Disinformation Campaign Proves Effective as Anti-SOPA Strike-Breaker

Two or three days ago, announcements were broadcast on various Media Outlets stating that two bills in the Congress and the Senate, SOPA and PROTECT-IP were effectively “Dead-in-the-Water,” resulting in the cancellation (or extreme reduction) of what would have been an extremely disruptive– and therefore highly dramatic– strike/protest by Major Internet Companies against the proposed legislation.

The fact that no sources were actually named, as well as the coordinated nature of this spurious disinformation campaign, indicates that this legislation, involving a precipitous curtailment of the Civil Liberties in the United States, indicates a scope of political interests far beyond those of the Entertainment Industry.

History shows us that a curtailment of Civil Liberties is never instituted without an eye to a further attack on those same liberties at a later date.

This debate is not over. Expect to hear opponents to these bills caricatured as disgruntled pirates of popular entertainment, 20-somethings living in their mothers’ basements, who want to continue downloading music and movies without having to pay for the privilege.

Expect to read further, and ever more disturbing, developments in the coming months.

View A Legal Analysis of S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act [PDF] from the Congressional Research Service

Wall Street Declares War on America (Yes, this constitutes Conspiracy!)

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan Admits Cities Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement

Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC (excerpted on The Takeaway radio program–audio of Quan starts at the 5:30 mark), casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country. “I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation. . . .”

Mayor Quan then rambles about how she “spoke with protestors in my city” who professed an interest in “separating from anarchists,” implying that her police action was helping this somehow.

Interestingly, Quan then essentially advocates that occupiers move to private spaces, and specifically cites Zuccotti Park as an example:

In New York City, it’s interesting that the Wall Street movement is actually on a private park, so they’re not, again, in the public domain, and they’re not infringing on the public’s right to use a public park.

Many witnesses to the wave of government crackdowns on numerous #occupy encampments have been wondering aloud if the rapid succession was more than a coincidence; Jean Quan’s casual remark seems to clearly imply that it was.

Might it also be more than a coincidence that this succession of police raids started after President Obama left the US for an extended tour of the Pacific Rim?

Occupy Oakland

Apparently, Wall Street doesn’t believe in the First Amendment right to Freedom of Association:

In a side note: apparently the police tried to claim that it was protesters throwing tear gas grenades. They’re not even good liars.

Also, my nephew went there to observe the event. Good thing he went at the wrong time.

The Deficit Hawks Target Nurses and Firefighters

Center for Economic and Policy Research

Dean Baker – March 28, 2011

Many people might think that the country’s problems stem from the fact that too much money has been going to the very rich. Over the last three decades, the richest 1 percent of the population has increased its share of national income by almost 10 percentage points. This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as the deficit hawks are fond of saying, $90 trillion over the next 75 years.

To put this in context, the size of this upward redistribution to the richest 1 percent over the last three decades is roughly large enough to double the income of all the households in the bottom half of the income distribution. The upward redistribution amounts to an average of more than 1.2 million dollars a year for each of the families in the richest 1 percent of the population.

And this upward redistribution was brought about by deliberate policy. We pursued a trade and high dollar policy that was intended to put downward pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers. The Federal Reserve Board deliberately kept unemployment higher than necessary in order to weaken workers bargaining power… And, we gave the Wall Street banks the benefit of “too big to fail” status so they can borrow with a government subsidy.

These policies and others fueled this enormous upward redistribution. But the deficit hawks don’t want us talking about any of these things.

The deficit hawks insist that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits now! They are busy hyperventilating over the enormous deficits, the result of the economic collapse, which was in turn the result of their economic mismanagement.

And the deficit hawks have clear ideas on how they want to deal with the costs of Social Security and Medicare over coming decades. And, it does not involve taking money from the tiny group of wealthy people who have profited enormously at the expense of the middle class over the last three decades?

Nor are the deficit hawks interested in reining in the drug companies, the insurance companies or the doctors. The bloated prices and exorbitant pay of these actors is the main reason that U.S. health care costs are so wildly out of line with health care costs in other wealthy countries.

But deficit hawks don’t get paid to go after rich people or the health care industry. Deficit hawks get paid to go after the benefits of middle-income people. This is why we were treated to a Washington Post column by finance industry executive Robert Pozen telling liberals that they should support his plan for raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security benefits for higher-income earners.

The deficit hawk crew will even shed some crocodile tears for the poor who earn near the minimum wage and live near the poverty level. They would raise their benefits if not for those greedy plumbers and mechanics who insist on getting the Social Security benefits that they paid for.

In the next few weeks we will be treated to an endless parade of budget experts who will be yapping about “entitlements” and insisting that middle-income workers are living too lavishly.

The deficit hawks are very good when it comes to whining about the deficit and demanding sacrifices from middle-class workers. They just aren’t very good when it comes to understanding the economy.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.

Obama: George Bush Jr. in Blackface?

Obama DoJ Asserts “State Secrets;” ACLU Blasts Obama

Jeppesen DataPlan, an entity known to anyone familiar with aviation, helped the U.S. government plan flights and logistics for its extraordinary rendition program in the earlier part of this decade. A lawsuit brough by five men who say they were unlawfully rendered to torturing countries was dismissed by a judge who agreed with the Bush Administration’s claim of a state secrets privilege. Civil rights activists had hoped that the Obama Administration would somehow change its mind at appeal, and argue the case on its merits in open court. That’s not going to happen. Today, the Justice Department — the Eric Holder / Obama Justice Department — re-asserted the state secrets privilege in Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen. This may be disappointing to civil libertarians, but it shouldn’t be surprising.

The case is fairly straightforward, and some of the classified details, like what Jeppesen did for the government, are known, having been disclosed by Jane Mayer and others. The CIA used Jeppesen’s unit to coordinate the complex travel arrangements that extraordinary rendition implies; which airports would be available when; how to schedule pilots; fuel requirements, etc. Jeppesen would therefore have access to a lot of data that’s not in the public domain, including how many renditions there were, which countries were used as transit points — CIA Black Sites — and which countries were rendition partners, whether they tortured or not. Jeppesen ostensibly has a lot of information about countries to whom the U.S. legally renders suspects. We know a lot about this stuff, but we don’t know everything.

It wouldn’t be wise for a new administration to come in, take over a case from a prosecutor, and completely change a legal strategy in mid-course without a more thorough review of the national security implications. And, of course, the invocation itself isn’t necessarily an issue; civil libertarians and others who voted for Obama did so with the belief that his judgment and his attorney general would be better stewards of that privilege than President Bush and his attorney generals (and vice president.)

More at Atlantic Monthly

The ACLU says the Obama administration reneged on civil liberties, offers “more of the same.”

Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU said of the decision: “Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

Rights Are Curtailed for Terror Suspects

By EVAN PEREZ – MARCH 24, 2011

The Obama administration took further chunks out of the Miranda recently when it passed new rules allowing investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning. According to the WSJ’s Evan Perez, the rules “significantly expand[] exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.”

And…

New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.

• A Process for Questioning Detainees

  From Miranda v. Arizona ruling: “Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed. The defendant may waive effectuation of these rights, provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently.”

  —Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1966

• Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

  Landmark ruling, citing the Fifth Amendment, says suspects must be reminded of their right to avoid self incrimination.

• Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010)

  Suspects don’t have to explicitly waive their Miranda rights for a confession to be admissible.

The move is one of the Obama administration’s most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.

More from the Wall Street Journal

Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH’s newest appointment

One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush’s worldwide torture regime.

Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was — and is — Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.

Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, “with great pride,” that he has now been selected to serve on the “White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.” In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday.

For his work at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Dr. James was the subject of two formal ethics complaints in the two states where he is licensed to practice: Louisiana and Ohio. Those complaints — 50 pages long and full of detailed and well-documented allegations — were filed by the International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, on behalf of veterans, mental health professionals and others. The complaints detailed how James “was the senior psychologist of the Guantánamo BSCT, a small but influential group of mental health professionals whose job it was to advise on and participate in the interrogations, and to help create an environment designed to break down prisoners.” Specifically:

During his tenure at the prison, boys and men were threatened with rape and death for themselves and their family members; sexually, culturally, and religiously humiliated; forced naked; deprived of sleep; subjected to sensory deprivation, over-stimulation, and extreme isolation; short-shackled into stress positions for hours; and physically assaulted. The evidence indicates that abuse of this kind was systemic, that BSCT health professionals played an integral role in its planning and practice. . . .

More grisly details from Salon Magazine

All-out Class Warfare!

Maine Gov. Paul LePage extends war on workers to war on art about workers

by Laura Clawson

Maine Gov. Paul “elected with 38% of the vote” LePage apparently isn’t content with going after collective bargaining rights for workers, raising pension contributions for public employees while exempting himself, and a host of other measures designed to drive down wages and working conditions.

No, his anti-worker crusade extends to artwork.

LePage has ordered a labor history mural removed from the walls of the state’s Department of Labor, and conference rooms renamed so they won’t honor labor leaders.

More at Daily Kos

A brief, and brutal, history of the Chamber of Commerce

by Joan McCarter

Bill McKibben, Kossack, author, and co-founder of 350.org, a global campaign to fight climate change writes the definitive short history of the Chamber of Commerce:

From the outside, you’d think the U.S. Chamber of Commerce must know what it’s doing. It’s got a huge building right next to the White House. It spends more money on political campaigning than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined. It spends more money on lobbying that the next five biggest lobbyists combined. And yet it has an unbroken record of error stretching back almost to its founding.

The article goes on:

It starts with the New Deal. The Chamber “accused Roosevelt of attempting to ‘Sovietize’ America; the chamber adopted a resolution ‘opposing the president’s entire legislative package.'” Opposition to FDR continued, shockingly, through the Lend-Lease program, designed to supply the allies with critical material to fight the Germans, and which brought a tremendous boon to American manufacturing. But more, the Chamber opposed American involvement in the war, the war which “triggered the greatest boom in America’s economic history.”

Bill McKibben:

But it’s precisely the kind of blinkered short-sightedness that has led the U.S. Chamber of Commerce astray over and over and over again. They spent the 1950s helping Joe McCarthy root out communists in the trade unions; in the 1960s they urged the Senate to “reject as unnecessary” the idea of Medicare; in the 1980s they campaigned against a “terrible 20” burdensome rules on business, including new licensing requirements for nuclear plants and “various mine safety rules.”

The article continues:

Now, of course, the Chamber fights everything from healthcare reform to environmental action. It’s in the environmental realm, McKibben argues, that the Chamber is shooting American business in the foot, yet again.

McKibben:

That’s why thousands and thousands of American businesses concerned about our energy future have already joined a new campaign, declaring that “The US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me.” They want to draw a line between themselves and the hard-right ideological ineptitude that is the U.S. Chamber.

More at Daily Kos

Global Class Warfare: The Fight Joined

by Tasini

I suppose maybe I’m a bit weary of the “check out this new outrage by Scott Walker’s assault on the workers” so time to be positive, forward-looking, at least for a moment, by thinking about a really intriguing effort by the United Auto Workers to take a serious shot at organizing against the stupendous class warfare–by taking it around the globe.

So, in my opinion, and I do not think this is a particularly original thought, there is just no way to defeat the current state of class warfare by keeping the offense within our own borders. Our world is littered every day with examples of the global scale of class warfare–whether it be the worldwide financial pollution brought to us courtesy of Goldman Sachs-Citibank-Robert Rubin-AIG et al or the foolish wage-depressing assault via, among other things, middle-class destroying trade deals.

To which the UAW says:

The United Auto Workers outlined a new push to recruit U.S. workers at one or more foreign auto makers and will bolster the effort by training and sending activists abroad to organize rallies and protests in support of the union campaign.

On Tuesday, UAW leaders meeting here described plans to reach out to foreign unions and consumers in what would be their first major campaign since failed efforts in the last decade at Nissan Motor Co. and auto-parts supplier Denso Corp. They hope to be more successful by reaching out to foreign unions at the auto makers’ overseas plants and bringing pressure from prayer vigils, fasts or protests at dealerships.

And…

The UAW has set aside tens of millions of dollars from its strike fund to bankroll its campaign. International actions are to be coordinated with foreign unions and run by some three dozen student interns recruited globally, UAW officials said. When the interns return to their home countries after learning about the UAW efforts in the U.S., they’ll be expected to organize protests against the auto maker, UAW officials said.

The UAW also set up a team to identify weaknesses of foreign-owned auto makers that it can use to apply public pressure, according to a person familiar with the matter. This could include highlighting matters such as past safety problems.

More at Daily Kos

Challenging Syria’s 40-year rule – Inside Story – Al Jazeera English

Syria: Simmering unrest a worry for Assad

The Syrian president insists his country is different, but it shares some economic problems with its neighbours.

The Syrian government is struggling to contain a week-old uprising in the southern city of Deraa, the deepest popular unrest since president Bashar al-Assad took office a decade ago.

It is not the first political rumbling in Syria this year: Several small protests took place across the country last month, including a demonstration against police brutality in Damascus, the capital, which ended when the interior minister showed up and promised to punish the offending officers.

But it is the Deraa protests which bear the most resemblance to the rallies that have swept Arab countries since December. Protesters have chanted “God, Syria and freedom,” and “the people demand the downfall of corruption,” the latter a variant on the familiar slogan (“the people demand the downfall of the regime”) which has become the standard of this year’s Arab revolts.

Syrian officials, clearly unnerved, have flown thousands of security forces into the city and brutally cracked down on demonstrators. They have blamed the protests on foreign powers, accusing organisers of stockpiling smuggled weapons from Israel.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/201132315133954429.html

also see:

Challenging Syria’s 40-year rule – Inside Story – Al Jazeera English.

Black man declared innocent after 30 years in Texas prison

DALLAS – A Texas man declared innocent Tuesday after 30 years in prison had at least two chances to make parole and be set free — if only he would admit he was a sex offender. But Cornelius Dupree Jr. refused to do so, doggedly maintaining his innocence in a 1979 rape and robbery, in the process serving more time for a crime he didn’t commit than any other Texas inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

“Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.

Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, (etc.)

I say we grant the glorious Republic of Texas their independence. In fact, I believe we should insist upon it. As for Florida: we stole it from Spain; it’s only right to return it. The entire state is built on sandstone, so it’s very light, as far as land goes. The US should offer to tow it across the Atlantic if Spain is unable to do so…

More at

Addendum to the World Trade Center / Mosque Controversy

from the Christian Science Monitor:

Sex shop and strip clubs near ground zero show double standard over Park51

Leaving the political controversy aside, the proposed Islamic community center would fit very well into – and improve – the urban landscape around ground zero. The same can’t be said for the sleazy shops nearby.

…if you walk the streets around the World Trade Center neighborhood, as I did the other week, the question of whether to build the center take on a concrete reality.

Sidewalk tour

My sidewalk tour shows that the center, named “Park51,” would fit quite well. It also shows that what’s more worthy of objection are the slew of sleazy businesses in the neighborhood – stores that should give pause to those who see ground zero locale as hallowed, sacred ground.

Park Place, where the proposed Muslim center would go, is currently an unimpressive street. The site for the Islamic center is a crumbling Italianate-style building, to which New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission refused to give historic protection by a 9-0 vote.

By contrast, Park51, a $100 million, thirteen-story glass and steel structure (the opposite of a traditional mosque with minarets) would add some luster to Park Place, but it would still be unnoticed by people going in and out of the buildings at the World Trade Center. Blocking the view of the proposed Muslim Community Center is the massive Federal Office Building just across the street from the World Trade Center.

Even more significant, the Muslim community center would not be a blight on the neighborhood surrounding the World Trade Center. That neighborhood has two of New York’s most architecturally-important churches. One is Trinity Church, a classic example of 19th-century Gothic revival. The other is St. Paul’s Chapel, the city’s oldest surviving church and its finest model of Georgian architecture (it was modeled after St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London). George Washington worshipped there and it became a refuge for rescue workers after 9/11.

Eyesores

But the World Trade Center neighborhood is also filled with eyesores. When I walked from Park Place on the north side of the World Trade Center to Rector Street on the south side, what I encountered were a string of bars, betting parlors, and fast-food restaurants. And within this cluster of buildings, especially noticeable were two strip clubs, the New York Dolls Gentleman’s Club and the Pussycat Lounge, plus Thunder Lingerie and More, a sex shop with a peep show.

This kind of commercial mix is typical of New York. Most of us who have lived in the city for any period of time take it for granted. But for those who have based their opposition to the Muslim Center on their concern for the sensibilities of the 9/11 families, places like the New York Dolls and the Pussycat Lounge present a moral dilemma.

Why are they treated with a live-and-let-live tolerance that doesn’t extend to an Islamic center? How, as a practical matter, are pole dancers less of an affront to the memory of the 9/11 dead than a community center that will have prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, and a bookstore?

The author, Nicolaus Mills, is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College

BENWAY

So I am assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic façade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D.– Total Demoralization. Benway’s first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

“I deplore brutality,” he said. “It’s not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.”

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in bathing suit and pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant “provisional detention”; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was approved by the Assistant Arbiter of Explanations. Since this official hardly ever came to his office, and the Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.

No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone’s quarters and start “looking for it.”

The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a handkerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which the make sneering and derogatory comments. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.

“And what is this supposed to be for?”

“It’s a pen wiper.”

“A pen wiper, he says.”

“I’ve heard everything now.”

“I guess this is all we need. Come on, you.”

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Of course the Annexia police processed suspected agents, saboteurs and political deviants on an assembly line basis. As regards the interrogation of suspects, Benway has this to say:

“While in general I avoid the use of torture– torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance– the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness, and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject’s teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded computer…”

–William Burroughs, Naked Lunch