Human Rights

Indiana Police Can No Longer Interfere With People Filming Police

March 2, 2014 Staff, thefreethoughtproject.com Resist! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Police abuse

King claimed the city and the officers violated his First, Fourth and 14th amendment rights. In addition, he asserted the IMPD used excessive force against him and that he was a victim of false arrest and malicious prosecution. The settlement was reached within weeks of King’s March 10, 2014, trial date. Along with requiring the city to implement a new policy, the settlement also awarded King $200,000 in damages. Police Chief Rick Hite now has two months to issue a bulletin informing his officers that they should not stop civilians observing or filming their actions in public, so long as the person filming does not interfere with their duties and keeps a “safe and reasonable” distance. Chock this one up for a win!

Political Prisoner Released From Solitary Confinement

February 28, 2014 Bret Grote, www.russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights

Maroon’s son, Russell Shoatz III, said, “We are very excited that this day has finally come. My father being released from solitary confinement is proof of the power of people organizing against injustice, and the importance of building strong coalitions. I especially want to thank all of those who have supported the collective struggle to end my father’s solitary confinement, including my siblings and members of the Shoatz family, the Human Rights Coalition, Abolitionist Law Center, Scientific Soul Sessions, the entire legal team, UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez, the 5 Nobel Peace Laureates, the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, along with the dozens of other organizations and thousands of individuals who have participated in this effort.”

Burkina Faso’s ‘West African Spring’

February 26, 2014 Sam Badger and Giorgio Cafiero, www.fpif.org Resist! Africa, Democracy, Human Rights

Since January, tensions have flared between the West African country’s authoritarian government and the impoverished masses yearning for democratic reforms. Depending on how developments unfold, the protests in Burkina Faso could serve as a catalyst for further uprisings in the region. On January 18, over 10,000 Burkinabe citizens rallied in the nation’s capital, Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo), and other cities to protest the concentration of political power in one man — President Blaise Compaore, who has ruled Burkina Faso since 1987. While Compaore claims democratic legitimacy, the opposition demands his departure from power, maintaining that Compaore’s past electoral victories were fraudulent and rigged. West Africa Since January, tensions have flared between Burkina Faso’s authoritarian government and pro-democracy activists. Photo Agence France-Presse

Chokwe Lumumba, Radical New Mayor Of Jackson, MS Dies

February 25, 2014 Associated Press, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Human Rights

"His young administration has been a great beacon of hope for so many of us," Cole said. "He was just beginning to make an effective start tackling the long-neglected challenges faced by our capital city." Republican Gov. Phil Bryant issued a statement Tuesday saying he and his wife, Deborah, "are shocked and saddened by the news of Mayor Lumumba's passing and are praying for his loved ones." "Just a short time ago, I had the opportunity to join the mayor in a church pew as we welcomed a new development to the city," Bryant said. "His enthusiasm for Jackson will be deeply missed." Lumumba was born in Detroit as Edwin Taliaferro, and changed his name in 1969, when he was in his early 20s.

Techniques Used In Prisons Are Now Applied To All Of US

February 25, 2014 Marlon Brock, www.policestateusa.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, NSA, Police abuse, Privacy, Surveillance

Has our country become one giant correctional institution? Americans are not typically aware of how their federal and state prison systems work. What we think we know, we learned from watching television. When I took my first walk through at FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) El Reno Oklahoma as a new employee, I was surprised at how non-Hollywood real prison life is. Frankly, all I knew about prison life was what I saw on television or at the movies. Not even close. As I got closer to retiring from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP), it began to dawn on me that the security practices we used in the prison system were being implemented outside those walls. “Free worlders” is prison slang for the non-incarcerated who reside in the “free world.” In this article I am going to compare a number of practices used in federal prisons to those being used today in the “free world.”

Manning: Security State Is Undermining The US Constitution

February 23, 2014 Chelsea Manning via Aaron Kirkhouse, www.privatemanning.org Educate! Chelsea Manning, Government, Human Rights, NSA, Surveillance, US Constitution

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the dangers of withholding documents, legal interpretations, and court jurisprudence from the public that pertain to the right to “life, liberty, and property” of a state’s citizens is as fundamental and important to protecting against such human rights abuses. When the public lacks the ability to access what its government is doing, it ceases to be involved in the governing process. There is a distinct difference between citizens, in which people are entitled to rights and privileges protected by and from the state, and subjects, in which people are placed under the absolute authority and control of the state. In essence, this is the difference between tyranny and freedom. To echo a maxim from Milton and Foes Friedman: a society that puts secrecy – in the sense of state secrecy – ahead of transparency and accountability will end up neither secure nor free.

Operation Nazification

February 21, 2014 David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org Educate! Government, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

After World War II, the U.S. military hired sixteen hundred former Nazi scientists and doctors, including some of Adolf Hitler's closest collaborators, including men responsible for murder, slavery, and human experimentation, including men convicted of war crimes, men acquitted of war crimes, and men who never stood trial. Some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg had already been working for the U.S. in either Germany or the U.S. prior to the trials. Some were protected from their past by the U.S. government for years, as they lived and worked in Boston Harbor, Long Island, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, and elsewhere, or were flown by the U.S. government to Argentina to protect them from prosecution. Some trial transcripts were classified in their entirety to avoid exposing the pasts of important U.S. scientists.

Bhopal Survivors To UN: Assist Us, Not Dow Chemical

February 21, 2014 ICJB, www.studentsforbbhopal.org Educate! Bhopal, Human Rights

The supporters said that it was a matter of serious concern that almost 30 years into disaster in Bhopal, not one of the UN agencies has lived up to its mandate by providing technical and other assistance towards the continuing humanitarian crisis in Bhopal. They said that while the UN has been negligent towards its responsibilities in Bhopal it has actively built its association with the corporation responsible for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal. The supporters handed over a letter from the Bhopal survivors meant for the Secretary General: In this letter survivors demanded that the United Nations terminate the membership of Dow Chemical, current owner of Union Carbide, in the United Nations Foundation for its ongoing violations of the human rights of the people of Bhopal.

Jordan Davis, Another Victim Of A Murderous Historical Continuum

February 20, 2014 Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Human Rights, Racism

"The subtext to all of these untimely deaths remains race. The subtext to the inability of juries to convict the George Zimmerman’s and Michael Dunn’s of the world of murder is tied to race as well. They are the most recent victims of a murderous historical American continuum. Tolnay and Beck in their book A Festival of Violence, “identified 2,805 victims of lynch mobs killed between 1882 and 1930 in ten southern states. Although mobs murdered almost 300 white men and women, the vast majority – almost 2,500 – of lynch victims were African-American. The scale of this carnage means that, on average, a black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate driven white mob.” Today, lynch mobs have been replaced by Zimmermans and Dunns and sanctioned by “Stand Your Ground” and “juries of their peers.”

Are U.S.-Backed Right-Wing Groups Trying Oust Venezuela’s Elected Government?

February 20, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Democracy, Human Rights, Latin America, Venezuela

"In the case of crime, the infiltration of mafias has been a powerful force in recent years. And in the case of scarcity, the role of private capitalists in withholding and hoarding goods, as well as currency speculation, has been a massively destructive force that really echoes the kind of Chile scenario of helping to destroy an economy as a preparation for the government being overthrown. But the reality is, these do not—these two factors, which the students are claiming are driving these protests, are really—they don’t explain why these protests are emerging now. Why? Because crime is actually going down, as we speak, and because food scarcity is not nearly as bad as it was earlier in the year. Rather, what explains what’s going on now is that this is the moment in which—after December elections, in which the opposition fared very poorly, this is the moment in which the right wing of that opposition has said, "Enough. You know, once again, enough. We’re done with elections. We’re going to go to the streets, and we’re going to try to topple this government."

1.66 Million Europeans Put End To Water Privatization On EU Agenda

February 18, 2014 Pablo Sanchez www.right2water.eu Organize! Europe, Food and Agriculture, Human Rights

The ECI Right2Water has submitted 1.66 million valid statements to the Commission. The representatives of the citizens committee are invited to the European Commission on Monday morning. The European Parliament has a public hearing with the ECI representatives in the afternoon, jointly organised by the 4 committees of the Parliament involved. The President of the Environment Committee (ENVI) Mathias Groote will chair the event with representatives of the Petitions Committee, the Internal Market Committee and the Development Committee. Over 30 Members of the European Parliament will be able to ask questions and we expect many more to attend. The organisers and the President of the ENVI Committee will host a press conference on Monday at 14h00 at the Raoul Wellenberg room at the European Parliament (ASP 5G2) with the President of the Citizens Committee Anne-Marie Perret and Maroš Šefčovič, EU Commissioner.

Pakistani Judge: Produce Missing Drone Victim

February 13, 2014 Staff, www.reprieve.org.uk Organize! Drones, Government, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

A Pakistani judge today ordered the country’s intelligence services to produce a victim of CIA drone strikes who has been missing since being seized from his Rawalpindi home a week ago. Kareem Khan, who lost his son and brother to a 2009 CIA drone strike in North Waziristan, had been due to travel to Europe to discuss his experience with parliamentarians in a number of countries later this month. However, he has not been heard from since being detained by a group of men in police uniforms and plain clothes in the early hours of February 5.

NATO Protesters Respond to Tribune War on Dissent

February 13, 2014 PlusOne, pastebin.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Democracy, Government, Human Rights

It is simply factually dead wrong for the Tribune to assert that “city officials went to great lengths to facilitate [protesters’] right to assemble” during the May 2012 NATO protests. In fact, protesters had to battle for months for the right to protest -- including against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s infamous “sit down and shut up” ordinance. And hundreds of protesters who were kettled and assaulted by police on May 20, 2012 would flatly dispute the Tribune’s characterization of that calculated police violence as ‘turning the other cheek.’

Activists also learned more during the NATO 3 trial about what many had suspected -- that Emanuel and police superintendent Garry McCarthy have stewarded the full-bore reinstatement of the city’s infamous Red Squad...

Legalizing Oppression: Lynne Stewart Interview

February 13, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Lynn Stewart

"The lynching and disbarring of civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, who because she has terminal cancer was recently released from prison after serving four years of a 10-year sentence, is a window into the collapse of the American legal system. Stewart—who has stood up to state power for more than three decades in order to give a voice to those whom authorities seek to crush, who has spent her life defending the poor and the marginalized, who wept in court when one of her clients was barred from presenting a credible defense—is everything a lawyer should be in an open society. But we no longer live in an open society. The persecution of Stewart is the persecution of us all."

U.S. Plummets In Global Press Freedom Rankings

February 12, 2014 Josh Stearns, www.freepress.net Educate! Human Rights, Media, Surveillance, Whistleblowers

After a year of attacks on whistleblowers and digital journalists and revelations about mass surveillance, the United States plunged 13 spots in the group’s global press freedom rankings to number 46. Reporters Without Borders writes that the U.S. faced “one of the most significant declines” in the world last year. Even the United Kingdom, whose sustained campaign to criminalize the Guardian’s reporters and intimidate journalists has made headlines around the world, dropped only three spots, to number 33.* The U.S. fell as many spots as Paraguay, where “the pressure on journalists to censor themselves keeps on mounting.” Citing the Justice Department’s aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers, including its secret seizure of Associated Press phone records, the authors write that “freedom of information is too often sacrificed to an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs, marking a disturbing retreat from democratic practices.

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