This is Part Two in WL Central's continued coverage of the arrest of Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab. He was arrested on May 5 at the Bahraini International Airport, following the announcement of his upcoming appearance on Julian Assange's talk show "The World Tomorrow." A representative of the public prosecution ordered that Rajab be detained for one week for "insulting a statutory body" via Twitter. Rajab denies the charges, saying they are aimed at hindering his human rights work and his right of expression. See Part One of our coverage here.
Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was arrested today by the order of the Bahraini public prosecution. This comes the day after WikiLeaks' press release that he, along with Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, will be the guests on next week's episode of Julian Assange's talk show, "The World Tomorrow."
Rajab was arrested at the Bahraini International Airport upon his return from Lebanon. Authorities have yet to comment on the reason for his arrest. Maryam al-Khawaja, another Bahraini human rights defender, said she and Rajab were discussing the possibility of his arrest as they left Beirut, knowing that the government in Bahrain was escalating.
In a recent interview with Gazeta Wyborcza, former Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski made the following statements:
Last Thursday, human rights and Julian Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson was held up on her flight from London to Sydney for security reasons. Over the years, journalists have been interrogated and detained at borders, often for purely political reasons. This incident was unprecedented with a lawyer now facing similar treatment.
Robinson was told that she is on an "inhibited" list of mysterious origin and that the Australian High Commission in London needed to be contacted before her departure. At some point, she was given the green light to board without that call being made and was able to get to her destination. When pressed, Australian Attorney General Roxon showed concern about the incident. She said that "this is not the result of any action taken by the Australian Government. We believe [Robinson], as an Australian who is not subject to any criminal charges or allegations, should be free to travel in and out of Australia."
The Guardian reported that "The Australian high commission in London has no record of a call being received from UK authorities concerning her travel". Virgin Atlantic, the airline that stopped Robinson, deferred responsibility to security services, while the UK Border Agency and DFAT each deny involvement.
Below is a list of addresses that were handed out on a sheet of paper at the Whitney Biennial 2012's Surveillance Teach-In, and described as "possible domestic NSA interception points".
Friday night was standing room only at the Whitney Biennial 2012's Surveillance Teach-In of Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Laura Poitras.
Her body of work includes: "My Country, My Country", about the U.S. invasion of Iraq; "The Oath", about two Yemeni men caught up in America’s "War on Terror"; and her current work in progress detailing the U.S. surveillance state in post 9/11 America.
Woven through the museum were interactive installations by Stimulate, and two mysterious portraits of of Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, who has been under house-arrest in Great Britian for 501 days without charge.
In 2006, the Polish military Secret Service (WSI) was restructured. The negotiations leading up to this drastic move triggered a number of US diplomatic dispatches. Most of these summarize public speeches by leading Polish politicians. The selection of material included in these dispatches is in itself telling. Most remarkable, however, is a casual comment by embassy staff in an unclassified cable (06WARSAW1171, emphasis by editor):
"On June 9, President Lech Kaczynski signed into law three bills that will liquidate Poland's existing Military Information Services (WSI) on September 30, 2006 in order to create two new services on October 1, 2006, the Military Intelligence Service (SWW) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW). The laws were a centerpiece of PiS's campaign promise to eliminate the vestiges of communism and corruption from Polish military intelligence. The laws do not appear to eliminate any existing military intelligence functions and so Post sees no reason to fear disruption of any ongoing cooperation with Polish military intelligence."
Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported in 2009 that such a collaboration in fact existed - up to 2005. The article is based on numerous sources with inside knowledge.
This article contains a number of interesting claims:
- A number of the agents delegated to the CIA went through an old fashioned USSR training. Some did not even have good English language proficiency. They would not be associated with the US.
- These agents had an excellent expertize in the Near and Middle East. They were paid for their work.
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" This familiar philosophical question came to my mind in response to a friend's challenge of my support for WikiLeaks and call for investigation into the recent shooting of a black teen in Florida. She said, "How do you know what the truth is? How do you know that George Zimmerman didn't act in self-defense? How do you know that Julian Assange didn't sexually assault women in Scandinavia? ... Unless you get on an airplane, go the scene of the action, and see for yourself, you can't be absolutely certain. You can check and crosscheck multiple different sources and you can draw reasonable inferences, but you still have to inject a certain amount of faith unless you conduct your own personal investigation".
It is true. We were not there at the moment of Trayvon Martin's death. Someone pulled the trigger and as a result the young man was dead. At the moment of his death, the neighbor's 911 call recorded someone crying for help. Someone was being threatened. Was it Zimmerman or Martin? We don't know if this was a murder or an act of self defense by Zimmerman. When the tree fell down, we were not in the woods to hear it.
Later I contemplated my friend's perspective and realized how it represents a psychological condition prevalent in American society. It is a kind of social disease, which perhaps explains the public silence around many problems in the world. This is a kind of belief system that says; I wasn't there. I don't know the truth, so I withhold judgment and remain aloof.
Julian Assange has now been detained for 500 days without charge. This includes the 10 days he spent in solitary confinement on top of the 490 days he's spent electronically tagged under house arrest. After all this time the media is still spreading the same falsities about his case and people continue to attack him with the same misconceptions as they were a year and a half ago.
In an emotional ABC radio interview today, Christine Assange, mother of WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has demanded the resignation of Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon.
The demand came after Ms Roxon appeared with other panelists, including WikiLeaks lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, on an Australian political TV show, "Q And A", on Monday 16th April 2012.
Christine Assange says Ms Roxon "has just point blank unblinkingly lied to the Australian people all the way through that Q And A session."
Ms Roxon's appearance on the show was eagerly awaited because since December 2010 there has been almost complete silence on Assange and WikiLeaks from both major Australian political parties. Radio presenter Phil Kafcaloudes replayed the following segment from the Q and A show:
Roxon: "There isn't something at the moment where we can intervene. We've made representations about proper processes, we've done all of the things that you should. He is not in a country that has doesn't have a legal system that operates properly. Ah, even I, as I said at the beginning, think it's an odd process, that you can keep someone detained for this period of time without there being a charge -"
Host: "Have you protested about that?"
Roxon: "We have made our views very clearly known to the - "
Robertson: "Not to the Australian public you haven't."
Roxon: "- to the Americans. Well, I'm here doing an interview today. This is a very public thing to be doing."
Robertson: "Good. What have you said to the Americans?"
(clapping, laughter)
Roxon: "Well we've said lots of things to the Americans."
I am indebted to Glenn Greenwald who posted an article here on the Tarek Mehanna case.
Greenwald outlines the case:
Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists’ documents into English and expressing “sympathetic views” to the group) as well as conspiring to “murder” U.S. soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an aggressive attack on a Muslim nation)
In a link by Greenwald to Julia Spitz of MetroWest Daily News, further details emerge:
He was a 'serious young man' who wanted to 'exemplify Islam,' said the judge, but became consumed by a fervor that led him to support al Qaeda by translating materials from Arabic into English and 'proselytizing' to recruit others to embrace his views.
Embrace his views or incite others to violence? (one might ask). As I wrote here, about incitement on the subject of certain Americans inciting others to kill Julian Assange:
There is no automatic 1st Amendment protection per Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969):
Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action
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