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Chris Hedges: Why I'm Suing Barack Obama Over the NDAA

Chris Hedges
TruthDig.com
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© AP / Dusan Vranic
Detainees pray at the U.S. military detention facility known as Camp Bucca in Iraq in this 2009 photo.
Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled "Counter-Terrorism," for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until "the end of hostilities." It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have "disappeared" into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.
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Attention

SOPA's Creator Aims To Resuscitate Bill After Protest Blackout

Andy Greenberg
Forbes
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:55 UTC
anti-Smith poster created by SOPA opponents
© n/a
An anti-Smith poster created by SOPA opponents.
Representative Lamar Smith has spent the last three months going to war with the entire Internet. And a few of the web's biggest sites going on strike isn't about to stop him now.

With a vote on SOPA indefinitely delayed, several of the most controversial portions of the bill excised and the White House committed to opposing the bill in its current form, the tech industry's least favorite piece of legislation seems close to dead. A day of protest against SOPA and its Senate cousin the Protect IP Act, in which sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, Major League Gaming, The Cheezburger Network, Tor and others plan to go offline for twelve hours Wednesday, may have seemed like overkill.

But right on cue, Texas representative Lamar Smith has vowed to pick up what's left of the tattered bill he introduced last October and push forward a markup hearing on the legislation in February. "To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy," he wrote in a statement to reporters. "I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property."
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Laptop

Internet Strike: Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit to go Dark Tonight


Los Angeles Times
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:41 UTC
Wikipedia page graphic
© Wikipedia
What does an Internet strike look like? You're about to find out.

Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing and even ICanHazCheezburger have joined hundreds of other websites in a pledge to go dark Tuesday night to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) -- two anti-piracy bills that are currently making their way through Congress.

"This is an extraordinary action for our community to take," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a statement Monday announcing Wikipedia's decision to go dark. "While we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

Wikipedia -- the Web's fifth-most popular property with 470 million monthly users -- is the largest Web entity to declare its intent to go dark, but it joins many other websites that have already pledged to shut down for 12 to 24 hours to draw attention to legislation that they say will hasten the end of the free Internet.
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Display

Protests Against SOPA, PIPA Go Viral

Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:31 UTC
SOPA protest graphic
© n/a
Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing plan unprecedented Internet 'strike' Wednesday

In a remarkable example of a grassroots campaign gone viral, several websites including Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Imgur and Tucows, are planning an unprecedented Internet "strike" Wednesday to protest controversial anti-piracy legislation being considered by Congress.

Many of the sites plan to go completely dark on Jan 18 to show opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Google will not go dark, but plans to note its opposition by sticking a protest link on its home page.

"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," Google said in a statement. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page."

According to Fight for the Future, one of the groups organizing the protests, nearly 12,000 websites have said they will join the blackout. That number is still growing.

The planned strike prompted a sharp response from at least one major supporter of the legislation. In a statement Tuesday, former Sen. Chris Dodd, now chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), blasted the so-called Internet Blackout Day.
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Crusader

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:29 UTC
To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate - that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it's a decision that wasn't lightly made. Here's how it's been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community's discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:
It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

Comment: To see a list of those expressing concern with SOPA and PIPA, compiled by the Center for Democracy & Technology, go here.

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Dollar

One U.S. family is responsible for half of Netanyahu's donations

Ophir Bar-Zohar
Haaretz
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:32 UTC
Benjamin Netanyahu at a an event with member of the Likud party in 2007
© Dudu Bachar
Benjamin Netanyahu at a an event with member of the Likud party in 2007
Owners of Duty Free America, a large chain of duty-free shops that operates in 13 airports, pledged half of NIS 330,000 Netanyahu raised.

Members of a single American family have donated half of the NIS 330,000 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has raised for his Likud party primary campaign in the past few weeks. Four members of the Falic family from Florida are responsible for contributing some NIS 165,000.

Of the nine donors that appear on the political contributions page on the state comptroller's website, seven gave over NIS 41,000 - very close to the maximum of NIS 43,280 that individuals are allowed to donate. Several of the donors have been mentioned in Channel 10's "Bibitours" investigative reports, according to which the prime minister may have allowed donors to finance his trips abroad, and allegedly billed a trip to two different sources.
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Attention

Who's Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientists?

Josh Levs
CNN
Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:31 UTC
Image

Nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed by a blast in Tehran on Wednesday, the state-run IRNA news agency said.
It's a question many people inside Iran -- and those who watch the country closely around the world -- were asking Wednesday: Who is killing nuclear scientists in Iran?

An explosion on Wednesday killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a top official at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Iranian officials said.

He is the third man identified as a nuclear scientist to be killed in Iran in a mysterious explosion in the past two years. A fourth survived an assassination attempt.

In each case, someone placed a bomb under the scientist's car.

Iranian officials, on state-run media, blame Israel and the United States.
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Megaphone

Vatican Official Condemns GMOs as 'New Form of Slavery'

Anthony Gucciardi
readersupportednews.org
Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:52 UTC
Image
© LaStampa
Ghanian-born Cardinal and top Vatican official Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson.
In an interview with the magazine L'Osservatore Romano on January 5, a prominent member of the Vatican spoke out against genetically modified crops. Cardinal Peter Turkson said that genetically modified crops are a "new form of slavery," and went on to discuss the impact that they have on both the environment and the economy. Regardless of religious association, anyone speaking out against genetically modified should be listened to. As a prominent leader of the Catholic people, Cardinal Turkson has the ability to inform millions worldwide regarding the negative effects of genetically modified food.

Even farmers have risen up against Monsanto and genetically modified seeds, with Monsanto forcing thousands of farmers into debt worldwide. In India, Monsanto has ruined the lives of so many farmers that the prevalence of their suicide has led to a large farming area to be titled the 'suicide belt of India'. Some have even blamed Monsanto for the recent bird and fish deaths, claiming that the poison coming from their factories may have poisoned animals worldwide. Monsanto's destruction isn't limited to the environment, however.
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Star of David

Israel Requests Delay in US-Israel Missile Defense Exercise

Laura Rozen
The Envoy
Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
A major U.S.-Israeli missile defense exercise that had been planned to take place in the spring has been postponed due to a request by the Israeli Defense Ministry, American and Israeli officials told Yahoo News Sunday.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued a request to the Pentagon last month that the planned joint exercise be postponed, a U.S. official told Yahoo News Sunday.

"It was Barak," the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency's Ron Kampeas reported earlier Sunday that the exercise was being postponed, ostensibly because of "Israeli budget cuts."

But American officials are privately concerned that the Israeli request for a postponement of the exercise could be one potential warning sign that Israel is trying to leave its options open for conducting a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the spring. In that case, it would not wish American forces to then be on the ground, the thinking goes.
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Vader

US: Perry Defends Marines Accused of Urinating on Corpses


Reuters
Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Rick Perry
© unknown
Rick Perry
Texas Governor Rick Perry, scrambling to keep his U.S. presidential bid alive, accused the Obama administration on Sunday of over-reacting to a videotape that shows four Marines appearing to urinate on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

"These kids made a mistake. There's not any doubt about it. They shouldn't have done it. It's bad," Perry told CNN's State of the Union program.

"But to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top," said Perry, who faces a possible make-or-break performance in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday.

The U.S. Marine Corps named an investigative officer last week to decide what, if any, charges to bring against the four Marines shown in the widely circulated videotape.
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