November 5, 2012

Iceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF

Originally posted by Jeff Neilson for thestreet.com on August 15, 2012

VANCOUVER (Silver Gold Bull) — For approximately three years, our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with “austerity” in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites — at any/all costs.

Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure, Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.

Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland’s approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland’s approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

The bankers told us that no amount of suffering (for the Little People) was too great in order to make sure that the Bond Parasites got paid at 100 cents on the dollar. Iceland told the Bond Parasites they would get what was left over, after the people had been taken care of (by their own government).

The bankers told us that our governments could no longer afford the same education, health care and pension systems which our parents had taken for granted. Iceland told the bankers that what the country could no longer afford was to continue to be blood-sucked by the worst financial criminals in the history of our species. Now, after three-plus years of this absolute dichotomy in economic policymaking, a clear picture has emerged (despite the best efforts of the propaganda machine to hide the truth).

In typical fashion, the moment that the Corporate Media is forced to admit that it has been serially misinforming us for the past several years; the Revisionists are immediately deployed to rewrite history, as shown in this Bloomberg Businessweek excerpt:

…the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said.

In fact, from the moment the Crash of ’08 was orchestrated and our morally bankrupt governments began executing the plans of the bankers, I have written that the only rational strategy was to put People before Parasites. While I wouldn’t expect national policymakers to take their cues from my writing, when I wrote out my economic prescriptions for our economies I didn’t base my views on compassion, or simply “doing the right thing.”

Rather, I have consistently argued that it was a matter of simple arithmetic and the most-elementary principles of economics that “the Iceland approach” was the only strategy which could possibly succeed. When Plutarch wrote 2,000 years ago “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics,” he was not parroting socialist dogma (1,500 years before the birth of Socialism).

Plutarch was simply expressing the First Principle of economics; something on which all of the modern capitalist economists who followed in his footsteps have based their own theories. When modern economists produce their own jargon, such as the Marginal Propensity to Consume; it is squarely based on the wisdom of Plutarch: that an economy will always be healthier with its wealth in the hands of the poor and the Middle Class instead of being hoarded by rich misers (and gamblers).

So when the Bloomberg Revisionists attempt to convince us that Iceland’s strong (and real) economic recovery was a “surprise”; this could only be true if none of our governments, none of the bankers and none of the media’s precious “experts” understood the most-elementary principles of arithmetic and economics. Is this the message the media wants to convey?

What is even more disingenuous here is the congratulatory tone in this exercise in Revisionism, since nothing could be further from the truth. As I detailed in a four-part series one year ago, the campaign of “economic rape” perpetrated against the governments of Europe over the past two and half years (in particular) has been expressly designed to take away “the Iceland option” for Europe’s other governments.

IMF headquarters in Washington, DC

One of the reasons for Iceland being able to escape the choke-hold of the Western banking cabal is that its economy (and its people) still retained enough residual prosperity to tough it out — as the banking cabal tried to strangle Iceland’s economy as retribution for rejecting their Debt Slavery.

Thus, austerity has been nothing less than a deliberate campaign to destroy these European economies so that the Slaves would be too economically weak to be able to sever their own choke-holds. Mission accomplished!

One can only assume that neither the Corporate Media nor their Banker Masters would have allowed this clear acknowledgment that Iceland was right and we were wrong to appear within its own pages, unless it felt secure in the knowledge that all the remaining Debt Slaves had been crippled beyond their capacity to ever escape this economic oppression.

Indeed, for evidence of this we need only look to Greece: the one other European nation where there had been “rumblings” (i.e. riots) aimed at toppling the Traitor Government that served the banking cabal. After two elections, the combination of fear and propaganda bullied the long-suffering Greek people into choosing another Traitor Government — which had expressly pledged itself to reinforcing the bonds of economic slavery. When the Slaves vote for slavery, the Slave Masters can afford to gloat.

Here, the purpose of this Bloomberg propaganda was not to praise Iceland’s government (when both the bankers and Corporate Media despise Iceland with all of their considerable malice). Rather, the goal of this disinformation was to manufacture a new Big Lie.

Instead of the Truth: that from Day 1 Iceland’s approach was the only possible strategy which could have succeeded, while our own governments chose a strategy intended to fail; we get the Big Lie. Our Traitor Governments were acting honestly and honourably; and Iceland’s success and our failure was yet another “surprise which no one could have predicted.”

We saw precisely the same Revisionism following the Crash of ’08 itself, where the mainstream media trotted out all their expert-shills to tell us they had been “surprised” by this economic event; while those within the precious metals sector had been predicting precisely such a cataclysm, in ever more-assertive terms, for several years.

The real message here for readers is that when an economic strategy of People before Parasites succeeds that there is nothing the least-bit “surprising” about this. As with all the remainder of the world around us, promoting the health of Parasites is only good for the Parasites themselves.

Source: https://www.thestreet.com/story/11665082/1/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf.html

First Amendment: Invalid – Anaheim Protesters Rights Violated

Editor’s note: In this article I am just going to bring up one example of how our first amendment rights are being violated. The one example is this: How every protest is being oppressed by authoritarian police state measures.

Right now in our once free and open America every plank of our first amendment is being violated by our corrupt government who is very obviously controlled by the banking mafia on Wall Street and the ruling class families.

You may be asking yourself how is it that our first amendment rights are being violated by a government we vote into office consecutively in hopes that they represent us? Well, the answer is quite simple. It comes down to the fact, as I said before, that our government is controlled by the Wall Street banking mafia and ruling class families which don’t have any interest in the us, the American people. However, one obvious interest they have in us is to oppress us with authoritarian police state/martial law measures.

A perfect example of this is the protests in Anaheim against the police shootings. Here is an excerpt from www.scpr.org describing the events:

Hundreds rallied Sunday to denounce two fatal police shootings and to issue a call for community peace, obstructing traffic in Anaheim.

Some 200 vocal protesters rallied in front of police headquarters while a separate group of about 100 people marched along a two-mile stretch of a main thoroughfare, The Orange County Register reported.

We are now seeing photos surface of the police militarized and dressed in military uniforms. They are as follows:

You see, this is just one example of the oppression our first amendment rights are/have been facing. I mean seriously do these people look like a threat to society and the police? I think not. They are just Americans pissed off about police brutality and who are now advocating community peace.

My question to you is: What will it take? What will it take for people to realize that when you have police militarized and dressed like military (or it could be the military playing the role as police officers) with weapons and armor/armored vehicles for a peaceful protest that you are NOT in a free society and open society any more. You are in fact are under authoritarian control!

So, please my fellow Americans. WAKE UP!

Related posts:

  1. Modern Warfare Three: Propaganda Exposed
  2. Supreme Court Forces U.S. To Take A Giant Step Toward A Totalitarian Socialist Government
  3. DHS emergency power extended, including control of private telecom systems
  4. Woman Convicted Of Battery For Pat Down Of TSA Worker
  5. It’s Official: Presidency Now a Dictatorship
  6. Rockefeller Foundation Predicts 13,000 Dead at London 2012 Olympics
  7. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Obamacare
  8. Martial Law Called For By U.S. Army Chief of Staff and CFR Member

Source: https://weare1776.org/1139/us-news/1139/

The end of Internet privacy (with petition)

Dear friends,

Right now, the US is poised to pass a new law that would permit US agents to spy on almost everything we do online. But we can stop them before the final vote.

Companies that we trust with our personal information, like Microsoft and Facebook, are key supporters of this bill that lets corporations share all user activity and content with US government agents without needing a warrant in the name of cyber-security — nullifying privacy guarantees for almost everyone around the world, no matter where we live and surf online.

If enough of us speak out, we can stop companies that profit from our business from supporting cyber-spying. Sign the petition to these key net corporations now:

https://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa_corporate_global/?vl

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would allow companies doing business in the US to collect exact records of all of our online activities and hand them over to the US government, without ever notifying us that we are being watched. No warrant, no legal cause and no due process required. To make matters worse, the bill provides the government and corporations with blanket immunity to protect them from being sued for violation of privacy and other illegal actions.

The bill’s supporters claim that consumer information will be protected, but the reality is that huge loopholes would make everything we do online fair game — and nowadays, from banking to shopping, our private information is all stored on the Internet.

CISPA is being moved forward in Congress and will be voted upon in days. Let’s raise a massive outcry to stop corporations from giving the US a blank check to monitor our every move. Click below to take action:

https://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa_corporate_global/?vl

This year, we helped stop SOPA, PIPA and ACTA — all dire threats to the Internet. Now, let’s block CISPA and end the US government attack on our Internet.

WIth hope and determination,

Dalia, Allison, Emma, Ricken, Rewan, Andrew, Wen-Hua, and the rest of the Avaaz team

More information:

CISPA: The internet finds a new enemy (Global Post)
https://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-grid/cispa-the-internet-finds-new-enemy-sopa

CISPA protests begin amid key changes to legislation (Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-cispa-protests-begin-amid-key-changes-to-legislation-20120416,0,5314596.story

Cybersecurity Bill FAQ: The Disturbing Privacy Dangers in CISPA and How To Stop It (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/cybersecurity-bill-faq-disturbing-privacy-dangers-cispa-and-how-you-stop-it

New CISPA Draft Narrows Cybersecurity Language as Protests Loom (Mashable)
https://news.yahoo.com/cispa-draft-narrows-cybersecurity-language-protests-loom-134202431.html

Source: avaaz.org email, April 18, 2012

Republican presidential candidates slam SOPA, Protect IP

In response to question from CNN's John King, Republican presidential candidates find little to love in SOPA or Protect IP.

All four Republican presidential candidates today denounced a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills, lending a sharp partisan edge to yesterday’s protest against the legislation by Wikipedia, Google, and thousands of other Web sites.

The bills are “far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening (to) the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet,” former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said during tonight’s CNN debate in South Carolina.

Romney’s rivals offered similar criticisms of the Senate measure, Protect IP-scheduled for a floor vote next week-and the House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said that while he’s “weighing” the bills, having “the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations” is exactly the wrong thing to do. Former senator Rick Santorum said that while there is a “role” for the government in protecting intellectual property, SOPA and Protect IP go “too far.”

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas Republican, publicly opposed SOPA long before nearly any other member of Congress, as CNET reported in November. Paul said tonight that “the Republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue”-SOPA’s author is Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, Hollywood’s favorite Republican-and he’s glad to see that changing.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, calls Protect IP an “extremely important” piece of legislation, and is planning a floor vote for next Tuesday despite objections from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican warned today that there are “serious issues” with the bill.

Wikipedia’s English-language pages went completely black on Wednesday with a splash page saying “the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet” and suggesting that readers contact members of Congress. (See CNET’s FAQ on the topic.)


Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the debate, conducted by CNN’s John King:

KING: Let’s continue the economic conversation with some input from a question from Twitter. If you look up here you can see it, CNNDebate.

“What is your take on SOPA and how do you believe it affects Americans?”

For those who have not been following it, SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, a crackdown on Internet piracy, which is clearly a problem. But opponents say it’s censorship. Full disclosure, our parent company, Time Warner, says we need a law like this because some of its products, movies, programming, and the like, are being ripped off online.

Let me start with you, Mr. Speaker. There’s two competing ends, two engines, even, of our economy here at on this.

How do you deal with it?

GINGRICH: Well, you’re asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: And I’m weighing it. I’m weighing it. I’m not rushing in. I’m trying to think through all of the many fond left- wing people who are so eager to protect.

On the other hand, you have virtually everybody who is technologically advanced, including Google and YouTube and Facebook and all the folks who say this is going to totally mess up the Internet. And the bill in its current form is written really badly and leads to a range of censorship that is totally unacceptable.

Well, I favor freedom. And I think that if you — I think we have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds that it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue. But the idea that we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations, economic interests, strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Mr. Speaker, Governor Romney, these companies complain — some of them are based in Hollywood, not all of them are — that their software, that their publishing, that their movies, that their shows are being ripped off.

ROMNEY: I think he got it just about right. The truth of the matter is that the law, as written, is far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening, the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet. It would have a potentially depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America, which is the Internet, and all those industries connected to it.

At the same time, we care very deeply about intellectual content that’s going across the Internet. And if we can find a way to very narrowly, through our current laws, go after those people who are pirating, particularly those from off shore, we’ll do that.

But a very broad law which gives the government the power to start stepping into the Internet and saying who can pass what to whom, I think that’s a mistake. And so I’d say no, I’m standing for freedom.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: I mean, it’s a big issue in the country right now.

Congressman Paul and Senator Santorum, your views on this one quickly.

PAUL: I was the first Republican to sign on with a host of Democrats to oppose this law. And we have worked -

(APPLAUSE) PAUL: We have had a concerted effort, and I feel like we’re making achievement. This bill is not going to pass. But watch out for the next one.

And I am pleased that the attitude has sort of mellowed up here, because the Republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue. And this is a good example on why it’s good to have somebody that can look at civil liberties and work with coalitions and bring people together. Freedom and the Constitution bring factions together. I think this is a good example.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Those who support the law, Senator, argue tens of thousands of jobs are at stake.

SANTORUM: I don’t support this law. And I agree with everybody up here that is goes too far. But I will not agree with everybody up here that there isn’t something that can and should be done to protect the intellectual property rights of people.

The Internet is not a free zone where anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people, and particularly when we’re talking about — in this case, we’re talking about entities offshore that are doing so, that are pirating things. So, the idea that the government — that you have businesses in this country, and that the government has no role to try to protect the intellectual property of people who have those rights in this country from people overseas pirating them and then selling them back into this country, it’s great.

I mean, I’m for free, but I’m not for people abusing the law. And that’s what’s happening right now, and I think something proper should be done. I agree this goes too far.

But the idea that, you know, anything goes on the Internet, where did that come from? Where in America does it say that anything goes? We have laws, and we respect the law. And the rule of law is an important thing, and property rights should be respected.

KING: All right.

Gentlemen, I want to thank you.

Source:

Photo credit: CNN

Foreclosed Homeowners Re-Occupy Their Homes

San Francisco – Carolyn Gage was evicted from her foreclosed home in January. Earlier this month, she moved back in.

“I’ve been in here for 50 years. I know no other place but here. I left and it was just time for me to come back home,” said Gage, who is in her mid-50s.

Gage’s monthly payments spiked after her adjustable rate mortgage kicked in, and she could no longer afford the payments on her three-bedroom house in the city’s Bayview Hunters Point district. She says she tried to modify her loan with her lender, Florida-based IB Properties, but to no avail.

When Gage initially left about 10 months ago, she took some personal items with her, but left most of the furniture and continued paying for some utilities.

“It didn’t feel right for me to move. I just left my things because I knew I was going to return to them eventually,” she said.

She had to re-activate a few utilities when she returned, like the water, but found the process fairly easy.

Walking back into the house was an emotional moment for Gage, but a joyous one.

“I was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; there’s no place like home,” Gage said. “It’s a family home; I plan to stay there.”

Gage was one of about two dozen homeowners who gathered Tuesday for a community potluck on Quesada Avenue for residents facing foreclosure and are refusing to leave their homes.

Homeowners expressed outrage at the way predatory lenders have targeted their community.

Residents of the Bayview are starting to see how the African-American community was especially victimized in the foreclosure crisis.

Gage believes that single women and elders in the black community were targeted for predatory loans. At the peak of the housing boom she was solicited for an adjustable rate loan to do some home improvements, even though she told the loan agent that she was on disability and did not have a steady income.

According to a report released last week by the Center for Responsible Lending, African Americans and Latinos were consistently more likely than whites to receive high-risk loan products. About a quarter of all Latino and African-American borrowers have lost their homes to foreclosure or are seriously delinquent, compared to under 12 percent for white borrowers.

Bayview residents Reverend Archbishop Franz King and Reverend Mother Marina King, who are founders of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, are also facing foreclosure. Their eviction date is set for Dec. 22.

King expressed deep anger and sorrow at the situation facing the black community in the Bayview.

“First redevelopment moved us out of the Fillmore and now we’re losing our properties too? It’s like there’s nowhere for us to go,” he said.

Grace Martinez, an organizer with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) who helped to arrange the event, commented that banks have become increasingly hostile to their efforts. “They call the police on us; they laugh at us.”

Vivian Richardson, a homeowner on Quesada Avenue whose house was also foreclosed on, also has no intention of leaving. Her current eviction date is set for Dec. 31, but she, like many of her neighbors, is asking her lender to reduce the principal on her loan in order to make the monthly payments more affordable.

Richardson has been attempting to modify her home loan for the past two years. Earlier this month, tired of the lack of communication from the lender, Aurora Loan Services based in Delaware, she worked with ACCE to coordinate an e-mail blast to Aurora’s chairman.

On Nov. 3, over the span of one to two hours, approximately 1,400 emails were sent and more than 100 phone calls made, imploring Chairman Theodore P. Janulis to stop Richardson’s eviction. A spokesperson from the bank called her an hour after the blast and asked her to send an updated set of financial information so that they could review her case.

Two weeks have passed and she has yet to hear anything further. The bank spokesperson commented that Richardson’s case is still being reviewed internally and they hope to get back to her by the end of next week.

However, Richardson has lived in her house for 13 years and plans to stay regardless of the bank’s decision.

“I will defend the home,” she said.

On Dec. 6, there will be a national day of action, “Occupy Our Homes,” where people across the country facing predicaments similar to Gage and Richardson may follow their lead.

Partly inspired by the Occupy movement, the day of action is supported by various community organizations like Take Back the Land and ACCE. The call to action is for people to move back into their foreclosed properties and to defend the properties of families facing eviction.

Martinez commented on the growing anger people are feeling. “The idea is, ‘I want what’s mine.’” She said many homeowners had trusted the banks and ultimately, “People were buying into a lie.”

Source: https://www.truth-out.org/foreclosed-homeowners-re-occupy-their-homes/1322246348

Senator Bob Casey says the NDAA will NOT be used against the American people

The following is a copy of an email from Bob Casey with the correspondents name blanked out:

Dear Mr. *****:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes policy and annual expenditures for the Department of Defense. The House of Representatives and the Senate recently passed the final version of the 2012 NDAA with broad bipartisan support. It is currently awaiting the President’s signature before it becomes law.

The Department of Defense is responsible for overseeing the United States Armed Forces and ensuring that our Nation is able to effectively respond to threats. It is critical that Congress provides the Department of Defense with sufficient funding to protect American lives, defend our Nation and support our servicemembers and their families. While our overseas military engagements continue, it is particularly important to provide the resources our servicemembers need to successfully conduct operations and ensure their own safety.

As your United States Senator, I am committed to ensuring the safety and security of all Americans. Since 2001, United States counterterrorism efforts have helped to ensure our national security. Our brave servicemembers and intelligence personnel work tirelessly to protect our nation against the threat of terrorism. However, it is essential that the executive branch operate with transparency and ensure that our counterterrorism efforts do not infringe on the civil liberties of American citizens. We must not sacrifice our fundamental values and ideals in the face of this critical threat.

The custody and detention provisions in the NDAA are the result of thorough consideration and bipartisan agreement. These provisions, including Sections 1021 and 1022, will allow the United States to deal effectively with the threat posed by al Qaeda, a terrorist group that has inflicted devastating harm on our Nation and continues to seek to attack our citizens, our allies, and our interests both here at home and around the world.

Section 1021 of the NDAA does not expand the executive branch’s authority to detain suspected terrorists. This section states explicitly that it is not intended to limit or expand the authority that Congress granted the President in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The definition of a ‘covered person’ in this section is ‘a person who was a part of or substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.’ This is the position that has been adopted by the Obama Administration and upheld in U.S. courts since 2001. In addition, it requires the executive branch to brief Congress regularly on the individuals and groups to whom this authority is being applied.

It is important to note that Section 1021 does not create any ‘new’ or ‘unprecedented’ presidential power, nor does it create any ‘permanent’ detention power. The legislation explicitly states that Section 1021 shall not ‘affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’

Section 1022 of the NDAA requires that persons who are members of al Qaeda and have participated in planning or carrying out an attack against the United States or its allies be held in military custody. However, the executive branch can exercise a waiver of this requirement if the President certifies to Congress that holding a particular suspect in civilian custody will better serve U.S. national security interests. In addition, this provision applies only to non-US citizens and non-lawful resident aliens who are al Qaeda operatives and who plan or carry out attacks against the United States. It explicitly does not apply to American citizens and those who reside here lawfully.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California proposed an amendment which would have limited the requirement of military custody in Section 1022 to suspected terrorists captured abroad. This proposal was rejected in the Senate by a vote of 55 to 45. I voted against this amendment because the waiver provision provides flexibility to the executive branch to determine whether a suspected al Qaeda operative captured on U.S. soil should be transferred to civilian custody.

Senator Mark Udall of Colorado offered an amendment to remove the detention provisions in Section 1021 from the bill altogether. This amendment would have essentially allowed the executive branch to continue to engage in existing detention practices without codification in law. By codifying the detention practices already in use, Congress is exercising its critical responsibility to oversee and create a legal framework for executive branch action. For this reason, I joined a majority of Senators in voting against this amendment.

Senator Feinstein also offered an amendment to explicitly prohibit the indefinite detention of American citizens. I voted in favor of this amendment out of concern that authorizing the government to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens was at odds with fundamental American values. Unfortunately, this amendment was rejected by a vote of 55 to 45. Finally, Senator Feinstein proposed an amendment to clarify that nothing in the bill ‘shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’ I also voted for this measure, which passed the Senate by a vote of 99 to 1 and was included in the final version of the bill.

On December 15, 2011, Senator Feinstein introduced S. 2003, the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011. This legislation would clarify that an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States. S. 2003 would also require Congress to make a ‘clear statement’ about the limitations on authority to detain U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. This legislation has been referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am not a member. Please be assured that I will examine this legislation closely.

Nothing in the NDAA authorizes the U.S. military to patrol our streets, detain ordinary Americans in their homes or conduct any law enforcement functions inside the United States. Section 1022 says only that a specific group of persons, narrowly defined as those who are ‘a part of or substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners’ should be subject to military custody, unless the executive branch determines that civilian custody is more appropriate in a particular case. The NDAA does not address when or where a person may be captured, and does not authorize the military to exercise unprecedented powers on U.S. soil.

In addition, the NDAA will not disrupt ongoing interrogations, intelligence gathering functions and surveillance activities, and it does not require military commissions in terrorist prosecutions. The administration raised concerns that certain provisions would limit its ability to collect vital information and limit its prosecutorial options. In response, the Senate Armed Services Committee clarified that no such limitations would be placed on the President?s authority.

The NDAA absolutely does not authorize torture of detainees, irrespective of citizenship. Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire proposed S. Amdt. 1068 to the NDAA to authorize certain enhanced interrogation techniques. However, the U.S. Constitution prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ and we must not tolerate the use of torture under any circumstances. I believe strongly that the United States has a moral obligation to uphold its commitments under the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners. We must, therefore, hold all executive branch officials accountable for alleged violations of these commitments. I am pleased that S. Amdt. 1068 was not included the final version of the NDAA that passed the Senate. Please be assured that I support efforts to prohibit the use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ practices, and that no such practices have been endorsed in this bill.

The NDAA also does not change the fundamental, constitutional right of habeas corpus review. The writ of habeas corpus is a legal doctrine that allows individuals to challenge their detention in a court of law. The U.S. Constitution explicitly provides this right to American citizens, and the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld its applicability, even with respect to suspected terrorists. Any American citizen or lawful permanent resident held in U.S. custody will have the right to habeas corpus review. Similarly, the courts have established that persons detained under the Authorization of the Use of Military Force, including those held at Guantanamo Bay, have the right to such review. Nothing in the NDAA undermines this critical right.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.

If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, https://casey.senate.gov. I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office, or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.

Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator

Female protesters brutally beaten with metal poles as vicious soldiers drag girls through streets by their hair in day of shame

By Inderdeep Bains on December 18, 2011

After being viciously beaten by a 10-strong mob of Egyptian male soldiers, this woman lies helplessly on the ground as her shirt is ripped from her body and a man kicks her with full force in her exposed chest.

Moments earlier she had been struck countless times in the head and body with metal batons, not content with the brutal beating delivered by his fellow soldier, one man stamped on her head repeatedly.

She feebly tried to shield her head from the relentless blows with her hands.


Brutal: This shocking image shows Egyptian army soldiers dragging this helpless woman on the ground and kicking her hard in the chest after ripping her clothes from her body.


Outnumbered: This woman screams in pain as she is surrounded by five male soldiers during protests in the Egyptian capital and beaten with poles.

But she was knocked unconscious in the shameful attack and left lying motionless as the military men mindlessly continued to beat her limp and half-naked body.

Before she was set upon by the guards, three men appeared to carry her as they tried to flee the approaching military.

But they were too slow and the soldiers caught up with them, capturing the women and knocking one of the men to the ground.

The two other men were forced to abandoned their fellow protestors and continued running, looking helplessly back at the two they left behind being relentlessly attacked as they lay on the ground.

This is just one of the hundreds of shameful injustices seen in Cairo’s Tahrir Square where Egypt’s military took a dramatically heavy hand on Saturday to crush protests against its rule.

Aya Emad told the AP that troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the Cabinet headquarters. The 24-year-old said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod and another slapped her on the face, leaving her nose broken and her arm in a sling.

Mona Seif, an activist who was briefly detained Friday, said she saw an officer repeatedly slapping a detained old woman in the face.

‘It was a humiliating scene,’ Seif told the private TV network Al-Nahar. ‘I have never seen this in my life.’


Brutally injured: This woman is left barely conscious and splattered in blood after being beaten the military in violent clashes between rock-throwing protesters and military police


Shameless: Egyptian army soldiers use brutal force to arrest this female protester and drag her by her hair during clashes with military police near Cairo’s Tahrir Square


Violent: The heavy handed Egyptian army soldiers drag the arrested a woman protester off by her hair

In Bahrain a similar pictured was emerging with a video clip showing a female human rights activist being hit by a policewoman during clashes between police and anti-government protestors.

Police fired teargas to break up a demonstration by several hundred people on the outskirts of the capital, Manama where several women staged a sit-in protest trying to block a main road.

After nearly 48 hours of continuous fighting in Egypt’s capital more than 300 were left injured and nine dead, many of them shot dead.The most sustained crackdown yet is likely a sign that the generals who took power after the February ouster of Hosni Mubarak are confident that the Egyptian public is on its side after two rounds of widely acclaimed parliament elections, that Islamist parties winning the vote will stay out of the fight while pro-democracy protesters become more isolated.Still, the generals risk turning more Egyptians against them, especially from outrage over the abuse of women.

‘Do they think this is manly?’ Toqa Nosseir, a 19-year old student, said of the attacks on women. ‘Where is the dignity?’


Man-handled: Egyptian soldiers clash with this female protester and two male protestors near Cairo’s Tahrir Square


Protection: A female and two male Egyptian protester use a metal sheet as a shield as they throw rocks at military police, unseen, behind the gates and inside the Parliament building near Cairo’s Tahrir Square

Brave: Two women join protesters as they shout anti-military council slogans near the cabinet in Cairo

Nosseir joined the protest over her parents’ objections because she couldn’t tolerate the clashes she had seen.’No one can approve or accept what is happening here,’ she said.’The military council wants to silence all criticism. They want to hold on power … I will not accept this humiliation just for the sake of stability.’Nearby in Tahrir, protesters held up newspapers with the image of the half-stripped woman on the front page to passing cars, shouting sarcastically, ‘This is the army that is protecting us!”No one can approve or accept what is happening here,’ she said.’The military council wants to silence all criticism. They want to hold on power … I will not accept this humiliation just for the sake of stability.’Nearby in Tahrir, protesters held up newspapers with the image of the half-stripped woman on the front page to passing cars, shouting sarcastically, ‘This is the army that is protecting us!’


Grief: A woman mourns slain Egyptian protesters who were killed during the latest clashes with Egyptian soldiers, while they wait to receive their bodies in front of the morgue in Cairo


Under-fire: Pro-reform female protesters run for cover as heavy-handed police try to disperse them with tear-gas, in Abu Seba village, north of Manama, Bahrain

‘Are you not ashamed?’ leading reform figure and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei posted on Twitter in an address to the ruling military council.

Egypt’s new, military-appointed interim prime minister defended the military, denying it shot protesters. He said gunshot deaths were caused by other attackers he didn’t identify.

He accused the protesters of being ‘anti-revolution.’

The main street between Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the anti-Mubarak protests, and the parliament and Cabinet buildings where the clashes began early the previous morning looked like a war zone on Saturday.

Military police on rooftops pelting protesters below with stones and firebombs and launched truncheon-swinging assaults to drive the crowds back.

Young activists put helmets or buckets on their heads or grabbed sheets of concrete and even satellite dishes as protection against the stones hailing down from the roofs.

The streets were strewn with chunks of concrete, stones ,broken glass, burned furniture and peddlers’ carts as clashes continued to rage after nightfall Saturday.


Detained: Activist Zainab al-Khawaja (Right) screams while being arrested during a protest in Abu Seba village, north of Manama


Heavy-handed: A Bahraini policewoman drags activist Zainab al-Khawaja across the floor after arresting her fo taking part in sit-in protest

The clashes began early on Friday with a military assault on a 3-week-old sit-in outside the Cabinet building by protesters demanding the military hand over power immediately to civilians.

More than a week of heavy fighting erupted in November, leaving more than 40 dead – but that was largely between police and protesters, with the military keeping a low profile.

In the afternoon, military police charged into Tahrir, swinging truncheons and long sticks, briefly chasing out protesters and setting fire to their tents.

They trashed a field hospital set up by protesters, swept into buildings where television crews were filming and briefly detained journalists. They tossed the camera and equipment of an Al-Jazeera TV crew off the balcony of a building.

A journalist who was briefly detained told The Associated Press that he was beaten up with sticks and fists while being led to into the parliament building. Inside, he saw a group of detained young men and one woman.

Each was surrounded by six or seven soldiers beating him or her with sticks or steel bars or giving electrical shocks with prods.

‘Blood covered the floor, and an officer was telling the soldiers to wipe the blood,’ said the journalist


Defiant: A brave woman shouts anti-government slogans as she stands amidst tear gas fired by riot police to disperse a sit-in at a roundabout on Budaiya Highway, west of Manama

As night fell in Tahrir, clashes continued around a concrete wall that the military erected to block the avenue from Tahrir to parliament.

In Bahrain, Zainab al-Khawaja, 27, was arrested and dragged across the floor by her handcuffs after police fired teargas to break up a demonstration by several hundred people on the outskirts of the capital, Manama.

Ms al-Khawaja and several other women staged a sit-in protest trying to block a main road. The other women fled the scene but Ms al-Khawaja refused.

Riot police fired tear-gas at the women, with dozens requiring hospital treatment after the incident.

A report by a panel of human rights experts in November found that Bahraini security forces had used excessive forces and carried out the systematic abuse of prisoners, including torture, when the regime sent in troops to crush the uprising in March.

Watch Video here: WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075683/The-brave-women-Middle-East-Female-protesters-brutally-beaten-metal-poles-vicious-soldiers-drag-girls-streets-hair-day-shame.html

China Villagers Defy Government In Standoff Over Death

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Villagers in southern China on Thursday defied authorities and continued protests over a death in custody and land dispute in the latest outburst of simmering rural discontent that is eroding the ruling Communist Party’s grip at the grassroots.

Many hundreds of residents in Wukan Village in Guangdong province held an angry march and rally despite moves by authorities to halt a land project at the centre of the months-long unrest and detain local officials involved.

“The whole village is distraught and enraged. We want the central government to come in and restore justice,” said one resident who described the scene.

He and another resident, both speaking on condition of anonymity, said villagers remain enraged over last weekend’s death in custody of Xue Jinbo, 42, who was detained on suspicion of helping organize protests against land seizures.

“We won’t be satisfied until there is a full investigation and redress for Xue Jinbo’s death,” said the second resident.

“If you say he wasn’t beaten to death, then you can show us the body,” another villager who had his face hidden from the camera by the hood of his jacket told Hong Kong’s Cable TV.

“If there really isn’t any injury on the body, then why would you not return the body to us?”

Rural land in China is mostly owned in name by village collectives, but in fact officials can mandate its seizure for development in return for compensation, which residents often say is inadequate and does not reflect the profits reaped.

The government of Shanwei, a district including Wukan, said on Wednesday a “handful” of Communist Party members and officials accused of misdeeds over the disputed land development were detained and that the main land development project had been suspended, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In a bid to allay suspicions that other villagers detained over protests in September had been abused, the local government put online footage of four suspects being visited by relatives and reassuring them of their wellbeing.

FURY

But for the two residents interviewed it was not enough to defuse fury over the death of Xue, whom villagers believe was the victim of police brutality — a charge the government denies, citing an autopsy that found he died of heart failure.

Wukan has been surrounded by police and anti-riot units.

China’s leaders, determined to maintain one-party control, worry that such outbursts might turn into broader and more persistent challenges to their power.

But they usually stay local and Beijing’s grip remains strong, said Kenneth Lieberthal, an expert on Chinese politics.

“Is there a risk of disruption? Yes, absolutely. Is this a place just waiting to explode? No,” said Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. think tank.

“The chances of long-term, systemic instability are very, very small. The chances of some major disruption — like 1989, but on a much larger scale — are considerably greater, but still the odds are they can avoid it,” he said.

Wukan, with its clannish unity and big stake in rising land values, is an example of the kind of slow-burning discontent that is corroding party power at the grassroots.

Residents say hundreds of hectares of land was acquired unfairly by corrupt officials in collusion with developers. Anger in the village boiled over this year after repeated appeals to higher officials.

Although China’s Communist Party has ruled over decades of economic growth that have protected it from challenges to its power, the country is confronted by thousands of smaller scale protests and riots every year.

One expert on unrest, Sun Liping of Tsinghua University in Beijing, has estimated that there could have been over 180,000 such “mass incidents” in 2010. But most estimates from Chinese scholars and government experts put numbers at about half that in recent years.

The Chinese government has not given any unrest statistics for years.

The real worry for Beijing is not the sheer number of such protests, but their tendency to become more persistent and organized - both features on display in the unrest in Wukan, where there were torrid riots in September.

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/china-villagers-defy-government-standoff-over-death-141649453.html;_ylt=AuxeBhruiTXMTq4kB4qFQ9HOfMl_;_ylu=X3oDMTNxdjlzdmg1BG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBXb3JsZFNGBHBrZwMxNmZiZDA5Yy0yODEzLTNlMTYtYTFiOC0xYWY3NWM2ZGVlNDkEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDOWM4ZGViZTAtMjcyNy0xMWUxLTlmNmUtNWFkNTVkYzhlYWFk;_ylg=X3oDMTFwcGsyZXJqBGludGwDZ2IEbGFuZwNlbi1nYgRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN3b3JsZARwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0Aw-;_ylv=3

Newt Gingrich Attacked by Protestors

 

Newt Gingrich begins his speech about medical research when suddenly chaos erupts.

Reporting from Iowa City, Iowa:


In a forerunner of what some Republicans expected to be a recurring event over the next 20 days, about a dozen protesters from the Occupy movement disrupted the start of a campaign appearance by Newt Gingrich at the University of Iowa on Wednesday.

The candidate had just begun to speak, at an event designed to highlight his support for additional research on Alzheimer’s and brain science, when the protesters began chanting in unison.

The group, who said they were part of the Occupy movement in Iowa City and nearby Cedar Rapids, continued as several members were escorted from the room by plainsclothed security officers.

There were no arrests.

Iowa Republicans are preparing for possible interruptions in the Jan. 3 caucuses by Occupy protesters. At a recent mock-caucus training session in Ames, the county Republican chairman advised local party officials that the caucuses are private party events, even though many will be taking place in public buildings.

If demonstrators become unruly and attempt to disrupt a caucus, then police should be summoned, party officials were advised.

At the same time, if a member of an Occupy group signs in as a Republican voter, he or she should be allowed to participate, the advice went, including during a portion of the caucuses in which issues are discussed.

However, the party officials were reminded that it takes at least two people to make a proposal—one to propose a motion and another to second it. By that calculation, it would take more than 3,500 protesters to have an impact at all 1,774 caucuses.

Party leaders expect any disruptions to be limited to Des Moines and other heavily populated areas, if they occur at all.

Gingrich, who allowed the protest to continue for about two minutes before starting to speak, said he believes in participatory democracy “sometimes by people who are rowdy. That’s part of the price of freedom.”

The protesters delivered a laundry list of anti-Gingrich lines, accusing him of “disregard for the poor,” criticized his role in crafting the 1990s welfare reform, his “vilification of people as shiftless and unwilling to work” and “your disgusting suggestions that we bring back child labor.”

Gingrich supporters began trying to shout down the protesters, whom Gingrich described as one percent of the crowd. There were about 300 people attending the event at the university’s medical complex.

“I was glad to come to the University of Iowa,” Gingrich interjected, as the protest continued, because of “your tradition of intellectual discourse.”

The anti-Gingrich demonstration was apparently the first by Occupy followers in Iowa. A Gingrich appearance last month at Harvard was also disrupted by Occupy protesters.

LYRICS:


Mic check! Mic Check!

Mr. Gingrich, we are here to protest your speech today, because we object to your callous and arrogant attitude towards poverty and poor people.
We are insulted by your disregard for the poor and the conditions and lead to poverty in this country. We cannot forget your 1990s proposition that welfare benefits to children of unwed mothers be denied.

 

 

 

Time Names ‘The Protester’ As ‘Person of Year’

The Protester‘ has been named Time’s ‘Person of the Year‘ for 2011.

The magazine cited dissent across the Middle East that has spread to Europe and the United States. (Dec. 14)