Israel firm on not apologising over flotilla
Israel firm on not apologising over flotillaIsrael sticks to refusal to apologise to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens on Gaza-bound aid ship last year.Last Modified: 17 Aug 2011 19:25Israeli marines shot dead nine Turkish passengers on the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010 [AFP]
Israel says it will stick to its refusal to apologise to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens on a Gaza-bound aid ship, an Israeli official has said.
Wednesday's announcement, which the official said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu conveyed to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a telephone call a day earlier, was made days before the publication of the findings of a UN inquiry into the deadly raid of the Mavi Marmara boat last year.
The so-called Palmer report was repeatedly delayed to allow for Israeli-Turkish reconcilliaiton talks amid concern in Washington at the rift between two countries that had been strategic partners in an increasingly volatile Middle East.
Kurt Hoyer, spokesman for the US embassy, said Washington wanted Israel and Turkey "to look for opportunities to get past the current strains in their bilateral relations".
Israeli officials, citing advance copies of the report, have said it would vindicate Israel's blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"We're firm on not apologising," the Israeli official said. Asked if Israel might change tack after the Palmer report's publication, the official said: "Why would we do that? We know the report supports our position."
Diplomatic deadlock
Turkey, which like Israel had a delegate on the UN panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, has said it would not accept such a finding.
Turkey's prime minister said on Wednesday that his country would never back down on demands for an apology from Israel over its 2010 commando raid.
"As long as Israel does not apologise, pay compensation and remove the embargo over Gaza, it is impossible to heal relations between Turkey and Israel," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
"It is out of the question to step back from our determination on this issue," he said.
The Mavi Marmara was part of an activist flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza when it was boarded by Israeli marines on the Mediterranean high seas on May 31, 2010.
The marines shot dead nine Turks, including a dual US citizen.
The Palmer report is due to be released on August 20.
Source:Agencies
Israel firm on not apologising over flotillaIsrael sticks to refusal to apologise to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens on Gaza-bound aid ship last year.Last Modified: 17 Aug 2011 19:25Israeli marines shot dead nine Turkish passengers on the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010 [AFP]
Israel says it will stick to its refusal to apologise to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens on a Gaza-bound aid ship, an Israeli official has said.
Wednesday's announcement, which the official said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu conveyed to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a telephone call a day earlier, was made days before the publication of the findings of a UN inquiry into the deadly raid of the Mavi Marmara boat last year.
The so-called Palmer report was repeatedly delayed to allow for Israeli-Turkish reconcilliaiton talks amid concern in Washington at the rift between two countries that had been strategic partners in an increasingly volatile Middle East.
Kurt Hoyer, spokesman for the US embassy, said Washington wanted Israel and Turkey "to look for opportunities to get past the current strains in their bilateral relations".
Israeli officials, citing advance copies of the report, have said it would vindicate Israel's blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"We're firm on not apologising," the Israeli official said. Asked if Israel might change tack after the Palmer report's publication, the official said: "Why would we do that? We know the report supports our position."
Diplomatic deadlock
Turkey, which like Israel had a delegate on the UN panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, has said it would not accept such a finding.
Turkey's prime minister said on Wednesday that his country would never back down on demands for an apology from Israel over its 2010 commando raid.
"As long as Israel does not apologise, pay compensation and remove the embargo over Gaza, it is impossible to heal relations between Turkey and Israel," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
"It is out of the question to step back from our determination on this issue," he said.
The Mavi Marmara was part of an activist flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza when it was boarded by Israeli marines on the Mediterranean high seas on May 31, 2010.
The marines shot dead nine Turks, including a dual US citizen.
The Palmer report is due to be released on August 20.
Source:Agencies
As America's Economy Collapses, "New Normal" Police State Takes Shape
By Tom Burghardt
Global Research, August 15, 2011Antifascist Calling...
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieuMedicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state betterdust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" spread beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" and infect God-fearin' folk here in the heimat.
Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the "responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances." (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called "Western democracies."
Secret Law, Secret Programs
Meanwhile up on Capitol Hill, Congress did their part to defend us from that pesky Bill of Rights; that is, before 81 of them--nearly a fifth of "our" elected representatives--checked-out for AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel.
Secrecy News reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee "rejected an amendment that would have required the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to confront the problem of 'secret law,' by which government agencies rely on legal authorities that are unknown or misunderstood by the public."
That amendment, proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) was rejected by voice vote, further entrenching unprecedented surveillance powers of Executive Branch agencies such as the FBI and NSA.
As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."
The DOJ refused and it now appears that the Senate has affirmed that "secret law" should be guiding principles of our former republic.
Secrecy News also disclosed that the Committee rejected a second amendment to the authorization bill, one that would have required the Justice Department's Inspector General "to estimate the number of Americans who have had the contents of their communications reviewed in violation of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 [FAA]."
As pointed out here many times, FAA is a pernicious piece of Bushist legislative detritus that legalized the previous administration's secret spy programs since embellished by our current "hope and change" president.
During the run-up to FAA's passage, congressional Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama and his Republican colleagues across the aisle, claimed that the law would "strike a balance" between Americans' privacy rights and the needs of security agencies to "stop terrorists" attacking the country.
If that's the case, then why can't the American people learn whether their rights have been compromised?
Perhaps, as recent reports in Truthout and other publications suggest, former U.S. counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke leveled "explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials--George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee--accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence ... about two of the 9/11 hijackers who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks."
Clarke's allegations follow closely on the heels of an investigation by Truthout journalists Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold.
"Based on on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with a former high-ranking counterterrorism official," Kaye and Leopold learned that "a little-known military intelligence unit, unbeknownst to the various investigative bodies probing the terrorist attacks, was ordered by senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's movements prior to 9/11."
As readers are well aware, the 9/11 provocation was the pretext used by the capitalist state to wage aggressive resource wars abroad while ramming through repressive legislation like the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act that targeted the democratic rights of the American people here at home.
But FAA did more then legitimate illegal programs. It also handed retroactive immunity and economic cover to giant telecoms like AT&T and Verizon who profited handily from government surveillance, shielding them from monetary damages which may have resulted from a spate of lawsuits such asHepting v. AT&T.
This raises the question: are other U.S. firms similarly shielded from scrutiny by secret annexes in FAA or the privacy-killing USA Patriot Act?
Echelon Cubed
Last week, Softpedia revealed that "Google has admitted complying with requests from US intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers, most likely in violation of European Union data protection laws."
"At the center of this problem," reporter Lucian Constantin wrote, "is the USA PATRIOT ACT, which states that companies incorporated in the United States must hand over data administered by their foreign subsidiaries if requested."
"Not only that," the publication averred, "they can be forced to keep quiet about it in order to avoid exposing active investigations and alert those targeted by the probes."
In other words, despite strict privacy laws that require companies operating within the EU to protect the personal data of their citizens, reports suggest that U.S. firms, operating under an entirely different legal framework, U.S. spy laws with built-in secrecy clauses and gag orders, trump the laws and legal norms of other nations.
Given the widespread corporate espionage carried out by the National Security Agency's decades-longEchelon communications' intercept program, American firms such as Google, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon may very well have become witting accomplices of U.S. secret state agencies rummaging about for "actionable intelligence" on EU, or U.S., citizens.
Indeed, a decade ago the European Union issued its final report on the Echelon spying machine and concluded that the program was being used for corporate and industrial espionage and that data filched from EU firms was being turned over to American corporations.
In 2000, the BBC reported that according to European investigators "U.S. Department of Commerce 'success stories' could be attributed to the filtering powers of Echelon."
Duncan Campbell, a British journalist and intelligence expert, who along with New Zealand journalistNicky Hager, helped blow the lid off Echelon, offered two instances of U.S. corporate spying in the 1990s when the newly-elected Clinton administration followed-up on promises of "aggressive advocacy" on behalf of U.S. firms "bidding for foreign contracts."
According to Campbell, NSA "lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between Airbus, the Saudi national airline and the Saudi Government" to gain this information. In a second case which came to light, Campbell documented how "Raytheon used information picked up from NSA snooping to secure a $1.4bn contract to supply a radar system to Brazil instead of France's Thomson-CSF."
As Softpedia reported, U.S.-based cloud computing services operating overseas have placed "European companies and government agencies that are using their services ... in a tough position."
With the advent of fiber optic communication platforms, programs like Echelon have a far greater, and more insidious, reach. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein noted on the widespread deployment by NSA of fiber optic splitters and secret rooms at American telecommunications' firms:
What screams out at you when examining this physical arrangement is that the NSA was vacuuming up everything flowing in the Internet stream: e-mail, web browsing, Voice-Over-Internet phone calls, pictures, streaming video, you name it. The splitter has no intelligence at all, it just makes a blind copy. There could not possibly be a legal warrant for this, since according to the 4th Amendment warrants have to be specific, "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ...
This was a massive blind copying of the communications of millions of people, foreign and domestic, randomly mixed together. From a legal standpoint, it does not matter what they claim to throw away later in their secret rooms, the violation has already occurred at the splitter. (Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It, Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 38-39.)
What was Google's response?
In a statement to the German publication WirtschaftsWoche a Google corporate spokesperson said: "As a law abiding company, we comply with valid legal process, and that--as for any U.S. based company--means the data stored outside of the U.S. may be subject to lawful access by the U.S. government. That said, we are committed to protecting user privacy when faced with law enforcement requests. We have a long track record of advocating on behalf of user privacy in the face of such requests and we scrutinize requests carefully to ensure that they adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the law before complying." (translation courtesy of Public Intelligence)
Is the Senate Intelligence Committee's steadfast refusal to release documents and secret legal memos that most certainly target American citizens also another blatant example of American exceptionalism meant to protect U.S. firms operating abroad from exposure as corporate spies for the government?
It isn't as if NSA hasn't been busy doing just that here at home.
As The New York Times reported back in 2009, the "National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."
Chalking up the problem to "overcollection" and "technical difficulties," unnamed intelligence officials and administration lawyers told journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen that although the practice was "significant and systemic ... it was believed to have been unintentional."
As "unintentional" as ginned-up intelligence that made the case for waging aggressive war against oil-rich Iraq!
In a follow-up piece, the Times revealed that NSA "appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants."
A former NSA analyst "read into" the illegal program told Lichtblau and Risen that he "and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages."
Email readily handed over by Google, Microsoft or other firms "subject to lawful access" by the Pentagon spy satrapy?
The Times' anonymous source said "Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits--no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told--and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches."
Nor, were they excluded from such illicit practices.
As Jane Mayer revealed in The New Yorker, "privacy controls" and "anonymizing features" of a program called ThinThread, which would have complied with the law if Americans' communications were swept into NSA's giant eavesdropping nets, were rejected in favor of the "$1.2 billion flop" called Trailblazer.
And, as previously reported, when Wyden and Udall sought information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on just how many Americans had their communications monitored, the DNI stonewalled claiming "it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority."
Why? Precisely because such programs act like a giant electronic sponge and soak-up and data mine huge volumes of our communications.
As former NSA manager and ThinThread creator Bill Binney told The New Yorker, that "little program ... got twisted" and was "used to eavesdrop on the whole world."
Three years after Barack Obama promised to curb Bush administration "excesses," illegal surveillance programs continue to expand under his watch.
A Permanent "State of Exception"
Under our current political set-up, "states of exception" and national security "emergencies" have become permanent features of social life.
Entire classes of citizens and non-citizens alike are now suspect; anarchists, communists, immigrants, Muslims, union activists and political dissidents in general are all subject to unprecedented levels of scrutiny and surveillance.
From "enhanced security screenings" at airports to the massive expansion of private and state databases that archive our spending habits, whom we talk to and where we go, increasingly, as the capitalist system implodes and millions face the prospect of economic ruin, the former American republic takes on the characteristics of a corporate police state.
Security researcher and analyst Christopher Soghoian reported on his Slight Paranoia blog, that according to "an official DOJ report, the use of 'emergency', warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year."
This is no trifling matter.
As CNET News disclosed last month, "Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today."
Declan McCullagh reported that "the 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections."
Significantly, CNET noted that this is also a "victory" for Democratic appointees of Barack Obama's Justice Department "who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements."
According to CNET, a "last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses."
However, by "a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."
Consider the troubling implications of this sweeping bill. While ultra-rightist "Tea Party" Republicans vowed to get "the government off our backs," when it comes to illicit snooping by securocrats whose only loyalty is to a self-perpetuating security bureaucracy and the defense grifters they serve (and whom they rely upon for plum positions after government "retirement"), all our private data is now up for grabs.
The bill, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who spearheaded opposition to the measure said that if passed, it would create "a data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites."
To make the poison pill legislation difficult to oppose, proponents have dubbed it, wait, the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" even though, as CNET noted, "the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well."
Soghoian relates that the 2009 two-page Justice Department report to Congress took 11 months (!) to release under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Why the Justice Department stonewall?
Perhaps, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed last year, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and presumably other secret state satrapies, ordered "an extra layer of review on its FOIA requests."
EFF revealed that a 2009 policy memo from the Department's Chief FOIA Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, Mary Ellen Callahan, that DHS components "were required to report 'significant FOIA activities' in weekly reports to the Privacy Office, which the Privacy Office then integrated into its weekly report to the White House Liaison."
Included amongst designated "significant FOIA activities" were requests "from any members of 'an activist group, watchdog organization, special interest group, etc.' and 'requested documents [that] will garner media attention or [are] receiving media attention'."
Despite the appearance of reporting "emergency" spying requests to congressional committees presumably overseeing secret state activities (a generous assumption at best), "it is quite clear" Soghoian avers, "that the Department of Justice statistics are not adequately reporting the scale of this form of surveillance" and "underreport these disclosures by several orders of magnitude."
As such, "the current law is largely useless." It does not apply to "state and local law enforcement agencies, who make tens of thousands of warrantless requests to ISPs each year," and is inapplicable to "to federal law enforcement agencies outside DOJ."
"Finally," Soghoian relates, "it does not apply to emergency disclosures of non-content information, such as geo-location data, subscriber information (such as name and address), or IP addresses used."
And with Congress poised to pass sweeping data retention legislation, it should be clear that such "requirements" are mere fig leaves covering-up state-sanctioned lawlessness.
War On Terror 2.0.1: Looting the Global Economy
Criminal behavior by domestic security agencies connect America's illegal wars of aggression to capitalism's economic warfare against the working class, who now take their place alongside "Islamic terrorists" as a threat to "national security."
Despite efforts by the Obama administration and Republican congressional leaders to "balance the books" on the backs of the American people through massive budget cuts, as economist Michael Hudson pointed out in Global Research, the manufactured "debt ceiling" crisis is a massive fraud.
The World Socialist Web Site averred that "as concerns over a double-dip recession in the US and the European debt crisis sent global markets plunging--including a 512-point sell-off on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Thursday--financial analysts and media pundits developed a new narrative. Concern that Washington lacked the 'political will' to slash long-standing entitlement programs was exacerbating 'market uncertainty'."
Leftist critic Jerry White noted that "in fact, the new cuts will only intensify the economic crisis, while the slashing of food stamps, unemployment compensation, health care and education will eliminate programs that are more essential for survival than ever."
Indeed, as Marxist economist Richard Wolff pointed out in The Guardian, while the "crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in 2007," may have "plunged millions into acute economic pain and suffering," the "recovery" that began in 2009 "benefited only the minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called recovery never 'trickled down' to the US majority: working people dependent on jobs and wages'."
And despite mendacious claims by political officials and the media alike, the Pentagon will be sitting pretty even as Americans are forced to shoulder the financial burden of U.S. imperial adventures long into an increasingly bleak future.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade," The Washington Post reported.
The Post noted that "senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country's security."
"Instead of slashing defense," Panetta urged lawmakers to "rely on tax increases and cuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings."
But as Hudson points out, "war has been the major cause of a rising national debt." After all, it was none other than bourgeois icon Adam Smith who argued that "parliamentary checks on government spending were designed to prevent ambitious rulers from waging war."
Hudson writes that "if people felt the economic impact of war immediately--rather than postponing it by borrowing--they would be less likely to support military adventurism."
But therein lies the rub. Since "military adventurism" is the only "growth sector" of an imploding capitalist economy, the public spigot which finances everything from cost-overrun-plagued stealth fighter jets to multibillion dollar spy satellites, along with an out-of-control National Surveillance State, will be kept open indefinitely.
On this score, the hypocrisy of our rulers abound, especially when it comes to the mantra that "we" must "live within our means."
As Wolff avers, "where was that phrase heard when Washington decided to spend on an immense military (even after becoming the world's only nuclear superpower) or to spend on very expensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya (now all going on at the same time)? No, then the talk was only about national security needed to save us from attacks."
"Attacks," it should be duly noted, that may very well have been allowed to happen as the World Socialist Web Site recently reported.
Driving home the point that war, and not social- and infrastructure investment fuel deficits, Hudson averred that "the present rise in in U.S. Treasury debt results from two forms of warfare. First is the overtly military Oil War in the Near East, from Iraq to Afghanistan (Pipelinistan) to oil-rich Libya. These adventures will end up costing between $3 and $5 trillion."
"Second and even more expensive," the economist observed, "is the more covert yet more costly economic war of Wall Street against the rest of the economy, demanding that losses by banks and financial institutions be passed onto the government balance sheet ('taxpayers'). The bailouts and 'free lunch' for Wall Street--by no coincidence, Congress's number one political campaign contributor--cost $13 trillion."
"Now that finance is the new form of warfare," Hudson wrote, "where is the power to constrain Treasury and Federal Reserve power to commit taxpayers to bail out financial interests at the top of the economic pyramid?"
And since "cutbacks in federal revenue sharing will hit cities and states hard, forcing them to sell off yet more land, roads and other assets in the public domain to cover their budget deficit as the U.S. economy sinks further into depression," Hudson wrote that "Congress has just added fiscal deflation to debt deflation, slowing employment even further."
While the global economy circles the drain, with ever more painful cuts in so-called "entitlement" programs meant to cushion the crash now on the chopping block, the corporate and political masters who rule the roost are sharpening their knives, fashioning administrative and bureaucratic surveillance tools, the better to conceal the "invisible hand" of that bitch-slaps us all.
And they call it "freedom."
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: [email protected]
© Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling..., 2011
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=26021
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007
By Tom Burghardt
Global Research, August 15, 2011Antifascist Calling...
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieuMedicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state betterdust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" spread beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" and infect God-fearin' folk here in the heimat.
Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the "responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances." (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called "Western democracies."
Secret Law, Secret Programs
Meanwhile up on Capitol Hill, Congress did their part to defend us from that pesky Bill of Rights; that is, before 81 of them--nearly a fifth of "our" elected representatives--checked-out for AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel.
Secrecy News reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee "rejected an amendment that would have required the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to confront the problem of 'secret law,' by which government agencies rely on legal authorities that are unknown or misunderstood by the public."
That amendment, proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) was rejected by voice vote, further entrenching unprecedented surveillance powers of Executive Branch agencies such as the FBI and NSA.
As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."
The DOJ refused and it now appears that the Senate has affirmed that "secret law" should be guiding principles of our former republic.
Secrecy News also disclosed that the Committee rejected a second amendment to the authorization bill, one that would have required the Justice Department's Inspector General "to estimate the number of Americans who have had the contents of their communications reviewed in violation of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 [FAA]."
As pointed out here many times, FAA is a pernicious piece of Bushist legislative detritus that legalized the previous administration's secret spy programs since embellished by our current "hope and change" president.
During the run-up to FAA's passage, congressional Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama and his Republican colleagues across the aisle, claimed that the law would "strike a balance" between Americans' privacy rights and the needs of security agencies to "stop terrorists" attacking the country.
If that's the case, then why can't the American people learn whether their rights have been compromised?
Perhaps, as recent reports in Truthout and other publications suggest, former U.S. counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke leveled "explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials--George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee--accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence ... about two of the 9/11 hijackers who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks."
Clarke's allegations follow closely on the heels of an investigation by Truthout journalists Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold.
"Based on on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with a former high-ranking counterterrorism official," Kaye and Leopold learned that "a little-known military intelligence unit, unbeknownst to the various investigative bodies probing the terrorist attacks, was ordered by senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's movements prior to 9/11."
As readers are well aware, the 9/11 provocation was the pretext used by the capitalist state to wage aggressive resource wars abroad while ramming through repressive legislation like the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act that targeted the democratic rights of the American people here at home.
But FAA did more then legitimate illegal programs. It also handed retroactive immunity and economic cover to giant telecoms like AT&T and Verizon who profited handily from government surveillance, shielding them from monetary damages which may have resulted from a spate of lawsuits such asHepting v. AT&T.
This raises the question: are other U.S. firms similarly shielded from scrutiny by secret annexes in FAA or the privacy-killing USA Patriot Act?
Echelon Cubed
Last week, Softpedia revealed that "Google has admitted complying with requests from US intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers, most likely in violation of European Union data protection laws."
"At the center of this problem," reporter Lucian Constantin wrote, "is the USA PATRIOT ACT, which states that companies incorporated in the United States must hand over data administered by their foreign subsidiaries if requested."
"Not only that," the publication averred, "they can be forced to keep quiet about it in order to avoid exposing active investigations and alert those targeted by the probes."
In other words, despite strict privacy laws that require companies operating within the EU to protect the personal data of their citizens, reports suggest that U.S. firms, operating under an entirely different legal framework, U.S. spy laws with built-in secrecy clauses and gag orders, trump the laws and legal norms of other nations.
Given the widespread corporate espionage carried out by the National Security Agency's decades-longEchelon communications' intercept program, American firms such as Google, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon may very well have become witting accomplices of U.S. secret state agencies rummaging about for "actionable intelligence" on EU, or U.S., citizens.
Indeed, a decade ago the European Union issued its final report on the Echelon spying machine and concluded that the program was being used for corporate and industrial espionage and that data filched from EU firms was being turned over to American corporations.
In 2000, the BBC reported that according to European investigators "U.S. Department of Commerce 'success stories' could be attributed to the filtering powers of Echelon."
Duncan Campbell, a British journalist and intelligence expert, who along with New Zealand journalistNicky Hager, helped blow the lid off Echelon, offered two instances of U.S. corporate spying in the 1990s when the newly-elected Clinton administration followed-up on promises of "aggressive advocacy" on behalf of U.S. firms "bidding for foreign contracts."
According to Campbell, NSA "lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between Airbus, the Saudi national airline and the Saudi Government" to gain this information. In a second case which came to light, Campbell documented how "Raytheon used information picked up from NSA snooping to secure a $1.4bn contract to supply a radar system to Brazil instead of France's Thomson-CSF."
As Softpedia reported, U.S.-based cloud computing services operating overseas have placed "European companies and government agencies that are using their services ... in a tough position."
With the advent of fiber optic communication platforms, programs like Echelon have a far greater, and more insidious, reach. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein noted on the widespread deployment by NSA of fiber optic splitters and secret rooms at American telecommunications' firms:
What screams out at you when examining this physical arrangement is that the NSA was vacuuming up everything flowing in the Internet stream: e-mail, web browsing, Voice-Over-Internet phone calls, pictures, streaming video, you name it. The splitter has no intelligence at all, it just makes a blind copy. There could not possibly be a legal warrant for this, since according to the 4th Amendment warrants have to be specific, "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ...
This was a massive blind copying of the communications of millions of people, foreign and domestic, randomly mixed together. From a legal standpoint, it does not matter what they claim to throw away later in their secret rooms, the violation has already occurred at the splitter. (Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It, Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 38-39.)
What was Google's response?
In a statement to the German publication WirtschaftsWoche a Google corporate spokesperson said: "As a law abiding company, we comply with valid legal process, and that--as for any U.S. based company--means the data stored outside of the U.S. may be subject to lawful access by the U.S. government. That said, we are committed to protecting user privacy when faced with law enforcement requests. We have a long track record of advocating on behalf of user privacy in the face of such requests and we scrutinize requests carefully to ensure that they adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the law before complying." (translation courtesy of Public Intelligence)
Is the Senate Intelligence Committee's steadfast refusal to release documents and secret legal memos that most certainly target American citizens also another blatant example of American exceptionalism meant to protect U.S. firms operating abroad from exposure as corporate spies for the government?
It isn't as if NSA hasn't been busy doing just that here at home.
As The New York Times reported back in 2009, the "National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."
Chalking up the problem to "overcollection" and "technical difficulties," unnamed intelligence officials and administration lawyers told journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen that although the practice was "significant and systemic ... it was believed to have been unintentional."
As "unintentional" as ginned-up intelligence that made the case for waging aggressive war against oil-rich Iraq!
In a follow-up piece, the Times revealed that NSA "appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants."
A former NSA analyst "read into" the illegal program told Lichtblau and Risen that he "and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages."
Email readily handed over by Google, Microsoft or other firms "subject to lawful access" by the Pentagon spy satrapy?
The Times' anonymous source said "Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits--no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told--and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches."
Nor, were they excluded from such illicit practices.
As Jane Mayer revealed in The New Yorker, "privacy controls" and "anonymizing features" of a program called ThinThread, which would have complied with the law if Americans' communications were swept into NSA's giant eavesdropping nets, were rejected in favor of the "$1.2 billion flop" called Trailblazer.
And, as previously reported, when Wyden and Udall sought information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on just how many Americans had their communications monitored, the DNI stonewalled claiming "it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority."
Why? Precisely because such programs act like a giant electronic sponge and soak-up and data mine huge volumes of our communications.
As former NSA manager and ThinThread creator Bill Binney told The New Yorker, that "little program ... got twisted" and was "used to eavesdrop on the whole world."
Three years after Barack Obama promised to curb Bush administration "excesses," illegal surveillance programs continue to expand under his watch.
A Permanent "State of Exception"
Under our current political set-up, "states of exception" and national security "emergencies" have become permanent features of social life.
Entire classes of citizens and non-citizens alike are now suspect; anarchists, communists, immigrants, Muslims, union activists and political dissidents in general are all subject to unprecedented levels of scrutiny and surveillance.
From "enhanced security screenings" at airports to the massive expansion of private and state databases that archive our spending habits, whom we talk to and where we go, increasingly, as the capitalist system implodes and millions face the prospect of economic ruin, the former American republic takes on the characteristics of a corporate police state.
Security researcher and analyst Christopher Soghoian reported on his Slight Paranoia blog, that according to "an official DOJ report, the use of 'emergency', warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year."
This is no trifling matter.
As CNET News disclosed last month, "Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today."
Declan McCullagh reported that "the 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections."
Significantly, CNET noted that this is also a "victory" for Democratic appointees of Barack Obama's Justice Department "who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements."
According to CNET, a "last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses."
However, by "a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."
Consider the troubling implications of this sweeping bill. While ultra-rightist "Tea Party" Republicans vowed to get "the government off our backs," when it comes to illicit snooping by securocrats whose only loyalty is to a self-perpetuating security bureaucracy and the defense grifters they serve (and whom they rely upon for plum positions after government "retirement"), all our private data is now up for grabs.
The bill, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who spearheaded opposition to the measure said that if passed, it would create "a data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites."
To make the poison pill legislation difficult to oppose, proponents have dubbed it, wait, the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" even though, as CNET noted, "the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well."
Soghoian relates that the 2009 two-page Justice Department report to Congress took 11 months (!) to release under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Why the Justice Department stonewall?
Perhaps, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed last year, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and presumably other secret state satrapies, ordered "an extra layer of review on its FOIA requests."
EFF revealed that a 2009 policy memo from the Department's Chief FOIA Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, Mary Ellen Callahan, that DHS components "were required to report 'significant FOIA activities' in weekly reports to the Privacy Office, which the Privacy Office then integrated into its weekly report to the White House Liaison."
Included amongst designated "significant FOIA activities" were requests "from any members of 'an activist group, watchdog organization, special interest group, etc.' and 'requested documents [that] will garner media attention or [are] receiving media attention'."
Despite the appearance of reporting "emergency" spying requests to congressional committees presumably overseeing secret state activities (a generous assumption at best), "it is quite clear" Soghoian avers, "that the Department of Justice statistics are not adequately reporting the scale of this form of surveillance" and "underreport these disclosures by several orders of magnitude."
As such, "the current law is largely useless." It does not apply to "state and local law enforcement agencies, who make tens of thousands of warrantless requests to ISPs each year," and is inapplicable to "to federal law enforcement agencies outside DOJ."
"Finally," Soghoian relates, "it does not apply to emergency disclosures of non-content information, such as geo-location data, subscriber information (such as name and address), or IP addresses used."
And with Congress poised to pass sweeping data retention legislation, it should be clear that such "requirements" are mere fig leaves covering-up state-sanctioned lawlessness.
War On Terror 2.0.1: Looting the Global Economy
Criminal behavior by domestic security agencies connect America's illegal wars of aggression to capitalism's economic warfare against the working class, who now take their place alongside "Islamic terrorists" as a threat to "national security."
Despite efforts by the Obama administration and Republican congressional leaders to "balance the books" on the backs of the American people through massive budget cuts, as economist Michael Hudson pointed out in Global Research, the manufactured "debt ceiling" crisis is a massive fraud.
The World Socialist Web Site averred that "as concerns over a double-dip recession in the US and the European debt crisis sent global markets plunging--including a 512-point sell-off on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Thursday--financial analysts and media pundits developed a new narrative. Concern that Washington lacked the 'political will' to slash long-standing entitlement programs was exacerbating 'market uncertainty'."
Leftist critic Jerry White noted that "in fact, the new cuts will only intensify the economic crisis, while the slashing of food stamps, unemployment compensation, health care and education will eliminate programs that are more essential for survival than ever."
Indeed, as Marxist economist Richard Wolff pointed out in The Guardian, while the "crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in 2007," may have "plunged millions into acute economic pain and suffering," the "recovery" that began in 2009 "benefited only the minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called recovery never 'trickled down' to the US majority: working people dependent on jobs and wages'."
And despite mendacious claims by political officials and the media alike, the Pentagon will be sitting pretty even as Americans are forced to shoulder the financial burden of U.S. imperial adventures long into an increasingly bleak future.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade," The Washington Post reported.
The Post noted that "senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country's security."
"Instead of slashing defense," Panetta urged lawmakers to "rely on tax increases and cuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings."
But as Hudson points out, "war has been the major cause of a rising national debt." After all, it was none other than bourgeois icon Adam Smith who argued that "parliamentary checks on government spending were designed to prevent ambitious rulers from waging war."
Hudson writes that "if people felt the economic impact of war immediately--rather than postponing it by borrowing--they would be less likely to support military adventurism."
But therein lies the rub. Since "military adventurism" is the only "growth sector" of an imploding capitalist economy, the public spigot which finances everything from cost-overrun-plagued stealth fighter jets to multibillion dollar spy satellites, along with an out-of-control National Surveillance State, will be kept open indefinitely.
On this score, the hypocrisy of our rulers abound, especially when it comes to the mantra that "we" must "live within our means."
As Wolff avers, "where was that phrase heard when Washington decided to spend on an immense military (even after becoming the world's only nuclear superpower) or to spend on very expensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya (now all going on at the same time)? No, then the talk was only about national security needed to save us from attacks."
"Attacks," it should be duly noted, that may very well have been allowed to happen as the World Socialist Web Site recently reported.
Driving home the point that war, and not social- and infrastructure investment fuel deficits, Hudson averred that "the present rise in in U.S. Treasury debt results from two forms of warfare. First is the overtly military Oil War in the Near East, from Iraq to Afghanistan (Pipelinistan) to oil-rich Libya. These adventures will end up costing between $3 and $5 trillion."
"Second and even more expensive," the economist observed, "is the more covert yet more costly economic war of Wall Street against the rest of the economy, demanding that losses by banks and financial institutions be passed onto the government balance sheet ('taxpayers'). The bailouts and 'free lunch' for Wall Street--by no coincidence, Congress's number one political campaign contributor--cost $13 trillion."
"Now that finance is the new form of warfare," Hudson wrote, "where is the power to constrain Treasury and Federal Reserve power to commit taxpayers to bail out financial interests at the top of the economic pyramid?"
And since "cutbacks in federal revenue sharing will hit cities and states hard, forcing them to sell off yet more land, roads and other assets in the public domain to cover their budget deficit as the U.S. economy sinks further into depression," Hudson wrote that "Congress has just added fiscal deflation to debt deflation, slowing employment even further."
While the global economy circles the drain, with ever more painful cuts in so-called "entitlement" programs meant to cushion the crash now on the chopping block, the corporate and political masters who rule the roost are sharpening their knives, fashioning administrative and bureaucratic surveillance tools, the better to conceal the "invisible hand" of that bitch-slaps us all.
And they call it "freedom."
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: [email protected]
© Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling..., 2011
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=26021
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007
The 6 Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety
By:Sara J., Steve Blair August 14, 2011
We don't envy public school teachers and administrators. They have trying jobs, and nobody seems to give them enough credit. Maybe it's no wonder that schools sometimes go a little crazy and traumatize students.
But sometimes, the craziest things schools do are done in the name of keeping kids safe, all logic be damned. Things like ...
#6. Forcing Students to Wear Electronic Tracking Devices
You know what's hard about running the school? Keeping track of all those freaking kids, most of whom don't even want to be there. Hell, look at what Mr. Rooney went through with Ferris Bueller.
With that in mind, two Houston, Texas, area schools started handing out radio frequency identification tracking tags to the students (at a district cost of $150,000) in the attempt to track the kids' movements on campus. The idea is to make it easier for administrators to make sure the students go to class (remember, state funding is tied to attendance).
Naturally, the technology has some flaws. For one, the badges can be taken off or handed to another pupil, allowing the students to do whatever they want anyway.
#5. Banning All Photography
We don't want to joke about pedophilia, or belittle all of the parents who spend time worrying about it. But there is a line between precaution and mindless panic.
For instance, to make sure all students are safe from the dangers of the world's online child porn mongers, a school in England has done the only logical thing they could think of -- ban everyone from taking any pictures of the students, ever. This ban applies to parents, other students, caretakers, friends, relatives ... basically all humans who attend any school events on or off campus, including school plays, sporting events and field trips.
So what's the big deal? First off, they're basically stripping away the possibility of capturing many of the valuable Kodak moments that happen in a child's formative years (the ones they'll want to show their own children so they can know what life was like before the Great Nano-Zombie Plague).
But more importantly, they're missing a great opportunity to actually do their jobs -- teaching children something meaningful that they can apply to the real world. Like, for instance, what to look out for when it comes to real-world creeps, other than "everyone who owns a camera."
Also, either there is a real misunderstanding of how child porn works, or the school grossly overestimates the sexiness of its children. If allowing children to be photographed playing soccer or doing a drama club performance of Fiddler on the Roof is enough to turn on pedophiles, then we probably just have to accept that fact. The next step is just throwing a tarp over the students any time they're in public for fear that someone nearby is getting aroused.
#4. Absolutely NO Touching!
Middle school is a tough time for most students. On top of all their physical changes, they have raging hormones that convince them that all boys want to be hit as hard as possible, and all girls, no matter how much they resist or how fast they run away, are longing for that inappropriate touch.
To make sure nobody gets out of line and all students are safe, Fairfax Middle School in Virginia decided to start teaching students how to behave properly right when they walk in the door that first day. Just kidding! That wouldn't be fun for us at all. Instead, they seemed to take the easy way out and said, "Screw it -- no touching, ever."
That's right -- in 2007, they banned any and all physical contact because the faculty believes students are incapable of understanding that there is a difference between a congratulatory high-five between two friends and a punch to the face.
This ban isn't just enforced in the classroom. Students are forbidden to touch each other while at lunch, in the hallway or at any other time during school hours.
The principal defended the ban, saying she's seen too many incidents of students playing bloody knuckles -- a game that involves two idiots slamming their knuckles together as hard as they can. This seems to imply that all touching is a slippery slope that always ends in slapstick fist-smashing.
The worst part is that FMS isn't the only school taking such extreme measures; these kinds of over-the-top precautions are showing up more often now that more school administrators have taken a ride on the crazy train (where they were apparently also groped and beaten). East Shore Middle School in Connecticut adopted the same policy in 2009. This one came about after a kick to the groin sent a student to the hospital.
So, instead of banning groin kicks (which we suspect were already against the rules), East Shore banned hugging, high-fiving and shaking hands on school grounds. Students caught high-fiving a classmate could receive detention, a suspension or even expulsion.
Some students decided to fight back by duct taping their arms to their sides as a form of protest. Which also misses the point, since their legs would still be free for groin kicking. Damn, even their acts of defiance don't make sense.
#3. Banning All Outside Food
Ask a bunch of kids what their favorite part of the school day is and almost all of them will either say lunch or recess. Many schools have already ruined recess by banning tag and other "contact sports," so naturally the next step is to ruin lunch. Some schools manage to do this while providing a semi-valid reason like allergiesor kids bringing items purchased from an erotic bakery, but one Chicago school decided they must ban all food brought from home to protect students from their own (or in most cases, their parents') bad decisions.
No, not really. But she did decide to ban all food brought from home, which is kind of the same thing for those students who realize that school cafeteria food is one step above what you get in a hospital. She did say she makes exceptions for students with allergies, but there doesn't seem to be much hope for students unfortunate enough to have healthy immune systems.
This ban has actually been in effect for six years, so why is this just now making the news? It might have something to do with the fact that the school recently changed their lunch menu to add healthier (read: more disgusting) food. However, they admit that they've seen a dropoff in what they call "meal participation" this year, as students would rather go hungry than eat the horror that has been set before them.
#2. Forcing Students to Wear Prison Jumpsuits for Dress Code Violations
Dress codes arguably have a necessary purpose in schools, particularly in terms of trying to lessen distractions in a classroom or solve issues with kids stealing from other kids. However, figuring out how to enforce a dress code can be a difficult; after all, kids are going to be kids, and the more you try to enforce it, the more they want to push the envelope. "You said I had to wear pants, you didn't say they couldn't be assless."
Therefore, a school in, yet again, Texas, decided to try a new tactic: make a public example of the students who violate the dress code. How? By making them wear prison jumpsuits.
And what, exactly, constitutes a violation of the dress code at Gonzales High School? The obvious stuff, like wearing clothes that expose underwear. But how about cargo pants, baggy pants or T-shirts? In other words, if you look like a normal member of the community, you could be violating the school dress code and will be forced to dress like an inmate. No more dress code distractions in class now!
Of course, this whole system means that the students would have to experience some shame and ridicule wearing the jumpsuits for it to be effective ... which is the exact opposite of what happened. According to one student, "I talked to some of my friends about it and they said they are not going to obey the dress code just so they can wear the jumpsuit."
#1. Deterring Bad Behavior by Issuing Stiff Fines
Maybe your 10-year-old kid decides one day it would be funny if he tossed some spit wads at the kid in the front row of the classroom, or to stuff a classmate into a locker. Of course, your kid may get caught and face a reprimand. Maybe he would have to spend some time in detention. Maybe he'd have to see the principal. Or maybe he'd have to pay a $500 fine.
Wait, what?
Schools in, yes, Texas, and other areas of the country have taken to having campus police write tickets to students for everything ranging from creating disturbances in class to cursing and fighting.
Now, this might make some kind of sense if most of the between 4,000 and 6,000 students who were ticketed since 2005 were high schoolers. After all, high school kids are almost adults, and the bad stuff they do is probably more along the lines of fighting and vandalism than making faces at a teacher. But that isn't the case. Many of the tickets are being written for elementary school kids, such as the 92 criminal citations given to 10-year-olds in Dallas in 2006 and 2007. Several districts ticketed kids as young as 6.
Since the police are writing the tickets, the schools are out of the loop. That's right: Your 10-year-old kid gets a ticket, he gets to go to court and talk to a judge about why he was swearing. Between court costs and having to take time off work to drive the juvenile delinquents down to the court house to explain why they were being ... er ... kids, it's costing parents a lot more than the fines, even if some of those are commuted to community service.
Read more: The 6 Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19339_the-6-dumbest-things-schools-are-doing-in-name-safety.html#ixzz1VFwPBgLo
By:Sara J., Steve Blair August 14, 2011
We don't envy public school teachers and administrators. They have trying jobs, and nobody seems to give them enough credit. Maybe it's no wonder that schools sometimes go a little crazy and traumatize students.
But sometimes, the craziest things schools do are done in the name of keeping kids safe, all logic be damned. Things like ...
#6. Forcing Students to Wear Electronic Tracking Devices
You know what's hard about running the school? Keeping track of all those freaking kids, most of whom don't even want to be there. Hell, look at what Mr. Rooney went through with Ferris Bueller.
With that in mind, two Houston, Texas, area schools started handing out radio frequency identification tracking tags to the students (at a district cost of $150,000) in the attempt to track the kids' movements on campus. The idea is to make it easier for administrators to make sure the students go to class (remember, state funding is tied to attendance).
Naturally, the technology has some flaws. For one, the badges can be taken off or handed to another pupil, allowing the students to do whatever they want anyway.
#5. Banning All Photography
We don't want to joke about pedophilia, or belittle all of the parents who spend time worrying about it. But there is a line between precaution and mindless panic.
For instance, to make sure all students are safe from the dangers of the world's online child porn mongers, a school in England has done the only logical thing they could think of -- ban everyone from taking any pictures of the students, ever. This ban applies to parents, other students, caretakers, friends, relatives ... basically all humans who attend any school events on or off campus, including school plays, sporting events and field trips.
So what's the big deal? First off, they're basically stripping away the possibility of capturing many of the valuable Kodak moments that happen in a child's formative years (the ones they'll want to show their own children so they can know what life was like before the Great Nano-Zombie Plague).
But more importantly, they're missing a great opportunity to actually do their jobs -- teaching children something meaningful that they can apply to the real world. Like, for instance, what to look out for when it comes to real-world creeps, other than "everyone who owns a camera."
Also, either there is a real misunderstanding of how child porn works, or the school grossly overestimates the sexiness of its children. If allowing children to be photographed playing soccer or doing a drama club performance of Fiddler on the Roof is enough to turn on pedophiles, then we probably just have to accept that fact. The next step is just throwing a tarp over the students any time they're in public for fear that someone nearby is getting aroused.
#4. Absolutely NO Touching!
Middle school is a tough time for most students. On top of all their physical changes, they have raging hormones that convince them that all boys want to be hit as hard as possible, and all girls, no matter how much they resist or how fast they run away, are longing for that inappropriate touch.
To make sure nobody gets out of line and all students are safe, Fairfax Middle School in Virginia decided to start teaching students how to behave properly right when they walk in the door that first day. Just kidding! That wouldn't be fun for us at all. Instead, they seemed to take the easy way out and said, "Screw it -- no touching, ever."
That's right -- in 2007, they banned any and all physical contact because the faculty believes students are incapable of understanding that there is a difference between a congratulatory high-five between two friends and a punch to the face.
This ban isn't just enforced in the classroom. Students are forbidden to touch each other while at lunch, in the hallway or at any other time during school hours.
The principal defended the ban, saying she's seen too many incidents of students playing bloody knuckles -- a game that involves two idiots slamming their knuckles together as hard as they can. This seems to imply that all touching is a slippery slope that always ends in slapstick fist-smashing.
The worst part is that FMS isn't the only school taking such extreme measures; these kinds of over-the-top precautions are showing up more often now that more school administrators have taken a ride on the crazy train (where they were apparently also groped and beaten). East Shore Middle School in Connecticut adopted the same policy in 2009. This one came about after a kick to the groin sent a student to the hospital.
So, instead of banning groin kicks (which we suspect were already against the rules), East Shore banned hugging, high-fiving and shaking hands on school grounds. Students caught high-fiving a classmate could receive detention, a suspension or even expulsion.
Some students decided to fight back by duct taping their arms to their sides as a form of protest. Which also misses the point, since their legs would still be free for groin kicking. Damn, even their acts of defiance don't make sense.
#3. Banning All Outside Food
Ask a bunch of kids what their favorite part of the school day is and almost all of them will either say lunch or recess. Many schools have already ruined recess by banning tag and other "contact sports," so naturally the next step is to ruin lunch. Some schools manage to do this while providing a semi-valid reason like allergiesor kids bringing items purchased from an erotic bakery, but one Chicago school decided they must ban all food brought from home to protect students from their own (or in most cases, their parents') bad decisions.
No, not really. But she did decide to ban all food brought from home, which is kind of the same thing for those students who realize that school cafeteria food is one step above what you get in a hospital. She did say she makes exceptions for students with allergies, but there doesn't seem to be much hope for students unfortunate enough to have healthy immune systems.
This ban has actually been in effect for six years, so why is this just now making the news? It might have something to do with the fact that the school recently changed their lunch menu to add healthier (read: more disgusting) food. However, they admit that they've seen a dropoff in what they call "meal participation" this year, as students would rather go hungry than eat the horror that has been set before them.
#2. Forcing Students to Wear Prison Jumpsuits for Dress Code Violations
Dress codes arguably have a necessary purpose in schools, particularly in terms of trying to lessen distractions in a classroom or solve issues with kids stealing from other kids. However, figuring out how to enforce a dress code can be a difficult; after all, kids are going to be kids, and the more you try to enforce it, the more they want to push the envelope. "You said I had to wear pants, you didn't say they couldn't be assless."
Therefore, a school in, yet again, Texas, decided to try a new tactic: make a public example of the students who violate the dress code. How? By making them wear prison jumpsuits.
And what, exactly, constitutes a violation of the dress code at Gonzales High School? The obvious stuff, like wearing clothes that expose underwear. But how about cargo pants, baggy pants or T-shirts? In other words, if you look like a normal member of the community, you could be violating the school dress code and will be forced to dress like an inmate. No more dress code distractions in class now!
Of course, this whole system means that the students would have to experience some shame and ridicule wearing the jumpsuits for it to be effective ... which is the exact opposite of what happened. According to one student, "I talked to some of my friends about it and they said they are not going to obey the dress code just so they can wear the jumpsuit."
#1. Deterring Bad Behavior by Issuing Stiff Fines
Maybe your 10-year-old kid decides one day it would be funny if he tossed some spit wads at the kid in the front row of the classroom, or to stuff a classmate into a locker. Of course, your kid may get caught and face a reprimand. Maybe he would have to spend some time in detention. Maybe he'd have to see the principal. Or maybe he'd have to pay a $500 fine.
Wait, what?
Schools in, yes, Texas, and other areas of the country have taken to having campus police write tickets to students for everything ranging from creating disturbances in class to cursing and fighting.
Now, this might make some kind of sense if most of the between 4,000 and 6,000 students who were ticketed since 2005 were high schoolers. After all, high school kids are almost adults, and the bad stuff they do is probably more along the lines of fighting and vandalism than making faces at a teacher. But that isn't the case. Many of the tickets are being written for elementary school kids, such as the 92 criminal citations given to 10-year-olds in Dallas in 2006 and 2007. Several districts ticketed kids as young as 6.
Since the police are writing the tickets, the schools are out of the loop. That's right: Your 10-year-old kid gets a ticket, he gets to go to court and talk to a judge about why he was swearing. Between court costs and having to take time off work to drive the juvenile delinquents down to the court house to explain why they were being ... er ... kids, it's costing parents a lot more than the fines, even if some of those are commuted to community service.
Read more: The 6 Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19339_the-6-dumbest-things-schools-are-doing-in-name-safety.html#ixzz1VFwPBgLo
"The Perfect Boss"111The Perfect Boss
There were about 70 scientists working on a very hectic project. All of them were really frustrated due to the pressure of work and the demands of their boss but everyone was loyal to him and did not think of quitting their job.
One day, one scientist came to his boss and told him, "Sir, I have promised my children that I will take them to the exhibition going on in our township so I want to leave the office at 5:30 pm."
His boss replied, "OK, You're permitted to leave the office early today."
The Scientist started working. He continued his work after lunch. As usual, he got involved to such an extent that he looked at his watch only when he felt he was close to completion. The time was 8.30 PM.
Suddenly he remembered the promise he had made to his children.
He looked for his boss but he was not there. Having told him in the morning himself, he closed everything and left for home. Deep within himself, he was feeling guilty for having disappointed his children. He reached home. The children were not there.
His wife alone was sitting in the hall and reading magazines. The situation was explosive; any talk would boomerang on him. His wife asked him, "Would you like to have coffee or shall I straight away serve dinner if you are hungry?"
The man replied, "If you would like to have coffee, I too will have but what about the children?"
Hi wife replied, "You don't know? Your boss came here at 5.15 PM and has taken the children to the exhibition."
What had really happened was ... The boss who granted him permission was observing him working seriously at 5.00 PM. He thought to himself, this person will not leave the work, but if he has promised his children they should enjoy the visit to exhibition. So he took the lead in taking them to exhibition.
The boss does not have to do it every time. But once it is done, loyalty is established. That is why all the scientists at Thumba continued to work under their boss even though the stress was tremendous.
By the way, can you hazard a guess as to who the boss was?
He was none other than the mastermind behind India 's successful nuclear weapons and missiles program - Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President of India.
Good or evil?
Good and evil are concepts which people talk and think about the most throughout their lives. Some people endeavor “to be a good person” and “to protect himself and his loved ones from bad people and behavior.” This effort shown to avoid evil is, of course, very important. However, many people who endeavor in this direction may not have actually thought how close evil is to them because people who do not live according to the moral values of the Qur’an determine good and evil in terms of their own beliefs, thoughts, worldview and sociocultural tendencies. On the contrary, the source from which we can truly learn what good and evil is, is the Qur’an and the sunna of the our Prophet (saas). Allah sent the Qur’an to people to reveal right and wrong and to bring them from the darkness to the light. What good and evil is, and the reasons that lead a person to evil are revealed in the Qur’an. In one verse it is revealed:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"Or do those who perpetrate evil deeds suppose that We will make them like those who have faith and do right actions, so that their lives and deaths will be the same? How bad their judgement is!" (Surat al-Jathiyya, 21)
Good?
The Real Good Revealed in the Qur’an is the Attitudes of Those Who Fear Allah and Abide by His Commands
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"... Rather devoutness is possessed by those who have fear of Allah...." (Surat al-Baqara, 189)
A person who fears Allah acts according the good pleasure of Allah and the moral values of the Qur’an in every situation he or she faces, and so does good deeds throughout his or her life. Knowing that every incident occurs by Allah’s leave and command, considering everything in terms of goodness and wisdom, thinking that every deed, hidden or open, will be faced in the Hereafter lead the individual to always think rightly and do good deeds.
Good Deeds Erase Bad Deeds
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"…Good actions eradicate bad actions. This is a reminder for people who pay heed." (Surah Hud, 114)
For as long as they are determined about displaying good moral values, Allah will take fear and sorrow out of the lives of His servants, forgive their bad deeds and respond to them with the best of their deeds:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"As for those who have faith and do right actions, We will erase their bad actions from them, and recompense them for the best of what they did." (Surat Al-‘Ankabut, 7)
Those Who Follow Allah’s True Path Will Attain Salvation
People leading a good life, avoiding secret pains depend on their own behavior. Allah showed people the way to be happy and to get rid of troubles; and revealed that this is only possible to follow the true path Allah showed:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"... But when guidance comes to you from Me, all those who follow My guidance will not go astray and will not be miserable." (Surah Ta Ha Suresi, 123)
Evil?
The Source of Evil; The Lower Self and Satan
There are two main sources of evil revealed to people in the Qur’an. One of these is the lower self, which every person has, and which constantly commands a person to do evil. The inner self tries to direct people away from the right path and drag them to disaster, by the suggestions it whispers.
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"I do not say my self was free from blame. The self indeed commands to evil acts – except for those my Lord has mercy on..." (Surah Yusuf, 53)
Another being who is assigned to command people to evil and ugly behavior, and who is the supporter of the inner self is “satan.” In the Qur’an it is revealed that satan only calls people to evil as such:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"He only commands you to do evil and indecent acts and to say about Allah what you do not know." (Surat al-Baqara, 169)
Satan Deceives People By Making Good Appear As Evil, and Evil As Good
Satan sets forth a variety of false evidences to convince people that they are on the right path, despite the fact that they are not abiding by the morality of the Qur’an. Those who do not consider these evidences with a religious perspective would be easily convinced and shape their behavior accordingly in terms of these false facts.
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"If someone shuts his eyes to the remembrance of the All-Merciful,We assign him a satan who becomes his bosom friend – they debar them from the path,yet they still think they are guided." (Surat az-Zukhruf, 36-37)
The Return of Evil is the Fire
It is revealed in the Qur’an that those who prefer evil will be sent to the Fire, an eternal torture that cannot be compared to any pain in this world, and will stay there eternally as follows:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"No indeed! Those who accumulate bad actions and are surrounded by their mistakes, such people are the Companions of the Fire, remaining in it timelessly, for ever;" (Surat al-Baqara, 81)
Good and evil are concepts which people talk and think about the most throughout their lives. Some people endeavor “to be a good person” and “to protect himself and his loved ones from bad people and behavior.” This effort shown to avoid evil is, of course, very important. However, many people who endeavor in this direction may not have actually thought how close evil is to them because people who do not live according to the moral values of the Qur’an determine good and evil in terms of their own beliefs, thoughts, worldview and sociocultural tendencies. On the contrary, the source from which we can truly learn what good and evil is, is the Qur’an and the sunna of the our Prophet (saas). Allah sent the Qur’an to people to reveal right and wrong and to bring them from the darkness to the light. What good and evil is, and the reasons that lead a person to evil are revealed in the Qur’an. In one verse it is revealed:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"Or do those who perpetrate evil deeds suppose that We will make them like those who have faith and do right actions, so that their lives and deaths will be the same? How bad their judgement is!" (Surat al-Jathiyya, 21)
Good?
The Real Good Revealed in the Qur’an is the Attitudes of Those Who Fear Allah and Abide by His Commands
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"... Rather devoutness is possessed by those who have fear of Allah...." (Surat al-Baqara, 189)
A person who fears Allah acts according the good pleasure of Allah and the moral values of the Qur’an in every situation he or she faces, and so does good deeds throughout his or her life. Knowing that every incident occurs by Allah’s leave and command, considering everything in terms of goodness and wisdom, thinking that every deed, hidden or open, will be faced in the Hereafter lead the individual to always think rightly and do good deeds.
Good Deeds Erase Bad Deeds
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"…Good actions eradicate bad actions. This is a reminder for people who pay heed." (Surah Hud, 114)
For as long as they are determined about displaying good moral values, Allah will take fear and sorrow out of the lives of His servants, forgive their bad deeds and respond to them with the best of their deeds:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"As for those who have faith and do right actions, We will erase their bad actions from them, and recompense them for the best of what they did." (Surat Al-‘Ankabut, 7)
Those Who Follow Allah’s True Path Will Attain Salvation
People leading a good life, avoiding secret pains depend on their own behavior. Allah showed people the way to be happy and to get rid of troubles; and revealed that this is only possible to follow the true path Allah showed:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"... But when guidance comes to you from Me, all those who follow My guidance will not go astray and will not be miserable." (Surah Ta Ha Suresi, 123)
Evil?
The Source of Evil; The Lower Self and Satan
There are two main sources of evil revealed to people in the Qur’an. One of these is the lower self, which every person has, and which constantly commands a person to do evil. The inner self tries to direct people away from the right path and drag them to disaster, by the suggestions it whispers.
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"I do not say my self was free from blame. The self indeed commands to evil acts – except for those my Lord has mercy on..." (Surah Yusuf, 53)
Another being who is assigned to command people to evil and ugly behavior, and who is the supporter of the inner self is “satan.” In the Qur’an it is revealed that satan only calls people to evil as such:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"He only commands you to do evil and indecent acts and to say about Allah what you do not know." (Surat al-Baqara, 169)
Satan Deceives People By Making Good Appear As Evil, and Evil As Good
Satan sets forth a variety of false evidences to convince people that they are on the right path, despite the fact that they are not abiding by the morality of the Qur’an. Those who do not consider these evidences with a religious perspective would be easily convinced and shape their behavior accordingly in terms of these false facts.
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"If someone shuts his eyes to the remembrance of the All-Merciful,We assign him a satan who becomes his bosom friend – they debar them from the path,yet they still think they are guided." (Surat az-Zukhruf, 36-37)
The Return of Evil is the Fire
It is revealed in the Qur’an that those who prefer evil will be sent to the Fire, an eternal torture that cannot be compared to any pain in this world, and will stay there eternally as follows:
I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed satan-
"No indeed! Those who accumulate bad actions and are surrounded by their mistakes, such people are the Companions of the Fire, remaining in it timelessly, for ever;" (Surat al-Baqara, 81)
