionage and arrested them from Nepal and find out on whose authority they act freely in the jurisdiction of other countries? Please also urge the Pakistani authorities to contact the Indian government for the safe and unconditional release of the couple. Also urge the Nepali authorities to stop the illegal operations of Indian agencies.
The AHRC has written a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Question of Torture and arbitrary arrest calling for his intervention into this matter.
PAKISTAN: A couple was abducted from Nepal, arrested and tortured in India to confess that they were agents of the ISI and were planning to assassinate chief minister of Gujrat
Name of victim: 1. Mr. Imran Yousaf Chippa, son of Mohammad Yousaf 2. Ms. Sofia, wife of Imran Yousaf Chippa Both are residents of house number A-59, Block C, North Nazimabad, Karachi, Sindh province, Pakistan Alleged perpetrators: 1. India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) 2. Other intelligence agencies of India Date of incident: 24 November 2011 Place of incident: Kathmandu, Nepal
I am writing to voice my deep concern regarding the abduction of a Pakistani couple from Nepal allegedly by the Indian intelligence agencies Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). They were then taken to India where the couple was kept in illegal detention for more than 17 days and bitterly tortured. The couple after four months of their arrest was released on bail and they cannot go back to Pakistan till the final decision of the case. As the couple does not have any they are surviving by begging before the mosques and shrines.
This is very shocking for me and I would like to know under which authority Indian intelligence agencies operate freely outside of their own jurisdiction and in a sovereign country? The action of the Indian intelligence agency is in violation of all norms and the respect of others sovereignty. It has been reported that the RAW maintain several agents in Nepal and harass people from different parts of South Asia. They first find out if their victims have any money with which to buy their freedom and if they do not they are charged as being agents of enemy countries.
I received the information that Mr. Imran Yousaf Chippa, son of Mohammad Yousaf and Sofia Kanwal were married in October 2011 in Karachi-Pakistan. They went to Nepal for their honey moon on 17 November 2011 with the return ticket of 24 November. On the departure day as the couple was going to Katmandu air port in a taxi, a Suzuki gypsy jeep cut them off and four persons from the jeep asked their identity. As the police saw the Pakistani passports they were taken to a nearby police station. They were forcefully pushed in to jeep and their hands were chained and their eyes were folded with the dopatta (a piece of cloth which generally women in south Asia use for covering the front portion of the body).
After 30 hours of the drive they were locked in a room and later on after several days of detention they came to know that it was a farm hours near the New Delhi airport. The officers sitting in the jeep were taking the names of each other in numbers like one two, three and whenever they were contacted to their center through the wireless they told that a Pakistani couple has been arrested from Nepal. The couple was kept there up to 12 December 2011 and were severely tortured to confess that they were working for the Pakistan spy agency and had planned to kill Mr. Moodi, the chief minister of Gujrat state.
I am appalled that Imran, the victim, was tortured continuously for all the days of his illegal captivity, his legs were tortured to the point where he cannot walk or sit properly. His right leg was injured with a knife and it is almost paralysed. His back still bears visible signs of electric shocks. His genitalia also have signs of cigarette burning. When he hung upside down alcohol was poured into his anus. The nerves of the legs are ruptured during the interrogation which was taken by many intelligence agencies including notorious Indian agency, RAW. During the interrogation, it was told to the couple that they were arrested from Nepal by the agents of RAW. Sofia, the wife, was beaten with fists and kicked to confess. At many times she was threatened with raped if she did not confess.
On 12 December, early in the morning, the couple was told that they are going to release them as the agencies did not find any evidence of being agent of ISI. They were taken in a jeep to an unknown place and after one hour long drive at 4 PM the couple found themselves before the Tees Hazari court at New Delhi. When they were taken out from the jeep a heavy contingent of media persons arrived and was estimated to be not less than 200 persons. For further information, please read the report published in the Hindustan Times and an audiovisual report broadcast in News24 TV regarding this case.
The couple was produced before the court of Mr. Vinod Yadev, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) who immediately sent them for judicial remand and couple was lodged in Tihar Jail. After court proceedings the police addressed the media and claimed that the couple was arrested from Delhi railway station and had the plan to assassinate chief minister of Gujrat. The media have not asked to interview the couple. The media and journalists ran many concocted stories against the couple without taking the views from the couple as they were produced in the court. During the court proceeding through the evidences it was proved that they were arrested from the Nepal but the media have never covered this fact and totally ignored it in an effort to spread sensationalism and hatred against the neighbouring country.
In the month of March 2012, Imran took off his clothes before the judge and revealed the torture marks on his body and asked the judge to listen to the actual facts from the couple. The judge finally agreed to do so. He took his statement in his chamber and for the next six days he continuously asked the couple to come and record statements with all evidences. On 20 March 2012, the judge granted interim bail to the couple for two days and it continued every two days for some more days. Finally on April 13 the couple received bail and was released. The couple lives in Gujrat as Imran’s birth place was Gujrat but his relatives and friends do not want to associate with him as he has been declared by the media as an agent of Pakistan.
I cannot understand as to why, when the judge in this matter was shown actual evidence that torture had been committed in custody, he did not immediately take action to assist the victims and take legal action against the intelligence officials and police officers concerned. The court also did not ask where the victims had been for the seven days of their detention as the law of India clearly state that an arrested person must be produced in court within 24 hours.
The action, or rather lack of action on the part of the Pakistan High Commission is shameful if not actually criminal. To ignore a citizen of their country that has been falsely charged on the one hand and is forced to beg in the streets in order to survive on the other is unconscionable. Can it be that the High Commission was reluctant to take action because it was afraid that if they revealed the illegal actions of the India intelligence agency then the India side might also reveal the illegal actions of the Pakistani ISI?
It is regretful that the government of Nepal is ignoring the fact that it has allowed its sovereign soil to be used as a battle ground by the intelligence agencies of two foreign governments. There have also been reports that the ISI is also carrying out similar acts.
I, therefore, urge the India authorities to initiate a judicial enquiry of the case of Imran and Sofia and prosecute all those officials of the Indian intelligence agencies who fabricated charges of espionage and arrested them from Nepal and on whose authority they act freely in the jurisdiction of other countries? I also urge the Pakistani authorities to contact the Indian government for the safe and unconditional release of the couple. I urge the Nepali authorities to stop the illegal operations of all foreign intelligence agencies in their country. Furthermore, the authorities in Pakistan must conduct an immediate inquiry into the appalling behaviour of the officers of the High Commission of Pakistan for their lack of action to assist their own nationals in distress. The victims must be compensated for the ordeal they have suffered by both countries.
Yours sincerely,
PLEASE SEND LETTERS TO:
1. Mr. Asif Ali Zardari President of Pakistan President’s Secretariat Islamabad PAKISTAN Tel +92 51 9204801+51 9214171 Fax: +92 51 9207458 Email: publicmail@president.gov.pk
2. Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minster Government of India Room No. 148 B, South Block New Delhi INDIA Fax: + 91 11 230116857; 23015603 Email: manmohan@sansad.nic.in
3. Chairperson National Human Rights Commission Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg New Delhi 110001 INDIA Fax: + 91 11 2338 4863 E-mail: chairnhrc@nic.in
4. Mr. Raja Pervez Ashraf Prime Minister of Pakistan Prime Minister House Islamabad PAKISTAN Fax: + 92 51 9221596 E-mail: secretary@cabinet.gov.pk, pspm@pmsectt.gov.pk
5. Prime Minister of Nepal Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Minister of Nepal Singh Darbar, Kathmandu P.O. Box: 23312 NEPAL Tel: +977 1 4211000 Fax: +977 1 4211086 Email: info@opmcm.gov.np
6. Home Minister of Nepal Home Ministry Singh Darbar, Kathmandu NEPAL Fax: +977 1 42 11 232
7. Federal Minister for Human Rights Ministry of Human Rights Old US Aid building Ata Turk Avenue G-5, Islamabad PAKISTAN Fax: +92 51 9204108 Email: sarfaraz_yousuf@yahoo.com
Thank you.
Urgent Appeals Programme Asian Human Rights Commission (ua@ahrc.asia)
This does not happen every day: a Minister of Culture publicly rejoices because a film from her country has not been awarded an Oscar. And not just one film, but two.
It happened this week. Limor Livnat, still Minister of Culture in the outgoing government, told Israeli TV she was happy that Israel’s two entries for Oscars in the category of documentary films, which made it to the final four, did lose in the end.
Livnat, one of the most extreme Likud members, has little chance of being included in the diminishing number of Likud ministers in the next government. Perhaps her outburst was meant to improve her prospects.
Not only did she attack the two films, but she advised the semi-official foundations which finance Israeli films to exercise “voluntary self-censorship and deprive such unpatriotic films of support, thus making sure that they will not be produced at all.
The documentaries in question are very different in character.
One, The Gatekeepers, is a collection of testimonies by six successive chiefs of the General Security Service, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, variously known by its Hebrew initials Shin Bet or Shabak. In the US its functions are performed by the FBI. (The Mossad is the equivalent of the CIA.)
All six service chiefs are harshly critical of the Israeli prime ministers and cabinet ministers of the last decades. They accuse them of incompetence, stupidity and worse.
The other film, 5 Broken Cameras, tells the story of the weekly protest demonstrations against the “separation” fence in the village of Bil’in, as viewed through the cameras of one of the villagers.
One may wonder how two films like these made it to the top of the Academy awards in the first place. My own (completely unproven) conjecture is that the Jewish academy members voted for their selection without actually seeing them, assuming that an Israeli film could not be un-kosher. But when the pro-Israeli lobby started a ruckus, the members actually viewed the films, shuddered, and gave the top award to Searching for Sugar Man.
I have not yet had a chance to see The Gatekeepers. Because of that, I am not going to write about it.
However, I have seen 5 Broken Cameras several times – both in the cinema and on the ground.
Limor Livnat treated it as an “Israeli” film. But that designation is rather problematical.
First of all, unlike other categories, documentaries are not listed according to nationality. So it was not, officially, “Israeli”.
Second, one of its two co-producers protested vehemently against this designation. For him, this is a Palestinian film.
As a matter of fact, any national designation is problematical. All the material was filmed by a Palestinian, Emad Burnat. But the co-editor, Guy Davidi, who put the filmed material into its final shape, is Israeli. Much of the financing came from Israeli foundations. So it would be fair to say that it is a Palestinian-Israeli co-production.
This is also true for the “actors”: the demonstrators are both Palestinians and Israelis. The soldiers are, of course, Israelis. Some of members of the Border Police are Druze (Arabs belonging to a marginal Islamic sect.)
When the last of Emad Burnat’s sons was born, he decided to buy a simple camera in order to document the stages of the boy’s growing up. He did not yet dream of documenting history. But he took his camera with him when he joined the weekly demonstrations in his village. And from then on, every week.
Bil’in is a small village west of Ramallah, near the Green Line. Few people had ever heard of it before the battle.
I heard of it for the first time some eight years ago, when Gush Shalom, the peace organization to which I belong, was asked to participate in a demonstration against the expropriation of some of its lands for a new settlement, Kiryat Sefer (“Town of the Book”).
When we arrived there, only a few new houses were already standing. Most of the land was still covered with olive trees. In following protests, we saw the settlement grow into a large town, totally reserved for ultra-orthodox Jews, called Haredim, “those who fear (God)”. I passed through it several times, when there was no other way to reach Bil’in, and never saw a single man there who was not wearing the black attire and black hat of this community.
The Haredim are not settlers per se. They do not go there for ideological reasons, but just because they need space for their huge number of offspring. The government pushes them there.
What made this first demonstration memorable for me was that the village elders emphasized, in their summing-up, the importance of non-violence. At the time, non-violence was not often heard about in Palestinian parlance.
Non-violence was and remains one of the outstanding qualities of the Bil’in struggle. From the first demonstration on, week after week, year after year, non-violence has been the hallmark of the protests.
Another mark was the incredible inventiveness. The elders have long ago given way to the younger generation. For years, these youngsters strived to fill every single demonstration with a specific symbolic content. On one occasion, protesters were carried along in iron cages. On another, we all wore masks of Mahatma Gandhi. Once we brought with us a well-known Dutch pianist, who played Schubert on a truck in the midst of the melee. On yet another protest, the demonstrators chained themselves to the fence. At another time, a football match was played in view of the settlement. Once a year, guests are invited from all over the world for a symposium about the Palestinian struggle.
The fight is mainly directed at the “Separation” Fence, which is supposed to separate between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. In built-up areas it is a wall, in open spaces it is a fence, protected on both sides by a broad stretch of land for patrol roads and barbed wire. The official purpose is to prevent terrorists from infiltrating into Israel and blowing themselves up here.
If this were the real purpose, and were the wall built on the border, nobody could fairly object. Every state has the right to protect itself. But that is only part of the truth. In many regions, the wall/fence cuts deeply into Palestinian territory, ostensibly to protect settlements, in reality to annex land. This is the case in Bil’in.
The original fence cut the village off from most of its lands, which were earmarked for the enlargement of the settlement now called Modi’in Illit (“Upper Modi’in”). The real Modi’in is an adjacent township within the Green Line.
In the course of the struggle, the villagers appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which finally accepted part of their claim. The government was ordered to move the fence some distance nearer to the Green Line. This still leaves a lot of land for the settlement.
In practice, the complete wall/fence annexes almost 10% of the West Bank to Israel. (Altogether, the West Bank constitutes a mere 22% of the country of Palestine is [is as] it was before 1948.)
Once Emad Burnat started to take pictures, he could not stop. Week after week he “shot” the protests, while the soldiers shot (without quotation marks) at the protesters.
Tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets were used by the military every week. Sometimes, live ammunition was deployed. Yet in all the demonstrations I witnessed, there was not a single act of violence by the protesters themselves – Palestinians, Israelis or international activists. The demonstrations usually start in the center of the village, near the mosque. When the Friday prayers end (Friday is the Muslim holy day), some of the devout join the young people waiting outside, and a march to the fence, a few kilometers away, commences.
At the fence, the clash happens. The protesters push forward and shout, the soldiers launch tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. The gas canisters hit people (Rachel, my wife, had a big bruise on her thigh for months, where a canister had hit her. Rachel was already carrying a fatal liver disease and was strictly warned by her doctor not to come near tear gas. But she could not resist taking photos close up.)
Once the melee starts, boys and youngsters – not the demonstrators themselves – on the fringes usually start to throw stones at the soldiers. It is a kind of ritual, a test of courage and manhood. For the soldiers this is a pretext for increasing the violence, hitting people and gassing them.
Emad shows it all. The film shows his son grow up, from baby to schoolboy, in between the protests. It also shows Emad’s wife begging him to stop. Emad was arrested and seriously injured. One of his relatives was killed. All the organizers in the village were imprisoned again and again. So were their Israeli comrades. I testified at several of the trials in the military court, located in a large military prison camp.
The Israeli protesters are barely seen in the film. But right from the beginning, Jews played an important part in the protests. The main Israeli participants are the “Anarchists against the Wall”, a very courageous and creative group. (Gush Shalom activist Adam Keller is shown in a close-up, trying out a passive resistance technique he had learned in Germany. Somehow it did not work. Perhaps you need German police for it.)
If the film does not do full justice to the Israeli and international protesters, that is quite understandable. The aim was to showcase the Palestinian non-violent resistance.
In the course of the struggle, one of Emad’s cameras after another was broken. He is now wielding camera No. 6.
This is a story of heroism, the heroic struggle of simple villagers for their lands and their country.
Long after Limor Livnat will be forgotten, people will remember the Battle of Bil’in.
President Barack Obama would be well advised to see this film before his forthcoming visit to Israel and Palestine.
Some years ago, I was asked to make the laudatory speech at a Berlin ceremony, in which the village of Bil’in and the “Anarchists against the Wall” were decorated for their courage.
Slightly paraphrasing President John Kennedy’s famous speech in Berlin, I proposed that every decent person in the world should proudly proclaim: “Ich bin ein Bil’iner!”
URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
On October 2006 the words “truth predictors” were all over the internet, after Google said that they will have truth predictor software, according to Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman of Google.
He forecast that, within five years, “truth predictor” software would “hold politicians to account”. Voters would be able to check the probability that apparently factual statements by politicians were actually correct, using programmes that automatically compared claims with historic data, he said.
Politicians “don’t in general understand the implications” of the internet, Mr Schmidt argued. “One of my messages to them is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting ‘is this true or false?’. We [at Google] are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.”
That was back then, the same Eric Schmidt that sold 2.5 Billion of stock or 42 percent of his Google shares on February, the 8-k filed on Friday. Last year Eric Schmidt sold another bulk of his shares; 153,193 shares with value of $103.5 million. Last year Google Inc shares were trading at $688.01, now after the sell of 3.2 million shares the share-market-price is $785.37, roughly 120 dollars higher than last year. Very ODD, GOOG price went up to 834.82 after the notice of the sale was published.
This sale comes after Google Inc. had split its shares, meaning that people can buy 1 share for half the price. This maneuvers on high value shares are done with the purpose to attract naive buyers, that will become temporally-imaginary-part-business-owners.
Public companies CEO’s use this trick to cash out the real money(capital money), cheap out the company’s shares to lure buyers into the market, but they’ll keep the Class B shares, which are the ones with more voter power(10 to 1).
In the past companies had done exactly this maneuver only to unload the super-fake-valued shares, then sell to the public the cheaper ones, to later on, the same executives would buy more shares at cheaper prices, then super-fake- value-inflate the shares and sell it again. A cycle of deceit to the outsiders that think in owing a piece of the pie of the richer companies in the planet. (CEOs control millions of shares, valued in billions of dollars, they have an army of “brokers” -anonymously working for them-doing the buying -selling game-inflating the price of the shares), only a blind can not see.
When money of this magnitude is shuffle around something is cooking. Google Inc. worth net is approximately $200 billion, but that net worth is fluctuating all the time, because Google’s price depends on its direct advertisement, addsense google Adds and public shares. I call this sucking-up dry the public’s money. The only people that makes the big money are the executives that keep taking up the real money out of the company’s capital, while the little people delusion to “own” big company’s shares keeps buying faked-valued-shares, the CEOs keep the good shares until they render them worthless. No company is king forever!.
Going back to the original story, where is the truth predictor software Eric Schmidt predicted will be ready in 5 years? Cheap Talk!, or Bullish Talk? what ever it was, the software was not developed, and politicians still running campaigns with lies.
Same politicians that are pushing for censoring the internet; just in case that Google remember their 5 years old prediction and make the truth predictor come to life. Then we do not have to worry for Aaron Swuartzs committing suicide, Bradley Mannings stealing “truths” to be shared with the public, and Julian Assange wouldn’t need to be hiding in an Ecuadorian Embassy because is sharing the truth.
The American could then be able to trust the politicians again, because we will be resting assured that everything promised will be for real, and not a stunt propaganda to win “the chair”.
I see that some people needs to work in his/her super-inflated-patriotism feed by lies and excused secrecy. There is no reason any government should work under secrecy. There is no reason, the governments will punish a real patriot, a hero that risking his life, to unmask criminals embedded inside our Defense Forces. There is no reason the government should be protecting criminals instead is persecuting truth seekers. When there is no transparency in the government, there is shadow government, and a shadow government does not work for the regular American, which is to close to 300 million. The Generals in our Defense Forces, current and formers(and their families) live like kings. They reserve for themselves the most expensive gourmet dishes, they travel in chartered private planes, they play in the super luxury golf courses built specially for them, all this extravagance paid by American Tax Dollars. These are the real criminals, the ones Bradley Manning is exposing. While the real heroes, the brave men and women are killed in the ground, all brainwashed by well structured lies, that only serve the Corporations that our Defense Forces are protecting, corporations that are amazing billions of dollars, while we Americans are struggling to survive.
While all this game is taking place, the U.S. unemployment rate, currently at 8.1 percent. That’s more than 1.5 million jobs. Reading these numbers means nothing, but there are more than 2 million families struggling to live another day. That 1.5 million number published by the Unemployment Department is the steady number of current unemployed people, but does not reflect the reality. The people that runs out of employment benefits are taken out of the current statistic sheets.
The health of the Nation is not with the numbers published every day by the financial markets. The health of the nation is reflected by the low debt acquired by credit cards holders every month.
The Google, Yahoo, Wall mart, British Petroleoum and others CEOs are riding the American debt by the horns on the American’s back.
The news of the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez broke today, March 05, 2013 will be recorded as the official date of death. But in fact, he was declared brain death on December 30, 2013, said Guillermo Cochez, Former Panamanian Ambassador for OEA.
He went on to say that Chavez was disconnected from the machines that kept him alive on February 23, by order of his daughters.
“The information that I have is that December 30 or 31 Hugo Chavez was declared death, that’s why nobody was able to see him or talk to him. It was a lie that Fidel Castro was visiting Chavez every day, or that Raul Castro talked to him every day. Also I know that Chavez was transported to Venezuela, because Cuban representatives did not want that Chavez be disconnected from the machines that kept him alive in Cuba, for that reason was taken to Venezuela and disconnected by order of his daughters, for respect to their father and tired to see the body of their father being manipulated,” said Guillermo Cochez.
Why Hugo Chavez’s death was kept hidden for four days?
The rumors said that the government of Maduro, -who was left in place in Hugo’s place- was preparing a plan for the succession to power. Afraid of the opposition.
When Chavez announced that his cancer had returned, he addressed Venezuelans and appointed Vice President Madure as president, as the Venezuela constitution specifies.
If the president dies, Venezuela’s constitution specifies that the vice president assumes the presidency until new elections can be held.
At the beginning of December, Chavez announced that his cancer had returned and said he wanted Maduro to replace him; if “something were to happen that would incapacitate me.” Chavez said in a press conference before leaving to Cuba for treatment, for fourth time in.
“My firm opinion, as clear as the full moon irrevocable, absolute, total; is that you elect Nicolas Maduro as president,” Chavez said, waving a copy of the Venezuelan Constitution as he spoke in front of cameras.
Now is up to the people of Venezuela to upheld Chavez last wish. To elect Nicolas Maduro as president. Time will tell
Before Chavez underwent his latest operation in December, he explained why he had chosen Maduro:
“He’s one of the young leaders with the greatest ability to continue, if I’m unable to — God knows what he does — if I’m unable to, to continue with his firm hand, with his gaze, with his heart of a man of the people, with his gift for people, with his intelligence, with the international recognition he’s earned, with his leadership, leading the presidency.”
It could result in a rebellion of the forces of “Chavismo”, the name given to the left-wing political ideology based on the ideas, programs and government style associated with the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. Chavista is a term to describe strong supporters of Chavez, which is closely associated with support for Chavismo.
Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s interim president who is likely to stand for elections within 30 days, said Tuesday: “In the immense pain of this historic tragedy that has affected our fatherland, we call on all the compatriots to be vigilant for peace, love, respect and tranquility.” Maduro announced the military and police would be deployed to maintain order in Chavez’s immediate absence, while Venezuela announced it’s expelling two U.S. military officials accused of plotting against the government.
On January 10, Venezuela started a new electoral process but it is not necessary a new swearing in relation of the president Hugo Rafael Chavez, because there is not a interruption in the exercise of his job, said Luisa Estela Morales, President of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice in Venezuela.
Luisa Estella Morales, has backed the Government’s argument of “administrative continuity” to the already official absence of the president. With this the Tribunal set the precedent that Chavez is still president even if he is absent. Now after the announcement of his death, the tribunal will have to swear the vice president Nicolas Maduro, until Venezuela is ready for new elections. El Pais And again we ask the question; why hide to Venezuela that Chavez is death. Unless the chavistas were working overtime, under the shadows preparing for the elections, with this having the upper hand of a few days.
The New York Times released yesterday a special report on ‘Comment Crew’, a group of hackers from China. The U.S. government knew about them since 2005. But Obama Administration is keeping its mouth shut regarding ‘Comment Crew’. According to The New York Times, Comment Crew was tracked down to a white tall building in Shanghai, China.
On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyber warriors.
The building off Datong Road is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence -confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the unit for years – leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of attacks on U.S. corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower. The New York Times
Hackivists around the world as they are widely known, are a group of hackers that serve social interest for the general public. The corporate world, and the governments see them as cyber criminals, crimes that can landed them in jail for 100 years if the governments wanted to, or 5 years or less if they take a plea. There had been all types of arrests on the hacker community, but there are many types of hackers and common criminals as well.
David Thomas known as El Mariachi was a common criminal and not a hackivist. His activities and crimes can not even be considered to be the work of a hacker, this type of crime does not involve hacking into computers. They have a gang working together, people that work in banks, or in places where there is a database to be extracted, but not by means of hacking. See Hakcers Wars
Attorney General Eric Holder promises the Justice Department will play a “pivotal role” in thwarting efforts by WikiLeaks or any other organization to extract data illegally from U.S. companies. (Credit: White House)
Madiant Security Firm reports(SPT&SPT1) speak of serious threat coming from China, “they have the evidence”, Madiant said. Why then the U.S. government insist on looking the other way. In the latest White House public release, Obama Administrations blames Wikileaks, Anonymous, and Luzsec as a threat to the U.S. and its American corporations.
White House warns of dangers posed by WikiLeaks, LulzSec, other ‘hacktivists’
New Obama administration strategy says organizations such as WikiLeaks and hacking group LulzSec may conduct “economic espionage against U.S. companies. Attorney General Eric Holder at press conference, February 20
The recent published 74 pages report of Mandiant security firm amount of information is impressive, they give an scope of the type of activities ‘Comment Crew’ is interested in: APT1 Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units. (APT-Advanced Persistent Threat) Mandiant_APT1_Report
On 2004 Mandiant started tracking the groups APT, that according to this security firm amount to 20 or so of these groups. In 2010 Mandiant published the first report on these Chinese groups, APT Report.
“The Chinese government may authorize this activity, but there’s no way to determine the extent of its involvement. Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment” .Mandian said
This issues needs to be taken very seriously and not just like another paper published. There are serious consequences and ramifications to this report.
There is no news that all the governments have an army of cyber warriors, but the interesting point on this report is the deep of the insertion of ‘Comment Crew’ into the U.S. government databases. Remember this group is in China, where more of the illegal cyber activity occurs apart from Indonesia where there are more than 65,000 known hackers.
The war on words started last year when U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers accused China of cyber espionage. There are serious consequences when you speaking publicly acting as a representative of the U.S. government. Specially is your adversary is China, known to buy U.S. debt and owning trillions of dollars of it.
China’s economic espionage has reached an intolerable level and I believe that the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have an obligation to confront Beijing and demand that they put a stop to this piracy. Beijing is waging a massive trade war on us all, and we should band together to pressure them to stop. Combined, the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have significant diplomatic and economic leverage over China, and we should use this to our advantage to put an end to this scourge. — U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, October, 2011
Chinese Defense Minister on January, 2013 responded to such charges, saying that it is unprofessional and groundless to accused the Chinese Military of launching cyber attacks without conclusive evidence.
Why will China want to steal American Corporate secrets? Isn’t the U.S. government sent our corporations and its secrets to China a decade ago? The American Corporations become greedy and exchanged security for cheaper operational costs. They moved to China.
Made in China
100 % of Microsoft Hardware – Read the Microsoft Hardware – The China Connection
SMT and DIP PCB Assembly, Mother Boards and circuits.
Modems, speakers, microphones, cameras, video cameras
When we think communication, we think Internet. Most of our communication gadgets come from China. How hard will be to install mini dropping devices inside every product that China produce?.
Beijing, China—November 14, 2006: IBM Chairman, President and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano (left) and Dr. Zhou Ji (right), Minister of the Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China, at the launch of a major initiative to bring IBM’s global information technology services expertise and capabilities to China in support of the country’s increased focus on developing its services industry. Sam Palmisano before a sign “What makes us special? IBM China” magnifying-glass Sunil Mittal being recognised by Samuel J. Palmisano and President APJ Abdul Kalam India President APJ Abdul Kalam, Samuel J. Palmisano and IBMers lighting the lamp magnifying-glass Samuel J. Palmisano shaking hands with IBMers magnifying-glass
2006-2010: Remaking IBM into a globally integrated enterprise
IBM was clear on its strategy; making it a reality took a lot of work. The transformation took place in phases that often overlapped. From 2006 to 2008, IBM expanded its presence in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and today nearly half of its employees are in emerging markets. The company set up a network of global delivery centers in India, China, Brazil and other countries. By standardizing processes and outputs across its large, diverse client base, IBM could deliver quality services to its IT and business process outsourcing clients consistently, with the right skills, in the right place—wherever that would be. Projects could be staffed more quickly, delivering greater value to clients sooner.
Sharing resources
The model of shared services caught on. Global procurement was centralized in China.
Beijing, China—November 14, 2006: IBM Chairman, President and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano (left) and Dr. Zhou Ji (right), Minister of the Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China, at the launch of a major initiative to bring IBM’s global information technology services expertise and capabilities to China in support of the country’s increased focus on developing its services industry.
Dell will consider transferring its factories to central and western China if wages in coastal areas continue to rise. However, the company supports higher wages for workers in coastal areas, said Amit Midha, the president of Dell in Greater China and South Asia, on June 21, 2010
Several electronic manufacturers including Foxconn have previously decided to move factories to inland regions. In 2009, Taiwan Hon Hai Group, the parent company of Foxconn, established a joint venture for producing laptop computers with Hewlett-Packard in Chongqing.
Taiwan Quanta Computer, another major laptop contract manufacturer, also established factories in Chongqing in early 2010.
Cyber espionage and cyber warfare has everything to do with China, theoretically speaking. If People Liberation Army controls every aspect of the life in China, including people jobs, habitat, and food. Chances are, that China government is taking advantage of the greed of American Corporations. Pay back time for the years of abusing the people of China. The government of China allowed for a whole decade to use their people as slaves workers for American companies.
While this phenomenon of jobs transfer was going to China, American Corporate world was enjoying a steady raise in their profits, and China as Imperial power, become stronger, controlling the price of the dollar, monopoly of products made in China, buying American debt, accelerated production of weapons of all calipers and strategically straightening its power in the world.
For China the ‘One Child Policy” paid off. On the backs of their citizens the Chinese Imperial Power Become a World Power.
We the United States of North America sent our manufacturers to China, even some of the Military gadgets were to be made in China, critical technology for the Defense Department was even ‘Made In China’.
On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyber warriors.=
The building off Datong Road is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence -confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the unit for years – leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of attacks on U.S. corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.
A 60-page study to be released by the U.S. security firm Mandiant tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the hacking groups-known to many of its victims as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” – to the doorsteps of the military unit’s headquarters.-
Exposing Issue
The computer security firm Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report, saying hoped to “bring visibility to the issues addressed.” New York Times reporters then tested the conclusion with others experts inside and outside government. (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Co. to investigate a Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another group. The firm is not currently working for The Times.)
“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about of thousands of people generating attacks from this neighborhood.”
Other firms that have tracked “Comment Crew” say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issue as a consensus document for all 16 U.S. Intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unite 61398.
While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in physical and virtual infrastructure electrical power grids, gas lines, waterworks and government and corporate databases. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America.
Contacted Monday, Chinese officials in Washington said their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They described China itself as victim of hacking, and note that other are many hacking groups in the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006.
“Right now there is no incentive for the Chinese to stop doing this,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. “If we don’t create a high price, it’s only going to keep accelerating.”
The White House said it was “aware” of the report, and Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said, “We have repeatedly raised our concerns..with senior Chinese officials, including in the military, and we will continue to do so.”
Under a directive signed by President Barack Obama last week, the government plans to share with American Internet providers-starting today-information it has gathered about the unique digital signature of the largest of the hacking groups, including Comment Crew and other emanating from near where Unit 61398
is based.
While the warnings will not explicitly link those groups or their giant computer servers to the Chinese army, U.S. officials say they are planning to tel China’s new leaders in coming weeks that the volume and sophistication of the attacks have become so intense that they threaten the relation between Washington and Beijing.
The U.S. government also has cyber warriors. But officials insist they operate under strict, if classified, rules that bar using offensive weapons for nonmilitary purposes or stealing corporate data.
Young bright computer geeks and social activists, at war with the establishment of governmental control and corporate greed.
Hacktivists against Government’s hackers-snitch-ex-anons or simply Fedhackers
What it is the maximum penalty for internet hacking? 1,5,10,35, or life in prison? All depend actually. If you are individual of interest for the district attorney’s office, you can be offer a deal, a deal you can not refuse.
If Aaron Swartz, our young privacy advocate, political and social activist was alive today, he probably can tell you about his 6 months in jail deal. Well, not that he accepted, so he was facing 35 years in jail, all because he did not want to play the district attorney’s sinister deal. This cost him his life.
What about the other “cyber breakers”? They all being offered a deal. One by one saw its day at the district attorney’s office. What do they do? All acted according to their conscience and sense of justice.
The district attorney’s office managed to brake few of them. Some of them “went to work” for the DA, some refused, but the simple truth is that now they are divided, scared and scattered.
Simple as this. The divide and conquer start showing inside the anon community. The paranoia is running wild. By now the Anons do not know who is snitch, who is being followed, and who is real anonymous. Once you see an anon’s name in the news, you are considered to be exposed.
The anons are doxing each other, they are snitching. And more scary for the anons, is that the Feds are hiring some of them and using them to infiltrate the ranks of the hackivist community. Who is wining this cyber war? Just in Indonesia, there is an estimate that
In some other instances the feds are blackmailing the anons already detained,they are being forced to work as snitches, in exchange to drop some of the charges.
By now, you should know how the district attorney’s office of crooks and escalators works. Once they arrest one anon, they will be offered two deals; One, to be an informant, a snitch in other words, if that is not accepted, they will probably be offer a deal, if that is refused also, the DA will play with the life of the defendants, using the unconstitutional trick called, plea bargain or blackmail. The DA assure with deals an 80 % of the cases a wining verdict. For them plea bargain or cases won sqare and fair in the court room is the same. They use this convictions to move up in the ladder of the office of the district attorney.
The less they care is justice being served. We can not help, but to remember Aaron Shwartz, the latest of its victims. Using the scare tactic, bringing outrageous charges, unheard charges on the book. Its call plea bargain. Aaron was offer 6 months in jail to plea guilty, off course innocent as he was he refused the Plea, Ortiz got mad and charged him with 9 counts of bogus charges that carried all together 35 years in jail.
Pleas Bargaining has come to dominate the administration of justice in America.
According to one legal scholar, “Every two seconds during a typical workday, a criminal case is disposed of in an American courtroom by way of a guilty plea or nolo contender plea. Even though plea bargaining pervade the justice system. He argue that the practice should be abolished because it is unconstitutional.
Government should not retaliate against individuals who exercise their right to trial by jury.
Plea Bargain it is one of the dirtiest tactics used by the government to coerce individuals into agreeing to plea guilty charges that they did not commit in exchange for waving their constitutional rights of a court trial.
Paul Lewis Hayes, serving life sentencing for writing a check of $ 88.30 and declining to accept a plea bargain of 5 years. The district attorney retaliated and charge him with another crime “Habitual Criminal Act”, which carries a mandatory life imprisonment. Hayes lost and appealed his conviction, took his case to the Supreme Court and 5 to 4 the supreme court upheld the conviction. The Case Against Plea Bargaining
The government has already understood that they lose the cyberwar, the youth in the planet outnumber the old. We seen the youth rebelling against the old in the
As a cyber space race looms, the military is looking for a few good geeks.
In Hacker Wars, rogue hackers on the payroll of malevolent corporations are taking over the Internet. Our privacy and basic liberties are being swept aside at an alarming rate. The only way to stop them is to beat them at their own game! Hackers like you have to stand on the side of freedom and fight for those who can not fight for themselves. In this war of the electron and the switch, there is no substitute for victory.
High school hackers, crackers and digital deviants: Uncle Sam wants you. Again the government blackmailing the youth of America. They want to use our youth to snitch each other in exchange for a pay check.
Anons hackers doxing each other. Who they working for? Feds? private firms, ego? Next Generation Fuckery
I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI-David Thomas ran one of the most popular online crime hubs, while the FBI ran him. El Mariachi
Anonymous hacker, commentator, journalist, and fameball Barrett Brown was arrested in a dramatic takedown last night live and on-camera, in the middle of a TinyChat with a dozen others.
Some weren’t worried. “Cool how the FBI staged @BarrettBrownLOL‘s arrest live on cam to bolster the idea he hasn’t been working for them for some time already,” said Methadonna on Twitter, voicing the suspicions of many. Daily Dot
The hacker group Anonymous is dealing with the arrest and betrayal of one of its most vocal members the only way it knows how: By hacking a security firm and covering its website with a rant against feds and snitches. To Snitch Sabu
Read the following story of Sabu, the mention of the victim SONY, makes the crimes more expensive and the years of jail multiply by the dollar $ Sign!!!!!
Hector Xavier Monsegur, a.k.a. Sabu, was outed Tuesday as a Puerto-Rican American resident of New York who pleaded guilty in August to an indictment on charges of computer crimes against targets ranging from Visa and Mastercard to the security firm HBGary and Sony that carried a maximum sentence of up to 124 years and six months in prison.
Six top computer hackers associated with groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and AntiSec have been arrested and charged in New York in connection with a series of attacks on computers used by the entertainment industry, credit card companies, intelligence firms and even an Irish political party, U.S. officials announced Tuesday. Los Angeles Times
The FBI and Secret Service have successfully infiltrated the underground world of computer hackers in the US: 25 percent are secretly informing the government about their peers for fear of a long prison sentence. In fact, the community is riddled with paranoia and mistrust as it is not clear who is part of this “army of informants.” Tech Spot on hackers
One of the six, Hector Xavier Monsegur – also known by his computer name of “Sabu” – pleaded guilty and was said by officials to be working with the government against his former colleagues.
Brian Salcedo, now 23, has been in custody since 2003, when an FBI stakeout caught him and a partner breaking into several Lowe’s networks over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection at a suburban Detroit store. 8 years for Crazy Long Hacker
A skilled San Francisco computer intruder was sentenced here Friday to 13 years in federal prison for stealing nearly two million credit card numbers from banks, businesses and other hackers — in what is the longest hacking sentence in U.S. history. Record Sentence for hacker Max Vision
We see these hackers thieves that stole millions of dollars in wire fraud, their sentences are very small compared to Aaron Swartz 35 years sentence.
Hackers and thieves are notorious nowadays. In fact it’s all anyone tends to hear in the news, and they get long sentences. A con artist/thief stole millions of dollars and got sentenced to 150 years in Jail. Which obviously he won’t ever survive. A man who murdered two children, aged 10, and 12 respectively, got 14 years combined.
Who decide when a crime deserve more years in jail? Justice, Judge, Governor, District Attorney? Make your opinion count, demand accountability for harsh punishment and outrageous district attorney charges for social activist and dissidents.
“Being a federal prosecutor isn’t just a job, it’s a privileged position of power… And one of the things that goes with the unbridled power to decide who to indict and what charges will be brought; is the responsibility to use that power appropriately. Anyone who does not understand that responsibility should not be allowed to pass the bar, much less be handed the power to ruin lives with relative impunity.” Kurt Hopking
On January 14, 2013, Yesterday, it became public that Stephen Heyman oversaw TWO excessive prosecutions of hacker-defendants who committed suicide, Aaron Swartz and Jonathan James.
Swartz was charged with using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. He faced a maximum sentence of 31 years if convicted. Federal Reserve HACKED
Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 – May 18, 2008), was an American hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States.The South Florida native was 15 years old at the time of the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. He died on May 18, 2008, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Leonard Harris Sassaman (1980 – July 3, 2011) was an advocate for privacy, maintainer of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer code and remop (operator) of the randseed remailer.
Sassaman was a well-known cypherpunk, cryptographer and privacy advocate. He worked for Network Associates on the PGP encryption software, was a member of the Shmoo Group, a contributor to the OpenPGP IETF working group, the GNU Privacy Guard project, and frequently appeared at technology conferences like DEF CON. Sassaman was the co-founder of CodeCon along with Bram Cohen, co-founder of the HotPETS workshop (with Roger Dingledine of Tor and Thomas Heydt-Benjamin), co-author of the Zimmermann–Sassaman key-signing protocol, and at the age of 21, was an organizer of the protests following the arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. He committed suicide.
Ilya Zhitomirskiy (12 October 1989 – 12 November 2011)[1] was a Russian-American software developer and entrepreneur. Zhitomirskiy was a co-founder and developer of the Diaspora social network and the Diaspora free software that powers it. Diaspora could have destroyed facebook platform if being developed as Zhitomirskiy had planned.
On the evening of 12 November 2011, Zhitomirskiy was found dead in his San Francisco home by police responding to calls about a suspected suicide. An autopsy report from the Medical Examiner’s office formally ruled the death a suicide in April 2012. While press reports questioned whether the pressure of working on Diaspora had led to his suicide, Diaspora co-founder Maxwell Salzberg disagreed. Salzberg stated, “Yes, I agree that being a startup founder is stressful. But it wasn’t the stress of work that killed Ilya. He had his own issues. He was sick.” Zhitomirskiy’s mother, Inna Zhitomirskiy, did not comment on reports of his history of mental illness, but she did say on his participation in Diaspora, “I strongly believe that if Ilya did not start this project and stayed in school, he would be well and alive today.”
Diaspora is the Privacy Aware Open Source Social Network that puts you in control of your information.
“”Indonesia has 65 thousand hackersand the largest base in Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta hackers on a more active and creative,” says IT analyst Onno W. Purbo here on Thursday. and the largest base in Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta hackers on a more active and creative,” says IT analyst Onno W. Purbo here on Thursday.
CHINA has revealed that millions of its computers have been hacked by the US in the past year, as it hits back at claims foreign media organisations had been infiltrated by Chinese spies. The Australian
Iranian official says bank attack blame is a smoke screen for the U.S. to continue launching cyber attacks against Iran. US blame Iran for hacking US bank
Hackers crew Jember Hacker terrorists (JHT) deface the official website of Indonesian president (http://www.presidensby.info) with a message reads, “This is a PayBack From Jember Hacker Team”.
Hackers deface website of president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) apparently in protest at growing corruption and wealth inequality in the country and because of increasing anger at the current administration.
Deface page mention hacker code name as “MJL007” who performed the hack and government is working with law enforcement teams to examine log files in a bid to trace the origin of the attack.
“Corruption is rampant, the poor are everywhere. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer,” hacker told. Mirror of hack is available at Zone-H.
According to an Iranain source, who combed through the leaked documents: “An email exchange between two senior officials at Britam suggested that the scheme was approved by Washington, explaining that Qatar would fund the militants in Syria to use chemical weapons.”
How the site was hacked indicates the company had used bargain-basement hosting. Their domain shared the same numerical address as many other domains. A young hacker simply saw this as a target of opportunity, and exploited an obvious weakness.
It’s hard to find good people when dirty deeds need to be done, thus we have the culture of fear cultivated by our leaders in Washington to prevent us from viewing and discussing the obvious truths.
The Israeli documentary putting military rule in Palestine on trial
The Law In These Parts documentary builds a strong case against the judges responsible for Israel’s draconian occupation laws
What is legal and what is just? Through candid, first-ever, interviews with Israeli judges, prosecutors and legal advisors, The Law In These Parts – winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival – is a gripping and revelatory investigation into the legal framework put in place by Israel to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
‘Why are Palestinans attempting to enter Israel labelled “infiltrators”?’
The Law In These Parts, an Israeli documentary awarded this year’s Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury prize, examines how the country created a military-legal system to control the Palestinians in the lands Israel occupied in 1967. And at some point during the film, it becomes clear that it’s the judges who are on trial. The documentary, which just screened as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival, features forceful archive footage, alongside a line-up of Israeli legal experts, explaining how they made Israel’s occupation laws.
Since Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, the military has imposed thousands of orders and laws, established military courts, sentenced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, enabled half a million Israeli “settlers” to move to the Occupied Territories and developed a system of long-term jurisdiction by an occupying army that is unique in the entire world.
Each judge sits in a black leather chair at a heavy wooden desk intended, you might first assume, to evoke a serious courtroom. But then, each is quietly interrogated by the film’s narrator; asked to explain the military rule that they created. Why did Israel even need hundreds of new laws for occupied Palestinians? What was wrong with the existing legal system? Because Israeli law, one judge says, can only be applied if you give citizenship to the Palestinian population. Why aren’t Palestinian fighters described as “prisoners of war”? Why are Palestinians attempting to enter Israel labelled as “infiltrators”? One judge is asked to recount a case from the mid-1970s, where a Palestinian woman giving bread and sardines to a Palestinian “infiltrator” from neighboring Jordan was sentenced to a year and a half in prison – as deterrent. “How did you find out about the pitta bread?” asks the narrator. Don’t worry about that, the military judge replies, the walls have ears.
The evidence against these Israeli judges slowly mounts as they try to justify an unjustifiable tangle of what they thought would be temporary laws, devised to control and subdue Palestinians in the occupied territories. One judge recounts how he told former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon of an obscure law from the Ottoman era, which Sharon swiftly deployed to seize Palestinian land. The film’s narrator asks the judge if he thinks, with hindsight, that this was a good idea. “History will decide,” the judge replies, but the narrator leaves no room for evasion: “But when will that be?” he asks, of a system that has been in place for 45 years.
This film successfully depicts the dense, crushing absurdities of Israel’s military rule in a way that words don’t always manage. While reporting from the region, I spent hours talking with lawyers, who would deconstruct the maze of rules that mean Palestinians always end up penalized. I have notebooks full of explanations of these small, complicated, crucial details. But how do you distil this system into one line of a short news piece? How do you condense the overlapping Ottoman rulings, laws from the British mandate era and brand new Israeli edicts that all fuse into a controlling mesh of military rule over Palestinians, while keeping Jewish settlers free – because as Israeli citizens, they are governed (or, mostly, not governed) by regular Israeli law? And how do you explain why 99.74% of military trials end up convicting Palestinians?
The Law In These Parts ends with a focus on Bassem Tamimi, one of the organizers of weekly demonstrations in Nabi Saleh, a West Bank village whose land and main water source, a spring, has been appropriated by a nearby settlement. He was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment after protesting last month at an Israeli supermarket in the West Bank, which stocks settlement, but not Palestinian, produce. Amnesty has described him as a prisoner of conscience and demanded his release, castigating the Israeli military’s “campaign of harassment, intimidation and arbitrary detention” against this 45-year-old father of four.
As one of the organizers of the al-Nabi Salneh protests and a coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Bassem Tamimi and his family have been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since the demonstrations began, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times. His wife has been arrested twice and two of his children have been injured — Wa’ed was in hospital for five days after he was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet and Mohammed was injured by a tear-gas canister that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Bassem Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date, though he has only once been convicted by a military court – on charges that Amnesty International believes were unfounded. Amnesty International
During a trial last year, Tamimi, a schoolteacher, told the military court: “Your honor, I was born in the same year as the occupation, and ever since I’ve been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom. I have been imprisoned nine times for a sum of almost three years, though I was never convicted of any crime. During one of my detentions I was paralyzed as a result of torture. My wife was detained, my children wounded, my land stolen by settlers and now my house is slated for demolition … You, who claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East, are trying me under laws written by authorities I have not elected, and which do not represent me”. Shortly after this hearing, Tamimi was convicted of inciting protesters to throw stones at soldiers (he was cleared of more serious charges, including “perverting the course of justice”, in May, after 11 months in military prison, because a judge decided that key evidence, obtained from a coerced 14-year-old Palestinian boy, was unreliable).
“What actually incited them,” Tamimi told the courtroom, “was the occupation’s bulldozers on our land, the guns, the smell of tear gas.” And then he asked: “If the military judge releases me, will I be convinced that there is justice in your courts?”
8.8.88 marked a moment of nationwide unity in the Burmese democracy movement. The demonstrations were held in a “spirit of unity, sacrifice and setting aside differences
Twenty-two years ago on 8 August, Burma’s army brutally massacred as many as 3,000 peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators marching against increasing poverty and oppression, and calling for an end to the military dictatorship. The serious human rights violations and economic mismanagement that led to the national uprising in 1988 have continued to worsen under the current regime.
“This is my country and this is the way it has been for more than 40 years.
I only remember a few weeks when things were any different.
In 1988 I was only a little boy. But that’s when every one in Burma was in the streets went out, they were tired of Military rulers. they wanted a change. It was the students who led the demonstrations.
They become more and more outspoken and demanded that the generals give up power. We have even Aung San Suu Kyi when came back from Europe to lead up the people, but the generals wanted it differently.
At the end of the day, 3000 lay dead in the streets and it was all over. I feel as I wanted to fight for democracy ..but I think it better make a long plan We can not go out into the streets again.
Another student massacre still fresh in the minds of Rangoon Residents was like a spear punching their fears, On 7th July 1962, Burmese university students were massacred and Rangoon University Students’ Union building was dynamited down where students were still inside.
General Ne Win notoriously justified his action by saying “Dar Dar Chin and Hlan Hlan Chin shin mae” which is laterally meaning aggressive challenging words in Burmese saying “I will fight Sword with Sword and Spear with Spear (to wipe out the opposition)” but in reality he killed un-armed non-violent students protesters with guns and dynamites. Burma Democratic Concern
The first uprising since the Military Junta took power in Burma was in 1988, the students took to the streets and 3000 of them were massacre and the soldiers killed them with their dreams and their hopes to ask for something different. The Military Junta killed the revolution’s seed.
“From the 8.8.88 uprising, we were able to bring down a 26 year old military dictatorship because we were united as a country. It was so pure, that spirit of unity. We were able to transcend our differences for our common unified vision of justice and democracy for all. My greatest wish is for us to retain that same spirit of unity that captured the nation’s imagination over twenty-two years ago, as that cohesiveness is our only chance for genuine national reconciliation and democracy in our country.” Burma Parnership
The fear was stronger than the dreams of liberty and with the students bodies, was buried the unborn revolution.
For years the secret service was every were, they had eyes in every corner, no cameras were allowed to film the misery that the people was living. Well so they thought, but an underground network of young reporters were risking their life and filming every aspect of the misery. They were filming every act of repression. The broken buildings of the society tired of living. For 19 years was silence, no dissent was heard off. But one day the spirit of the revolution, that seeds that was buried with the students in 1988 start its first sprouts aiming to the sun. And one day, the seed cracked open and the people felt the hope again. The hope to fight again for a dream stolen more than 60 years ago, and in 2007 the hope came dressed as a women his name is Aung San Suu Kyi was daughter of Aung San, who founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from the British Empire in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. Aung San Suu Kyi was raised in England and came to her country to pick up the pieces scattered all along the delta river.
Aung San Suu Kyi was no new to the Military Junta, she was loved and cherished by the people, when in 1990 she run as an opponent of the Military Junta, almost the whole country vote for her and she was placed in house arrest. Her crime was been loved by the people. That could have been the only reason why she has not been disappeared. For years the Junta was hoping for the people to forget about her, but her memory is fresh in the heart of the people. They know Aung San Yi is their only hope.
Some students have asked me which politicians are standing behind me. They are apprehensive that such politicians might manipulate me and then take over the students. I am happy that the students have been so open and honest with me. Young people are frank and free from deviousness. I answered them truthfully. There are no politicians behind me. What I am trying to do is to help achieve the democratic system of government which the people want. For the achievement of this system, there are some veteran politicians who wish to help me in various ways. I have told such politicians that if their object is to obtain positions of political power for themselves, I would not support them in any way. Should these politicians try to obtain positions of political power I promise in front of this assembly of people that I myself will not hesitate to denounce them. Speech Given in 1988 by Aung San Suu Kyi
The network of young reporters from DVB (Democratic Voice of Burma), it is a network of dissidents in exile, with headquarters in Oslo, they smuggle the footage with trusted carriers, and using satellite when it is possible, this way they have been able to export the repression out of Burma for the world to see. They have one of the most risky jobs, not for money but for the dream of freedom, to see Burma free of the Military boot rule” Burma Journalist.
I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection… I therefore will not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the Burmese military junta. I will try my best to feed in their demonic appetite of fear and paranoia by posting any pictures that I receive though other means (Journos!! please don’t ask me what other means would be). Please lobby the Chinese government or UN to get junta to switch on the Internet. Please! Sept 27, 2007 Burma Voice Democratic
Burma documentary assembled entirely with video clips recorded with hidden cameras.
The camcorders bring you the students uprising, their massacre. They bring you the fear in an oppressed and hungry population. They bring you the Monks uprising, their massacre. They bring you the people uprising, their massacre. And they bring you the lies and the repression of the Military Junta.
Thousands of Buddhist monks have been on the streets of the big cities of Burma (Myanmar) for the past few days, and the numbers are only growing. They are now calling explicitly for the overthrow of the military regime which has ruled the country for almost two decades, and they say they will not stop marching until the government is gone. Burma’s democratic leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for many years.
20 years later another protest shocked the Nation, this time were not the students but the beloved Buddhist Monks of Burma that came to the streets with their bowls upside down refusing to receive alms from the Military Junta and their families. The scene took by surprise the Military Junta and gave hope to the people that came to the streets to add their protests in hope that the rude-less government will respect the Monks. The Monks protest was allowed for several days, and even when the Monks marched to greet Aung San Yi the Military Junta removed the barricades leading to Aung San Yi home. This unexpected event gave strength to the people to dream for a change, but as 20 years before the protests were beat and killed. The Monks Monastery was raided twice and the 247 Monks were taken away and the bodies started to show up in the river. Once again the people’s hopes was killed and buried with the Monks.
Burmese monks have taken part in protests in the past, against British colonial rule and against a half-century of rule by military dictatorship. The most notable recent occasion was in 1990.
Their militant resistance to the British produced the most prominent political martyr of Burmese Buddhism, U Wisara, who died in prison in 1929 after a 166-day hunger strike.
The silence of the United Nations, EU, US and the elite keep a complete silence for more than 50 years.
The question is why?.
Now, US parade Aung San Suu Yi. Why?.
The world ignores the sacrifice of the Buddhist Monks. Now, is no different than 50 years ago. What’s had changed?. Why the Elite insists on dividing Burma in slices of religious blocks. They always had fought together as an oppressed nation, during the 1962, 1988, 2005, 2007 uprising was never a sectarian divide.
Ask yourself Burma, ask yourself peace activists, ask yourself political activist in Burma, in whose interest is served when the Media feeds a war between Muslims and Buddhists. Why Aung San Suu Yi sided with the dividers? These questions need to be ask before we make any judgements.
In 1988 Aung San Suu Yi asked for unity of the Nation against the Military Boot, because of her standing against the Junta she become an instant hero, remember her words:
“Reverend monks and people! This public rally is aimed at informing the whole world of the will of the people. Therefore at this mass rally the people should be disciplined and united to demonstrate the very fact that they are a people who can be disciplined and united. Our purpose is to show that the entire people entertain the keenest desire for a multi-party democratic system of government.”
Cinematic re-imaginings of 1968 have flooded our screens in recent years to mark the 40th anniversary of the global phenomenon of revolutionary action. Such films are often coloured in a dangerous hue of nostalgia or, even worse, attempt to market their subjects as seductive youths titillated by violence, cheapening the political vigour that drove them. Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary Children of the Revolution is certainly immersed in the same fascinations, yet comes from a different vantage point, offering a unique point of reference: the daughters of the revolution.
Generational conflicts are always complicated, and even when the times allowed it, certain memories can be very unpleasant, if not painful to revisit. Especially when you are confronted with a past little out of the ordinary.
As in the case of Bettina and May, whose life as girls was marked by the radical choices of their mothers, who, at some time in their lives, they decided to go underground.
Children of the Revolution looks at the immediate aftermath of 1968 in Germany and Japan, from where revolutionary politics burst globally in the 1970s to have a long-lasting impact on our contemporary age. O’Sullivan positions Germany and Japan alongside each other for their shared histories as aggressors in the Second World War, as broken nations in its aftermath and, most importantly for this documentary, as countries that experienced large-scale civil revolt in the 1960s and into the 1970s. Both the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army, leading activist groups of their respective nations, came up against limitations while operating within their own national borders and broke through internationally, ending up in Palestine to join its liberation movement. Both activist organisations involved women as central leading figures, namely Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, and O’Sullivan details their personal histories through interviews with their daughters, Bettina Röhl and May Shigenobu, who were born and raised amid the chaos. Sep 06, 2011 Electric Sheep Magazine
It is in this intimate territory, but at the same time political, which pushes the powerful documentary by Shane O ‘Sullivan, “Children of the Revolution”, which tells, through the eyes of their daughters, the stories of two women who become figures center of the revolutionary movement in Germany and Japan in 1968, Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu.
Their stories are pretty much public, even if Europe is more familiar with the figure of Ulrike Meinhof than Fusako, but the private aspect of it which moves Shane to offers us new insights on the vicissitudes of a history destined to leave many questions open.
The film opens with the disturbing images of an attack plane and continues at a rate very close and decided to tell the events, with lots of interesting archival material, photographs and never before seen interviews with people around you.
One can not help but breathe violence. Nevertheless, the documentary manages to capture something different, more profound that goes beyond the story we all know. Shane enters the complex mother-daughter relationship, investigating their memories and their opinions about the choices of their mothers and of those who may be the limits of revolutionary action. What comes out is also the portrait absolutely unusual at the time, by reflecting, in a broader analysis, on how the media basically build a certain image of the story and its protagonists. “This is where you decide to start the story that makes the difference.” (May Shigenobu) Both Bettina and May did not follow in the footsteps of their mothers policies, but their opinions about it are very different. Bettina Meinhof and her twin sister Regina were little more than teenagers when their life changes completely after the choice of Ulrike, an established journalist and intellectual figure on the left, to devote himself to the cause of German revolutionary movement. By daughters of the middle class become daughters of the revolution and almost end up in Jordan to be trained as soldiers. May is already born as a daughter instead of revolution. His mother Fusako was part of the armed forces when the Japanese as’ the light in response to the report with a rebel Arabic. In the coming years would move from time to time, constantly changing identity for security reasons, but the relationship with his mother, though fleeting, still managed to stay strong and to create understanding and comprehension.
While Ulrike seems to have been less aware of what would be the consequences of his choices, to the point of being torn between her identity as a mother and that of revolutionary Fusako seems to have had a more consistent and conscious path, connecting the two women who were her mother, and the revolutionary.
In fact, the testimony of Bettina May and create a strong emotional contrast. Both know, however, that those years were complex, where the revolution was everywhere in the air and the actions of those who remained involved should be clear, sharp, impressive, because every age has its own means of communication and their voices to be heard. Filmed in Tokyo, Beirut and Germany, “Children of the Revolution” is the third documentary written and directed by Shane O’Sullivan, who agreed to answer some probing questions about his work.
Ulrike Meinhof
As to the idea of working on a topic as complex as the revolutionary movement in Germany and Japan, where it started the idea? My research on these stories are started before 9/11. The anti-capitalist demonstrations in Seattle and Genoa drew the student revolutions of the ’60s and the spirit of that time. Then the attack of 9/11 made it all fall into the nightmare of terrorism and anti-globalization movement is eclipsed. When the war in Iraq reported on protests in the streets, the government ignored them and “Operation Free Iraq” began. So I became interested in the energy and idealism of ’68 and what ensued. In Germany and Japan, the movement had a more international footprint so as to bring their own representatives in the Middle East.
In the documentary you wanted to mainly occupy the two female protagonists of the movement. What made them so interesting to you?
I considered the strongest characters of the movement and, after reading childhood of their daughters, Bettina and May, I found a way to tell a great political event through an exclusive point of view. The mother-daughter relationship, which is the focus of the documentary, highlights not only the personal aspect of the story, but it also reveals other motivations of the two protagonists.
In the documentary, have always maintained a neutral position and distant but telling the story of two women from a very intimate point of view. Do you think this is an aspect of the story that was left out and instead is important in the analysis of events that happened?
I believe that, as often happens, it creates the myth around so controversial figures. These two women have been slandered and defamed, but there were very human and complex motivations behind their actions that have been taken in a political and cultural context very different from that of today. Aspects of the society of which we are now almost careless were instead a source of conflict at the time. I do not condone their actions but I try to understand them.
I think the strongest aspect of the film is the subjective point of view of Bettina May and in telling the story of their mothers. A unique point of view that comes from personal experience and extensive research and knowledge of the history and politics of the time.
Their personal stories help us to reflect in a more wide variety of political issues: the nature of protest and resistance and how to defy an unjust war, the company or an economic system. Relazionandoci to them and the mother-daughter relationship you can imagine, up to a certain point, as it may have been their lives.
The mother-daughter relationship of the two protagonists seems to have been very complex to analyze. Where have you found it harder?
The relationship between Fusako-May was easier to understand why, despite the ongoing events, May continued to maintain a relationship of love and support to his mother and his comrades of the movement. Ulrike between Bettina and the relationship was much more complex and psychologically unstable. The transformation of Ulrike, divided between the maternal feelings and ideals of the movement, has a great influence on children and the growth of Bettina, distorting the relationship between the two.
As they affect the differentiating cultural and Bettina May is the approach to the past of their mothers and the idea of revolution in general?
I would say a lot of influence. May grew up in the Middle East where his mother was seen as a heroine. The environment in which she grew up shared the same ideals of his mother, and the revolution was seen as a just cause against imperialism, despite the West were seen as terrorists. In Germany, Bettina lived in a society much more bourgeois, capitalist, with a father in a suburb alienated in Hamburg, away from his mother and his revolutionary ideals. To date, the generation of ’68 found opposite judgments between right and left, and Ulrike is seen as an idealist or a terrorist psychopath.
The documentary explores parallel both the past and the present in a manner that causes it to reflect on those which can be broadly human errors. What is your opinion?
The issues behind the student movement of ’68 are still alive: the struggle for education within the reach of all, the protest against a corrupt economic system that threatens to implode Europe, trying to stop a war. The nature of the protests has been transformed: from hijackings and sieges embassies to the popular revolutions in the Middle East; operations of hacker Western societies and looting shops in the streets of London, as part of a youth discontented. But the question is always the same: what are legitimate means to fight social injustice?
In the 70s, the only way that the Japanese or the Palestinians had to attract the public was hijack a plane and then give a press conference to present their demands and be known as a movement. Now things have changed. We have more sophisticated tools to communicate, organize and mobilize the people that make the operation of control by the authorities, a job much more difficult. The movements of the “Arab Spring” pointing to a more effective way to be heard and demand changes. But how do we evolve into a movement that comes to have a permanent voice in the political system? The protests are much more powerful now, but we are still waiting for a new wave.
Karin Bauer author of “Everybody Talks About the Weather..We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof”
ONCE UPON A TIME, WE HAD HONEST LEADERS. NEVER AGAIN.
This should be shown in our schools, to show what we had and now what we have.
The Cabinet Meeting was to be held – the ADC inquires, “Sir what will be served in the meeting…Tea or Coffee?”
Sir looked up and replied sternly…the ADC was taken aback! “Whichever of the Ministers wish to have tea or coffee should drink it before leaving his home or when he returns home. The Nation’s money is for the Nation and not for the Ministers!”
After this instruction – as long as he was the Head of the nation …nothing except water was ever served in the Cabinet meetings.
Some items amounting to Rs.38.50 paisa had been purchased for the Governor General’s House. He asked for the bill; a few items were purchased on Mohtarima Fatima Jinnah’s request; he gave instructions that the amount was to be deducted from her account. A couple of items were for his own personal use…their amount to be deducted from his personal account. The remaining items for the Governor House, he said, may be charged to the Government. Instructions were issued to check and make sure what may be charged to the government in the future.
When the brother of the British Emperor – Duke of Gloucester was going to visit Pakistan – the British envoy requested that he receive him at the Airport. He replied, “if I do so then the British head of state (King) would have to reciprocate when my brother would visit London”.
Once the ADC placed a Visiting Card before him…he took it and tearing it said, “Tell him not to come here before me, in future!” the card was his brother’s and his fault..? Printed under the brother’s name was…Brother of Mohammed Ali Jinnah Governor General Pakistan.
During the severe winter of Ziarat, Col. Ilahi Bukhsh offered him a pair of socks. He liked them but inquired about the price. On learning that the price was Rs.2/-, he said the price was high. Col Ilahi Bukhsh replied that “the socks had been purchased from your account” to which the answer was that “even my account is a National trust…the Head of a poor country should not be so extravagant!” With that he rewrapped the socks and returned them to the Colonel.
He was impressed with the work of a particular Nurse in Ziarat and asked if he could do something for her. She said that she was from Punjab and all her family were there, she was alone in Quetta if he could have her transferred to Punjab.
He answered rather regretfully, “I am sorry…this is in the hands of the Health Ministry and not the Governor General’s jurisdiction.”
He ordered a writing table to be installed in his plane…when the File reached the Finance Ministry; the finance minister sanctioned it but sent a written note stating, “The Governor General must ask the Finance Ministry before issuing any such Order”. He gave a written apology and withdrew his previous order.
There is the incident of the Railway track barrier/gates which is well known. When Gul Hasan (his ADC, later C-in-C Pakistan Army) requested the railway track gates to be opened so that his car may pass over unhindered, his face turned red in anger and he ordered the gates to be shut saying, “If I do not obey rules – who else will!”
This was the Pakistan of 60 years ago when Mohammed Ali Jinnah was Head of State…We have evolved and arrived at this Pakistan of today. Today, railway track barriers/gates (Phatak) aside – all traffic signals of the city are switched off- both sides of the main roads are closed to traffic for an hour before the royal entourage goes by and the Head of State may announce a 5 crore donation or funding without a sanction of the Finance Ministry and even after a refusal for a sanction from the finance ministry, aeroplanes purchased and on orders from the President and Prime Minister, scores of people are transferred – as many people’s jobs are terminated and without merit…by bending of rules and regulations as many personnel given promotion..
What to mention socks…even the kids pampers are charged to the National treasury which has brought the expenditure of the President House to 18 and ½ and the Prime ministers budget to 20 Crores. Here nephews, sisters, brother in laws hold sway over the portals of power…where Secretaries receive phone calls from, “I am the brother in law of the Sahib.”
It is a Pakistan in which the full government is present at the airport to receive the vice-president of the United States of America. In the Cabinet meetings, besides tea, coffee full lunches and dinners are served. The kitchens of the President and prime Minister turn crores of rupees into smoke annually! This is the advanced Pakistan where 16 crore poor people are trying to survive!
When the Quaid e Azam left the Governor House on duty there was one police car with a single Inspector of police who also happened to be a non-muslim – at the time when Gandhi had been killed and Quaid e Azam’s life was in danger too – in spite of that the Quaid e Azam went for his evening walk, enjoyed the fresh air without security…but today the Heads of State do not travel even ten kilometres without modern bullet proof cars, expert security guards and well trained Commandos –
We have failed to instil equality in our country, we have been unable to establish a dynamic morally upright nation…have not even made it a peaceful secure modern State!
We the 16 crore poor of Pakistan desire the moral integrity of the Pakistan of 60 years back…Relieve us of this kind of progress, prosperity and prestige and restore to us the venerable Pakistan of the Quaid e Azam…the Pakistan of 1948.
More stories on Pakistan….
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday said it has started investigations against the Sahrif brothers in a $32 million money laundering scandal.
“The reference against Sharif brothers was sent by Interior Minister Rehman Malik and it will be decided on merit,” NAB spokesman Zafar Iqbal said while addressing a media briefing at the NAB headquarters. Replying to a question about the reports that President Asif Ali Zardari has directed the NAB chairman to initiate an inquiry against the Sharifs and reopen pending cases against them, the spokesman said the president had only directed the NAB chairman to ensure that there was no political victimisation. Malik had earlier claimed he had evidence to prove that the PML-N leaders were involved in laundering $32 million. Nawaz Sharif Scandal
Following documents have been placed before the Supreme Court and National Accountability Bureau (NAB) alleging Nawaz Sharif involvement in $32 millions corruption scandal.
How a legitimate student movement is forced to become violent
Follow the links provided in the article, watch the original version of the events of the student protest in 1968 recorded by journalist Ulrike Meinhof. Make your own opinion of what happened on Germany. What was before the “terrorist organization RAF”. How the government responded to the demands for dialogue?. The Film released in 2008 give us a light on the other side of the story. Every story has its victims and perpetrators, but specially every story has a precedent and has an end. But there is something that insist to be in every human story, it seems never to end, injustice and inequality . Now it is you the readers who has to make your opinion. At the end it is what count.
The state court in Stuttgart recently ruled that the former Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist Brigitte Mohnhaupt should be released on probation in March, after serving 24 years in detention. Federal President Horst Köhler is also expected to announce his decision soon as to whether another former RAF terrorist, Christian Klar, will be pardoned. The only remaining RAF members still in prison are Eva Haule and Birgit Hogefeld, with Haule qualifying for parole in August.
A court paroled a one-time leader of Germany’s notorious Red Army Faction Monday after 24 years in prison, amid bitter memories of the left-wing terrorist group’s attacks on law enforcement and business leaders, which plunged the country into fear three decades ago.
The impending release of these former terrorists has met with a vicious response from the German political establishment and media. The main question at issue has been whether their release should be made conditional on an expression of remorse. While conservative politicians, victims’ family members and representatives of the security services are demanding such a statement be made prior to release, some media outlets, and a handful of Green and Social Democratic Party (SPD) politicians, say the government should show its strength through clemency.
Burial of the RAFMembers Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe in a common grave at the Stuttgart Dornhaldestrasse cemetery., Masked at the grave; Motiv: 6 von 12; Foto: Abishag Tüllmann, Stuttgart, 27.10.1977; Publication must show the following: Picture Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage – Abisag Tüllmann Archives
The head of the Christian Democratic (CDU) parliamentary faction Volker Kauder told the press, “There should be no mercy for those who mercilessly murdered wives’ husbands and children’s fathers with the aim of destroying our democracy.” The former head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) Horst Herold was no less vehemently opposed to the early release of Mohnhaupt. Another former BKA chief, Hans Ludwig Zachert, also opposed a pardon and denounced Klar as a “mass murderer” and “ice block.” He was supported by former Stuttgart prosecutor general Klaus Pflieger, who co-authored the indictments against Klar and Mohnhaupt.
The Bavarian Prime Minister and chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Edmund Stoiber, even demanded the prisoners expressly renounce violence and make a positive commitment to the state. He told the press a condition of their release should be an “open” expression of “genuine” regret. “It is not the state that should signal its reconciliation to the RAF terrorists, but the terrorists must first honestly express regret for all their crimes and profess their allegiance to the constitutional state.”
Such “confessions” are typical not for a democracy based on the rule of law, but for dictatorial and totalitarian regimes.
According to German law, a convict’s request for the suspension of the remainder of his or her sentence on probation, after the completion of a minimum term, must be approved by the courts. A condition for a positive decision is the prognosis that the person will not commit any more criminal offences. The law does not stipulate that a convict must first make an expression of remorse, much less issue a political statement supporting the state.
At present, those given life sentences must serve at least 15 years. On average, they are released after 17 to 19 years. In cases of “especially serious guilt,” as was found in the case of the RAF terrorists, the minimum sentence is extended. In these cases, the average detention amounts to 23 to 25 years.
In the cases of Mohnhaupt and Haule, it is not a matter of “clemency” or a “signal of reconciliation,” but the granting of legally enshrined rights, guaranteed through a 1977 judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court, and the principles of rule of law and human dignity, which are due to any offender who has served an appropriate sentence, even in cases of the most serious crimes.
The Badeer Meinhof Gang Trial
One of the most repulsive examples of the hysteria with which politicians and the media have reacted to the impending release of the RAF terrorists was the Sunday television talk show hosted by Sabine Christiansen. Christiansen had invited three “victims of terrorism” onto her show: Michael Buback, the son of the German attorney general murdered by the RAF in 1977; Michael Esper, a victim of the Al Qaeda bombing of the synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia; and Bettina Röhl, the daughter of RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof. The highly emotional contributions of these individuals were then supported and deepened by the Brandenburg interior minister and retired lieutenant general, Jörg Schönbohm (CDU).
To refresh the memory to the German society The Badeer Meinhof Complex Documentary brings the story of the main players of the student movement of 1970 in Germany .
Nominated for the Golden Awards for the best foreign film, The Badeer Meinhof Complex 2008 German Film brings you the factors behind the upraising. The first part of the Film show us the injustice, the inequality of world wide political game of oppression, repression and silencing the dissenting voices of the youth. The common denominator for a revolution has always has been Injustice and inequality.
You can have all the sociologists of the world studying the patterns of revolutions and every time they will miss the point. Purposely they will miss the point. Usually studies of any subject are conducted by prestigious Universities. Universities “Paid” to “Find” something.
You can have hundreds terrorism strategist and spies agencies around the world trying to stop “Terrorism”, you can have hundreds Benjamin Netahagus’s books written giving lessons to how to combat terrorism. Every time the strategist will miss the point. There is no terrorism, it is a wake up call to show the governments that something it is wrong. Something wrong that it is answered with State terrorism.
The Badeer Meinhof Complex Film give you the aspects of German’s wrongs of the 70’s. The US’s wrongs of Vietnam, The Israel’s wrongs of the Occupation of Palestine, the wrongs of injustice and inequality.
The Badeer Meinhof Complex Film was nominated for the best foreign language Film and it could have been very well nominated for the Best Documentary, doing it so would have given a truth to the German student movement of the 70’s.
There is an immense archive of the Badeer-Meinhof gang that could had been used, but the producers of the film decided for a more socially accepted category of film. Not too Radical, not to political, not to human. The characters of the film are all real, the events are truth story, even the government response it is very real. Akashma News Intricately researched and impressively authentic slice of modern German History, with a terrific cast, assured direction, and a cracking script. Rotten Tomatoes
In this heated atmosphere, Christiansen carried out a viewers’ poll and announced at the end of the programme that 91 percent of those questioned had expressed opposition to the early release of Mohnhaupt and Klar. The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung called the programme “a declaration of journalistic bankruptcy,” and added, “If Christiansen had asked whether terrorists should face the death penalty, 91 percent would probably have supported this.”
Andrees Badeer left 05
Anyone who believes in a humane society can only welcome the initiative to release the last of the RAF prisoners. In 1992, one and a half decades ago, the RAF announced the end of its armed struggle. In 1998, nearly 10 years ago, the organisation dissolved itself, and most of its members were then released. Most had served their sentences; others were pardoned by the German president and released early. All four predecessors of the present federal President Horst Köhler have pardoned RAF members, none of whom has since returned to the armed struggle.
This March, Brigitte Mohnhaupt will have served the minimum sentence for her offences. The federal prosecutor’s office has supported her request that the balance of her sentence be suspended, and the state court in Stuttgart has sustained this view. Politicians and the media—some more reluctantly than others—have accepted that the letter of the law is being followed.
Unlike Mohnhaupt, Christian Klar received a minimum sentence of 26 years, which only expires in 2 years’ time. In 2003, in his application for a pardon, he expressed his regret for the consequences of his actions: “Naturally, I must recognise my guilt. I understand the feelings of the victims and regret the suffering of these people.”
In 2001, Klar had been interviewed on television by the now-deceased journalist Günter Gaus, who also advised Klar on his application for a pardon. According to Gaus’s daughter Bettina, the impression made by Klar—seriously scarred physically and psychologically by decades of imprisonment—left Gaus “deeply unsettled.” This assessment is shared by the author of these lines, who also witnessed the interview. The 54-year-old Klar, who had studied philosophy and history, although probably healthy in a purely medical sense, was absent, unsure of himself and evidently had trouble following the journalist’s questions and articulating his own thoughts.
Several RAF prisoners have spent many years of their detention in total isolation, and their prison conditions were consciously designed to destroy their personalities.
The political dead-end of individual terror
Meinhof
Marxists have always rejected and opposed the politics and methods of individual terrorism and the RAF. Revolutionary politics aims at the emancipation of broad layers of working people, seeking to raise their political consciousness and cultural level so that they might abolish capitalism and organize society on a humane and truly democratic basis. Socialist politics are therefore always linked to the struggle for democracy and humanity.
Terrorism, on the other hand, feeds on contempt for the general population, acts independently of it and, in the long run, always ends up seeking to influence one section or other of the ruling class through violent attacks and opportunist manoeuvres. At the same time, it provides the representatives of the state with a pretext to weaken fundamental democratic rights and makes the struggle for socialist politics more difficult. A glance at the history of the RAF makes this very clear.
Mohnhaupt and Klar are generally regarded as prominent leaders of the RAF “second generation.” The initial public appearance of the Red Army Faction “first generation,” around Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, occurred in 1970. Its members came from the student protest movement that was directed against the colonial war of the US in Vietnam, and the preponderance of former Nazis in the post-war German Federal Republic (West Germany).
Human relations are political, because they show if the people are opressed or free, if they can act throughful or not, if they can act in any way or not. 1969 Ulrike Meinhof
Interview of Ulrike Meinhof considered by German Police one of the founder of the Red Army Faction, she was a journalist
In the period that shaped this generation and drove them to rebellion, the Nazi lawyer Hans Globke was chief of staff to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer; a Nazi naval judge, Hans Filbinger, who had condemned a sailor to death in March 1945 for desertion, was prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg; and many Nazi professors still delivered their lectures at the universities as if nothing had happened. Only a few of the judges who had served on the Nazis’ so-called “people’s courts”—which had imposed thousands of death sentences—faced trial after the war, and they were then acquitted.
The Social Democratic Party, which had long since abandoned a socialist perspective, still had significant support in the factories and trade unions. In East Germany, the Stalinist bureaucracy, along with its followers in the West, were also hostile to any revolutionary movement of the working class. At the same time, the student movement was strongly influenced by the anti-Marxist theories of the Frankfurt School, which wrote off the working class as a revolutionary factor, regarding it as a bourgeoisified mass “intoxicated by consumerism,” instead glorifying the guerrilla movements in the Third World and other petty bourgeois forces.
The RAF was from the outset marked by this contempt for the working class and broad sections of the population. In April 1968, Baader, Ensslin and others started fires at two Frankfurt department stores. In October of the same year, the trial of the arsonists ended with three-year sentences being handed out. Ensslin took sole responsibility for the arson, arguing she had done it out of “protest against the indifference with which people were watching the genocide in Vietnam.”
In 1972, 11 Israeli athletes attending the Olympic Games in Munich were kidnapped and subsequently killed by Palestinian terrorists. The RAF glorified this as an “anti-imperialist, internationalist and anti-fascist act.” The RAF attacked US army facilities in Germany without any regard for the lives of the young soldiers who often came from the most oppressed layers of the American working class.
For its part, the German state acted with extreme aggression not only against the RAF, but also against left-wingers and socialists. The media and politicians used the attacks to slander all critics of capitalism as terrorists.
In 1972, shortly after the beginning of the so-called “May offensive,” practically the entire “first generation” of the RAF was arrested. In the same year, the so-called “Anti-radical decrees” were introduced, which threatened to prohibit any member of a left-wing organization from working in the public service.
The politics of the RAF “second generation” consisted essentially of attempts to induce the state to release the RAF prisoners through a campaign of assassinations and hostage-takings. It was characterised by a mixture of violence and opportunism.
From the mid-1970s, the government under Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt launched a counter-offensive against the strike wave and student radicalisation that had persisted since 1968. It ruthlessly suppressed all attempts to free the RAF prisoners by means of hostage-taking. The rights of the prisoners, who were being kept in high-security facilities, were further limited, including imposing total isolation, which is a form of torture.
Original Film Presented by Journalist Ulrike Meinhof in 1967 to Parliamnet to explain her siding with the student protest
In the following video you see excerpts of Ulrike own accounts of the events of June 2, 1967
When she is asked why you side with the students? she honestly answered: “The right wing-press blame the student for the catastrophe of June 2th, 1967, The Springer Publishing uses its newspaper to demonize the critical voices of students as hooligans. “For these Juvenals is no longer enough to raise hell, they have to see blood” Meinhof continues; “The truth is that the protest of these students had exposed our state as a police state, Police and press terror reached a peak on the 2th of June in Berlin, and we know that freedom in this country means freedom for police brutality.Then she goes on to say that The Battle for Jerusalem is demagogy, and while the US discusses or, whether or not to use Nuclear weapons in Vietnam, Israel, with American support, initiates a war of aggression and shamelessly labels it a preventive war.”
The RAF leadership were surprised by this harsh response and the unwillingness of the state to compromise. During the occupation of the German embassy in Stockholm by RAF members in April 1975, for example, the government did not yield, even after the murder of two embassy workers, and instead ordered the storming of the embassy.
Two years later, as the RAF prisoners were conducting a hunger strike for improved prison conditions, the German attorney general and two colleagues were assassinated. Later, a rocket attack failed on the building of the federal prosecutor’s office. The banker Jürgen Ponto was killed in a botched kidnapping attempt. The seizure of a German civilian airliner by a Palestinian commando group associated with the RAF led to the pilot being murdered. Instead of the RAF prisoners being released as demanded, the German government again ordered the ending of the hostage crisis by force.
The most prominent episode of the RAF’s “1977 offensive” remains the abduction of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the president of the employers’ federation. His three companions and his driver were shot during the kidnapping. As the RAF admitted later, its goal was to use “his connections and influence” for an exchange of prisoners. However, the SPD-led government was determined not to make any compromise and even to accept Schleyer’s death as a result. This view prevailed, even against the wishes of Schleyer’s family, who had already assembled the ransom being demanded.
The callousness and brutality with which the RAF acted made it easy for the ruling elite and the media to encourage a climate of hysteria and trample on democratic rights. It was not only political opponents who were destroyed psychologically, physically and morally, but also many completely innocent people were shot during house searches, traffic controls and such like—”in self-defence” or “by mistake.”
At the same time, the terrorist attacks served the ruling class as a pretext for new and ever harsher attacks on democratic rights.
Two years after the Anti-radical decrees were introduced, a law was passed in 1974 making possible the exclusion of lawyers during a criminal trial and precluding several defendants being represented by a single attorney. This was aimed at preventing a lawyer acting as a conduit for communication between the prisoners. The number of appointed defence counsels was limited to three.
The law also made it possible for a trial to take place in the absence of the accused if he or she was mounting any protest actions such as a hunger strike for improved prison conditions.
The monitoring of communications between attorneys and their clients was legalized. In 1976, wide-ranging expressions of political opinion were criminalized, such as the “anti-constitutional endorsement of violence” and “supporting” terrorist organizations. The prosecuting authorities were given the right to order detention on remand in cases involving state security, even when there was no suspicion that an accused might collude with others or seek to flee the trial.
In 1977, the so-called “law banning contact” followed, legalizing the total isolation of the RAF prisoners, a situation that had had already been practiced without any legal basis. One year later, further possibilities for excluding for attorneys and extending the authority of the police to conduct searches followed.
At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, it became increasingly difficult to determine which actions were being carried out by the RAF and which could be attributed directly to the state. There are suspicions that the final attacks were not committed by the RAF and that the letters claiming responsibility on the part of the RAF only served to divert attention from the real culprits.
For example, at the time of his murder in 1989, the spokesman for the executive board of the Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, was under sharp attack by other members of the bank and was due to be replaced on the day he died. After Herrhausen had argued in favour of debt cancellation for several Third World countries, which had accumulated massive debts mainly with American banks, he received death threats. He took the threats so seriously that he wore a bulletproof vest at international finance meetings. Whether the RAF was at all responsible for his murder remains disputed to this day.
The present campaign against the release of the former RAF members takes place at a time when democratic rights are once again being sharply attacked. In the name of the so-called “fight against terrorism,” the government is pressing to legalize the deployment of the army inside Germany, together with the use of confessions obtained under torture as well as preventative detention merely on the basis of suspicion.
The hysteria surrounding the issue of whether Mohnhaupt and Klar should be released sooner or later after serving a quarter-century in prison is in fact part of a campaign to create the climate for a massive increase in the powers of the state apparatus—a development that seriously threatens basic democratic rights and is directed against growing popular opposition.
This link provided take you to the Film German Version caption translated to Portuguese The Baader-Meinhof Complex
9th November 1974 After Two Years of Solitariy Confinement
Holger Meins dies in prison following his hunger strike. He had been protesting against solitary confinement. Starbuck Holger Meins
Verena Becker, the former German Red Army Faction (RAF) member arrested last week over her links to a spectacular political murder committed 32 years ago, worked for years as a secret service informant, it emerged yesterday.
Becker, 57, was paid to help capture leaders of the left-wing terrorist group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, according to senior former intelligence figures who spoke in a television documentary screened in Germany yesterday. The revelations came after she was arrested at her home in Berlin last Saturday when police found new evidence implicating her in the killing of Siegfried Buback. September 04, 2009 NZ Herald News
The similar political positions of the “Terrorists” of the 70’s , the Vietnam War, Israel Occupation of Palestine, US imperialist goals and fascism they all play a role in the student uprising of the 70’s. The state of constant alert from part of the governments against the students, sent the movement to a higher grounds of protest.
Injustice and inequality are the two main forces that drove the students movement rise. The repressive tactics of the governments sent the movement from vocal to violent. The events caught on cameras, and the accounts from witness of those movement let us know that the students were forced to become violent to protect themselves, and to be heard by a dormant populace.
40 years later the governments of the world are in the same state of alert against a movements that started to grow. Injustice and inequality the two factors of the past still the same factors affecting the modern political movements.
All the material utilized in this article are taken from public sources for education purposes.
The military has denied any link to Tahirul Qadri.
ISLAMABAD: To Pakistan s ruling party, a firebrand cleric camped outside parliament with thousands of protesters is looking more and more like the harbinger of their worst fear: a plan by the establishment to engineer a “soft coup”.
In their eyes, Muhammad Tahirul Qadri seems like the perfect candidate for such a mission. A practised orator who has electrified crowds with his anti-corruption rhetoric, the doctor of Islamic law leapt into action to back the last power grab by the army in 1999.
The aim this time, some politicians suspect, is to use Qadri to bring down the current administration and provide a pretext for the handpicked caretaker cabinet.
“What we are seeing is dangerous and evidence that the third force is up to its tricks again,” said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a politician who has been a frequent critic of the army s record of interfering in politics.
The military has denied any link to Qadri, and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has built up a reputation for standing more aloof from politics than predecessors who have not hesitated to dismiss civilian governments. Pakistan has been ruled by the military for more than half of its 65 years as an independent nation.
Critics note, furthermore, that the ruling Pakistan People s Party (PPP), which has a long record of confrontation with the military, has often been quick to portray itself as a victim of bullying by the military to distract attention from its shortcomings.
But the timing of Qadri s return from six years of living in Canada, just a few months before elections are due, and his role in supporting a 1999 coup by former army chief Pervez Musharraf have nonetheless rung alarm bells.
Qadri, who led a convoy of buses carrying thousands of protesters into the capital, Islamabad, on Monday, has repeatedly demanded that the army should have a say in the formation of an interim administration that is due to oversee the run-up to elections in May.
“You meet army officers in the night; I m asking that you consult with them on the caretaker set up under the sunlight,” Qadri said in a speech on Tuesday in remarks clearly addressed to the government.
The PPP s fears over the potential for military meddling centre on the impending formation of a caretaker cabinet.
Pakistan passed a constitutional amendment last year that requires the government and opposition to agree on the
composition of the temporary administration.
The amendment is designed to prevent any ruling party exploiting the advantages of incumbency to manipulate elections
by using state power to skew the playing field.
The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League, the main opposition party, have spent months negotiating a list of mutually
acceptable names for the transitional cabinet, including a number of politicians noted for resisting military rule.
“The PPP has lost three generations of leaders fighting against dictatorships,” said a senior member of the PPP. “You
think we will give up now? We will take up this battle at all levels.”
Meanwhile, military officers privately do little to conceal their contempt for the PPP, whose government has been unable to end militant violence, bring down sharp food price inflation or get the economy on track since it took power in March, 2008.
They are also dismissive of the Pakistan Muslim League.
One officer, speaking in a personal capacity, said the army had no desire to seize power but might be forced to play a role
as mediator between political factions if the cleric s protests trigger a prolonged crisis.
“If this gets worse, then the army may have to intervene (as a moderator),” he told Reuters.
After years of suspicion and ill-will between the generals and the PPP-led coalition led by President Asif Ali Zardari, Qadri s protests have seemed to signal a shift in the political landscape, with unpredictable consequences.
“We can t say who is behind him. But all we know is that he can t pull this off without backing from someone,” Maulana
Fazlur Rehman, the veteran leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Pakistan s biggest religious party, said on television.
The political temperature soared even higher on Tuesday when Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered the arrest of Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with a corruption case. Authorities have yet to carry out his instructions.
An aide to Ashraf said the military was behind this move as well, but the chief justice is known to be independent-minded.
If Qadri succeeds in bringing down the government, then a man whose name had faded from the limelight since he left
Pakistan for Canada in 2006 will have sabotaged the PPP s bid to be the first civilian government to complete a full term.
That would undermine Pakistan s struggle to bury the legacy of decades of military dictatorship by building institutions
strong enough to resolve the nuclear-armed country s multiple crises.
The military has a track record of picking interim administrations in past decades that have then overstepped their
mandates by hounding the army s political opponents or manipulating elections.
Army officers in Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until it broke away in 1971, have used a similar approach to
appoint a technocratic government to implement reforms.
But some commentators and Western diplomats argue that times have changed and the military has lost the appetite for
embroiling itself in struggles with increasingly assertive political parties and a hyperactive media.
“The military has no interest in disrupting the path to elections: in fact their interest is the opposite, supporting
the transfer of power from one elected government to another, which is a political milestone in Pakistan s history,” said
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington.
Much will depend on whether Qadri has enough rhetorical firepower left to persuade his followers to maintain their
protest, or whether the government decides to order the police to apply pressure to disperse them.
“There is nothing wrong with raising your concerns and protesting,” said Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira. “But
if you try to hold the capital hostage and disrupt the lives of its people, the law will take its course.”
Some excerpts were originally posted 12/29/2011 Published on France24
UPDATED by Marivel Guzman
Most of everything published in the original article is one side of the story, off course we know that every story has many faces, many sides to the same story.
Being in the internet era we can not be conformed with what the “News” tells us. Take your time and research every news outlet, blog and forum. Find the truth of the story. Make your own opinion, at the end of the story your opinion is what it matters.
Every bit of material written about PLO, Palestine and any other Palestinian supporter groups in the last 40 years needs to be revised. Every person incarcerated related to Palestine events was done according to Israel side of the story. Remember that for the first 50 years or so of the partition of Palestine, the only news coming out of the occupied territories were Israel News. Just recently with the internet wide use the more information is being filter out without Israel mingling with the truth. Anything that came out from the territories before the internet it is considered now Israel propaganda. Think again when you read old articles.
Palestine is an occupied land. It’s people being displaced and made refugee by the millions. For years, the world did not know about Palestine Occupation, unless you did have family inside. The News never bother to report Palestine’s side of the story. It is until recently with the coming of the internet that the world is unveiling the truth. Little by little the veil in coming off and Israel’s true colors are been seen by the world.
Resisting the occupation has been an everyday affair of every Palestinian, so do not get duped by Propaganda Hasbarista.
I had included some links to articles related to names and events related to the arrest of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
It is my intent to unveil the truth and to shed some light to events leading to the activities of some of the persons named in this article.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the unpardoned terrorist will be release and deported to Lebanon .
The news were spreading like a wild fire in the net when the court released the information of the granting of his parole, but as part of his conditional release, Abdullah, 62, is required to leave France before January 14.
Over the years, Abdullah became a miscarriages of justice for resistance . He became eligible for parole after 18 years in prison, but each of his seven applications for release were turned down since 1999, a major breach of French legal procedures and the European Convention on Human Rights.
This came as the United States and “Israel” pressured France over the years to prevent Abdullah’s release, under the pretext that he had never apologized or expressed regret for the murders. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin criticized the decision to grant him parole, arguing that Abdullah never expressed remorse and could yet be a threat if released.
For his part, Abdullah’s lawyer welcomed the ruling and said he hoped the government would not give in to US pressure by refusing to expel him.
“I hope that we have an independent enough government to expel him,” said the lawyer, Jacques Verges. ABNA NEWS
During a visit to France last year, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati also called for Abdallah to be freed, calling him a “political prisoner.”
Updated 5:48pm: Several hundred protesters gathered outside the French embassy in Beirut Monday to demonstrate against the postponed release of former Marxist rebel Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Some demonstrators began hurling eggs and rocks at the embassy after shutting down traffic to demand the political prisoner’s immediate release following his 28-year imprisonment in France. Al Akhbar English January 14, 2013
Despite the fant that he completed the minimum term of his sentence in 1999, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for killing two US and Israeli officials, is still behind bars.
Earlier in December, a French court sentenced notorious Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal to life in prison. Now, another radical pro-Palestinian militant has resurfaced in France – this time, by proxy. France24
Carlos the Jackal figures prominently in Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy. In the Trilogy, Carlos is depicted as the world’s most dangerous assassin who’s trademark execution is a single well placed bullet in the throat, a man with international contacts that allow him to strike efficiently and anonymously at locations anywhere on the globe. His actual name (Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) is used and details – a mixture of fact and fiction – are given about his upbringing and training, including the fictional account that he trained with Russian intelligence at Novgorod. In the Trilogy he keeps residence in France disguised as a priest, protected by a close network of contacts. Born Trilogy
On December 22, several dozen protesters gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris to call for the liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, former leader of the Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions. The 60-year-old Abdallah has been imprisoned in southwestern France since 1984, despite the fact that he completed the minimum term of his sentence in 1999.
The Factions Armes Revolutionnaires Libanaises (FARL) formed in 1979 is a Lebanese revolutionary group seeking to create a Marxist-Leninist state in Lebanon. Although this group was one of the three groups that emerged from the breakup of the PFLP-Special Operations Group [#CR0001639] upon the assadinationof its leader, Wadi Haddad by Mossad. FARL According to CIA
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the 1982 murders of US military attaché Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yakov Barsimentov in Paris, as well as in an assassination attempt on Robert O. Homme, an American consul in Strasbourg. The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions has claimed responsibility for these acts, saying they were carried out in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
‘A resolute and pitiless militant’
Yves Bonnet, former director of France’s Central Headquarters for Surveillance of the Territory and founder of the International Centre for Research and Studies on Terrorism, contributed to the hunt that led to Abdallah’s arrest in Lyon in 1984. Despite that, he declares himself in favour of the prisoner’s release. “This injustice has lasted long enough,” he recently told FRANCE 24.
Abdallah in 1986. (AFP)
“It’s gone beyond the limits of what’s reasonable, and at this point nothing justifies his imprisonment. We should put him on a plane and send him back to Lebanon, where the authorities are willing to receive him.”
Described as a shy teacher from northern Lebanon who became – in his own words – a “revolutionary Communist and anti-Zionist militant”, Abdallah has filed for parole seven times – to no avail.
In November 2003, the local entity that grants parole in Pau, the southern city in which Abdullah is detained, gave the green light to one of Abdallah’s requests. But the minister of Justice at the time, Dominique Perben, appealed the decision, calling the prisoner’s case “extremely serious”. Abdallah remained in prison.
Abdallah’s most recent request for release on parole, filed in May 2009, was rejected by a Paris appeals court that deemed the prisoner “a resolute and pitiless militant” who might take up his “combat” again upon returning to Lebanon.
The court justified its decision by citing a 2008 French law that aimed to maintain in detention prisoners seen as likely to resume criminal behaviour once their prison sentence is completed. Contacted by FRANCE 24, the former justice minister did not wish to comment on “legal decisions made by independent judges”.
‘Hostage of the French government’
Abdallah is supported by a network of anti-imperialist, Marxist, and anti-Zionist activists who have continually denounced what they consider judicial mistreatment of “a hostage of the French government”. They compare him to a more celebrated former political prisoner: Nelson Mandela of South Africa.
Meanwhile, Abdallah’s lawyer, the controversial Jacques Vergès, has slammed the United States for what he alleges has been US pressure on French authorities not to release Abdallah. In 2007, Vergès urged French judges “to show our condescending American friends that France is not a submissive girl”. Demonstrators in Paris on December 22 used that argument in a scathing slogan, chanting: “French justice at the feet of Zionists and Americans”.
Maurice, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s brother, protested in front of the French embassy in Lebanon in April 2010. (AFP)
Like Abdallah’s supporters, Yves Bonnet contends that the US and Israel are still manoeuvring to keep the former leader of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions in jail. “France has faced enormous pressure to prevent the man who assassinated two people who were not, in fact, diplomats, but rather a CIA agent and a member of Mossad [Israeli secret service], from being freed from prison,” Bonnet said.
Meanwhile, the Shiite party Hezbollah has frequently called on France to liberate Abdallah, and the Lebanese authorities have already asked France to hand over the man they have called “one of their oppressed sons”.
‘France did not keep its promise’
In the late 1990s, Yves Bonnet appeared before a union of lawyers and judges to plead the case of a man who he said was likely “cursing” him from his jail cell. “I was received by four magistrates who listened attentively before turning me down politely,” Bonnet recounted. “They explained to me that Abdallah’s alleged conversion to Islam had turned him from a Christian into a dangerous Islamic propagandist, and for that reason it was impossible to release him.”
France’s former top intelligence official says he is especially “uncomfortable”, because he had secured a deal in 1985 to swap Abdallah for French diplomat Gilles Peyrolles, who had been kidnapped in Lebanon by the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions in March of that year.
A French diplomat who was held by kidnappers for 10 days has been freed in Lebanon. The envoy, Gilles Sidney Peyrolles, director of the French cultural center in the northern port of Tripoli, was the fourth kidnapped foreigner to gain freedom in less than a week. Mr. Peyrolles said today that he he had been kept in Syrian-controlled territory by a group that treated him very well. April 03, 1985 New York Times
In an article published in French daily Le Figaro in January 2011, Middle East specialist Georges Malbrunot wrote that some of Abdallah’s supporters had even warned the French government about possible kidnappings of its citizens in Lebanon.
“The Clotilde Reiss case showed certain people in Lebanon that it was possible to get a prisoner back through blackmail,” a journalist close to Hezbollah is quoted as saying in the article.
For the first time, a French journalist was allowed to travel to the University of Isfahan, where French academic Clotilde Reiss taught prior to her arrest on charges of spying. Here is an exclusive report by special correspondent Alain Chabod.
by John Halle on January 13, 2013
UPDATED by Marivel Guzman
Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz.
Aaron Swartz’s death needs justice. He was not a crazy person with suicide thoughts. Aaron was perfectly sane individual charged with bogus made up crimes. We all know that our system is rotten. The prosecutors in our “justice” system make crimes to climb up in their careers.
In our system The People (Prosecutor) has to prove a person guilty and the judge needs to have hard evidence before he/she allows a person to be charged with a crime.
In Aaron Swartz’s case neither the Prosecutor Ortiz or the Judge had any hard evidence to charge Aaron with the dozens or so crimes he was charged with, and regardless of the evidence they went ahead with the outrageous charges.
With the abuse of power they displayed, Aaron was overwhelmed by the outcome of wrong verdict, and saw his bright future blurred by 35 years in federal prison plus 1,000,000 dollars.
Who ever had felt the power of the justice in the flesh knows the power of the District Attorney’s office. How they Deal with the life of the “Defendants”. They deal with the lives as if dealing in a game of cards. The district Attorney and the Defendant’s attorney interchange cases as conveniently as they come. The two sides build illustrious careers with the people lives.
Aaron Swartz is one special case, they, the District Attorney’s office conspired with other powerful behind the scenes actors, they played a macabre game to show Aaron a lesson.
They wanted to send a lesson to all the internet dissenters, to all the social and political activists, to the hacktivist community. They wanted to silence Aaron and all the Aarons in the world.
They certainly did, they did it so well that Aaron could not survive the bullying, bullying that drove him to kill himself.
Our system needs balance, needs honesty, and Aaron Swartz needs justice.
In the name of Justice and truth, the culprits need to be brought to the real justice system and pay for the crime. SHARE AND SIGN THE PETITION Akashma News
Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on Friday, was by all accounts a remarkable person. But he was by no means a radical. In his brief role as an organizer with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, he was among those who were convinced that with sufficient pressure from its activist base, the Obama administration would eventually reveal its deeply obscured roots in traditional New Deal/Great Society liberalism.
It hardly needs to be said that those of us who argued against him at the time, as I did, take no pleasure in having been proven right in the years since. The most tragic indication came two years ago when the Obama justice department charged Swartz himself with a 12 count violation of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his attempt to acquire, via the MIT server, the JSTOR scholarly archive and make it available to the general public.
A small, delicate and bookish 26 year old, the prospect of a lengthy prison term, according to friends, terrified him and this, compounded by a history of depression, was, according to a statement released by this family, a primary reason for his suicide.
This was, of course, an almost unspeakable tragedy for those who knew him.
For them there is an understandable tendency to focus on Swartz’s extraordinary life and accomplishments and a reluctance to point fingers at those who are responsible.
Those of us who only know of Swartz’s work in passing shouldn’t feel any compunction about doing so, and there is plenty of blame to go around.
Most conspicuously, there is the Obama administration, and its deep pocket contributors in the high tech, publishing and entertainment industries who have attempted to make what they call the “theft” and what Swartz regarded as the liberation of intellectual property a crime meriting the most severe punishment. A ridiculously disproportionate 35 year sentence was being aggressively pursued by Massachusetts Federal Attorney, Carmen Ortiz who likely viewed the prosecution as an opportunity to raise her profile within the party. The strategy seemed to be working: Massachusetts Governor and close friend of Obama Deval Patrick mentioned her as a likely successor.
It should be our job to ensure that Ms. Ortiz’s cynical calculation will not pay off. A petition demanding her removal from office is being circulated and should be signed, though this is a bare minimum. Demonstrations at her office should become routine and her public appearances should be greeted with conspicuous displays of opposition. Should she receive the nomination for governor, or any other position in the future, those honoring Schwartz’s memory should pledge to nominate, finance, and actively support a third party candidate who can benefit from the legitimate outrage at Ortiz’ exercise in prosecutorial over-reach and extreme Democratic Party triangulation.
The other target, MIT, is not used to having the light of publicity affixed to it, but it is well deserved. As the Swartz’s family notes, by filing charges when the primary victim JSTOR refused to do so, MIT’s acquiesence was required for the federal prosecution to proceed.
Although MIT enjoys a near pristine reputation as America’s premier scientific and technical institution, it has more than a few skeletons in its closet due to its having been for years a leading beneficiary of federal government contracts, much of this tied to the development and production of costly, destabilizing and unnecessary weapons systems.
Complementing this flow of cash is the revolving door connecting its faculty with high level positions in industry and the federal government. MIT Professors such as CIA director John Deutsch, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, among many others, have been leading figures within the Washington establishment.
The presence of these naturally raises suspicions with respect to the Obama Justice Department having influenced MIT’s decision to pursue prosecution. While this is necessarily a matter of speculation, it is difficult to see what MIT gained, since its own intellectual property was not being compromised. Furthermore, the climate at the institute, particularly within higher technology circles has historically promoted a culture of openness and sharing of ideas. The prosecution seriously if not fatally undermined this culture and this is what the Swartz’s family meant by MIT failing “to stand up for… its community’s most cherished principles.”
MIT faculty, particularly those in fields such as computer science and software engineering where Swartz made, at a very young age, substantial contributions, should demand an explanation for the administration’s catastrophic and tragic decision to move forward with the prosecution. And it should demand the release of all communications with federal officials relating to the Swartz case, should they exist.
Doing so would serve justice and, ultimately, the best interests of MIT as an institution.
It is the least which the MIT community can do to honor Swartz’s memory.
Reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to reflect the realities of computing and networks in 2013. The act is much too open ended. Any reasonable use of a computer system that isn’t explicitly authorized can be classified a computer crime.
While I am fully in solidarity with the major points of this article, I want to point out, in a comradely way, an example of the kind of thinking, or at least of rhetoric, that leftist enemies of the ruling order should avoid, even in making an incidental point:
[MIT has] been for years a leading beneficiary of federal government contracts, much of this tied to the development and production of costly, destabilizing and unnecessary weapons systems.
This use of the word “unnecessary” leaves the implication that some weapons systems that are developed and produced for the U.S. government are “necessary”, without questioning what interests they might be “necessary” for, and will reinforce in many minds the notion that some such weapons systems are “necessary” in the abstract, and not “necessary” specifically to serve the interests of the U.S. ruling class.
Again, I am fully in solidarity with the intent of this post and hope to see further discussion of the topic, including on how to accomplish exactly the kind of liberating task that Aaron Swartz was persecuted for attempting.
This important documentary Film 5 Broken Cameras brings you the story of the life of struggles in Bil’in, a small Village of 1800 residents in Palestine. Bil’in it is just an example of the situation lived in Palestine, a situation sustained for 65 years.
Every family in Palestine has somebody injured, in jail, or killed. Every face has a story. Palestine is not a place of people invented as some ignorant people said.
Bil’in residents have continued to withstand these injustices despite the frequent night raids of Israeli soldiers in the town followed by an increasing number of arrests of inhabitants and of activists. But now, the army has toughened the oppression by systematically arresting members of the Bil’in committee in charge of organizing the non-violent resistance actions. The aim of the arrests is to discourage Bil’in residents and reduce their resistance to the occupation.
By supporting Bil’in, you will help its inhabitants to continue their struggle and maintain hope in their fight for liberty. This site is dedicated to all people of good will – Palestinian, Israeli and the internationals who fight side by side against the injustices endured by the people of Bil’in.
Bassen Abu Rahmah RIP-One of Bassem’s ideas was to fly a kite during a protest, symbolizing the freedom that Palestinians are striving for.
Bassem Abu Rahmah (Phil), known for his Charisma, beautiful smile and kindness. A pacifist struggling to keep his land.
Who Was Bassem Abu Rahmah?
Bassem Abu Rahmah was a 30-year-old Palestinian from the town of Bil’in in the occupied West Bank. Nicknamed “Elephant”, he was known to friends and family for his charisma and kindness, and for his creative ideas for protesting Israel’s confiscation of lands belonging to local residents for the construction of its separation wall, which has had a devastating impact on the lives of Bil’in’s residents, cutting them off from their farmlands and grazing pastures, restricting their movement and their access to employment, education and health care. One of Bassem’s ideas was to fly a kite during a protest, symbolizing the freedom that Palestinians are striving for.
What happened to Bassem?
On April 17, 2009, while taking part in a weekly peaceful protest against the building of the wall, Bassem was struck in the chest and killed by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by Israeli soldiers in an incident that was caught on videotape.
Bassam Abu Rahmah, who was killed within minutes of receiving a direct hit to the chest from an IDF-fired high-velocity tear gas cannister at a regular Friday anti-Wall demonstration on 17 April 2009.
The day that he was killed was like most Fridays in Bil’in, however on this occasion several Israeli peace activists who had joined the weekly protest became trapped in a no-man’s land dividing Israeli soldiers and village residents. Amidst the confusion, Bassem went to help them, calling on the soldiers to stop firing tear gas and allow the Israeli protesters to escape to safety. Instead, the soldiers fired an extended-range tear gas canister directly at him, hitting him in the chest and knocking him unconscious.
There were no ambulances in Bil’in that day. After a car arrived to take Bassem to hospital, Israeli soldiers shot tear gas at it, forcing villagers to carry his body a distance to the waiting car. During the 30 minutes it took for him to reach the hospital, Bassem died.
What was the Official Israeli Response?
The Israeli army claimed that Bassem’s death was an accident and that the tear gas canister that killed him had hit a wire and changed direction in air. A similar claim was made by Israeli authorities after American citizen Emily Henochowicz lost an eye after being hit in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during a demonstration in May 2010. In July 2010, the Israeli Army’s Judge Advocate General announced that it would open an investigation into Bassem’s death after his family threatened to petition the Israeli High Court of Justice. The results have yet to be released.
The Israel Defense Forces first said Abu-Rahma was in a group of Palestinians hurling rocks at troops. But video footage showed him shouting, not throwing rocks, when he was shot.
Video footage filmed during the April 2009 protest against the separation fence in the Palestinian village of Bil’in also showed IDF troops firing tear gas canisters directly at demonstrators while in the presence of commanding officers. See 5 Broken Cameras
U.S. Involvement
Along with other more advanced and lethal weaponry, the U.S. is a primary supplier of tear gas canisters and dispensers for Israeli forces and other repressive regimes across the region. A number of non-violent Palestinian and international activists, including American citizens, have been seriously wounded or killed by Israeli soldiers using American-made tear gas canisters and launchers. A month before Bassem’s death, American Tristan Anderson was seriously injured after being hit in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops at a demonstration in the West Bank town of Ni’lin.
The video shows plainly that the demonstrators were not violent. Here is a rough translation of the words on the video, supplied by an anonymous friend: The demonstrators are telling the soldiers in Hebrew that there are children and Israelis present and they are asking them not to shoot. Bassem is shouting “Listen, wait a minute, wait a minute!” before he falls to the ground. The soldiers then fire another round of tear gas as the demonstrators yell that he is injured and needs an ambulance.
In the longer video, as [Mohammed] Khatib is arguing with the soldier, you can clearly hear the soldier say, “Do you want more gas?” They can see someone is on the ground and bleeding and because they know it’s a Palestinian, they don’t care.
And the soldier is telling Khatib “Are you going to shut up?” as Khatib pleads with him to stop shooting. The Israeli who’s next to Bassem right after the shooting is just saying, “There’s an injured man, bring an ambulance quickly.” He asks Bassem where he was hit. The demonstrators also repeat throughout, this is a non-violent demonstration. The soldiers merely respond with tear gas.
Bassem Abu Rahmah like the other Bil’in Villagers and the International Activist, and Israel Activities risk their life every Friday to protest the Occupation. Please Watch 5 Broken Cameras, Watch this video, enough evidence to be presented at the ICC in its due time. RIP Bassem
Follow the narrative of “5 broken cameras” as it was made, planned, edited and made in a documentary as a final piece of art, 5 broken cameras presskit, gives you the most intimates details and difficulties presented with the reality of the Israeli occupations and continuous nigh raids and harsh tactics of the IDF trying to stop Bi’lin Village from demonstrating on Fridays after pryers in front of the illegal wall.
The Evidence of A Crime
More Stores……..
Emat Burnat Palestinian Filmaker take you on a road of desperation, occupation, outrage and tears. In 5 years IDF (Israel Soldiers) destroyed 5 cameras, but he continue filming Palestinian Struggles. 5 Broken Cameras
They started this war 7 years ago protesting the Land grab for Settlements and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. They are not deterred by the gas, arrests, the bullets, the bullying and the death. Every Friday after prayer they gather by the Wall pacifically protesting the stealing of the Land. 5 Broken Cameras Exposes Israel True Colors
Palestinian Political Prisoners of Conscience and Martys
Bassam Abu Rahmah, who was killed within minutes of receiving a direct hit to the chest from an IDF-fired high-velocity tear gas cannister at a regular Friday anti-Wall demonstration on 17 April 2009.
I have been activist for few years now. I consider myself to be part of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement and like Bil’in resistance fighters, I’ m an advocate for the non-violent movement. It is difficult to witness the struggle of Palestinians fighting their battle with a Palestinian Flag and a camera.
Bil’in residents decided to wage a Non violent resistance war against the stronger army of the Middle East.
They started this war 7 years ago protesting the Land grab for Settlements and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. They are not deterred by the gas, arrests, the bullets, the bullying and the death. Every Friday after prayer they gather by the Wall pacifically protesting the stealing of the Land.
I have been sharing photos and videos taken from the villages in West Bank, Gaza and West Jerusalem, images that could be rated R by the MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America) by its violent content. The violence is recorded in every one of the videos shoot by the residents and by the International Community of activists volunteering to be live witness of the Israel Occupation, internationals that take their own doses of beating, gas, bullets, arrests, and sometimes death.
It is not easy to get “used” to watching images of terror inflicted on the children, or people being dragged by the soldiers when they are arrested, specially is not easy to watch people dying in front of the cameras. After so many years of watching blood on the streets of Palestine, children being arrested in the middle of the night for throwing rocks to the military jeeps, you create this sympathy for resistance fighters. You can not help yourself to siding with the weak, the occupied people. You become more susceptible to pain, it is not possible to stop crying when watching so much pain inflicted on innocent people.
Phil was known as The Elephant, his Name was Bassem Abu Rahman RIP
Killed April 07, 2009
When Phil (Bassen Abu Rahmah, The Elephant) was killed, my heart stopped for a moment and my eyes could not stop crying. I was hoping to see him getting up smiling and mocking the Israel soldiers with his big smile and playful eyes. But 5 Broken Cameras is not a Hollywood movie where the script can be changed to give a happy ending to the story, NO!, 5 Broken Cameras it is the reality in Bil’in, Palestine and Phil was a real person not stunt paid actor. He was killed for no reason, other than showing to Palestinians who is the thug criminal in an occupied land, to show the Palestinians that even protesting with a flag it is a crime.
Two central figures in the Oscar Nominated Best Documentary 5 Broken Cameras Phil-Bassem Abu Rahman and Adeeb Abu Rahman.
Adeeb Abu Rahman gives the Occupation his biggest smile after coming out of court.
Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a non violent protester from Bil’in, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment by the Military Court of Appeals, for his involvement in organizing non violent demonstrations in front of the Wall. The decision dramatically aggravates the one-year sentence originally imposed in the first instance.
Judge Lieutenant Colonel Benisho of the Military Court of Appeals accepted the Military prosecution’s appeal in Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s case today, which demanded to harshen the already heavy-handed one-year sentence imposed on him by the prior instance back in July. The court sentenced Abu Rahmah 18 months of imprisonment with bail of 6,000 NIS and suspended sentence of 1 year. An appeal filed by the defense both on the severity of the punishment and on the conviction itself was denied. Read it at 972 Magazine
Jawaher Abu Rahmah RIP January 1 2010
Jawaher Abu Rahmah sister of Bil’in activist, Phil-The Elephant-Bassem Abu Rahmah, died in Ramallah hospital. Jawaher Abu Rahmeh, in the occupied West Bank, died on this first day of the year2010 in Ramallah Hospital from the effects of massive quantities of IDF-fired tear gas used to disperse demonstrators at the regular weekly Friday demonstration against the route of The Wall through their village lands.
“We are shocked and furious for Israel’s brutality, which once again cost the life of a peaceful demonstrator. Israel’s lethal and inhumane response to our struggle will not pass. In the dawn of a new decade, it is time for the world to ask Israel for accountability and to bring about an end to the occupation.”
Adv. Michael Sfard, who represents the village in an appeal against the Wall added: “The son was killed by a directly aimed projectile, the daughter choked in gas. Two brave protestors against a regime that kills the innocent and doesn’t investigate its criminals. We will not quiet, we will not give up, we will not spare any effort until those responsible will be punished. And they will.”
the story of Adeeb Abu Rahma of Bil’in. It’s not part of the big diplomatic news like the Obama-Netanyahu meeting this week, but in a sense, it’s more important. Far from being unique, this case captures most of what there is to know about the current stage of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. It’s the kind of things you have to keep in mind when you read the morning news.
Adeeb Abu Rahma is a resident of Bil’in, the village which became the symbol of non-violent resistance to the occupation. A few years ago, Israel decided to build its security barrier on Palestinian land, and not on the Green Line, the historic border between Israel and the West Bank. The reason for this was PM Ariel Sharon’s desire to capture more land for new neighborhoods in some of the large settlements Israel was building in recent years, and to secure a reality in which most of the settlements are seen as part of Israel, and not something “across the border”.
The people of Bil’in, who had much of their land taken for the barrier project, filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court against the confiscation, and even had a partial victory: The court ruled that parts of the fence were not constructed on the village’s land for security reasons, and ordered it to be moved. The court failed to address the main issue – the decision to build the fence inside the West Bank rather than on the old border – but it didn’t really matter, because the army simply ignored the verdict. Three years later, the fence is still on its original location.
For five years now, a popular struggle against the fence has been taking place in Bil’in. Every week, Palestinians, Israelis and international activists are taking part in demonstrations. Most of the action consists of attempts to march to the village’s confiscated land; occasionally stones are thrown, but there was never a serious threat to the army forces there, and certainly not to Israeli civilians who live nearby.
Without much outside help or even support from the Palestinian Authority, these demonstrations had a tremendous effect. They relegitimized the Palestinian cause in the eyes of the international community, after the blow it suffered because of the suicide attacks of the Second Intifada. The protest also spread to other villages in the West Bank, and there are already talks of a third Intifada – this time, a non-violent one.
Israel is doing all it can to stop the protest in Bil’in. It used rubber covered bullets, tear gas, stun grenades and plastic bullets against the demonstrators. Bassem Abu Rahma, Adeeb’s cousin, was among those killed on the hills surrounding Bil’in, after suffering a direct hit of a tear gas canister. As can be seen in this video, Bassem (like all the rest of the protesters) wasn’t taking part in any violent act when he was hit, and the soldiers who shot him weren’t in any kind of danger.
A few months ago the army declared the entire Bil’in area a closed military zone, and stepped up the nightly raids on the homes of Palestinian residents. Many were arrested and held under “administrative detention”, without having any charges presented against them. This is standard procedure in the West Bank; there are currently 213 Palestinians imprisoned under administrative detention orders without charges or trial.
Adeeb Abu Rahma, a taxi-driver and father of nine, was knows as one of the prominent figures in the none-violent protest. Adeeb and his wife Fatima’s families have been cut by the fence from some 25 acres of their land on which they used to grow olive trees and cereals. In this video, you can see Adeeb in an emotional outburst in front of IDF soldiers:
Michael Moore tweeted his followers to watch the film about Palestine that launched earlier in the departed year called 5 Broken Cameras. Twice. The chieftain of cinematic guerrilla activism sings it up as “one of the best films of the year” and ”that rare documentary that has the power to move many. Pls watch!”
“Watch one of the best films of the year, “5 Broken Cameras,” the story of a Palestinian farmer who picks up a camera” MMFlint
Moore reveals a deeper connection to the film than suggested by those lonesome tweets. It took home the best picture award at the Traverse City Film Festival founded by Moore in his native Michigan. And he’s spoken at a number of screenings in the US. A video of one such pre-screening talk shows the extent of his directorial admiration for Emad Burnat’s film and the significant Israeli obstacles he has had to climb to showcase the debut Palestinian talent. Bil’in protesters oppose a ‘horrible, horrible wrong’ — Michael Moore
Follow the narrative of “5 broken cameras” as it was made, planned, edited and made in a documentary as a final piece of art, 5 broken cameras presskit, gives you the most intimates details and difficulties presented with the reality of the Israeli occupations and continuous nigh raids and harsh tactics of the IDF trying to stop Bi’lin Village from demonstrating on Fridays after pryers in front of the illegal wall.
UPDATED:Aaron Swartz’s supporters will be remembering Aaron’s 30-year birthday Saturday, Nov. 5 and Sunday, Nov. 6 in San Francisco, Calif. in a two-day lectures, workshops and reception.
Aaron Swartz was not criminal, he was not a hacker, Aaron was an intellectual, a young social activist looking for balance in our society.
Co-founder of Reddit Aaron Swartz found dead 😦 😥
Aaron Swartz Indicted For Hacking JSTOR.-
Tragic that the imminent end of life rotten in a federal prison pushed this young intellectual to take his life.
Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who wrote key parts of early RSS code, helped establish Reddit, opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act, and pushed hard for open access to information like U.S. case law and academic journals. Information that should be freely available to the public.
Last year Aaron Swartz the internet hacktivist was indicted for charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, data theft and property damage, Today Aaron Swartz is death. Found death in his apartment on apparently suicide.
A spokeswoman for New York’s Medical Examiner says 26-year-old Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was found Friday.
Swartz’s death was confirmed by his attorney, Elliot Peters, in an email to MIT’s The Tech newspaper.
“The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true,” Peters wrote.
Before you go any further on the indictment charge of our young bright Aaron Swartz, you need to learn about his alleged crime.
25-year-old Swartz, who is best known as co-author of the initial RSS specification, allegedly broke into a computer closet at MIT, accessed MIT’s network connected to JSTOR and downloaded “a major portion of JSTOR’s archive” without authorization, and distributed the acquired content through file sharing networks.
These are are words used in the indictment of Aaron, but this could have been proven wrong by an IT specialist that had cracked the most difficult cases in the IT industry. Alex Stamos is the CTO of Artemis Internet, he was the defense witness in Aaron Swartz case. Please take a minute to read his post “The truth about Aaron Swartz’s Crime”.
Aaron Swartz, was web pioneer who advocated for free online content. This more than suicide it is a crime delivered directly from the the Justice Department in their attempts to keep the profits soaring for the Corporate Gangsters.
Demand Progress, a website for which Swartz previously served as Executive Director, set up a web page and petition in support of Swartz, indicating that the indictment came with surprise and questioning a legal strategy that makes downloading “so many journal articles” a felony that should be punished with jail time. Demand Progress also noted that “the alleged victim has settles any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute.” Toms Guide
Swartz himself reached out to his Twitter followers and thanked for their support via tweets. Demand Progress’ current Executive Director David Segal said that “Aaron’s career has focused on serving the public interest by promoting ethics, open government, and democratic politics. We hope to soon see him cleared of these bizarre charges.”
It is outrageous to think that the life of a young person be wasted this way. The Justice Department should respond for this crime.
It is not that we do not have enough with the trampling of our rights as a citizens, now we are facing greater threats to our physical integrity, when Law Thugs like District Attorneys base their career creating crimes with the pen.
35 years in prison for distributing old academic journals/papers? I can’t imagine a non-profit like JSTOR going after someone with the fury of the entertainment industry. If anything they should see the writing on the wall; most journals are required to move towards open access. According to JSTOR they did not want to press charges, but the Federal Government went full blown against this 25 year old internet activist, and was facing 50 years in Jail and more than 1,000,000 in fines. What a ridicule and out of proportion judgment, when we have Real criminals directing our life.
Most of our politicians are hacking each other, they have the best technology money can buy and they get away with it.
Last year, Swartz openly criticized the US and the Israeli regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran. The blogger was also vocal in criticizing Obama’s so-called kill list and other policies. Obama has been reportedly approving the names put on the “kill lists” used in the targeted killing operations carried out by US assassination drones.
Every week or so, more than 100 members of the US national security team gather via secure video teleconference run by the Pentagon and go over the biographies of suspects in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, and “nominate” those who should be targeted in the attacks.
Obama is then provided with the identities of those put on the “kill list” and signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia as well as the risky strikes in Pakistan.
Swartz was critical of monopoly of information by corporate cartels and believed that information should be shared and available for the benefit of society.
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,” he wrote in an online “manifesto” in 2008.
Some DA at the United States Attorney’s Office was trying to get herself a promotion and killed this amazing young man in the process. Justice is backward, law enforcement is covering the real criminals. There are real crimes out there, this is not one of them. “I’m so sick of living in a world without compassion and understanding. The laws on the books don’t automatically force prosecution and saying ‘its just my job’ is a justification that has never worked in history. In fact, those who claim this are often the worst of us, and by far. I’m sick of the monied interests having so much power and controlling our fates. From the office of the President down to the lowliest street beggar – money rules. Money become the evil that control our everyday lives. Copyright, IP, patents aren’t more important than my freedom or my ability to educate myself and others. This is an attack on my basic right to speak!
I’m so angry right now. The world only produces a few thousand Aaron Swartz’s a generation. Instead of us building a system to enable and empower people like him, we build systems by old men to protect the assets of old men while pissing on young men. They are destroying the boomer generation, you’ve become traitors to the American dream and to basic American freedom. The systems they build enable DAs and money men to toss the people who try to do better in this life in jail.” Internet Forums
The family of Aaron Swartz and the internet community are demanding the Federal Prosecutor to be charge with the murder of Aaron. The unjustifiable thread of excessive charges brought our young activist to depression and ultimately to his death. The office of the Federal Prosecutor unable to stop the chains of hacking events in the internet and DDS attacks prompted them to look for scapegoats. Aaron’s death demand justice.
I hope Anonymous and others hacktivists show a lesson to the Corporate Scam of the world, and their prostitutes. This is a crime against our youth. This is not how our youth deserve to be treated.
Aaron Swartz was a truly beautiful person. The world is unquestionably dimmer without him. RIP Aaron, you will be missed and remembered. The more since condolences to his family and friends.
Europe Union is taking seriously PRISM spying program, they know well that this could very well be use to spy on EU officials.
Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the 
Laura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award®, an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy for My Country, My Country (POV 2006). She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for 
The collective anonymous group announced on Friday, that next Monday, the internet will go black as a protest for the passing in the senate of CISPA, another draconian law, which 
ground.
The state court in Stuttgart recently ruled that the former Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist Brigitte Mohnhaupt should be released on probation in March, after serving 24 years in detention. Federal President Horst Köhler is also expected to announce his decision soon as to whether another former RAF terrorist, Christian Klar, will be pardoned. The only remaining RAF members still in prison are Eva Haule and Birgit Hogefeld, with Haule qualifying for parole in August.
Aaron Swartz’s death needs justice. He was not a crazy person with suicide thoughts. Aaron was perfectly sane individual charged with bogus made up crimes. We all know that our system is rotten. The prosecutors in our “justice” system make crimes to climb up in their careers.
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Aaron Aarons 
Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who wrote key parts of early RSS code, helped establish Reddit, opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act, and pushed hard for open access to information like U.S. case law and academic journals. Information that should be freely available to the public.
“I’m so sick of living in a world without compassion and understanding. The laws on the books don’t automatically force prosecution and saying ‘its just my job’ is a justification that has never worked in history. In fact, those who claim this are often the worst of us, and by far. I’m sick of the monied interests having so much power and controlling our fates. From the office of the President down to the lowliest street beggar – money rules. Money become the evil that control our everyday lives. Copyright, IP, patents aren’t more important than my freedom or my ability to educate myself and others. This is an attack on my basic right to speak!
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