US President Barack Obama delivered a speech at the State Department that described in detail the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. He focused on the unfolding transformation in the region and how it was a “moment of opportunity.” And, he called the State Department a “fitting venue to mark a new chapter in American diplomacy.”
He called out Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the rulers of Bahrain in a roll call of ongoing state repression. He illuminated what he thinks a peace deal between Israel and Palestine should look like at this point in world history and put forth an economic of foreign investment plan. And, he drew attention to the use of technology to fuel the Arab Spring but, despite the fact that Amnesty International hailed WikiLeaks as a catalyst in the Arab Spring, he did not mention WikiLeaks and the organization’s release of previously classified US State Embassy cables.
The core of the speech aims to highlight the value of ordinary citizens sparking movements for change. He says these movements “speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years.” He explicitly highlights how America came from a history of nonviolence, protest and rebellion against empire.
This focus is deceitful on many levels because individuals who engage in nonviolence and fight against repressive domestic and foreign policies here in the United States (some that have to do with what Obama raised in his speech) can easily be harassed, intimidated and even criminalized for engaging in political activity. US citizens who take too much interest in US foreign policy in countries like Colombia or Palestine risk having their homes raided by the FBI/SWAT and subsequently being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.
Henry Rollins interview by Maximus D. Estevez and Jonathan "Toth" Getzschman: full text available here. Submitted by Jonathan "Toth" Getzschman.
"I don’t go to CNN for news like I don’t go to a Burger King for a meal."
Max: In America's search for transparency, new organizations have been formed, such as Wikileaks. America is torn on that specific issue. Some view it as treason. Others view it as patriotism. What is your take on the subject?
Henry: If WikiLeaks is treason, then so was the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame [VP Dick Cheney called her and her husband "Fair Game" after they proved and announced to the media that Bush was lying about Saddam Hussein's WMD's] and let’s get everyone into court and get it going. If America has so many things that we are not supposed to know about, perhaps it’s time to change the way we do things. The way America conducts itself at this point only seems to lead to new conflicts. If America didn’t go to Iraq, there would be no deficit. Since the American media has been bought and paid for, some people need alternate sources to get their information.
I don’t go to CNN for news like I don’t go to a Burger King for a meal.
Max: In a time when many American's are wanting more transparency in government and to get their voices heard, what do you see as the most honorable and expedient way to get the government to listen to the will of the people?
Antiwar and international solidarity activists, subjects of a federal grand jury investigation that alleges they may have provided “material support for terrorism,” uncovered documents on FBI guidelines and investigation practices left behind in an activist’s home that was raided in September of last year. The documents illuminate how the FBI has conducted surveillance of the activists being targeted in the investigation and further prove the grand jury is being used as a tool to go after political groups.
On September 24 of last year, the home of Lindon Gawboy and Mick Kelly, an activist who helped to organize a mass demonstration outside the Republican National Convention in 2008, was raided and subpoenaed. Gawboy was awoken by FBI pounding on her door. She came to the door and asked for a search warrant. The FBI ignored her request for a warrant and proceeded to use a battering ram, which took the door off its hinges and shattered a nearby fish tank.
The agents raiding Gawboy and Kelly’s home emptied file cabinets and desks and stacked files around the apartments. They set up and went through individual documents taking files away that were of interest to them. At some point during this process, an agent’s papers on the investigation became mixed in with Kelly’s files. And, presumably by chance, Gawboy found the revealed documents just weeks ago.
FROM THE CABLES/GITMO FILES
Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be just one of many diplomats or international officials alleged to have abused maids or nannies in the United States:
In April 2007, a Tanzanian maid filed a lawsuit against Alan Mzengi, a minister-counselor at the Tanzanian Embassy. She alleged the Mzengis kept her as “a virtual prisoner in their residence, stripping her of her passport, refusing to permit her to leave the house unaccompanied.” The lawsuit states she was not paid for her four years of work.
On this case, Reuters reports a US State Embassy cable from December 2009 shows the US government asked the Tanzanian government to investigate saying, “While payment of the lost wages to Ms. Mazengo is our first priority, we also hope that any diplomat who has treated his domestic staff in such an abusive manner would face appropriate sanction upon his return home," the cable said.
The State Department continues to monitor a possible Tanzania investigation and claims it will be getting “tough on alleged abuse of domestic workers by foreign diplomats.”
Cables deal with Canadian electricity:
One story out from CBC reports that Prince Edward Island utility Maritime Electric was part of Hydro-Québec's plans for purchase of NB Power. In October 2009, as the New Brunswick government was considering a $4.8 billion deal that was politically unpopular, the possibility of a sale was denied. The cables show it was seriously considered.
New US International Cybersecurity Strategy Aims to Institute 'Rule of Law' on the Internet
The United States officially launched its international cyber security strategy in a White House event on Monday, May 16. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined by the following administration officials: John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism and homeland security adviser; Howard Schmidt, White House cybersecurity coordinator; Attorney General Eric Holder; Secretaries Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security and Gary Locke of Commerce; and Defense Deputy Secretary William Lynn.
The presentation of the cyber security presented several principles, outlined the approach the US intends to take in the further development of cyber security protections, and indicated how the US might use the Internet to preserve its status as a superpower in the world.
Featured during the presentation were seven principles, which appear in the framework: economic engagement, protecting networks, law enforcement, military cooperation, multi-stakeholder Internet governance, international development and Internet freedom. Within the presentation, Clinton sought to explain that cyber crime, Internet freedom and network security could no longer be “disparate stovepipe discussions.”
At no time during the launch of the strategy was WikiLeaks mentioned. Not even Clinton bothered to mention it, despite the fact that she heads a State Department that had their department’s classified information leaked and published by media organizations and continue to have new information published each day.
The Bahrain regime is playing a rather odd game of promising dialog and reform to international observers, while it continues its repression.
Small signs of goodwill
The trial of 20 political detainees, which was meant to take place on the 8th of May was postponed the 12th of May to allow all the detainees time to review the charges and to prepare.
It is even said that some lawyers were allowed to be present at some interrogation.
However the special military court set for the occasion fails to meet the minimum standards for a fair trial and has led to the following sentences :
Trial observers were refused entry to the military court.
Some of the healthcare professionals that were detained for obscure reasons were also released.
View the updated list here.
The king also announced on the 9th of May the lift of emergency state for the 1st of June, the ministry however said no date was definite on when the Saudi forces will go.
For the past four or five days, a copy of a leaked confidentiality agreement from WikiLeaks has been a hot topic among those who follow news and politics. Those that have regularly scrutinized WikiLeaks, who have typically gone along with any meme in the media that shines a light on the organization’s imperfections, took the posting of this agreement as an opportunity to focus on how this showed complete hypocrisy. Those sympathetic and supportive, on the other hand, saw this as a moment when they needed to get out in front and defend the organization.
I was one of those people who found the renewed push to further de-legitimize WikiLeaks concerning. I posted an analysis of the confidentiality agreement and later posted a comprehensive and thought-out critique of David Allen Green's work on WikiLeaks. (Green is the blogger for the New Statesman, who helped make the agreement a big story.)
As the story was breaking, I received a Twitter message, “WikiLeaks Threatens Its Own Leakers With $20 Million Penalty" http://bit.ly/klgAnz What says @kgosztola?” The message came from Roni Weiss, a personality on a podcast show called “Don’t Worry About the Government.” I told him he should have me on his program to share my opinion.
On Facebook, we went back and forth on the “Don’t Worry About the Government” show page as I tried to get him to do a segment with me. He stated his position, “My biggest concern is that I just don't have much to say about it…My stance is basically: This looks bad for them, publicity-wise, and beyond that, I don't really care, because they do a lot of things that look bad.
BBC’s report on US State Embassy cables from WikiLeaks detailing the “hidden agenda” of northern Arctic states has led Greenpeace to call “on the Arctic Council to place an immediate moratorium on industrial exploitation within the area that has historically been covered by sea ice.”
Truls Gulowsen, Arctic campaign leader for Greenpeace Nordic, writes, “What the Arctic needs in this time of extreme external pressure is a protection against additional threats from dangerous shipping, oil exploitation, bottom-trawling, over-fishing and other destructive industrial practices.” Gulowsen also points out the “more immediate and more dangerous safety issue” is that moves into the “fragile Arctic to drill for oil” will create a threat of oil spills and likely impact the marine environment.
The Financial Times post on the cables highlights some of the noteworthy revelations in the cables:
Authored by Mike Soron.
Discussing a draft declaration from South American and Arab State leaders, a United States government operative lists a series of “anti-American digs” against the US and Israel that were later excluded from the text.
What is considered anti-American is stunning and revealing. This quiet, unassuming cable shows a bizarre and expansive US foreign policy agenda in 2005.
Among statements considered to be anti-American:
The cable also described aspirations for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East as “anti-Israeli sentiment”.
An unusually clear window into a USG operatives’s worldview at the time.
—
Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa is covering the Wikileaks cables as they relate to Canadian intellectual property and internet law. Do follow.
While the arrest and future trial of doctors and nurses has been quite well covered by mainstream media, it is only one measure among many that were taken to repress the pro-democratic movement in Bahrain.
Following the violent and deadly crackdown in February and March that led to at least 31 casualties, 18 members of the main opposition party Al Wefaq, resigned from the parliament.
Monday, we learned that Jawad Ferooz and Mattar Mattar were detained.
The arrest of Mattar came a day after he spoke to Al Jazeera.
Despite the claim by Press TV, that he died in custody, there has been no such confirmation. There have, however, been several reports of him leaving to hospital due to brutal torture.
The General Federation for Bahrain Trade Unions announced Wednesday that at least 1115 people lost their jobs in the past two months for taking part in strikes or protests.
Among them is Abdulhadi Alkhawaja’s wife, who was fired from her work after 10 years at Kanoo School. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is a prominent human right defender whose daughter went on hunger strike after his brutal abduction by the Bahraini regime on the 8th of April. Abdulhadi was held incommunicado for weeks, no lawyer or relative was allowed to see him.
David Allen Green, legal correspondent for the New Statesman out of the UK, has spent the last few days calling attention to a leaked confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which he revealed in a blog post on May 11. Green has posted a second post on the agreement on his blog, Jack of Kent, and will be posting a summary to the New Statesman website on May 16, which last time I checked, he intends to glibly title, "NDAs for Dummies."
I published an initial analysis of the leaked agreement on WL Central. The analysis was featured as a “Best Opinion” in an “Irony Alert” blog post on the agreement on The Week’s website.
Green, who is the blogger who was the first to draw attention to the agreement, called it a “draconian and extraordinary legal gag that WikiLeaks imposes on its own staff” and, in particular, focused on Clause 5 of the agreement that “imposes a penalty of ‘£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling’ on anyone who breaches this legal gag.”
In his follow-up post, which cites the analysis I wrote, he groups me with others who “sought to explain the document away: to normalize it and to contend that it is somehow unexceptional.” That is true. That is what I did.
He adds:
It may be well that for WikiLeaks partisans (like "the Birthers" in the United States), nothing - not even a disclosed document- will shift their adherence to their cause.
Edited podcast now posted.
There are three high profile federal grand jury investigations. For each one, the argument could be made that the grand jury is chilling political action or seeking to criminalize people for associating with certain groups that are not charged with committing any crimes but instead are unsavory and illegitimate to the government.
The investigations being referred to are the investigation into Anonymous that is based in San Jose, California, the investigation into antiwar and international solidarity activists that is based in Chicago, Illinois, and the investigation into WikiLeaks that is based in Alexandria, Virginia.
Joining the "This Week in WikiLeaks" show this week is Jim Fennerty, who is a Chicago-based attorney defending the activists who were raided by the FBI in September of last year and now face a grand jury investigation. He is with the National Lawyers Guild and will be here to talk about his work defending the activists and will talk about the grand jury process and what those following the WikiLeaks might see happen in Alexandria as the investigation moves forward.
To listen to the show, click play on the widget below:
You can also listen to the show by going to this page. The podcast will appear in the list of "CMN News" episodes. Click the latest "This Week in WikiLeaks" episode and download. (The podcast can also be downloaded off of iTunes by searching for "CMN News" and then downloading the latest podcast.)
In the final week of January, twelve anti-war, labor and international solidarity activists were expected to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. They refused to go before the grand jury.
These activists from Chicago, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and other areas have been subpoenaed over the past months. Several of the activists had their homes raided. Documents, cell phones, storage disks, computers, and children's artwork were seized from their home. The subpoenas indicated the FBI was looking for evidence that the activists had provided "material support for terrorism." And, it was discovered that the FBI had an informant, who went by the name of "Karen Sullivan," infiltrate an anti-war group in the Twin Cities.
This "witch-hunt" began on September 24th and, since then, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been working to get activists to testify before a grand jury in Chicago. So far, all the activists have refused to participate in this "fishing expedition."
WL Central recently began posting coverage of this story. And, as the grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and those who might be linked to WikiLeaks advances, it seems appropriate to provide context and shine a light on other stories of suppression of freedom and civil liberties in the United States.
Here is a profile of one of the activists (which I wrote and originally posted at OpEdNews.com in January):
Authored by Juan Gabriel Gomez Albarello, Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This article is available in Spanish in El Espectador.
The so-called “Lleras Act”, a proposal concerning intellectual property rights and access to internet in Colombia, prompts a discussion that has taken place in other places and which has led to various responses. I would not like to take the Colombian Constitutional Court's place and claim that, if Congress approves the current proposal, that tribunal would declare the Act inconstitutional. However, I would like to refer to the way in which the problem of granting adequate protection of basic rights such as the presumption of innocence and the freedom of expression was approached by the French Constitutional Council.
The proposal submitted to Congress by the Interior Minister, German Vargas Lleras (grandson of a former Colombian president, Carlos Lleras), proposes to protect intellectual property rights by means of restricting access to internet to those accused of infringing upon those rights. From the cultural industry's point of view, the most interested part in the profits that those rights generate, the protection mechanism included in the proposal is very ingenious: the individual or firm who feels affected by a violation of their intellectual property rights can complain before the user's internet provider and request a suspension of that user. If the provider refuses to do so, then such a provider would share the responsibility related to any violation of their rights.
In 2010, WikiLeaks revealed through its release of the Iraq War Logs and its partnership with organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism “303 allegations of [detainee] abuse by coalition forces were reported in the military files after 2004.” Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who just published an op-ed in the Washington Post condemning WikiLeaks while at the same time using the information they have released to prop up his own views on US policy in the “war on terror,” pledged to “make changes as needed” to ensure that Abu Ghraib didn’t happen again.
The Iraq War Logs proved changes had not been made. And now, with this new report out from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and PBS’s Need to Know there is further confirmation that perpetrators of atrocities continue to go unpunished, those who allow for systemic abuse to continue have not been held accountable, and nothing has really changed since the Abu Ghraib scandal.
On May 7, an estimated 30,000 - 50,000 people marched in downtown Toronto to call for decriminalization of marijuana in Canada. This cause in Canada is not just for marijuana users (despite being an obvious proponent of legalization, or at least decriminalization, this writer is not a smoker). The importance of Canada's drug laws is not just the perceived object, but all that gets swept up under the umbrella of the 'drug war'. Exactly as the 'war on terror' allowed a complete disregard of national and international law, 'pre-emptive wars' and excusable torture, and the new wars on copyright infringement and child pornography are being used to justify governments seizing control of the internet and denying citizens their right to privacy, so has the much older drug war allowed the US to override the sovereignty of American countries and impose their own laws on them.
The provincial courts have been calling Canada's marijuana laws unconstitutional since 2000 and Canada was the first country to adopt a system regulating the medicinal use of marijuana. In 2002, Prime Minister Jean Chretien promised decriminalization, while his government also looked at amnesty for the 600,000 Canadians convicted of possessing marijuana. Both amnesty and legalization were recommended by a senate committee, and decriminalization was seen as a safe 'middle ground'. Not middle enough for the Bush administration however, and their threatened reprisals caused the slow death of the plan. As reported earlier on WL Central, political activist Marc Emery was not only extradited to the US for something that is not a serious crime in Canada, contrary to even the one-sided Canada-US extradition agreement, but he was denied a transfer back to Canada after one year, contrary to the sentencing judge's recommendations, because of "law enforcement concerns." In other words, he would not be in jail in Canada for something he did in Canada, which is not a crime in Canada, so they kept him.
In his quest to make Canada unrecognizable, newly powerful Prime Minister Stephen Harper is hoping to change all that. He is not attempting to assert Canada's authority to create and enforce its own laws, but he is trying to bring Canada's drug laws and enforcement in line with that of the US. Ten days into his new majority, the Supreme Court of Canada is hearing a case Harper's federal government is bringing against Vancouver supervised injection site Insite. Insite is North America’s first legal supervised injection site. The BC Ministry of Health Services provides operational funding for Insite through Vancouver Coastal Health, which operates the facility in conjunction with PHS Community Services Society. Insite operates on a harm-reduction model, which means it strives to decrease the adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug use without requiring abstinence from drug use.
Vancouver has a drug problem. Anyone who has been to the emergency ward in any of the hospitals in Vancouver has seen how that drug problem affects Vancouver's health services. The Ministry of Health is a provincial responsibility and the costs associated with running Insite are borne by the province, as are the costs of not running Insite. Some say that Insite is none of the federal government's business. Those would be the people who supported its founding in 2003 and its exemption from Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act ever since. Those people would not include Stephen Harper. In his quest to bring the drug war to Canada, to impose mandatory minimum sentencing and build huge new prisons to 'keep our streets safe', Harper does not have any sympathy with people preventing drug addicts from dying, no matter how much taxpayer money they save. He is, in fact, willing to spend tax dollars arguing his case all the way up to the Supreme Court.
A leaked confidentiality agreement that those doing “business” with WikiLeaks are expected to sign was obtained and published by the New Statesman. The New Statesman and other news organizations believe they have uncovered another aspect of the WikiLeaks organization that indicates it is unfit to be trusted by whistleblowers. But, for anyone who understands confidentiality agreements there may be nothing extraordinary or even draconian about the agreement.
A confidentiality agreement is essentially a non-disclosure agreement. Included are details noting the “owner of the information,” the “receiver of the information,” a definition of what it considers to be “information,” why the agreement is necessary, what information is covered by the agreement, a definition of the permitted use of the information, any exceptions to the agreement, and penalties that could be imposed if the agreement is breached.
What news organizations seem to be taking issue with, rather ridiculously, is the word “owner" and the idea that WikiLeaks might be marketing this information to media organizations.
The New Statesman and others consider the use of the word "owner" to be proof that the organization finds it has “commercial ownership over the information that has been leaked to it.” But, the word “owner” is the term that is used in these agreements. It is standard and may not be proof the organization sees itself as literally owning the information.
Clause by clause:
“A” stipulates the information that it finds to be covered by the agreement is defined.
GOP Leads Hearing on 'Improving' Whistleblower Provisions in Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill
A hearing titled, “Legislative Proposals to Address the Negative Consequences of the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Provisions,” was held today. Focused on proposed legislation from Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), the hearing looked at how to “improve” the Dodd-Frank Act by “preserving” the internal reporting mechanisms or processes that companies have setup for whistleblowers (e.g. hotlines).
Rep. Grimm essentially argued that the changes in Dodd-Frank make it highly likely the “floodgate” will open. Frivolous claims and costly penalties will arise from the fact that whistleblowers are now allowed to go to the SEC before reporting fraud or corruption through a company’s internal reporting system.
Marcia Narine, a witness appearing before the committee on behalf of the US Chamber of Commerce, suggested Dodd-Frank provisions aim to treat all companies like criminals and assume if employees bring a tip documents will begin to be shredded to cover up corruption or fraud. She found this to be unfair and argued that companies are being penalized for not doing their job, for not paying attention to a whistleblower that had information on Bernie Madoff and was ignored.
Kenneth Daly of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) asserted that the provisions in Dodd-Frank change the “emphasis from problem solving to getting paid for problem identification.” What developed later in the hearing was this conventional wisdom that whistleblowers could now be rewarded for malfeasance.
Update 2 - May 11 - 1:50 PM New York Time
This statement was posted by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression yesterday night. It is the latest on Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian solidarity activist, who is one of twenty-three activists that has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Chicago.
From the statement:
On Friday, May 6th, the bank accounts of Hatem and Naima Abudayyeh of Chicago were frozen. The bank manager at the TCF (Twin Cities Federal) branch could not explain what had happened but stated that the Bank Security Act prevented him from releasing any assets.
In a strange turn of events, the bank admitted announced today (May 10) that they shut down the accounts, stating they no longer want to provide banking services to the Abudayyeh family. Simultaneously, TCF management informed the Abudayyehs today that they were issuing them a check for the value of their accounts.
Calls from across the United States ha an impact. A Code Pink activist from Washington, DC called US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office and was told, "We've received hundreds of calls." The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) received numerous calls as well and "journalists from a National Public Radio affiliate, Al Jazeera and other agencies contacted them for an explanation."
The family's attorney, Michael Deutsch, says, "In my opinion, the bank did not act out of the blue. I suspect that the FBI and U.S Attorney investigation caused the bank to overreact and illegally freeze the Abudayyehs’ banking accounts that had been there for over a decade."
A federal grand jury is meeting at 11 am EST in Alexandria, Virginia. The grand jury is being employed to “build” a case against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who just won a gold medal for peace and justice from the Sydney Peace Foundation.
“The WikiLeaks case is part of a much broader campaign by the Obama administration to crack down on leakers,” writes Carrie Johnson of NPR. Johnson is one of a few reporters in the US press who has published a report today on this stirring development in the United States. She finds “national security experts” cannot “remember a time when the Justice Department has pursued so many criminal cases based on leaks of government secrets.”
The number of people subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury is unclear (and not in any of the few news articles published on the grand jury so far). What is known is that at least one individual from Cambridge was issued a subpoena seeking to compel him to testify before a Grand Jury. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com reported the individual served had a public link to the WikiLeaks case and it was “highly likely” the subpoena was connected to the WikiLeaks Grand Jury investigation.
There are two other federal Grand Juries that are ongoing in the country. In San Jose, California, a Grand Jury has been empanelled to investigate the “hacktivist” group, Anonymous. Another Grand Jury in Chicago has been empanelled to target antiwar, labor and international solidarity activists for their political action.
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