Monthly Archives: December 2012

Where You Register Your Domain Name May Land You In Jail

"Richard O’Dwyer has never been to the United States. Not once. His Internet site ran on servers in Sweden. Neither Sweden nor his home country has charged him with a crime. So how in the world could the United States government make a case against O’Dwyer and enforce its laws against a foreign citizen like this? Because he used a .com domain name. All .com domains (among many other global top level domains or gTLDs) are registered with Versign, a US-based company. The implications of this are huge. Can the US government exert its laws against a non-US website based on the registry used for that domain name?" Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: Expanding Covert Warfare Makes Us Less Safe

"Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the 'war on terror.'" Continue reading →

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NDAA Opponents Just Won Their Biggest Victory Since The Blocking Of Indefinite Detention

"The Michigan House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill today that would prevent any state cooperation with federal agents attempting to detain people without due process in Michigan, The Tenth Amendment Center reports. Carl Mayer, a lawyer for the group of journalists and activists suing over the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), told BI that the vote is 'the most important development in this fight since Judge Forrest issued her permanent injunction' on section 1021 of the NDAA." Continue reading →

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Forced sterilization victims still seek justice in US

"Denied the chance of a baby - a decades long program of forced sterilization in America, left tens of thousands of women unable to have children. Once promoted as a way to build a healthy nation, its only recently that the traumatized victims of a eugenics programme, are being considered for compensation. RT's Marina Portnaya went to meet one of those who were left traumatised, by compulsory birth control." Continue reading →

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11 Secret Documents Americans Deserve to See

"Many documents produced by the U.S. government are kept secret for questionable reasons. The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and reports that would reveal embarrassing or illegal activities. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations." Continue reading →

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NDAA Indefinite Detention Opponents File Supreme Court Emergency Motion

"Opponents of the post-9/11 use of indefinite military detention have filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block a law they say allows innocent American citizens to be locked away without trial. The motion, submitted on Wednesday, asks the Supreme Court to reinstate an injunction against a key portion of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Unless the court does so, the motion argues, Americans are 'in actual and imminent danger of losing their core First Amendment rights and fundamental Equal Protection liberties.'" Continue reading →

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Indefinite Detention and the NDAA: The rise of America’s imperial presidency

"In the eleven years since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, America has effectively lived under a perpetual state of emergency. Last year, President Barack Obama while vacationing in Hawaii signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which included an embedded provision allowing the presidency what some have termed as indefinite detention powers. The political firestorm and continuing controversy over both the Global War on Terror and the NDAA has led many American citizens to wonder just what all of this means for their individual freedom." Continue reading →

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Jane Marquardt: “Progressive” Prison Profiteer

"Last Saturday, members of the Salt Lake City Prison Divestment Campaign told Utah’s Democratic Party the truth about Jane Marquardt, who sought a position as vice chair of the Utah Democratic Party’s Central Committee. You see, Jane holds another vice chair position: Vice chair of the board at Management and Training Corporation (MTC), America’s third largest operator of for-profit prisons. Yet the Democratic Party claims to stand for immigrants, the poor, people of color, and the LGBT community, all of which are groups that Jane Marquardt’s company cages and abuses for profit." Continue reading →

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The Unfathomable Depravity of the CIA

"Fifty-nine years ago, a CIA bioweapons expert named Frank Olson attended a secret meeting where he was unwittingly given a drink laced with an experimental hallucinogenic compound now known as LSD. In the early hours of November 28, Olson fell to his death from the window of a 13th-floor hotel room. The Agency described the incident as a suicide, concealing the LSD test until 1975. His sons now filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit claiming that the scientist was murdered to conceal illegal interrogations that had been conducted by the agency using biological agents he had developed, resulting in the deaths of detainees in Norway and Germany." Continue reading →

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CIA beat and sodomized wrongly detained German citizen

"CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA 'rendition team' at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture." Continue reading →

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