US Federal Judge bans free speech

According to Wikipedia, Wikileaks is a website which allows whistleblowers to release government and corporate documents, anonymously and without possible retribution. But a US federal district court judge has tried to close it down.

Wikileaks revealed details of criminal activity at the Cayman Island branch of the Julius Baer bank. Officials of the bank went crying to a California district court, and Judge Jeffrey White ordered Dynadot, registrar of the domain name wikileaks.org, to take that site name offline – permanently.

The New York Times says that the judge’s actions are unconstitutional: taking away the domain name “was akin to shutting down a newspaper because of objections to one article. The First Amendment requires the government to act only in the most dire circumstances when it regulates free expression.”

Judge White has acted like he’s an employee of Julius Baer… but what’s really funny is that the tizzy-fit in the US courts has been pretty much a waste of time. So the wikileak.org domain name has gone – but there’s still wikileaks.be, mirrored documents at cryptome.org, and Wikileaks is also available at the IP address http://88.80.13.160. To shut down these access methods, Julius Baer would have to pursue injunctions in all the jurisdictions where they’re registered or where the servers reside – and these are deliberately scattered around to make such action very difficult!

But, even though Julius Baer and their pet judge have been ineffectual, it’s still damn out of order for them to try and silence free speech on the net. Wikileaks serves an important function – its original purpose was, in part, to allow Chinese dissidents to speak out without having to watch their backs – and the American courts have revealed that they don’t give a toss about freedom of expression even though that freedom is meant to be constitutionally enshrined there.

In most countries, laws relating to free speech and a free press still don’t apply online, even though the internet has been in existence for years. So Judge White can try to hide behind the argument that a website is not a newspaper. But we all know that’s a bunch of bullshit. There’s an expression in England: “The law is an ass.” And it applies just as well to the judge.

Banned books – get ’em while they’re hot!!

Censorship pisses me off. And when officialdom bans books, that really burns my ass!!

So, when I found this banned manual on the net, I thought: Screw the Man! Everyone should be able to read this if they want! And now y’all can!!

The book in question is Department of the Army Technical Manual TM 31-210. It’s the U.S. Army’s official handbook on how to make improvised munitions – that’s improvised explosive devices or IEDs. And this particular .pdf is the “Thanks-to-Feinstein’s Electronic Edition”.

Until recently, the UK’s ridiculous anti-terrorist laws made mere possession of material like this a criminal offense!! But the Appeals Court has now ruled that such material is only illegal if it can be linked to a specific terrorist act. So if you have it just out of curiosity, like me, you’re not breaking the law.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!

PS: the above link is to a zipped pdf version of the handbook. Alternatively, you can click on this link to a zipped html version.

PPS: the site where I found the Improvised Munitions Handbook has loads of other banned/sensitive materials available for download.  Check it out, peeps!! It’s at http://cryptome.org.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Well, it’s 2008… so happy new year, fellow hate-haters!!

This year is destined to be better than 2007, I think.  For a start, America’s going to replace George W Bush.  God knows who’ll be the new prez – but it’s got to be an improvement, no matter what.

The troops are due to get the hell out of Iraq this year, too.  That’s good news and no mistake!

But we’re still stuck with Gordon Brown and his entourage – his little Labour lackies.  There isn’t an election due for ages.  So, 2008 isn’t going to be all good.

Baghdad Neighbourhood Watch: bringing peace to the streets with an AK-47

Check out these respectable young men.  They are members of “sahwa” (awakening) – the Iraqi version of Neighbourhood Watch.

The sahwa groups are made up of what the US military authorities call “concerned local citizens”.  The streets of Baghdad are dangerous, and the police are pretty ineffective.  So the US military fund these sahwa groups to police their own streets.

There are 72,000 members of 300 sahwa groups in Iraq, and these numbers are increasing.  It is “Iraq’s own surge” and it is having an effect.  Attacks in Baghdad are down 80% since November last year, murders down 90%, and vehicle-borne bombs reduced by 70%.

The sahwa initiative works because each group’s members are patrolling the streets where they live; they have a real interest in combatting crime, as opposed to the police who generally are most concerned with staying alive and maybe receiving bribes.

But, by funding these groups, the US Army is saying it’s okay to be a vigilante.  The police are governed by regulations (even if those regs are regularly breached).  The sahwa are not governed in the same way.  They patrol the streets in large groups, armed with assault rifles, questioning any strangers they come across.  Is this really the way to bring peace to the streets of Baghdad?

The US military obviously believe this is the right solution.  But American soldiers are there for a tour of duty, then they’re rotated out.  They don’t have to live on those streets full-time.  Their wives and mothers don’t have to negotiate those streets to get to the market.

If Washington,DC was “policed” like  Baghdad, maybe the generals wouldn’t be so blase about what they call “security”.  Security for who?

Four British residents to be freed from Guantanamo Bay… two others will stay locked up

Four British residents are to be freed from Guantanamo Bay, after being held without charge for 5 years.  They are Jamil el-Banna, a father of 5 from London;  Abdenour Samuer, who fled from persecution in Algeria and was given political asylum in the UK;  Omar Deghayes, a 37 year old man who was born in Libya and came to Britain as a child after his father was murdered;  and Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, a Saudi national with a British wife.

Although the men are not British citizens, they have long, established links with the UK.  But until August this year, the government refused them representation.  Then foreign secretary David Miliband responded to growing criticism of the government’s position, and wrote to Condaleezza Rice requesting their release.

They will be returning to Britain, except Shaker Aamer who is going to Saudi Arabia.

Jamil el-Banna, a Jordanian, was on a business trip to Gambia.  MI5 had approached him, asking him to work for them; then, a few days later they told the CIA that Banna’s travelling companion was carrying bomb materials.  This was not true, but the CIA grabbed him and flew him to Guantanamo.

Omar Deghayes had studied law at Wolverhampton University and in Huddersfield.  His family says that he condemns terrorism.  He has been blinded in one eye by a US soldier during his imprisonment.

Another UK resident, Binyam Mohammed al-Habashi from Ethiopia, is to stay in Guantánamo. The Pentagon claims he is particularly dangerous and it is determined that he face one of the military commissions established to prosecute prisoners in the camp.   And another former UK resident, Ahmed Belbacha, has not even been mentioned in the reports.

Amnesty International urgently wants to find out why these 2 men are not being freed after 5 years of being held with no charge.  And David Miliband should do what he can to get them freed.  After all, if they were truly dangerous, wouldn’t they have been tried in court by now?

U.S. intelligence report says Iran isn’t developing nukes! But Bush still wants to bomb ’em to hell!

The US National Intelligence Estimate, a report of what the various American intelligence agencies know and believe, has stunned the Western world by revealing that Iran stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons 4 years ago!  Iran is still proceeding with its uranium enrichment project, but this material is clearly for use in power generation.

This revelation has blown a hole right through George Bush’s foreign policy regarding Iran.  He’s still muttering dark threats: he said yesterday that “Iran was dangerous. Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”  Apparently US military action is still an option… even though there’s no reason to bomb Tehran!

This intelligence report has revealed Bush’s true face to the entire world.  Some of us have always known that the President is a blood-thirsty war-monger.  But now everyone can see the lunatic for what he is.  Anyone who continues to defend his crazed ravings is clearly either as insane as he is; or is as evil as he is.

George W. Bush: leader of the Free World?!!?

UK has harshest terror detention laws

Well, here’s something to make the British law and order crowd feel proud. The BBC reports that according to a survey carried out by the human rights group Liberty, the UK police have the power to hold uncharged terror suspects longer than any comparable country in the world.

British police can hold uncharged terrorism suspects for up to 28 days – and ministers are saying they want to increase that to up to 56 days.  The Liberty survey, carried out by lawyers and academics in 15 countries, found that the second-longest detention period was in Australia – at just 12 days!

Other European countries have detention rules far less draconian than Britain’s.  In France, terror suspects can be held for just 6 days before the equivalent of a charge is made.  And in Germany, suspects must be seen by a judge within 48 hours but can be held without trial during the period of investigation. This must be reviewed by a judge at least every 6 months.

Here’s a summary of terror detention laws in Europe and the USA:

France: Up to 72 hours without seeing a lawyer and four years in pre-trial detention
Germany: Must be seen by a judge within 48 hours but can be held without trial during investigation
Greece: Up to 12 months – 18 months in extraordinary cases
Italy: Up to 24 hours without seeing a lawyer
Norway: Up to 48 hours – a judge can increase this period
Spain: Up to 72 hours without a lawyer – can be increased to a maximum of 13 days
USA: The attorney general can detain foreign suspects but must start deportation proceedings within seven days. Suspects can be held for periods of six months

It is difficult to compare legal systems, but Liberty used the charge as an indicator of when the process moves from the police to the judiciary.  On that basis, the 28-day limit in the UK was by far the longest.

Liberty is calling for Britain to use alternative measures – for instance, by making intercept evidence, such as from phone taps, admissible in court.

It says that better investigatory powers for police would be more effective and fairer than an extention of the already lengthy detention times.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti told the BBC that she would also back measures allowing for a suspect to be charged with a lesser offence while investigations for other related offences continued.

“With safeguards, I think it’s perfectly proper to charge someone with a lower-level offence, like possessing explosive material or attending a terror training camp, while you continue to investigate a complex conspiracy to murder.”

What makes the UK’s approach to detention of terror suspects even worse is that the police have been keeping suspects in custody away from the courts for the full 28 days when they could have been charged earlier!  The Daily Mail reported this allegation made by Conservative Shadow Security Minister Dame Pauline Neville-Jones: Don Stewart-Whyte and Mohammed Usman Siddique, who were arrested last August for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to detonate explosives on planes flying from Heathrow to the USA, were charged on the 28th day of detention when the police had had the necessary evidence for some days.

When the police act in this way, the extended period of uncharged custody is tantamount to internment.  And this makes the government’s plans to extend the possible period to 56 days even more unacceptable.  It would also be interesting to discover how often “suspects” are held for the maximum period and then released with no charges following.  It’s possible that the police are using the extended custody as a way of keeping certain people off the streets, where they can’t make trouble for the establishment.  And I don’t mean “trouble” as in criminal activities – I mean as in asking inconvenient questions in public, or taking part in political campaigns that embarrass the government.

If the government go on with their plan, the UK will be well on its way to becoming a police state.  In fact, the UK already resembles a police state.  Please let’s not make the situation even worse!

UK plan: pay Afghan farmers to not grow opium

The UK government has come up with a plan to combat the increase in opium coming from Afghanistan – they propose to pay Afghan farmers to grow something else.

The Afghanistan opium problem is getting steadily worse.  Illegal Afghan opium was selling for as much as $125 per kilo in 2006. The UN said the area under cultivation rose this year from 165,000 to 193,000 hectares and the harvest rose from 6,100 to 8,200 tonnes.

Some influential figures have proposed really radical remedies.  Lord Jay, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary, suggested that Afghani opium be legally produced and used to manufacture morphine for medical use.  But his idea has been rejected.  The pharmaceutical industry probably vetoed the idea, as an increase in the legal opium harvest would make it more difficult to justify the high price that is currently demanded for morphine.

Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown, who has recently returned from Afghanistan,  announced to the House of Lords that The Department of International Development is considering the subsidised purchase of legal crops from Afghani farmers so they can make the kind of money that they get from raising poppies.

He stressed that the UK government is against the US policy of aerial spraying of poppy fields.  That kind of action only alienates the Afghani farmers when winning their trust should be the priority.

It’s interesting that opium harvests in Afghanistan have been steadily increasing ever since the Taliban were overthrown.  Before the war, the Taliban were strictly opposed to opium and heroin on religious grounds, and had been clamping down on the trade.  So this situation is the fault of the UK and USA.  President George Bush is encouraging the illegal production of heroin.  No wonder he won two terms!

The British Army are doing their bit to encourage the illegal cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan.

Impeach George Bush!!

 

Holy Hell!!  That isn’t Laura!

And at least Bill Clinton had the good grace to get gobble-gobbled in private… and by a human*.

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*Well, I assume Monica was a human.  She looked human.  Kinda.  😉

Coming soon – nuclear war with Iran! (maybe)

The world has gone fucking mad!!!   The French (you gotta love ’em) has threatened war with Iran!!!

As  BBC News  reported:

Mr Kouchner has sounded the alarm over Iran’s nuclear programme
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner says the world should prepare for war over Iran’s nuclear programme.

“We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio.

Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue “right to the end”, but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose “a real danger for the whole world”.

Iran has consistently denied it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons but intends to carry on enriching uranium.

Bernard Kouchner telling Iran: “This means war!”

Okay, so the French aren’t actually saying “Let’s fry ’em now!”, but remember this – France are the one Western permanent member of the UN Security Council that is ever moderate over Iran.  The USA (and their UK poodles) are usually the ones being all aggressive, and the French usually need to calm them down.  Now France is getting all feisty…. what more encouragement could a fruitcake like George Bush need???

And remember this – the other two permanent members, Russia and China, are far more relaxed about Iran’s nuclear programme – Russia’s actually helping Iran to build one nuclear power station.  Whose side will they be on if Bush goes off on one?????