Terrorism

Patriot Act: Cool Mitch McConnell Gets Passionate — And Pays

May 28, 2015 Burgess Everett and Manu Raju, www.politico.com Resist! Law, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

Mitch McConnell rarely goes out on a limb on issues that divide Senate Republicans. He’s more prone to sit back and listen, let his conference work out their differences — and only then assert his own views. But the majority leader ditched that dispassionate approach when it came time to renew the country’s anti-terrorism surveillance laws — he spoke out early and vociferously against reforming soon-to-expire PATRIOT Act provisions — and the departure now threatens to undermine the Kentucky Republican’s vow to bring more responsible governance to the Senate. For weeks, McConnell tried to lay the groundwork for an extension of the post-9/11 law, only to be boxed into a corner by the House GOP leadership and his junior senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, who’ve pushed to substantially change or end the program.

Chelsea Writes On 5 Years In Confinement In New Guardian Op-Ed

May 28, 2015 Chelsea E. Manning, www.chelseamanning.org Resist! Chelsea Manning, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

It all began in the first few weeks of 2010, when I made the life-changing decision to release to the public a repository of classified (and unclassified but “sensitive” ) documents that provided a simultaneously horrific and beautiful outlook on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. After spending months preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in 2008, switching to Iraq in 2009 and actually staying in Iraq from 2009-10, I quickly and fully recognized the importance of these documents to the world at large.Today marks five years since I was ordered into military confinement while deployed to Iraq in 2010. I find it difficult to believe, at times, just how long I have been in prison. Throughout this time, there have been so many ups and downs – it often feels like a physical and emotional roller coaster.

A Nation Of Snitches

May 12, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Resist! Civil Liberties, Privacy, State, Surveillance, Terrorism

A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.

Government Treating #BlackLivesMatter Like A Terrorist Group

April 29, 2015 Adam Johnson, www.alternet.org Educate! police brutality, Racial Justice, Surveillance, Terrorism

We learned in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement that the government’s use of its anti-terror apparatus at a local and federal level was both routine and pervasive. Thus far, the means with which similar practices have been used on #BlackLivesMatter have been subtly emerging -- thanks in large part to some truly intrepid journalism -- from across the country. Here is a recap of the five of the worst examples: The police wearing the counterterrorism jackets at protests are perhaps the most palpable sign of the agency's transformation since 2001. Before 9/11 the NYPD had no counterterrorism bureau and the Intelligence Division focused its resources on gang activity. After the September 11 attacks, however, billions of dollars were poured into the department to counter the threat of terrorism, as a 2011 60 Minutes report showed.

Exposed: How The FBI Entraps Innocents As Terrorists

April 21, 2015 Democracy Now!, www.democracynow.org Educate! Criminal Justice, FBI, Terrorism

Yeah, my—well, actually, not deported, but under the threat of being arrested, my wife voluntarily left. This has definitely had a devastating effect on my family in regards to physically separating us, not only by my incarceration, but the fact that in 2013 immigration authorities approached my family in Columbus, Ohio, and under the threat of my wife being told that if she doesn’t leave, that she would be incarcerated, saying that her application was denied. And everything in regards to how my wife originally entered this country was legal, and they found a small technicality to just find a reason, the fact that she overstayed her original 90 days when she entered the country from the U.K. as a visitor, even though we filed the paperwork within that timeframe for her to get, you know, permanent residency and then eventually to get citizenship.

Tar Sands Campaigners Are Canada’s New ‘Terrorists’

March 21, 2015 Pete Dolack, www.theecologist.org Resist! Canada, Oil & Gas, Terrorism

Canada's Harper régime has invented the new crime of being a member of an 'anti-Canadian petroleum movement', and equating such a stance with terrorism. Evidently believing it is in danger of losing the fight against pipeline projects intended to speed up Alberta tar sands production, its response is to place environmentalists under surveillance. A secret report prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country's national police agency, claims that public activism against the problems caused by oil and gas extraction is a growing and violent threat to Canada's national security. The report goes so far as to challenge the very idea that human activity is causing global warming or that global warming is even a problem.

Kahnawake Sends ‘Open Letter’ To Prime Minister

March 7, 2015 APTN, www.aptn.ca Educate! Aboriginal Rights, Canada, Terrorism

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake is the latest to voice its concern over the federal government’s anti-terror legislation bill C-51. According to the letter sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper Wednesday, the council, like many First Nations across the country, is concerned about the effect the bill could have on activists. “While it is clear that the Canadian people and their government are concerned with both real and potential incidents of terrorism in Canada, there is also a great fear that the law may be used to brand legitimate protests by First Nations as acts of terrorism,” said Chief Lloyd Phillips. The proposed anti-terror bill will give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service police-like powers.

What’s Happening To Canada? Open Letter From Ralph Nader

March 7, 2015 Ralph Nader, www.rabble.ca Educate! Canada, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

You are quoted as saying that "jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced" as a predicate for your gross over-reaction that "violent jihadism seeks to destroy" Canadian "rights." Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are "jihadis" fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush. How does "jihadism" match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism -- west and east, north and south -- or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory? Reading your apoplectic oratory reminds one of the prior history of your country as one of the world's peacekeepers from the inspiration of Lester Pearson to the United Nations.

Nonviolent Leader Arrested In The Maldives

March 2, 2015 Matt Mulberry, www.opendemocracy.net Educate! Climate Change, Terrorism, United Nations

The former President of the Maldives and global climate activist Mohamed ‘Anni’ Nasheed was arrested on February 22 on “terror” charges just days before he was to lead a mass demonstration against the current government. Both the UN and the EU have issued statements of concern over what now appears to be an escalation by entrenched power holders in the Maldives to stifle effective political opposition. Known to outsiders for its pristine beaches, clear turquoise waters, and five-star luxury resorts, the Maldives is a nation of about 340,000 people spread across an archipelago of 26 atolls located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, roughly 500 miles southwest of Sri Lanka. Its natural beauty is its biggest asset, given that nearly one-third of the country’s GDP is generated via tourism. But that beauty also has a way of obscuring the intense political struggles that have come to characterize everyday life for most Maldivians over the past 30 years.

Why Does The FBI Have To Manufacture Its Own Plots?

February 28, 2015 Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! FBI, Media, Terrorism

The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency’s latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, “it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant.” One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI’s plot: his mom had taken away his passport. Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain noted on Twitter that this case “sounds like another victory for the FBI over the mentally ill.” In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade.

How The US Can Really Combat Radicalism

February 26, 2015 As'ad AbuKhalil, www.english.al-akhbar.com Educate! Foreign Policy, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

The US government held yet another conference on how best to combat “Islamic radicalism.” It is interesting that radicalism — even without adding the Islamic adjective, as the Obama administration avoids the label — is applied to only one cultural and religious milieu. Radicalism is thus assumed to be a phenomenon of one culture and one religion. When the US government speaks about radicalism, it ignores the radicalism that prevails in the US Congress or in the US churches. It has only one radicalism and one form of violence in mind. Thus the violence of the US government, visited upon people in many Muslim countries, is not seen as the product of radicalism, but of moderation and of lofty ideals. Furthermore, for the US to really demonstrate its willingness to effectively combat radicalism it has to undertake those steps and policies — which it will never do. . .

New Report Reveals Magnitude Of Black Lynchings In US

February 12, 2015 TeleSurTV, www.telesurtv.net Educate! History, Racial Justice, Terrorism

About 4,000 black people were lynched in the southern states of the United States between 1877 and 1950, equivalent to more than one per week, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Over 6 million black people also fled the South between 1910-1970 to escape the violence and terror in a region known for its extreme and widespread racism. This is the most extensive study published on “racial terrorism” recently, after five years of investigation in 12 southern states. It has added 700 more cases of lynchings to the previous investigation by sociologists Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck in 1995.

The Terror We Give Is The Terror We Get

February 10, 2015 Chris Hedges www.truthdig.com Educate! ISIS, Terrorism, Violence

We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage. We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them. We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites. We produce high-budget films such as “American Sniper” to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad. The barbarism we condemn is the barbarism we commit. The line that separates us from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is technological, not moral. We are those we fight.

The FBI Invents Some Plots & Ignores Others In War On Freedom

February 3, 2015 Derek Royden, www.occupy.com Educate! FBI, Law, Terrorism

After Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI was forced to re-prioritize, making counter-terrorism the Bureau’s main focus. More than 1,800 agents, almost a third of the total dealing with criminal cases from organized crime to insurance fraud, were transferred to terrorism and intelligence duties in the aftermath of the attacks. What 9/11 did, among other things, was to create a need for proof, via arrests, that the new State focus on terrorism was showing results. We’ve all seen the headlines from mainstream media sources after arrests were made and press conferences were given by high level officials announcing another disrupted “terror plot.” Yet, when one investigates these cases, as many journalists and writers in the alternative press have done, we see the score isn't as it all appears – and when compared with similar cases where terror charges were not brought, a disturbing picture emerges.

The War On Terror: Ex-CIA Officer John Kiriakou Speaks

January 21, 2015 Andrew Jerell Jones, www.firstlook.org Educate! CIA, Human Rights, Terrorism, Torture

John Kiriakou is the only CIA employee to go to prison in connection with the agency’s torture program. Not because he tortured anyone, but because he revealed information on torture to a reporter. Kiriakou is the Central Intelligence Agency officer who told ABC News in 2007 that the CIA waterboarded suspected al-Qaeda prisoners after the September 11 attacks, namely Abu Zubaydah, thought to be a key al Qaeda official. Although he felt at the time that waterboarding probably saved lives, Kiriakou nevertheless came to view the practice as torture and later claimed he unwittingly understated how many times Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding.

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