Wednesday, May 16, 2012 02:14 PM PDT

Federal court enjoins NDAA

An Obama-appointed judge rules its indefinite detention provisions likely violate the 1st and 5th Amendments

By Glenn Greenwald President Obama (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

(updated below)

A federal district judge today, the newly-appointed Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York, issued an amazing ruling: one which preliminarily enjoins enforcement of the highly controversial indefinite provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last December. This afternoon’s ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven dissident plaintiffs — including Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Brigitta Jonsdottir — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

The ruling was a sweeping victory for the plaintiffs, as it rejected each of the Obama DOJ’s three arguments: (1) because none of the plaintiffs has yet been indefinitely detained, they lack “standing” to challenge the statute; (2) even if they have standing, the lack of imminent enforcement against them renders injunctive relief unnecessary; and (3) the NDAA creates no new detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF already provides.

As for the DOJ’s first argument — lack of standing — the court found that the plaintiffs are already suffering substantial injury from the reasonable fear that they could be indefinitely detained under section 1021 of the NDAA as a result of their constitutionally protected activities. As the court explained (h/t Charles Michael):

In support of their motion, Plaintiffs assert that § 1021 already has impacted their associational and expressive activities–and would continue to impact them, and that § 1021 is vague to such an  extent that it provokes fear that certain of their associational and expressive activities could subject them to indefinite or prolonged military detention.

The court found that the plaintiffs have “shown an actual fear that their expressive and associational activities” could subject them to indefinite detention under the law,and “each of them has put forward uncontroverted evidence of concrete — non-hypothetical — ways in which the presence of the legislation has already impacted those expressive and associational activities” (as but one example, Hedges presented evidence that his “prior journalistic activities relating to certain organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban” proves “he has a realistic fear that those activities will subject him to detention under § 1021″). Thus, concluded the court, these plaintiffs have the right to challenge the constitutionality of the statute notwithstanding the fact that they have not yet been detained under it; that’s because its broad, menacing detention powers are already harming them and the exercise of their constitutional rights.

Significantly, the court here repeatedly told the DOJ that it could preclude standing for the plaintiffs if they were willing to state clearly that none of the journalistic and free speech conduct that the plaintiffs engage in could subject them to indefinite detention. But the Government refused to make any such representation. Thus, concluded the court, “plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the First Amendment.”

Independently, the court found that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the NDAA violates their Fifth Amendment due process rights because the statute is so vague that it is virtually impossible to know what conduct could subject one to indefinite detention. Specifically, the court focused on the NDAA’s authorization to indefinitely detain not only Al Qaeda members, but also members of so-called “associated forces” and/or anyone who “substantially supports” such forces, and noted:

Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on their vagueness challenge. The terms upon which they focused at the hearing relate to who is a “covered person.” In that regard, plaintiffs took issue with the lack of definition and clarity regarding who constitutes an “associated forces,” and what it means to “substantially” or “directly” “support” such forces or, al-Qaeda or the Taliban. . . .

The Government was unable to define precisely what ”direct” or “substantial” “support” means. . . .Thus, an individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so.

Perhaps most importantly, the court categorically rejected the central defense of this odious bill from the Obama administration and its defenders: namely, that it did nothing more than the 2001 AUMF already did and thus did not really expand the Government’s power of indefinite detention. The court cited three reasons why the NDAA clearly expands the Government’s detention power over the 2001 AUMF (all of which I previously cited when denouncing this bill).

First, “by its terms, the AUMF is tied directly and only to those involved in the events of 9/11,” whereas the NDAA “has a non-specific definition of ‘covered person’ that reaches beyond those involved in the 9/11 attacks by its very terms.” Second, “the individuals or groups at issue in the AUMF are also more specific than those at issue in § 1021″ of the NDAA; that’s because the AUMF covered those “directly involved in the 9/11 attacks while those in § 1021 [of the NDAA] are specific groups and ‘associated forces’.” Moreover, “the Government has not provided a concrete, cognizable set of organizations or individuals that constitute ‘associated forces,’ lending further indefiniteness to § 1021.” Third, the AUMF is much more specific about how one is guilty of “supporting” the covered Terrorist groups, while the NDAA is incredibly broad and un-specific in that regard, thus leading the court to believe that even legitimate activities could subject a person to indefinite detention.

The court also decisively rejected the argument that President Obama’s signing statement – expressing limits on how he intends to exercise the NDAA’s detention powers — solves any of these problems. That’s because, said the court, the signing statement “does not state that § 1021 of the NDAA will not be applied to otherwise-protected First Amendment speech nor does it give concrete definitions to the vague terms used in the statute.”

The court concluded by taking note of what is indeed the extraordinary nature of her ruling, but explained it this way:

This Court is acutely aware that preliminarily enjoining an act of Congress must be done with great caution. However, it is the responsibility of our judicial system to protect the public from acts of Congress which infringe upon constitutional rights.

I’ve been very hard on the federal judiciary in the past year due to its shameful, craven deference in the post-9/11 world to executive power and, especially, attempts to prosecute Muslims on Terrorism charges. But this is definitely an exception to that trend. This is an extraordinary and encouraging decision. All the usual caveats apply: this is only a preliminary injunction (though the court made it clear that she believes plaintiffs will ultimately prevail). It will certainly be appealed and can be reversed. There are still other authorities (including the AUMF) which the DOJ can use to assert the power of indefinite detention. Nonetheless, this is a rare and significant limit placed on the U.S. Government’s ability to seize ever-greater powers of detention-without-charges, and it is grounded in exactly the right constitutional principles: ones that federal courts and the Executive Branch have been willfully ignoring for the past decade.

UPDATE: I really should mention the rest of the plaintiffs who brought this lawsuit beyond the four well-known ones I named above, because each deserves immense credit for doing this. Alexa O’Brien is an independent journalist who writes for WL Central, regarding WikiLeaks, Guantanamo and other issues, and founded a website to work on America’s corrupted elections, U.S. Day of Rage. Kai Wargalla is a British activist who founded Occupy London and has done extensive work in advocating for WikiLeaks. Jennifer Bolen, who along with Hedges spearheaded the organization of this lawsuit, is an activist with Revolution Truth who did substantial work to defeat the NDAA.

Though I knew a fair amount about it as it proceeded, I hadn’t written about this lawsuit before, largely because I did not expect it to succeed; I anticipated that it would be dismissed on “standing” grounds, the favored tactic (along with the State Secrets privilege) for both the Bush and Obama DOJs to persuade federal courts not to even adjudicate constitutional challenges to the War on Terror powers. Serious kudos to all of the plaintiffs and lawyers here who persevered in what I’m certain they knew would be an uphill battle.

Federal court enjoins NDAA - Salon.com.

A rare moment of common sense!

Editor

A preliminary ruling finds the NDAA likely to be unconstitutional, striking down infinite detention and prohibits its enforcement pending a permanent ruling.

I recently reported on a coalition of journalist filing a lawsuit because the NDAA was being used to silence their critical reporting on the US government.

The corporate media remained silent on the story as the lawsuit moved forward with many in outright disbelief that such a thing could be occurring in America.

Just hours those journalists won a sweeping victory before US federal district Katherine Forrest that breaks the long streak of courts siding with the federal government in granting Constitution trampling totalitarian powers to the executive branch.

The ruling found that the journalists 1st Amendment rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Press are indeed being suppressed by the NDAA.

Separately, the ruling also found that the infinite detention statue most likely violates the Fifth Amendment Right to due process – which includes the right to a lawyer and a trial to defend yourself against allegations made against you.

The judge also ruled, as the alternative media has been reporting all along only to be dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists’, that the language in the bill is so broad that NDAA can be applied for reasons well beyond the original purpose of fighting Al-Qaeda terrorist.

In fighting lawsuit, the government was forced to reveal their interpretation of the NDAA and the Obama administration:

1. Refused to certify that the journalists in the lawsuit could not be targeted by the NDAA for their activities.
2. Refuses to certify that the journalistic and free speech conduct that the plaintiffs engage in could subject them to indefinite detention.
3. Refused to certify that the NDAA would not be used to target activities that would otherwise be protected by the first amendment.
4. Refused to define of “significantly supporting”,  “directly  or indirectly supporting” terrorism or even define what providing “support” meant.
5. Refused to define who was a “covered person”.
6. Refused to define “associated forces”
   * Note: By refusing to say the NDAA didn’t apply to the activities of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit you can be assure their activities certainly fall under the government’s secret definition of these terms. In fact, if the government would have certified this the plaintiffs lawsuit would have been dismissed outright as they would not have had standing to file the lawsuit.
   

Perhaps most importantly, the court found that the NDAA does in fact grant more power than what was originally authorized under the 2001 AUMF.

That is important because Obama has claimed the right to target American citizens for assassination and to launch military strikes or invade any country under the NDAA while these new powers are nothing more than what already existed under the 2001 AUMF.

However, the court found the 2001 AUMF clearly defines and limits the fight to Al-Qaeda terrorists as opposed to the current NDAA’s affirmation that the entire world is a battlefield and everyone is a potential target.

The Daily Sheeple reports: [more here:] Federal Judge Temporarily Strikes Down NDAA As Unconstitutional.

Desperate Times Demand Revolutionary Measures

By Peter Phillips

“Don’t waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate-—just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.” Chris Hedges, May 2012

May 15, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Runway capitalism is moving unrelentingly towards sociopolitical-environmental collapse—cheered on by a two-headed single party machine known as US Congress. Activists, who see the coming disasters as catastrophic, are seeking revolutionary change through non-cooperation, and occupy disruptions. Yet, many are the still delusional hopefuls desperately fumbling with traditional responses; including “Kum ba yah” marches, and the futile support for progressive left-leaning candidates seeking positions of influence inside the Washington beltway.

Do we understand that habeas corpus is no longer a legal protection in the US or that the US president can torture and kill American citizens, let along anyone in the world? How can we ignore the inconvenient truths of warrentless wire taps and electronic monitoring for everyone? Why do we tolerate that US-NATO forces killing people in over one hundred countries in the world using special service operatives, private assassins and drones—a million civilians deaths in Iraq alone? How can we be so blind as not to see our corporate media is a propaganda fog machine for the one percent? These questions, reflecting the reality of America today, are so far from the values of our traditions that accepting any aspect of authority from Washington DC is a sacrilege to our honor. We are in desperate times.

In Congress, wealth begets membership, and wealth is the reward for correct action. The members in the House and Senate have a collective net worth of $2.04 billion, up from $1.65 billion, in 2008. While at the same time, Americans’ household net worth has continued to declined and the number of people living in poverty has risen for the fifth year in a row.

The American Congress is in reality an artificial organization serving as cheerleader to the transnational corporate class of the world. Congress offers its members little more than a transitional path into the good life of corporate affluence as long as the members remain loyal to party discipline. Our legitimate electoral process has been completely usurped by the Supreme Court ruling that a corporation’s free speech rights allow unlimited campaign spending, and congressional lobbying knows no bounds. Any candidate willing to serve in the Democrat or Republican parties in the US congress today, even as a gadfly of resistance, is stepping beyond the pale of constitutional government.

Even if a Progressive Democrat of America—Moves On into the congressional circle, the magnitude of compromise demanded makes effective action impossible other than occasional symbolic votes of resistance. Those stepping out of party lines will invariably result in orchestrated opposition during the next selection cycle—Just ask Cynthia McKinney.

Reform is not an option. The only action possible is a complete and total return to the social justice values of our US Constitution and the Bill of rights. We cannot allow extrajudicial killings, privacy invasions into our homes, and police state interceptions in the commons. We cannot allow global capitalism to continue to kill and impoverish billions of people and destroy the planet

Protecting and even rewriting our Constitution and our Bill of Rights will require revolutionary acts. We must retool our elections and eliminate/ignore the dark clouds of corporate media. A mass movement at this level requires grass roots action by a core of at least ten percent of our population. Getting one out of ten people actively involved is not at all impossible; this is where our traditional values meet human rights. We are a people of hope that only need to overcome our fears and find the voice of our values by using radical democracy for human betterment for all.

The right to vote is a long held value. We am often asked, “Why waste your vote on an independent third party candidate, they will never has a chance to win.” Can voting for a candidate who reflects your own political values and beliefs be a wasted vote? It seems that voting for your true beliefs is a self-actualizing act, and compromising one’s values to pick the lesser of two evils is self-alienating. Therefore, we urge all to continue to vote, but find candidates outside of the two party oligopoly. Maybe someday, self-actualized voting will be fashionable.

Peter Phillips is a professor of political sociology and social movements at Sonoma State University. He is the president of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, and co-host with Mickey Huff of the weekly Project Censored Show on KPFA.

Desperate Times Demand Revolutionary Measures   : Information Clearing House.

B.C. NDP Outlines Objections to Enbridge Pipeline to Joint Review Panel

April 30th, 2012

VICTORIA – The B.C. New Democrat Official Opposition caucus has formally registered its opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project with the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel.

“Under the Enbridge proposal, British Columbia would assume almost all the project’s risk, yet would see only a fraction of the benefits,” said New Democrat leader Adrian Dix. “By any measure, such a high-risk, low-return approach simply isn’t in B.C.’s interests.”

The letter outlines six key concerns regarding the Northern Gateway Project:

• Lifting the current tanker moratorium will put B.C.’s coastline at serious risk of devastating environmental and economic damage from oil spills;
• The pipeline will traverse remote, highly valued areas of B.C., crossing almost 800 streams, putting these valuable environments and species, such as salmon, at risk;
• First Nation communities would be most severely affected by an oil leak or spill. First Nations must be consulted effectively and be respected on a government-to-government level , as has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada;
• Greenhouse gas emissions generated by NGP-related oil sands development will contribute to the costs of climate change;
• The NGP provides few long-term, sustainable economic benefits for B.C., and forgoes value-added economic activity involving upgrading and refining in Canada;
• Canadian consumers will see increased Canadian oil prices.

New Democrat environment critic Rob Fleming, as well as Skeena MLA Robin Austin, Stikine MLA Doug Donaldson and North Coast MLA Gary Coons, are already participating in the Joint Review Panel’s process, either as interveners or presenters.

“B.C. New Democrats are taking a stand on the Enbridge pipeline because B.C.’s interests are not being adequately represented nor protected by the provincial government in the review process,” said Dix. “It is simply not good enough to state, as the premier has, that the government is going to wait for the process to unfold before taking a position. The time to take a position is now.”

Attachments:

Caucus Letter to Joint Review Panel

B.C. NDP Outlines Objections to Enbridge Pipeline to Joint Review Panel | BC NDP.

Seven Years Later Depleted Uranium Plagues Fallujah

May 05, 2012 AFP

By Richard Walker

It was once known as Iraq’s City of Mosques. But today Fallujah is known as a place where large numbers of children are born with deformities and many people there die from rare cancers. Now, new reports have linked the causes to depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous shells that were used by U.S. forces during the brutal siege of the city in November 2004.

There was an abortive siege of Fallujah in April 2004 following the public abduction and murder of four American mercenaries by a mob. But the ferocious November siege in that year stands out as a war crime for which the Bush administration should be held accountable.

In 2004, this newspaper was one of the few that shone a light on the slaughter of civilians in Fallujah. In contrast, the mainstream media became the cheerleader for the propaganda that Fallujah was inhabited by thousands of foreign fighters.

Recently Ross Caputi, a former Marine, said that  the U.S. chain of command told Marines there were 2,000 foreign fighters in the city and that most civilians had been evacuated. That was a lie. There were still 60,000 civilians in a city of originally 250,000 inhabitants when the siege began. Therefore, the fatal impression given to soldiers that all those who remained posed a lethal threat was far from true.

After a three-week bombardment, more than half of Fallujah was leveled, including 65 mosques. One of the first buildings targeted was the main hospital, which meant there were no surgeons to treat civilians wounded during the siege. Marines used Hellfire missiles, tanks loaded with depleted uranium artillery shells, large quantities of C4 explosives and Mark 19 grenade launchers. From the air, phosphorous bombs were dropped as well as 2,000-pound bombs. In Caputi’s words, “Everything was used.”

Marines also employed the tactic of “reconnaissance by fire,” which involved firing into homes and buildings to determine if anyone lived in them. By Caputi’s reckoning, there was not only looting of the dead but mutilation of bodies, which has become an emerging feature of the war in Afghanistan.

The civilians trapped in Fallujah were defenseless as a battle raged around them. Of the 200,000 inhabitants who did flee, many were forced to seek shelter in the desert right outside the city. A grave containing 21 bodies wrapped in black body bags of the type used by the Marine Corps has since been unearthed in a cemetery in the center of the city. It is believed it dates to the 2004 November siege. The victims had been bound, gagged and shot execution-style.

——

Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.

Seven Years Later Depleted Uranium Plagues Fallujah | American Free Press.

Wall Street banks have secretly taken over US firearms and ammunition manufacturers and the world’s largest mercenary firms in a stealth build up private military force.

A Daily KOs article reveals that Wall Street banks have used private equity firms to acquire and launch a massive stealth takeover of private security firms, US ammo and gun manufacturers, uniforms, silencers and an army of mercenaries to build what amounts to the world’s largest private army.

At the same time the private mercenary companies they now control, which include the likes of  Dynacorp and the notorious name changing Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi,  have been authorized under Department of Defense DIRECTIVE NUMBER 3025.18 to actually conduct policing operations inside the United States.

The article reveals Citi Bank, Bank of America, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank have provide huge amounts of funding to two private Wall Street equity firms, Cerebus and Veritas Equity, which in turn have used umbrella companies such as Freedom Corp., to engage in stealth takeovers and weapons stockpiling which has consumed the likes of  several gun manufacturers and ammunition manufacturers including Remington, Cobbs, H&R, Marlin, Dakota, and Bushmaker.

Furthermore, the same private equity firms have taken over companies involved in the “crowd control industry”.

One such example is CPI which manufacturers microwave and radio frequency crowd control pain inducers similar to the US Military’s heat gun which has been mentioned for deployment to control Occupy protestors.

All of this comes following news that the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 450 million rounds of ammunition banned by the Geneva Convention which is coupled with reports that feds are buying up all surplus ammo and even ordering stores to cease sales to civilians.

At the same time a DHS informant says that the DHS is preparing for a civil war and recently leaked army manuals reveal mass military detention centers are being prepared inside the US for a War On Terror ‘strategy shift‘.  ….

Wall Street Banks Secretly Build The World’s Largest Private Army.

Why Is the State Department ‘Arming’ Mexico’s Intelligence Agencies with Advanced Intercept Technologies?

by Tom Burghardt l Antifascist Calling…

Amid recent reports that the bodies of four Mexican journalists were discovered in a canal in the port city of Veracruz, less than a week after another journalist based in that city was found strangled in her home, the U.S. State Department “plans to award a contract to provide a Mexican government security agency with a system that can intercept and analyze information from all types of communications systems,” NextGov reported.

The most glaring and obvious question is: Why?

Since President Felipe Calderón declared “war” against some of the region’s murderous drug cartels in 2006, some 50,000 Mexicans have been butchered. Activists, journalists, honest law enforcement officials but also ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire, the vast majority of victims, have been the targets of mafia-controlled death squads, corrupt police and the military.

Underscoring the savage nature of another “just war” funded by U.S. taxpayers, last week The Dallas Morning News reported that “23 people were found dead Friday–nine hanging from a bridge and 14 decapitated–across the Texas border in the city of Nuevo Laredo.”

The arcane and highly-ritualized character of the violence, often accompanied by sardonic touches meant to instill fear amongst people already ground underfoot by crushing poverty and official corruption that would make the Borgias blush, convey an unmistakable message: “We rule here!”

“The latest massacres are part of a continuing battle between the paramilitary group known as the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel,” the Morning News averred. “The violence appears to be part of a strategy by the Sinaloa cartel to disrupt one of the most lucrative routes for drug smugglers by bringing increased attention from the federal government.”

According to investigators the “two warring cartels are fighting for control of the corridor that leads into Interstate 35, known as one of the most lucrative routes for smugglers.”

But as Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Program pointed out last month in CounterPunch, “In a series of ‘Joint Operations’ between Federal Police and Armed Forces, the Mexican government has deployed more than 45,000 troops into various regions of the country in an unprecedented domestic low-intensity conflict.”

The militarization of Mexican society, as in the “Colossus to the North,” has also seen the expansion of a bloated Surveillance State. Carlsen averred that when the Army and Federal Police are “deployed to communities where civilians are defined as suspected enemies, soldiers and officers have responded too often with arbitrary arrests, personal agendas and corruption, extrajudicial executions, the use of torture, and excessive use of force.”

But expanding the surveillance capabilities of secret state agencies as the State Department proposes in its multimillion dollar gift to the Israeli-founded firm, Verint Systems, far from inhibiting violence by drug gangs and the security apparatus, on the contrary, will only rationalize repression as new “targets” are identified and electronic communications are data-mined for “actionable intelligence.”

Indeed, The New York Times reported last summer that “after months of negotiations, the United States established an intelligence post on a northern Mexican military base.”

Although anonymous “American officials” cited by the Times ”declined to provide details about the work being done” by a team of spooks drawn from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA and “retired military personnel members from the Pentagon’s Northern Command,” they said that “the compound had been modeled after ‘fusion intelligence centers’ that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups.”

Such developments are hardly encouraging considering the role played by “fusion centers” here in the heimat. As the ACLU has amply documented, “Americans have been put under surveillance or harassed by the police just for deciding to organize, march, protest, espouse unusual viewpoints, and engage in normal, innocuous behaviors such as writing notes or taking photographs in public.”

In Mexico, the results will be immeasurably worse; with corruption endemic on both sides of the border, who’s to say authorities won’t sell personal data gleaned from these digital sweeps to the highest bidder?

Only this time, the data scrapped from internet search queries, emails, smartphone chatter or text messages grabbed by bent officials won’t result in annoying targeted ads on your browser but in piles of corpses.

Guns In, Drugs Out: Iran/Contra Redux …
Upping Tech. in Mexico’s Escalating Civil War.

According to the Honduran newspaper, Tiempo, as well as the Honduran human rights group, COFADEH, the agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), dressed in military uniforms, killed at least four and possibly six civilians in a raid which took place on Friday, May 11. The victims included two pregnant women and two children. The newspaper Tiempo did not pull any punches, writing that those killed “were humble and honest citizens.” Apparently, the DEA agents fired from helicopter gunships upon a boat carrying civilians on the Patuca back to their community of Ahuas which itself is located in the Mosquito coast of Honduras. According to Tiempo, the DEA mistakenly fired upon the civilian boat because it was well-lit while the intended target — a boat carrying drug traffickers — was floating down the river without its lights on.

According to Tiempo, the mayor of Ahuas decried the killings, saying that “[t]hese operations were performed irresponsibly” and that the people in his community live in fear “because they now have the threat of operations because they kill poor people… ”

COFADEH, the Committee of the Families of the Disappeared of Honduras, has been very pointed in its condemnation of the role the U.S. played in these killings. COFADEH was founded in 1982 in response to the disappearance of 69 persons that year. As COFADEH explains on its website , it believes that the disappearances which took place in the 1980’s (a total of 184 between 1980 and 1989), was the direct result of the National Security Doctrine which the U.S. imposed on Honduras. This doctrine, according to COFADEH, “included a systematic and selective form of human rights violations. The most emblematic violations were torture, murders and enforced disappearances” of the type which the U.S. had sponsored in the Southern Cone of South America in the 1970s.

COFADEH has taken on renewed importance in Honduras after the 2009 military coup against President Manual Zelaya which was at least tacitly supported by the United States. Since that time, the types of killings and disappearances which led to COFADEH’s creation have started again, and are entirely the responsibility of the U.S.-supported coup government. Thus, according to a wonderful February, 2012 piece in the New York Times by Dana Frank, who relies heavily on COFADEH’s figures, “at least 34 members of the opposition have disappeared or been killed, and more than 300 people have been killed by state security forces since the coup,” including at least 13 journalists. Sadly, in researching this article, I discovered that a kind and brave woman, Vanessa Zepeda, who I had the honor of meeting on a School of Americas Watch delegation to Honduras shortly after the coup, has since been killed as a direct consequence of this coup. See, list of victims of the coup.

In response to the DEA killings, COFADEH put out a statement entitled, “Effects of the Military Occupation,” which blames the U.S.’s decades-long policies in Latin America for the continued violence in countries like Honduras. As COFADEH stated:

… a foreign army [i.e., the U.S. army] protected under the new hegemonic concept of the “war on drugs,” legalized with reforms to the 1953 Military Treaty, violates our territorial sovereignty and kills civilians as if it was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria.Two pregnant women, two children and two adult males were killed by shots fired from helicopter gunships piloted by U.S. soldiers on a boat on River Patuca returning to their community. They were workers in the local lobster and shellfish diving industry.

… [T]he “failed state” of Honduras gave way to the foreign military occupation under the script of the “war against the drug cartels,” similar to what has happened in the past eight years in Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala.

And this reality, from the perspective of a human rights organization, is unacceptable and reprehensible.

As COFADEH recognizes in this statement, the U.S. is very much at war in Latin America, from Mexico through Central America and to Colombia, leaving a wake of violence and bodies in its path. A recent article by Tom Burghardt describes in detail how the U.S. is indeed the prime source of the grisly violence plaguing this region. Thus, the U.S., in fighting the so-called “war on drugs,” is fueling the conflict with guns and advanced weaponry — weaponry which helps to prop up repressive governments such as those in Mexico, Honduras and Colombia; which in any case ends up in the hands of the very drug cartels the U.S. is claiming to fight (e.g., through the Fast & Furious program); and which is killing massive numbers of civilians (50,000 in Mexico and 250,000 in Colombia). No wonder then that the entire region was united against the U.S. and Canada in calling at the Summit of the Americas for the end to this war and to the de-criminalization of drugs.Yet, due to the media blackout on such issues, the vast majority of Americans do not even know that the U.S. is at war just south of our borders and do not understand why our Southern neighbors are crying out for a change in this senseless policy. The media’s failure in this regard is inexcusable.

Dan Kovalik: US DEA Kills Innocent Civilians in Honduras — US Media Silent.

The ailing TV network is making a desperate attempt at salvaging its remains. But cancelled shows, lackluster pilots and management’s desperate remarks are pointing to the company’s imminent demise.

Is NBC About to Go Bankrupt? | Benzinga.

“Chernobyl was much more contained than Fukushima” — “With Fukushima, there’s a much better distribution system, which is the ocean currents” (VIDEO)

Published: May 16th, 2012 at 1:51 pm ET By ENENews Email Article 64 comments Share72

Protect Yourself From Radiation
Uploaded by NewlynResearchGroup
Uploaded on May 8, 2012

• Chernobyl was much more contained than Fukushima
• There’s a sarcophagus and it wasn’t on the seaside
• At Chernobyl there was only one way radiation could be distributed around world and that was on airborne
• With Fukushima, there’s a much better distribution system, which is the ocean currents

Watch the complete four-part series (50 minutes) here

Published: May 16th, 2012 at 1:51 pm ET By ENENews

“Chernobyl was much more contained than Fukushima” — “With Fukushima, there’s a much better distribution system, which is the ocean currents” (VIDEO).

May 16, 2012 10:36 AM

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Ron Paul plays the long game

By

Brian Montopoli

Topics

Campaign 2012

(Credit: AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

NEWS ANALYSIS

(CBS News) On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Ron Paul’s campaign chairman Jesse Benton stressed that the campaign wants the Texas lawmaker’s supporters who travel to Tampa in August for the Republican National Convention to be “respectful.”

“We just can’t emphasize that enough,” said Benton, adding that the campaign wants to “make sure that decorum and respect are the name of the game, but we’re going to respectfully show that our people are here, and we’re the wave of the future.”

The Paul campaign’s desire to convince its loyal supporters to play nice in Tampa is grounded in the simple fact that his movement needs the Republican party. Paul, who has stopped active campaigning, has significant differences with his party. But he understands that it’s very difficult to gain traction outside the two-party system. So he’s trying to work within the system by moving the Republican Party in his direction.

The problem is that supporters of the 76-year-old politician aren’t shy about showing their disdain for the Republican party or its current standard bearer, Mitt Romney. The Paul strategy for making a splash at the convention centers on building up delegates by exploiting the byzantine delegate selection process; Paul supporters have been successful in states like Nevada in packing the state delegation with supporters even though Romney won the state.

But they haven’t always been civil about it: Romney’s son Josh was booed by Paul supporters in Arizona, and Paul backers have created disturbances in Oklahoma, Maine and other states that have angered other participants in the selection process. That behavior has complicated Paul’s efforts to leverage his support to extract concessions from Romney.

Benton noted that Paul supporters “are going to be under the microscope” in Tampa, and the campaign wants them to be remembered for helping push Paul’s message into the GOP mainstream, not for causing headaches for the nominee by generating headlines about dissent in the ranks. This desire to make peace with the party is also why you shouldn’t expect Paul to endorse a third-party candidate like Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, who holds views closer to Paul than Romney does.

The Paul campaign is seeking to get its positions on “monetary policy reform, prohibitions on indefinite detention, and Internet freedom” into the GOP platform, according to a strategy memo released publicly, and has been in talks with the Romney campaign in an effort to do so. The Romney camp doesn’t need to play ball - the candidate will have the nomination secured before anyone gets to Tampa - but it has reason to make concessions if it means helping to keep the Paul delegates from causing too much trouble.

Perhaps the most important impact the Paul delegates can have at the convention is in their votes on party rules. Many of the Paul supporters who travel to Tampa will be bound to vote for Romney on the first ballot, but they can cast whatever vote they want on the rules for electing Republicans in the future. Benton declined to get into specifics on the conference call on the rule changes the campaign is seeking, and follow up requests for clarification to multiple members of the campaign went unanswered. But Benton said broadly that the goal was to “open up the party” and keep establishment candidates from “locking the party down.”

One person who has already successfully taken on the GOP establishment is Ron Paul’s son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who defeated the establishment pick in the GOP primary in 2010. Though Benton said Tuesday that it’s too early to speculate on a Rand Paul presidential run, his campaign has made clear that it is paving the way for Rand Paul to seek the presidency in 2016 or 2020.

In 2008, Paul was so estranged from his party that he held a rival nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul while the GOP was selecting John McCain as party nominee. This time around, he and his supporters are poised to (grudgingly) rally around their party’s nominee in an effort to position their movement for greater successes in the future. It’s a pragmatic strategy perhaps best understood with a variation on a familiar phrase: “If you can’t beat them, join them. And then change them.”

Ron Paul plays the long game - Political Hotsheet - CBS News.

May 15, 2012

Details of the Israeli concessions that ended an historic 28-day mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and the more than two-month hunger strikes of several prisoners, emerged today.

Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer published the details on the basis of accounts given to its lawyers by Ahed Abu Gholme, a member of the prisoners’ committee that negotiated the deal, and by imprisoned PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat.

The key provisions of the deal, which Addameer hailed as “achievements of the prisoners’ movement” are as follows:

Details emerge of Israeli concessions that ended historic Palestinian mass hunger strike :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd].

(NaturalNews) The concept of vaccinating to immunize began in 1796, when British apothecary (pharmacist) Edward Jenner inserted cowpox pus under the skin of an eight year old boy. Jenner based his experiment on an unsubstantiated rumor that anyone who had experienced cowpox would be immune to smallpox.

Over the next couple of years, Jenner vaccinated others with cowpox to immunize them against smallpox. Without any actual proof of efficacy and safety, Jenner impressed King George III enough with a bogus immunization guarantee that he was awarded the equivalent of today’s $500,000.

Thus, Jenner was the first medical professional to administer diseased matter as medication to a healthy person and receive a substantial financial award. He was also the first to constantly denounce vaccination detractors successfully. He was protecting both his ego and large public purse.

Many health professionals throughout the 19th Century knew that there had been several cases of smallpox among those with cowpox histories. Jenner’s premise was flawed.

This was actually the beginning of a tradition that is carried on by today’s vaccinators. Come up with a bogus solution to prevent a disease, make a bundle of cash, and shut down reasonable arguments from those who know immunization by vaccination doesn’t work safely or effectively.

England’s incidents of smallpox after vaccination rose steadily from five percent in the beginning to 95% by 1895. There was even a serious epidemic around 1872, one year after smallpox vaccinations were decreed mandatory in the UK. The mortality rate among smallpox victims also shot up five fold around that time.

Despite intelligent protests with obvious facts and figures disproving efficacy, and proving harm from toxic materials and viruses contained in vaccines that endanger natural immunity, the inoculation for immunization premise has been maintained.

Protecting the industry against truth by attacking reasonable dissenters viciously has resulted in vaccine industry revenue of $17 billion annually today. This doesn’t include revenue from doctors’ visits for vaccinations and resulting ill health from them.

The vaccinators’ tactics of suppressing scientific data from concerned professionals has become more mafia like. Sincere medical professionals who register health concerns over vaccines are severely punished and slandered by the medical mafia owned mainstream media.

The truth about vaccines and disease outbreaks -allhidden from public view

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035715_vaccines_history_fraud.html#ixzz1v6A7KUKJ

Vaccines have been based on medical fraud for over a hundred years.

More Than Just a Fad

Coconut oil didn’t spring to life in the last few years, although it may seem that way. The truth is that coconut has been a healing superfood for centuries in tropical cultures. These people value coconut and its derivatives for their tremendous medicinal power - and they are remarkably healthy as a result. Even in Western society, coconut oil found widely popular uses until the middle of the 20th century, when coconut oil’s reputation took a bashing from researchers who examined the health impact of hydrogenated coconut oil - basically the evil twin of the real thing. But thanks to experts who are willing to give a genuine look into coconut oil’s benefits, we now can be assured that this oil is a bonafide health food.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/027220_coconut_oil.html#ixzz1v69pSOzs

Three Reasons Coconut Oil can Help You Lose Weight.

THE IRAN WAR PATH HAS RESUMED: With Another ‘Colin Powell Moment’? By Finian Cunningham

Global Research, May 16, 2012

You know when Western powers are getting trigger happy towards Iran again because the mainstream media propaganda machine starts cranking out lurid scare stories. The latest wheeze is based on “computer-generated drawings” allegedly depicting a nuclear explosion blast chamber that Iran has allegedly been using to test mini nukes. The drawings were provided “exclusively” to the Associated Press news agency by an unnamed official from “a country tracking Iran’s nuclear program, who said it proves [sic] the structure exists”. Don’t you just love the way “unnamed sources” are quoted, who go on to “prove” their own unverifiable claims? The AP story has since been picked up, predictably, by all and sundry Western media [1]. Not only are the stories illustrated with computerised images of the alleged blast chamber, there are also mathematical details of chamber dimensions, design and structure. A good rule-of-thumb is that when western media and unnamed “diplomats” assiduously provide “details” on suspect installations, then it is a sure sign of desperation to convince the wider public about otherwise dubious claims. The template for this kind of disinformation stunt was the presentation by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2003 before the United Nations Security Council. Then, in a contrived performance that smacked of sheer theatre, Powell presented audio recordings and satellite images to testify that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was a piece with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s hysterical assertion that Iraq had the capability of launching such weapons “within 45 seconds”. In sonorous tones, Powell declared to the world: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.” All of the supposed “solid sources” claimed by Powell (and Blair and George W Bush) were later shown to be fabrications or spurious. Powell for one lied through his teeth. But based on his performance, the US and Britain launched a nine-year war of aggression on Iraq that claimed over one million lives and bequeathed that country with a heinous legacy of ongoing internecine violence, poverty, destruction and widespread cancer-causing depleted-uranium contamination. Incredibly, far from being shamed over committing war crimes and being complicit in war crimes, Western governments and media continue to repeat the same cynical charade of weapons of mass destruction on Iran. Less than three years after Colin Powell’s disgraceful moment of mendacity before the eyes of the world, the New York Times ran a story alleging that Iran had nuclear warheads. The claim was based on images obtained by unnamed American intelligence officials allegedly from a stolen Iranian laptop. That story was later exposed by investigative journalist Gareth Porter to be a ludicrous fabrication because the images were actually of redundant North Korean missiles. It is with this kind of track record of war crimes and blatant fabrication that the latest “exclusive” story of a secret Iranian nuclear blast chamber must be assessed – a story based on computer drawings supplied yet again by ubiquitous unnamed sources. Debunking such disinformation is not enough. Given the seriousness of consequences from publishing this disinformation, Iran or some international citizen body should be filing a legal case against Western mainstream media for inciting illegal wars. It should be noted that the latest nuclear allegation against Iran comes only days ahead of the second round of the P5 + 1 negotiations set to take place on 23 May in Baghdad. Ominously, it is being mooted in the Western media that if Iran does not make a major concession, that is stop its legally entitled civilian nuclear energy programme (a highly unlikely concession), then the Western powers or their Israeli subcontractor of terror will move to a military option. In this context, of concern is the recent build-up of military forces by the US and its proxy autocratic monarchy states in the Persian Gulf. The move this week by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states to form a closer military union – citing Iran as a regional threat – can be seen as an American closing of ranks in advance of a possible attack. The dissemination by Western media of “evidence” of Iranian nuclear weaponisation takes on an even more sinister purpose, with shadows of the “Colin Powell moment”. Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent cunninghamfinian@gmail.com Notes [1] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/13/drawing-may-provide-insight-into-iran-nuclear-intentions/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com © Copyright Finian Cunningham, Global Research, 2012 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=30862

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THE IRAN WAR PATH HAS RESUMED: With Another ‘Colin Powell Moment’?.