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Colosseum

Surprise! The FBI drowning in counter-terrorism money, power and other resources will apply the term "Terrorism" to any group it dislikes and wants to control and suppress

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© Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com
"Abuses Of Power Always - Always - Expand Beyond Their Original Application"

Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald writes:
Documents just obtained from the FBI by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund reveal, as the New York Times put it, that "the [FBI] used read here, reveal numerous instances of the FBI collaborating with local police forces and private corporations to monitor and anticipate the acts of the protest movement.

As obviously disturbing as it is, none of this should be surprising. Virtually every seized power justified over the last decade in the name of "terrorism" has been applied to a wide range of domestic dissent. The most significant civil liberties trend of the last decade, in my view, is the importation of War on Terror tactics onto US soil, applied to US citizens - from the sprawling Surveillance State and powers of indefinite detention to the para-militarization of domestic police forces and the rapidly emerging fleet of drones now being deployed in countless ways. As I've argued previously, the true purpose of this endless expansion of state power in the name of "terrorism" is control over anticipated domestic protest and unrest.

It should be anything but surprising that the FBI - drowning in counter-terrorism money, power and other resources - will apply the term "terrorism" to any group it dislikes and wants to control and suppress (thus ushering in all of the powers institutionalized against "terrorists"). Those who supported (or acquiesced to) this expansion of unaccountable government power because they assumed it would only be used against Those Muslims not only embraced a morally warped premise (I care about injustices only if they directly affect me), but also a factually false one, since abuses of power always - always - expand beyond their original application.
Mr. Greenwald is correct.

Chess

Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Israeli Arab conflict is the result of interactions of superpowers in the early 20th century. British and French strategic interests in the Middle East were related to the Mediterranean trading route, which went from the Suez channel to Indian markets. But the presence of the Ottoman navy based in the Levant was a direct threat to British interests. So the British and the French decided to divide the Middle East into smaller entities and countries to make it impossible for the Ottoman Empire to control them all. A century later, the legacy of European colonization of the Arab world is reflected by its many ongoing conflicts.


Question

Where's Hillary Clinton?

Hillary Clinton
© Olivier Douliery/MCTWho's the real psycho here?
On December 15, the day after the day after the shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, State Department officials notified the press that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had fallen ill. "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion," deputy assistant secretary Philippe Reines said in a statement to the press.

Since then, Clinton does not appear to have been sighted in public.

On December 19, Clinton missed the State Department holiday party. "I was going to congratulate her on her record-breaking travel," President Obama said, noting her absence. "These are not frequent-flyer miles," he joked. "She is tireless and extraordinary."

On the same day as her office announced her illness, they also put out word that Clinton would be missing the Benghazi hearing scheduled for December 20 on Capitol Hill. Indeed, she did miss that hearing, and another one has not yet been scheduled.

And on December 21, Clinton missed President Obama's announcement that John Kerry would be nominated as the next secretary of state. "Hillary wanted very much to be here today, but she continues to recuperate. I had a chance to talk to her earlier today, and she is in good spirits and could not be more excited about the announcement that I'm making," Obama said at that event, again noting Clinton's absence.

Clinton's last trip, to the Czech Republic, Belgium, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, returned December 7.

Wall Street

U.S. Treasury warns of 'extraordinary measures' amid fiscal cliff deadlock

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© Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama is hoping to pass a stop-gap deal through the Senate – but Republicans are opposed to his plan of raising taxes and delaying spending cuts.
US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner warned on Wednesday he would have to take "extraordinary measures" to avoid a default on the US's legal obligations as the country is set to breach its $16.4tn (£10.16tn) debt limit.

In a letter to Congress, Geithner said the debt ceiling would be reached on 31 December and that the Treasury could raise $200bn (£124bn) to fund government spending as a stopgap measure. But he warned that the current impasse over the fiscal cliff budget crisis meant it was uncertain how long that money would last.

"Under normal circumstances, that amount of headroom would last approximately two months.

"However, given the significant uncertainty that now exists with regard to unresolved tax and spending policies for 2013, it is not possible to predict the effective duration of these measures," Geithner warned.

In the two-paragraph letter Geithner also warned that "the extent to which the upcoming tax filing season will be delayed as a result of these unresolved policy questions is also uncertain."

A similar row over increases in the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 led to a historic downgrade of the US's credit rating and panic on stock markets around the world.

The Treasury secretary's warning comes as Barack Obama prepared to cut short his Christmas holiday in Hawaii, with the intention of returning to Washington in the hope of restarting the stalled budget talks.

Chess

OWS activists called domestic terrorists

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© Ramin Talaie / EPA
US history is littered with repressive laws. Constitutional protections and civil liberties have been targeted. The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts restricted First Amendment freedoms.

So did the 1917 Espionage Act, 1919 anti-communist Palmer raids, 1934 Special Committee on Un-American Activities, its House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) successor, FBI COINTELPRO crackdowns, 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 2001 USA Patriot Act, and other post-9/11 measures.

Police state harshness today reflects US policy. Compromised civil liberties expanded government surveillance, eroded habeas rights, formalized military tribunals, permitted torture-extracted confessions, and sanctified violence in the name of national security.

Thousands of political prisoners languish in America's gulag. It's the world's largest by far. It's one of the harshest.

Many there deserve praise, not imprisonment. OWS activists may join them. More on that below.

For the first time, Patriot Act provisions created the crime of domestic terrorism. Section 802 applies to persons alleged to engage in acts "dangerous to human life."

Evidence isn't needed. Accusations suffice. US citizens and permanent residents are vulnerable. They're frequent targets. They're unjustly accused of violating federal, state, or local laws if they:
intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
influence government policy by intimidation or coercion;
and/or affect government conduct by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.
Patriot Act legislation enacted sweeping federal powers. They're used to investigate and prosecute alleged terrorism. Civil libertarians, environmental and animal rights activists are targeted.

Peaceful demonstrations are criminalized. At times, long-term incarceration follows.

Chart Bar

(We won't be?) Fooled again - Six weeks after reelection, Obama sells out liberal Democrats

After the election Kerry Eleveld wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled "Why Barack Obama Will Be a More Effective Liberal in His Second Term." "In response to their initial disappointment with the president's early performance, many progressives speculated that Obama was just waiting for a second term to be more liberal," he said. That was true. They were.

Eleveld continued: "A more likely explanation is that Obama was still finding his groove, figuring out which levers worked best for him in the context of governing the nation. And in some ways, he was still developing the courage of his convictions."

That, it turns out, was false. He wasn't.

You can't develop convictions that you don't have in the first place.

It's hard to remember now, more than six weeks later, but there was once a time (six long weeks ago) when liberal Democrats who naïvely chose to ignore Obama's consistently conservative first term, his consistently conservative career in the Senate, and his consistently conservative pre-politics career as a University of Chicago law professor, seriously believed that his reelection would lead to a progressive second term.

"It's time for President Obama to assume the Roosevelt-inspired mantle of muscular liberalism," Anthony Woods wrote in The Daily Beast. "This is his moment. He only has to take it."

It's his moment, all right. And he's taking it. But when it comes to Obama, liberals are once again guilty of some major wishful thinking. Obama's economic policies are closer to Herbert Hoover than Franklin Roosevelt.

"With re-election safely behind him, we hope Obama will be bolder in his second term," Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen wrote in The Nation.

Again with the Hope!

Change, not so much.

Smiley

If we policed the U.S. the way we do Afghanistan

I'd really like to see the response of drone-strike supporters if we tried taking out the dangerous criminals in their cities with remote-controlled aerial bombings. 'Cause I don't think that would play well in most 'hoods.

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Follow @SorensenJen on Twitter

Eye 1

Merry Christmas from the Feds, who can still read your emails without a warrant

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© AllGov.com
The federal government will continue to access Americans' emails without a warrant, after the U.S. Senate dropped a key amendment to legislation now headed to the White House for approval.

Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amendment attached to the Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act (which deals with publishing users' Netflix information on Facebook pages) that would have required federal law enforcement to obtain a warrant before monitoring email or other data stored remotely (i.e., the cloud).

The Senate was set to approve the video privacy bill along with the email amendment, which would have applied to a different law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. But then senators decided for reasons unknown to drop the amendment.

Handcuffs

United Arab Emirates 'arrests members of terror cell'

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© BBC
The United Arab Emirates says it has arrested members of what it called a terror cell which was planning attacks.

According to an official statement carried on the state news agency WAM, the arrests were made in conjunction with Saudi Arabia.

The cell had obtained "materials and equipments with the aim of executing terrorist operations", WAM said.

Those detained were reportedly both UAE and Saudi nationals and were members of what was termed a "deviant group".

The phrase "deviant group" is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe al-Qaeda members.

Sherlock

Syria military police chief defects to rebels

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© Screengrab: YouTubeSyrian General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police, making a statement about his defection.
Major General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal says army has 'committed massacres against an unarmed population'

The head of Syria's military police has defected from the army and declared allegiance to the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Major General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal was shown making a statement confirming his defection in a video broadcast on al-Arabiya TV late on Tuesday, saying he was joining "the people's revolution".

The defection came as a delegation of Syrian officials headed to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals for ending the conflict following talks with the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus this week.

Wearing his uniform with a red insignia on the shoulder, Shalal spoke from a desk in a room in an undisclosed location. Some rebel sources said he had fled to Turkey. It was not clear when Shalal changed sides.

"The army has destroyed cities and villages and has committed massacres against an unarmed population that took to the streets to demand freedom," he said. "Long live free Syria."