Beyond SOPA: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Censorship

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Beyond SOPA: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Censorship

by grtv

In recent weeks the general public has mobilized to face US legislative threats to Internet freedoms. Far from a conclusive victory, however, the death of SOPA and PIPA only highlight the latest in a series of measures that are seeking to create a legal framework for government-administered Internet censorship.

Find out more about this contentious topic in this week's GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=3827

When legislators in the US abandoned their support of SOPA and PIPA in the wake of mass popular protest earlier this month, many of those who had been mobilized by the legislation–which would have granted the US government almost total power to block access to foreign websites accused of so much as linking to copyrighted material–did not have long to enjoy their “victory.” The very next day the New Zealand police swooped in to the million-dollar estate of MegaUpload.com founder Kim Dotcom, arresting him and three others at the US government’s request for alleged racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering. The Department of Justice is now seeking the MegaUpload CEO’s extradition to the US.

Some amongst those who had been campaigning against SOPA and PIPA did not know that the US government already had the authority to shut down entire websites and in fact has exercised that authority on numerous occasions. What many are now learning is that, far from some potential future threat, internet censorship already exists in a variety of legislation that is already on the books in the United States and in nations around the world.

Although most commonly associated with China, which has implemented strict internet filters that prevent its citizens from finding politically sensitive material, various internet censorship programs have already been implemented by countries around the globe.

In 2010, Japan passed amendments to its copyright law making it illegal to download copyrighted material. The move has yet to curtail file-sharing in the country, so the Japanese government recently announced that they are going to begin putting fake copies of popular tv dramas on file-sharing websites that, when opened, remind users that it is illegal to download such material.

In July of 2010, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized the domains of 8 websites that it accused of hosting illegal copies of copyrighted material as part of an investigation dubbed Operation In Our Sites. The seizures came before any trial took place, and six of the websites did not actually host any of the copyrighted material in question, only linking to it. That November, ICE acted once again, this time seizing 82 domains. In December of 2011, over one year later, the agency returned one of the domains, Dajaz1.com, to its owner, after admitting that it had not in fact breached any laws.

In May of last year, the US Justice Department began seeking the extradition of one of the website’s operators, Richard O’Dwyer, from the UK. O’Dwyer is a British citizen who established TVShack.net in December of 2007. The DOJ is hoping to bring O’Dwyer to the US under the Extradition Act of 2003 to face charges of copyright infringement in the Southern District of New York.

Late last year, a number of nations signed a new global copyright agreement known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. Signatories include the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and, as of this past week, 22 member states of the European Union.

Purported to be a treaty against counterfeit goods, generic drugs and copyright, it threatens to fundamentally alter the internet as it has so far existed.

When the Polish government announced its intention to sign earlier this month, protests sprang up around the country.

While the public is only beginning to understand the implications of ACTA, which has already been signed by a number of countries, others are pointing to these types of agreements as only the thin edge of the wedge for the implementation of outright totalitarian control over the internet as a whole. Indeed, perhaps even more worrying than the existing legislation and agreements for internet censorship are the numerous proposals for even more restrictive measures that have been made time and again by political leaders in a variety of contexts.

In October of 2008, the Labor government in Australia proposed a mandatory filter for the entire Australian internet. The proposal, dubbed “Clean Feed” would ostensibly block any content deemed to break Australia’s media regulations. When a list of the websites supposed to be banned under the scheme was released in early 2009, it included the websites of numerous innocuous Australian businesses, as well as overtly political websites that had no illegal or offending material. The current government has said they would not vote for any such legislation, and the proposal would be unlikely to reach parliament until 2013.

In 2010 the UK passed the Digital Economy Act, which theoretically allows for the UK government to ban copyright violators from the Internet. In August of 2011, parts of the legislation proposing the blocking of sites believed to be linking to copyrighted material was declared to be unenforceable and were dropped from the legislation.

In March of 2009, Senator Jay Rockefeller opined during a subcommittee hearing that the internet is proving to be such a threat to America’s national security that it would have been better if it had never existed.

In June of 2010, Senator Joe Lieberman stated that he believed the US needed the same ability to shut down the internet as China currently has.

While these proposals are sometimes couched in business-friendly rhetoric about protecting intellectual property, sometimes as a national security question about defending cyber infrastructure from foreign enemies and sometimes as attempts to protect children or stop the spread of child pornography, the proponents of internet censorship are becoming increasingly honest about their real worry: the free spread of ideas amongst a public that is allowed to choose for themselves what information to believe and what to discard.

Last year, Bill Clinton advocated the idea that the US government create an agency for “fact-checking” websites on the internet.

Earlier this month, Evgeny Morozov of Stanford, who previously served as a Fellow of George Soros’ Open Society Institute, wrote an article calling on Google and other search engines to use banners to warn users about websites that are deemed to be pseudoscientific or conspiratorial. Perhaps realizing that the proposal sounds drastic, Morozov concludes:

“such a move might trigger conspiracy theories of its own—e.g. is Google shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore?—but this is a risk worth taking as long as it can help thwart the growth of fringe movements.”

Here we see the real danger of the internet for those who seek to control the spread of information. The internet, like every other medium that has come before it, changes not just the way in which people create, distribute and receive information, but the information itself. Just as the printing press led to the widespread publication of the Bible in the vernacular and ultimately to the Reformation which forever transformed the power structure in European society, so too has the internet allowed the public to receive, correlate and distribute information that challenges official government narratives in a way that threatens to transform the power structure of our society. And as the traditional media has begun to bleed away the remains of its increasingly dissatisfied customer base, self-immolated on the fantastic failure to challenge the status quo on issues like Saddam’s WMD or the growing apparatus of the police state or the never-ending bailouts of the too-big-to-fails, a new, independent media has arisen to take its place, empowered by technologies that allow for the instantaneous and nearly costless transmission of ideas to the farthest corners of the globe.

When situated in this context, the recent struggle over the SOPA and PIPA bills are seen for what they are: one battle in a much larger war for internet freedom, and ultimately, the cognitive liberty of the American public. But it is possible to win the battle and yet lose the war, as the millions of MegaUpload users who just had all of their files seized by the FBI found out the hard way. The only hope is that the movement that has arisen to face this, the greatest threat to the rise of this new era of mental independence, does not wane in the wake of the SOPA and PIPA “victory,” but instead rises to meet the even greater internet clampdown that awaits. After all, all the authorities are waiting for is for the public to fall back asleep






















Beyond SOPA: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Censorship

The War on Iran is Already Underway

The War on Iran is Already Underway by Leonid Slavin
Global Research, January 28, 2012
Strategic Culture Foundation and Stop NATO
If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia. The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism. The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela. The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy. Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia - the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia. The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West has finally became imminent. The first potential scenario in this context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousand support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out. For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account. At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel...” (2) If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia. An alternative scenario also deserves attention. EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, those of Greece, Italy, and Spain - by ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomatic chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3). As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20 billion, which generally should not be critical but, as the country's parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere. China and India, Iran's respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volume of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and US guarantees turned hollow. Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington's sanction suggestions with the utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran. The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, etc. Inducing regime change in Iran, which is Washington's end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope of capitalizing on the country's existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy in Iran. Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire's global primacy (5). The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam's territorial waters and opened fire on boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam. (By the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington's choice of pretexts for aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran's nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism. The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program - to make everybody in the world accept Washington's rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf, is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world's total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8). Passing through the Strait of Hormuz takes navigation across the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Iran grants as a courtesy the right to sail across its waters based on the UN Treaty on Maritime Goods Transportation. It must be understood in connection with Washington's recurrent statements concerning the Strait of Hormuz that in this regard the US and Iran have the same legal status as countries which penned but did not ratify the treaty, and thus the US has no moral right to references to international law. Iran's administration stressed recently after consultations on national legislation that Tehran would possibly subject to a revision the regulations under which foreign vessels are admitted to Iranian territorial waters (9). Navies are also supposed to observe certain international laws, in particular those defining the minimal distance to be maintained by vessels of other countries. It constantly pops up in the US media that Iranian boats come riskily close to US vessels but, as watchers note, provocateurs like the CIA-sponsored separatists from Iran's Baluchistan could in some cases be pulling off the tricks in disguise. Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. A few of these projects, the Hashan–Fujairah pipeline, for instance, are as of today in the process of being implemented. If that is the idea, the explanation behind Washington's tendency to convince its allies to create a “safer” pipeline infrastructure is straightforward. Geopolitics being an inescapable reality, it does have to be taken into account, though, that the region's countries remain locked in a variety of conflicts and, due to geographic reasons, Tehran would be a key player even if the pipelines are launched. Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia - the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia. The arrangement implicitly factors into the Asian countries' decision-making related to Iran. The precedent of “the war on terror” - a campaign during which the US occupied under dubious pretexts Iraq and Afghanistan at the costs of thousands of lives – must also be kept in mind. Ages ago, the White House sanctioned subversive activities against various parts of the the Iranian administration, including the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. Former CIA operative Phillip Giraldi writes that US and Israeli agents have been active in Iran for quite some time and are responsible for the epidemic of the Stuxnet virus and the series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists. The groups within Iran which aligned themselves with the country's foes are the People's Mujahedin of Iran, the Baluchistan-based separatist Jundallah, whose leader Abdolmajid Rigi was arrested in February, 2010 by Iranian security forces and admitted to cooperating with the CIA, and the Kurdish Free Life of Kurdistan (10). In essence, a war against Iran – up to date a secret war – is underway. The problem the parties involved are trying to resolve is to find a way of prevailing without entering the “hot” phase of the conflict. Notes (1) Colin H. Kahl. Not Time to Attack Iran. January 17, 2012. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137031/colin-h-kahl/not-time-to-attack-iran?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link6-20120120 (2) Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis. January 17, 2012. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/iran-us-and-strait-hormuz-crisis?utm_source=freelistf&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120117&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=b90cfbef7b1a402ea2f1fc384080fa15 (3) La UE acuerda vetar las importaciones de petroleo de Iran. 23.01.2012 http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20120123/54245752767/ue-vetar-importaciones-petroleo-iran.html (4) Richard Sanders. How to Start a War: The American Use of War Pretext Incidents. Global Research, January 9, 2012. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28554 (5) http://buchanan.org/blog/did-fdr-provoke-pearl-harbor-4953 (6) Recent Events in Iran and the Progress of Its Nuclear Program. January 17, 2012. http://www.cfr.org/iran/recent-events-iran-progress-its-nuclear-program/p27090?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link5-20120120 (7) http://www.eia.gov/cabs/world_oil_transit_chokepoints/full.html (8) Michael T. Klare. Danger Waters. January 10, 2012. http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2012/01/danger-waters.html#more (9) Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya. The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? Global Research, January 8, 2012. www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28516 (10) Philip Giraldi. Washington’s Secret Wars. 08 December 2011. http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/opinion-a-analysis/item/1236-washington%E2%80%99s-secret-wars
Global Research Articles by Leonid Slavin

The War on Iran is Already Underway

The Torture of Mumia Abu-Jamal Continues off Death Row

The Torture of Mumia Abu-Jamal Continues off Death Row Supporters Demand Transfer to General Population by Hans Bennett Global Research, January 23, 2012 Socialist Project On December 7, following the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to consider the Philadelphia District Attorney's final avenue of appeal, current DA Seth Williams announced that he would no longer be seeking a death sentence for the world-renowned death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal – on death row following his conviction at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and many others. Abu-Jamal's sentence of execution was first “overturned” by a federal court in December 2001, and during the next ten years, he was never transferred from death row at the level five supermax prison, SCI Greene, in rural western Pennsylvania. Shortly after the DA's announcement in early December, Mumia Abu-Jamal, now 57 years old, was transferred to SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA, 100 miles from Philadelphia. Once there, it was expected that he would be released from solitary confinement and transferred into general population where he would finally have contact visits and generally less onerous conditions. However, he was immediately placed in “Administrative Custody,” in SCI Mahanoy's “Restrictive Housing Unit” where his conditions of isolation and repression are now in many ways more extreme than they were on death row. Jennifer Beach/Prison Radio Jennifer Beach/Prison Radio Presently at SCI Mahanoy, Mumia Abu-Jamal is shackled around his ankles and wrists whenever he is outside his cell, even to the shower and during already restricted visits – where he is already behind Plexiglas; Before going to the yard he is subject to strip searches before and after the visit; He is only allowed bits of paper to write notes on, with a rubber flex pen, and four books (no shelves); No access to news reports; Letters delayed; Glaring lights on 24 hours a day; Only one brief phone call to his wife and one to an attorney; No access to adequate food or commissary, and more. Online Petition In the first week of January, at Abu-Jamal's request, supporters began a campaign directed at the PA Secretary of Corrections, SCI Mahanoy, and DA Seth Williams, demanding that Abu-Jamal be immediately transferred to the general population. The National Lawyers Guild (for whom Abu-Jamal serves as the Vice President) has released a statement and created an online petition demanding his transfer to general population. Furthermore, Abu-Jamal has asked for supporters to not just call for his release from the hole, but to challenge the very practice of solitary confinement and what are called in Pennsylvania “Restricted Housing Units.” Supporting Abu-Jamal's call to action, the Pennsylvania-based prison-activist organization called Human Rights Coalition explains that “Mumia may be in solitary, but he is not alone. The PA Department of Corrections holds approximately 2,500 people in solitary confinement on any given day, many of them for years at a time.” Ten Extra Years Spent On Death Row In 2001, U.S. District Court Judge William Yohn first “overturned” Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence, ruling that for a death sentence to be reinstated, the Philadelphia District Attorney must first hold a sentencing-phase jury trial, where the jury could only decide between execution or life without parole. The DA immediately appealed this ruling, in an effort to execute Abu-Jamal without bringing him to court before a jury in Philadelphia. Following Yohn's 2001 ruling, Abu-Jamal could have been transferred from solitary confinement on death row at SCI Greene, and into general population. If transferred, he would have had more freedom, including contact visits with family and friends. However, Judge Yohn granted the motion by the DA to keep Abu-Jamal in punitive conditions on death row while the DA appealed Yohn's ruling. As a result, Abu-Jamal stayed on death row during an appeals process that lasted almost ten years, a process that has now upheld the sentence's removal. In March 2008, the U.S. Third Circuit Court affirmed Yohn's 2001 ruling, but in January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the 2008 ruling and remanded it back to the Third Circuit. In April 2011, the Third Circuit affirmed the 2001 ruling for the second time. Finally, in October 2011, the DA's final attempt to challenge the decision was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, and in December the DA officially accepted the life sentence. Fighting for Mumia's Release While Abu-Jamal and his international network of supporters celebrated the final overturning of the death sentence, it was a bittersweet victory for a movement that has long fought for his release. In 2008 when the Third Circuit first affirmed Yohn's 2001 ruling, the Court also ruled against a new guilt-phase trial, effectively ended that avenue of appeal for Abu-Jamal to be released from prison. At this point, a new trial will likely require the bringing forth of new evidence. The investigation of police and prosecutorial misconduct, including the suppression of crucial evidence and the intimidation of witnesses could also lead to a new trial. These are the avenues that will be pursued to obtain Mumia's freedom. Among the new evidence that has come out in recent years, Philadelphia journalists Linn Washington Jr. and Dave Lindorff have recently performed a ballistics test, (watch video) fundamentally challenging the DA's shooting scenario/theory used to convict Abu-Jamal. In Philadelphia on December 9, the 30th anniversary of Abu-Jamal's arrest, supporters organized a large event at the National Constitution Center that was attended by over 1,000 people. Declaring that a sentence of life without parole is unacceptable, speakers ranging from author/activist Cornel West to Ramona Africa of MOVE and the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, pledged to continue fighting for Abu-Jamal's freedom. Pre-recorded video messages to the December 9 event were delivered by author/activist Michelle Alexander and the internationally renowned human rights activist Desmond Tutu, who days before has already released a statement declaring: “Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life – yet another form of death sentence. Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released. I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served.” An interview with Bret Grote of Human Rights Coalition by Hans Bennett of Prison Radio In this interview we speak with Bret Grote from Human Rights Coalition (HRC), who's website describes itself as “a group of predominately prisoners' families, ex-prisoners and some supporters,” whose “ultimate goal is to abolish prisons.” HRC seeks “to empower prisoners' families to be leaders in prison organizing, while at the same time reduce the shame of having a loved one in prison or being formerly incarcerated,” and “to make visible to the public the injustice and abuse that are common practice throughout our judicial and prison systems across the country, and eventually end those abuses.” Learn more at www.hrcoalition.org. Prison Radio (PR): Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal argue that his current time in the hole is a form of retaliation for his being a longtime political activist. In his recent article entitled, “Sadism in the Cell: Thanks to a Vindictive Prison System, Abu-Jamal is Still in 'The Hole,'” Linn Washington Jr. contextualizes recent events by documenting a long history of repression, ultimately arguing that "while Abu-Jamal detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for." Why do you think it is that Mumia is currently being held in “Administrative Custody?” Bret Grote (BG): In regard to Mumia, the inference should always be that the government is targeting him because of his politics due to the more than forty years that federal agents, Philadelphia police and prosecutors, governors of Pennsylvania, and prison officials have been conspiring to silence him. The current rationales offered by prison officials for his placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted. First, they asserted that they were waiting for the filing of paperwork by the District Attorney's office of Philadelphia so that his sentence would be formally changed from death to life without the possibility of parole. According to information available on the DOC's website, however, all death-sentenced prisoners are held on death row at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene or SCI Graterford. Abu-Jamal was removed from death row virtually as soon as Philadelphia DA Seth Williams announced he would not seek to re-impose the death penalty. If the prison were in fact waiting for a formal re-sentencing prior to placement in general population, Mumia would still be on death row. Second, they have recently decided that his hair exceeds the regulatory length and that he needs this cut. It took them five weeks to notify him of this. Obviously, the length of Mumia's hair was not unknown to prison officials. In fact, he was held on disciplinary status while on death row earlier during his confinement for eight years, although he was removed from that status – without cutting his hair – in the early 1990s at some point. The shifting rationales indicate that they are digging their heels in and seem prepared to try to continue subjecting Mumia to solitary confinement torture, which has been his fate for thirty years. It is important to note that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has recently declared that, in his opinion, prolonged solitary confinement of more than fifteen days violates article 1 (prohibiting torture) or 16 (prohibiting other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. He further stated that the Convention is violated when solitary confinement is imposed as punishment. These standards applied to U.S. prisons renders the overwhelming majority of solitary confinement practices criminal. PR: Can you please tell us more about how PA Prisons use solitary confinement and what are called “Restrictive Housing Units.” How is it used? Against whom? Are there other examples of solitary confinement punishment being used to retaliate against political activists? BG: While the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) operates in a seemingly arbitrary nature, there are some factors that place prisoners at high-risk for being kept in long-term solitary confinement: 1) political activism and jailhouse lawyering; 2) race; and 3) mental illness. To start with, those who file grievances about staff misconduct and abuse, or file lawsuits about civil and human rights violations, are routinely subjected to repressive treatment. Pennsylvania is far from alone in this practice. Professor of Corrections and Correctional Law at Minnesota State University, James Robertson, has stated that “Retaliation is deeply engrained in the correctional office subculture; it may well be in the normative response when an inmate files a grievance, a statutory precondition for filing a civil rights action.” He also refers to a survey of Ohio prisoners that found: “that 70.1% of inmates who brought grievances indicated that they had suffered retaliation thereafter; moreover, 87% of all respondents and nearly 92% of the inmates using the grievance process agreed with the statement, ‘I believe staff will retaliate or get back at me if I use the grievance process.’ [FN18] Among staff supervisors, only 21% believed that retaliation never happened, with one warden characterizing it as ‘commonplace’ when inmates resort to the grievance process.” As Robertson says, guards who retaliate “cannot be regarded as rogue actors. They act within the norm.” (“'One of the Dirty Secrets of American Corrections': Retaliation, Surplus Power, and Whistleblowing Inmates,” 42 Univ. Mich. Journal of Law Reform 611 (2009)). Russell Maroon Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member who has been incarcerated in PA prisons for almost 40 years is a prominent example of a political prisoner targeted for repression via placement in long-term solitary. Maroon has been held in the hole for more than twenty years and has not had a misconduct citation during that time. Although it is true that he escaped in the late 70s and early 80s, prison officials have told supporters and family that he is being kept in solitary because he is an organizer and a leader. Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6, have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and 9 years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside PA's control units. Damont Hagan is another who has been continually targeted for his outspokenness, including a recent incident where he was assaulted and placed in a cell with nooses at SCI Huntingdon. He was recently held in the solitary units at SCI Cresson, a prison that the Justice Department has announced an investigation into, in part due to the guard-encouraged suicide of John McClellan in May 2011. Caine Pelzer, Ravanna Spencer, Rhonshawn Jackson, Michael Edwards, Jerome Coffey, Andre Gay, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, and countless others have been thrown into solitary for the sole purpose of breaking their spirit. Look them up on the PA DOC inmate locator and send them a letter. Regarding race, the disparities within the solitary confinement population may be the most extreme in the entire criminal legal system, which is saying a lot. We do not know the exact figures because the demographics are not public, but reports of solitary units overwhelmingly comprised of people of color in PA prisons are common. Over the last thirty-plus years there has been a national trend of warehousing those with mental health needs inside prisons. These people often end up in prison because of their difficulties in adapting to life outside the walls, often because of experiences of childhood trauma and substance abuse, and their challenges in navigating social life is even more difficult inside the walls. The stresses of prison can lead to them getting in trouble with prison authorities due to an inability to follow the rules, which leads them to solitary, which leads to a worsening of their underlying psychological state. This cycle of dysfunction is a normative feature of prison systems across the United States. This nexus of retaliation, racism, and abuse of the mentally ill is widespread in PA prisons, and there is no shortage of examples to be found by reviewing the weekly PA Prison Reports on our website. PR: Besides solitary confinement, what other aspects of PA prisons does HRC identify as human rights violations? BG: Some of the obvious examples include physical abuse, medical neglect, racial discrimination, and sexual violence, all of which are chronic issues in prisons within Pennsylvania and beyond. In regard to the latter, a guard at SCI Pittsburgh was recently indicted on about 100 counts related to his rape and torture of prisoners at that facility. This is also being investigated by the Justice Department. This story has been suppressed in the national media, a phenomenon commented on by Mumia (“Rape Blocks” and “From State Pens To Penn State”), in what can only be understood as yet another example of the corporate media's complicity in enabling torture in U.S. prisons. Of course, race-based policies of mass incarceration violate the human right of equality under the law and the right to be free from racial discrimination. Michelle Alexander refers to this aspect of the U.S. prison nation as “the new Jim Crow.” Under international law it is known as apartheid, and it is prohibited under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The United States has never signed or ratified the convention for reasons that should be obvious enough. Pennsylvania is the world leader in another egregious human rights abuse: sending children to prison for the rest of their lives. There are more than 400 people in PA prisons who were sentenced for crimes allegedly committed when they were younger than 18. In this state, life means life, an utterly despicable practice that makes a cruel mockery of any pretense that the society we inhabit is humane, enlightened, or fair. Also of great importance in any discussion of the criminal legal system is the series of laws that enable “legal” discrimination against formerly incarcerated people, prohibiting them from obtaining access to food, housing, employment, stripping people of their right to vote in many states (though not PA) and setting them up for a life of poverty that guarantees high recidivism rates. This should be understood as a matter of deliberate policy, as it has been going on so long that it cannot plausibly be an unintended consequence of an otherwise sound system. The system works to violate human rights in such a comprehensive manner, from the socio-economic conditions that give rise to property and drug crimes and related acts of violence to the damaging and anti-human conditions inside the walls, and then to be released into a life of second-class status, enforced poverty, and political disenfranchisement, that it is hard to see how it is ‘legal’ in anything but pretense. Jennifer Beach/Prison Radio Jennifer Beach/Prison Radio PR: How is Human Rights Coalition working with PA prisoners and their families to improve conditions for PA prisoners? BG: In Pittsburgh and Philly we have weekly letter-writing to prisoners nights. Visit our website (Pittsburgh or Philly) to learn more and email us at hrcfedup@gmail.com or info@hrcoalition.org. We are constantly receiving phone calls and emails from people looking to advocate for their loved ones. In 2011 we initiated a Political Action Committee in order to be better organized through the building of a membership base and engaging in consistent acts of advocacy, education events, and building other campaigns. The PAC is in real need of some committed organizers to help us build momentum. One of the campaigns we've been increasingly involved with here in Pittsburgh is Decarcerate PA, which was started in Philadelphia. While the broader vision is to push for decarceration – shrinking the prison population, closing prisons, redirecting social resources to programs that care for people and communities – the immediate objective is to push back against planned prison expansion. The state of Pennsylvania is sinking some $685-million into building two new prisons and expanding a host of others. If more people are continually sent into these hellholes, then our efforts to improve conditions in any given situation will be futile. PR: What is HRC doing specifically to challenge the use of solitary confinement? BG: Aside from public education and advocacy, we are working to develop a legislative campaign with allied organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and the ACLU. While it is still in the planning stages, this campaign can be useful as a means for furthering political organizing objectives. Ultimately, any efforts to push back against torture and get people out of prison is contingent upon the wholesale removal from power of both corporate-backed imperial parties, the redistribution and redefinition of political power, and the elimination of an economic system with its roots in the market, replaced by one that has its roots in the earth. Anything less spells certain doom for our specific efforts to abolish solitary confinement, mass incarceration, and prisons, as well as our very survival on this planet. PR: HRC is also now starting a campaign to have Russell Shoats transferred out of solitary confinement at SCI-Greene. How can our readers support this? BG: Russell Shoats, discussed above, is a co-founder of HRC who has spent 20 years in the hole as a consequence of his principles and resistance to the inhumanity and criminality of this system. He is a 68-year-old revolutionary who has taught and inspired countless other prisoners and activists inside and outside the walls. Along with HRC, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild have submitted letters to the PA DOC requesting that Maroon be released into general population. Supporters can visit a recently-created website and click the “Follow” link at the bottom right to receive email updates when new postings are available. There is a sample letter on the site, and soon more material will be added. A new interview was just posted where Maroon discusses his thoughts on the importance of democracy and self-determination to movement building, the power of the feminist movement and matriarchal politics, Occupy Wall Street, and the imperative of centering food security (and square-foot gardening) in our movements. PR: Anything else to add? BG: It is absolutely critical to the fate of movements for social justice in this country that the situation of prisoners and the function of prisons in the social order take a central role in our analysis and practice. Everybody can correspond with a prisoner, help out a local group, get on email lists, and research the reality of the prison nation. It is not the land of the free, never was, never was intended to be, and the sooner we disabuse those around us of that notion the better chance there is to win some badly-needed victories. There is no dream too big and no action too small, let's keep at it till the walls crumble. • Prison Radio first began recording Mumia Abu-Jamal's radio essays in the early 1990s and we continue to this day. Our mission is to challenge unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism, and gender discrimination by airing the voices of men and women victimized by an unjust criminal justice system. Our website, www.prisonradio.org features Mumia's essays and much more, including the latest news about his case. To receive our email newsletter, please sign up on the bottom of our website's front page. Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia - www.abu-jamal-news.com. Global Research Articles by Hans Bennett

The Torture of Mumia Abu-Jamal Continues off Death Row

BFP Breaking News: The New Desperate Concoction for War on Iran | World News |Axisoflogic.com

War Architects Have Written a New Script- This Time with Azerbaijan in the Lead Actor Role

The imperial establishment’s desperation to militarily go after and take over the last ‘real’ domino – Iran, has truly reached a peak, and with that desperation comes a new farfetched and fantastical scenario. Last time the script of their scenario was written based on a Saudi Diplomat actor. It was only three months ago when the puppet mainstream media jumped in with a made-up, dubious, far-reaching, murkily and vaguely-sourced story of the thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in US. Here are a few excerpts from CNN’s fabulous-ized headline story that played around the clock for days, beating the war drums for its masters:

U.S. agents disrupted an Iranian assassination-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, U.S. officials said Tuesday…The Saudi ambassador was not the only intended target, U.S. officials said. The suspects also discussed attacking Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington and possibly Buenos Aires, Argentina, a senior U.S. official said.

…

Of course CNN was not the lone wolf in the intense broadcasting and dissemination of this Washington script. The rest of the MSM puppets followed the same trend: Washington Post, New York Times, FOX … Not only that, the pseudo-alternative con outlets did exactly the same thing. Just check out the verbatim dissemination by Huffington Post and other ‘popular’ so-called alternatives. Thankfully we had enough facts, critical thinkers, and independent news fronts to expose all the holes in that concocted story:

A close analysis of the FBI deposition reveals, however, that independent evidence for the charge that Arbabsiar was sent by the Qods Force on a mission to arrange for the assassination of Jubeir is lacking. The FBI account is full of holes and contradictions, moreover. The document gives good reason to doubt that Arbabsiar and his confederates in Iran had the intention of assassinating Jubeir, and to believe instead that the FBI hatched the plot as part of a sting operation.

…

So that scenario script kinda failed. Of course the other long-cooking concoction on Iran’s nuclear weapons development has not gotten the establishment hawks far either. Even the mainstream has been grudgingly admitting the holes-filled allegations on dangerous nuclear weapons armed Iran!

You’d think all the debunked allegations and failed attempts would give the imperial hawks a bit of a pause to come up with a better concoction. At least go away for a while and rethink their strategy; no? Obviously not. Desperation can do amazingly stupid things to greed-driven, wild-eyed and blood-thirsty bullies in pursuit of expanded turf. They just came out with a new concocted scenario and allegations. This time their lead actor happens to be Azerbaijan.

Our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives.

The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Now, interestingly the first place/source to start to disseminate our script writers’ new concocted scenario involving another ‘Iranian Plot’ was no other than … yes, you guessed it: Radio Free Europe. Check out this news’ origination by this long-propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits here. The second source to pick up on it was no other than a Soros-Funded site on Central Asia here. Guaranteed: the other MSM outlets will be having a field day with this new propaganda. In fact, they’ve been hot on another related side story with the same actor written by the same writers. I kid you not; here it is: Azerbaijan claims that the recent cyber attacks that destroyed its government and news websites originated in … Iran! Let’s check out the headline on this today at …Business Week:

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Cyber attacks that destroyed government and news websites in Azerbaijan this week mostly originated in Iran, government minister Ali Abbasov said. An investigation by Abbasov’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology found that of 25 attacks, 24 came from Iran and one from the Netherlands, Abbasov told reporters in the Azeri capital, Baku, today.

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, a scary terror cell in Baku, and savvy Iranian cyber-terrorists obsessed with this dingy little country’s dingier-littler government and news websites.

Source: boilingfrogspost.com










BFP Breaking News: The New Desperate Concoction for War on Iran | World News |Axisoflogic.com

'Stop madness on Iran nuclear program'

Sun Jan 22, 2012 10:23AM GMT

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting the Natanz nuclear fuel enrichment facility in central Iran, April 2008.

A recent article on an American website has urged restraint on the wave of 'unsubstantiated' allegations in the United States regarding Iran's nuclear program.

The article, titled "Stop the Madness" and published on the website of the American Foreign Policy magazine, censured Washington's allegations that Iran's nuclear activities have a military dimension, adding that such claims are “based on unsubstantiated assumptions” and merely serve “to provide ammunition for hawks in Washington that would rush the United States into another destructive war in the Middle East.”

The article pointed to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) explicit assertion that Iran's nuclear material “remains under the Agency's containment and surveillance” and that the Agency considers Iran's 20-percent enriched uranium to be to be low-enriched uranium and, in fact, "a fully adequate isotopic barrier" to weaponization.

The article further pointed to the fact that multiple experts and official reports on Iran have found no evidence that affirm diversion of nuclear materials to a weapons program, adding that, “Even US officials have conceded that they have no proof” of a military diversion in Iran's nuclear program.

The US and its allies have used the allegations against Iran's nuclear program as a pretext to sway the UN Security Council to impose four rounds of sanctions against the country.

As a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, Tehran insists it is entitled to utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence indicating that Iran's civilian nuclear program has been geared up for nuclear weapons production.

ASH/MYA/HJL  Source:  Press TV

A Sourcebook on Media Censorship in America

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A SOURCEBOOK FOR THE MEDIA REVOLUTION- Book Review of Project Censored's Censored 2012 volume, by Paul W. Rea.


Huff, Mickey and Project Censored, Eds. Censored 2012: Sourcebook for the Media Revolution. New York: Seven Stories Press, October 2011. $19.95.

For ordering details: ProjectCensored.org

Even more than its predecessors, Censored 2012 makes for highly engaging and informative reading. This collection is a well mixed bag containing much that we need to know but typically don’t.

In part, this deficit occurs because many Americans are, in Neil Postman’s memorable phrase, “amusing ourselves to death” and also because many exhibit an aversion to discussing issues. But above all this deficit results from increased media malpractice and censorship. When a study shows that regular viewers of Fox News are less informed—and likely more misinformed—than those who don’t follow the news, something is seriously amiss.

According to the project director Mickey Huff, the corporate media are serving up a diet of “junk-food news to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad” (p. 12). If this strikes many readers as obvious, fewer seem fully aware of just how pervasive this censorship has become—how very little coverage many significant issues receive.

As a result, even Americans who consider themselves informed don’t understand how their government attempts to minimize or even eliminate public awareness. On the climactic final day of the Durban Conference on Climate Change, NPR’s “Science Friday” featured a long segment on bedbugs (12/9/11). Censored 2012 reveals that even less coverage—none at all, in fact—is afforded to ongoing federal preparations to use a (real or contrived) state of emergency as a pretext to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and herd “dissidents” into mass holding camps (p. 85).

Both the book and the process that produces it are highly educational: as former director Peter Phillips observes, the democratized and educational nature of Project Censored invites faculty and students “to speak the truth to power with news and stories of the abuses of empire and the successes of our resistance” (p. 30). Under the guidance of present director Mickey Huff, this year’s volume delivers exceptional contributions, especially from students and faculty at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and Diablo Valley College in California. In all, close to twenty universities participated this year, with over 100 professors and several hundred students.

As in previous volumes, this one includes the twenty-five Top Censored Stories of the year. Topping this year’s list is “More US Soldiers Committed Suicide than Died in Combat;” the shocking significance, however, hardly declines at the other end: the massive disposal of toxic waste in Afghanistan and the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Libya (pp. 52-53). Since the early 1990s, the US press has paid some attention to Gulf War Syndrome among American veterans exposed to the “toxic soup” but much less attention to the medical fallout within Iraq, where the population lives amid carcinogenic radioactivity.

This year’s volume is organized around “clusters,” key areas of related issues. These include “Health and the Environment,” “Media Distortion of Nonviolent Struggles,” and Peter Phillips and Craig Cekala’s “Human Cost of War and Violence”; all present readable, concise treatments of topics that are, of course, the subjects of many current books.

As its title suggests, Censored 2012 features two essential topics: the mechanisms of media censorship and the key issues they’ve censored. Censorship, defined as one type of propaganda, itself takes many forms: skewed “framing, slight of content, and appealing to emotion over logic, among other tactics of media manipulation . . . .” These methods involve de facto “conspiracies to manipulate or withhold information” (p. 37). Canadian scholar Randal Marlin presents an excellent overview of traditional propaganda techniques, including the more recent (and most useful) concept of State Crimes Against Democracy, or SCADs.

Equally insightful is Jacob Van Vleet’s reprise of French sociologist Jacques Ellul (The Technological Society, 1964). In it, Prof. Van Vleet notes that “propagandists often use a combination of true and false statements in their appeals,” thereby creating “the illusion of objectivity when in fact only one side of the issue at hand is being presented.”

In addition, Van Vleet indicates that much propaganda is “social,” aiming to influence a society’s lifestyle. Such propaganda, often in the form of advertising, not only promotes consumption and an uncritical belief in technology; it also encourages “individuals to believe that their society . . . holds the best way of life.” This leads to what Marx described as “false consciousness.” Van Vleet also rightly points to “Conditioned Reflex and Myth,” paying particular attention to the societal rituals such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. These, according to Ellul, reinforce conditioned reflexes that impart excessive and exclusive “pride, patriotism, and even awe” (pp. 316-19).

Representing the category of censored issues, Ann Garrison’s “US in Africa: Velvet Glove on a Military Fist” is especially revealing. Garrison makes points that will surprise many readers: that US foreign aid to Africa, like that to Israel and Pakistan, is based on power projection: that conventional media claims not withstanding, it often involves “covering a military fist with a velvet glove of humanitarian and development aid” (p. 388).

Citing well-known interventions, Garrison shows how UN peacekeepers paid by the Security Council are often combatants dispatched at the behest of the US. In Somalia, under the guise of fighting terrorism, these African “peacekeepers” actually expanded areas of armed conflict. In addition to having Africans do the dying, these “peacekeepers” have commonly consumed funds previously been used for humanitarian aid, aggravating problems with agricultural production, famine, and refugees. Garrison also reveals how, especially in Congo, the UN enabled the World Bank to facilitate massive plunder of natural resources by neighboring Uganda and Rwanda (pp. 389-403).

But the real clincher is her disclosure about pilotless drones, which are fast becoming the dominant means of delivering explosives from the air. It’s well known that since 2000 the CIA has made extensive use of Predator drones over Pakistan. In 2008, however, General Atomic unveiled its new Reaper drones, which can carry far more missiles than its Predators. Since the company makes both planes, it needed new markets for the Predator. Its marketing campaign, abetted by WIRED magazine, proposed using the older drones to “stop the genocide” in “the next Darfur.” Following this script, Obama’s “humanitarian hawk” Samantha Power persuaded the president that Predators could be deployed to fire Hellfire missiles at Libyans (pp. 397-399).

Other outstanding chapters include Mickey Huff, Abby Martin, and Adam Bessie’s feisty “Framing the Messengers: Junk Food News and News Abuse for Dummies” and Kenn Burrows and Tom Altee’s meditative “Collaboration and the Common Good.”

Despite this diversity, the book does present unifying themes. Much as Occupiers unite around the idea that “the capital of government has succumbed to government by capital,” Censored 2012 shows us that, to an increasingly shocking degree, freedom of information has succumbed to the corporatocracy.

Fortunately, this book goes a long way toward telling us what we need to know.

Paul W. Rea, PhD, is the author of Mounting Evidence: Why We Need a New Investigation into 9/11 (2011).

A Sourcebook on Media Censorship in America

FEBRUARY 4: NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION. STOP THE U.S. WAR AGAINST IRAN

WATCH PRESS TV on this link: www.presstv.ir

BUILD FEB. 4 EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATION TO STOP U.S. WAR AGAINST IRAN

NO WAR! NO SANCTIONS! NO INTERVENTION! NO ASSASSINATIONS

A broad spectrum of U.S.-based anti-imperialist and anti-war organizations, including the IAC, agreed on a Jan. 17 conference call to hold coordinated protests across the country on Saturday, Feb. 4. The demands will be: “No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran.”

The ad-hoc group that took part in the call decided that although there are only two weeks to organize, it will invite anti-war forces around the world to join in to make this emergency protest a global day of action.

All agreed on the need to stop U.S. imperialism and/or Israel from launching a military attack on Iran. There was also a consensus that the new sanctions President Barack Obama signed into law on Dec. 31 -- with the goal of breaking the Iranian central bank -- were themselves an act of war aimed at the Iranian people. The political activists on the call raised the danger of a wider war should fighting break out in or around Iran.

While the organizations involved had varied assessments of the Iranian government, they all saw any intervention from U.S. imperialism in the Southwest Asian country as a threat to the entire region and to peace. Some of the people on the call who are originally from Iran and who were in touch with family and friends there conveyed the Iranian people’s anger at the recent assassination of a young scientist.

There was agreement to make “no assassinations” one of the demands to show solidarity with the Iranian population as well as to condemn the U.S. and its allies for criminal activities against Iran and its people.

As of Jan. 19, the organizations that called the actions or endorsed later included the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC), the International Action Center (IAC), SI! Solidarity with Iran, Refugee Apostolic Catholic Church, Workers World Party, World Can’t Wait, American Iranian Friendship Committee, ANSWER Coalition, Antiwar.com, Peace of the Action, ComeHomeAmerica.us, St. Pete for Peace, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality-Virginia, WESPAC Foundation, Peace Action Maine, Occupy Myrtle Beach, Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, Twin Cities Peace Campaign and Bail Out the People Movement (BOPM).

Individual endorsers include authors David Swanson, “When the World Outlawed War,” and Phil Wilayto, “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation’s Journey through the Islamic Republic”; and U.N. Human Rights Award winner Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general.

The list is expected to grow steadily as word spreads. Right now people can follow developments on the Facebook link:
No War On Iran: National Day of Action Feb 4, http://www.facebook.com/events/214341975322807/




FEBRUARY 4: NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION. STOP THE U.S. WAR AGAINST IRAN