azspot:

Who do you want to decide which websites you can visit or what Internet content you can access — you or a big telecom company?

That’s what the fight about network neutrality is all about. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet users, not Internet service providers, should be in control.

SIGN THE PETITION!

thedaytheytriedtokillme:

Spotter cards: What they look like and how they work

• This kind of highly confidential document – pictured above – is rarely seen by the public.
• These so-called “spotter cards” are issued by police to identify individuals they consider to be potential troublemakers because they have appeared at a number of demonstrations.
• The photographs are drawn from police intelligence files. This card was apparently dropped at a demonstration against Britain’s largest arms fair in 2005.

• On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik Prince. At the same time, Judge T.S. Ellis III sent the Iraqis’ lawyers back to the legal drawing board to amend and refile their cases, saying that the Iraqi plaintiffs need to provide more specific details on the alleged crimes before a final decision can be made on whether or not the lawsuits will proceed.

• High-ranking government officials are usually protected from claims that they violated a person’s civil rights. In lawsuits stemming from law enforcement and intelligence efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks, three federal courts have left open the possibility that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and a lieutenant may be held personally liable.
• In two cases, judges appointed by Republican presidents have refused at an early stage to dismiss lawsuits that were filed against Ashcroft and former Justice Department official John Yoo. One complaint challenges Ashcroft’s strategy of preventive detention. The other seeks to hold Yoo accountable for legal memos he wrote supporting detention, interrogation and presidential power.
• In a third case, the full federal appeals court in New York is reconsidering an earlier decision by three of its members to toss out a lawsuit by a man who was changing planes in the United States when he was mistaken for a terrorist and sent to Syria, where he claims he was tortured.
• The cases have been uncomfortable for the Obama administration, which inherited the task of representing Ashcroft and Yoo from the Bush administration, even though President Barack Obama opposed some of the homeland-security practices under his predecessor. As well, both the Obama and Bush administrations renounced some of Yoo’s legal positions.
• Among the Yoo memos retracted was his Oct. 23, 2001, opinion that the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches did not apply to domestic military operations aimed at terror suspects — so soldiers could enter and search homes without warrants in pursuit of terrorists.
• The Obama administration has yet to spell out its views on when people may be detained because of suspected terrorism links but without evidence of criminal activity.
• No attorney general has ever been held personally liable for official actions, said Yeshiva University law professor Alexander Reinert, who represents another post-9/11 detainee who is suing Ashcroft.

elpasajero:

G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail

“Saturday September 26 2009: Three undercover officers attempt to infiltrate a March Against Police Brutality at the University of Pittsburgh, but fail miserably due to their horrendous disguise attempts. During the march, one of them breaks a photographer’s camera. This is just one example of a larger pattern of attempts to silence the media during the G20 protests.”

(pigz. “What if we dressed up like cops at protest”?)

poortaste:ronworkman:

Uncle Sam always wins.

• Speaking at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club September 15, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis C. Blair, disclosed that the current annual budget for the 16 agency U.S. “Intelligence Community” (IC) clocks-in at $75 billion and employs some 200,000 operatives world-wide, including private contractors.
• In unveiling an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), Blair asserts he is seeking to break down “this old distinction between military and nonmilitary intelligence,” stating that the “traditional fault line” separating secretive military programs from overall intelligence activities “is no longer relevant.”
• Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has encouraged the explosive growth of fusion centers. As envisaged by securocrats, these hybrid institutions have expanded information collection and sharing practices from a wide variety of sources, including commercial databases, among state and local law enforcement agencies, the private sector and federal security agencies, including military intelligence.
• But early on, fusion centers like the notorious “red squads” of the 1960s and ’70s, morphed into national security shopping malls where officials monitor not only alleged terrorists but also left-wing and environmental activists deemed threats to the existing corporate order.
• It is currently unknown how many military intelligence analysts are stationed at fusion centers, what their roles are and whether or not they are engaged in domestic surveillance.
• If past practices are an indication of where current moves by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will lead, in breaking down the “traditional fault line” that prohibits the military from engaging in civilian policing, then another troubling step along the dark road of militarizing American society will have been taken.

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
• 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
• 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
• 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
• 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
• 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
• 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
• 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
• 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
• 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
• 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
• 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

The Black Eagle Trust was a fund created out of precious metals and gems, recovered by the United States from the Germans and Japanese (“Yamashita’s gold”) after World War II. The Nazis had appropriated gold from Jews all over Europe, and the Japanese had plundered Nanjing and other Chinese cities. American Secretary of War Henry Stimson proposed that the recovered assets be used to fund clandestine operations after the war. The existence of an independent funding source would help to keep these operations secret, and shield them from Congressional and public scrutiny. The name of the fund derived from the Nazi eagle that was stamped on gold bars made from melted-down, confiscated gold jewelry and coins. The bulk of the funding for the Black Eagle Trust came, however, from underground stashes in the Philippines, where the Japanese navy had horded stolen booty after the American blockade prevented them from returning the loot to Japanese soil.

buffleheadcabin:azspot:

Chilling Arrest at G-20

Paramilitary squads now operating openly in the United States. Keep in mind that in other countries in the not-so-distant past, paramilitary squads did things the police could not do, including torture, murder and ‘disappear’ people. Posted on Deep Thought blog.

• The COPA currently serves as a network of the serious researchers into the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other political figures. COPA was instrumental in overseeing implementation of the JFK Assassination Records Act, passed in 1992, which has led to the release of over 6.5 million pages of records to date, the second largest release of classified documents in US history.

Military uses Sonic Weapon and Tear Gas on Protesters at g20 Pittsburgh

Teargassing a CNN reporter too.

thedaytheytriedtokillme:

Police using an LRAD in Pittsburgh? Interesting feeds from the protests including twitter backlash.