Human Rights
Stopping crime before it happens is a great idea, but stopping young men for “walking while black” — touted by true believers as the same thing — is a game played by an occupying army.
The tactic is called stop-and-frisk. As practiced by many police departments, including New York’s, it amounts to blatant racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk makes it impossible for young men of color to lead normal lives, to walk outside without fear of preemptive police harassment. The long-term hatred and tension it engenders does far more harm to a community than all the questionable good that proponents ascribe to it. Security based on racism is a sham.
So I join in the celebration of Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling Monday in Manhattan’s Federal District Court, declaring the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional. She accused the city of “checkpoint-style policing” in minority communities and wrote in her decision, according to the New York Times [2]: “Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites.”
The tactic is called stop-and-frisk. As practiced by many police departments, including New York’s, it amounts to blatant racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk makes it impossible for young men of color to lead normal lives, to walk outside without fear of preemptive police harassment. The long-term hatred and tension it engenders does far more harm to a community than all the questionable good that proponents ascribe to it. Security based on racism is a sham.
So I join in the celebration of Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling Monday in Manhattan’s Federal District Court, declaring the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional. She accused the city of “checkpoint-style policing” in minority communities and wrote in her decision, according to the New York Times [2]: “Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites.”
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Hindus and Christians in eastern India refused to
allow the burial funeral of a woman who converted from Hinduism to
Christianity, and her body remained in dispute until police found a
neutral site on government property.
The confrontation is one of the latest in Hindu-majority India where Hindus suffer problems after converting to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or other religions.
Kanti Lakra, 60, died of kidney failure on August 12 in a hospital in Hazaribagh, in eastern India's Jharkhand state, according to the Times of India.
Last Rites
She had converted from Hinduism to Christianity several years earlier because her husband, Shiv Prakash Ram, was Christian.
Ram wanted to bury her body according to Christian tradition in Kesura, their village near Hazaribagh.
But the family were the only Christians among the village's Hindus, and Ram could not find a local cemetery.
The confrontation is one of the latest in Hindu-majority India where Hindus suffer problems after converting to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or other religions.
Kanti Lakra, 60, died of kidney failure on August 12 in a hospital in Hazaribagh, in eastern India's Jharkhand state, according to the Times of India.
Last Rites
She had converted from Hinduism to Christianity several years earlier because her husband, Shiv Prakash Ram, was Christian.
Ram wanted to bury her body according to Christian tradition in Kesura, their village near Hazaribagh.
But the family were the only Christians among the village's Hindus, and Ram could not find a local cemetery.
In what might be it's last gasp of investigative national security reporting before the finalizing of Jeff Bezos' CIA sponsored buyout, the Washington Post released an NSA internal audit from 2012 detailing thousands of violations of the FISA and other laws and regulations governing surveillance of Americans. Despite revealing literally thousands of instances of unauthorized collection that violated the law, the report whitewashed at least one seemingly deliberate violation. The Washington Post story failed to catch this that this operator error appears to have happened by design.
Last week Attorney General Eric Holder delivered an unprecedented speech concerning America’s oldest war. Perhaps hoping to carve out a positive legacy that works to bring an end to the War on Drugs, Holder has undoubtedly initiated a step in the right direction.
Speaking at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, the head of the Department of Justice did not hesitate in displaying his thoughts about our justice system. The stentorian sounds of jaws dropping across the room would ordinarily account for a news report in itself, but the speech’s content was truly unsurpassable on the day.
Speaking at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, the head of the Department of Justice did not hesitate in displaying his thoughts about our justice system. The stentorian sounds of jaws dropping across the room would ordinarily account for a news report in itself, but the speech’s content was truly unsurpassable on the day.
While fruitlessly scouring the banks of the Potomac river for the mythical beast known as Robust Congressional Oversight, our eyes were drawn by the light of an eleven star constellation often hidden in the night and fog of post-constitutional America. Behind the clouds of official secrecy the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) cast their invisible light onto the lives of the entire global family, illuminating our every word for the watchful generals and vengeful angels of the national security state.
The President, while defending the NSA's varied and all-encompassing spy program, justifies the practices by claiming that judicial review legalizes them. Few people are familiar with this court, its makeup and operations, or the scope of its authority. The evidence it sees is classified and unchallenged. The decisions it makes are state secrets. It is obfuscation to term this courts function review and even greater obfuscation to pretend that it is a neutral guardian of human rights.
The President, while defending the NSA's varied and all-encompassing spy program, justifies the practices by claiming that judicial review legalizes them. Few people are familiar with this court, its makeup and operations, or the scope of its authority. The evidence it sees is classified and unchallenged. The decisions it makes are state secrets. It is obfuscation to term this courts function review and even greater obfuscation to pretend that it is a neutral guardian of human rights.
Darrell Issa he could turn the tempest of the IRS's extra scrutiny of Tea-Party group's non-profit application into a Teapot Dome. On August 5, Issa, who is chair of the House Oversight Committee, widened his stalled investigation of the IRS to include contracts between revenue agency and the Federal Elections Commission. On August 7, Reuters broke the story that the NSA had been sharing personnel and resources with the DEA and IRS. Issa's aggressive grandstanding and hearings has yet to lead to the issuance of subpoenas into NSA-IRS wiretapping and data mining.
Issa's hearings and compulsive subpoena behaviors focus on IRS questioning of tax-exempt organizations’ involvement in electoral politics in ways that are not permitted within the framework of permitted non-profit charters. Issa's concerns are that certain conservative groups may have been subjected to greater scrutiny.
Issa's hearings and compulsive subpoena behaviors focus on IRS questioning of tax-exempt organizations’ involvement in electoral politics in ways that are not permitted within the framework of permitted non-profit charters. Issa's concerns are that certain conservative groups may have been subjected to greater scrutiny.
On August 9, President Obama gave a major policy speech on NSA spying programs. The compliant White House press corps promptly dumped a barrel of ink on the flesh of fallen trees to lovingly describe his statements as a major change in direction for the administration on privacy and civil liberties. It is not clear if the government-approved beltway faithful had been provided with the same transcript as the Free Press. While the housebroken howlers heralded vague promises made by the war criminal in chief, legally literate citizens saw the announcement for what it was, a delaying obfuscation and a whitewash. The first implementation of these announced solutions came today.
The United States government continued its attack on internet activists this week, attempting to gag imprisoned journalist Barrett Brown and his defense team while forcing the shuttering of several popular secure mail services and an exit node of TOR, the internet’s most widely used anonymous proxy service.
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
George Orwell "Politics and the English Language," 1946
Two months ago General Clapper sat before his bosses at the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions. They were engaging in a ritual called robust oversight. The ritual has a number of significant acts. First, the generals representing the intelligence community hold their hands in the air and promise not to lie, invoking the Almighty God. Then the representatives of the people ask questions that they think they know the answers to. The General then gives an answer which any of us would call a lie. The Senators then pretend to believe him.
George Orwell "Politics and the English Language," 1946
Two months ago General Clapper sat before his bosses at the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions. They were engaging in a ritual called robust oversight. The ritual has a number of significant acts. First, the generals representing the intelligence community hold their hands in the air and promise not to lie, invoking the Almighty God. Then the representatives of the people ask questions that they think they know the answers to. The General then gives an answer which any of us would call a lie. The Senators then pretend to believe him.
The anonymous browser TOR is the most popular end user security tool in the world. Using this browser allows people to surf the internet anonymously. The service is used worldwide to avoid secret police surveillance by dissidents living under repressive regimes in places like Syria, Turkey and the United States. It is also used by hackers and others to conceal their identities. According to Wired Magazine's security blog “Threat Level,” the service was compromised by a hack Sunday night.
The malware inserted itself into the browser via a compromised website and immediately began broadcasting the infected computer's MAC address, user name, IP address, and any websites visited subsequently to an IP address in Herndon Virginia owned by Verizon and block leased to SAIC, a major defense and intelligence contractor.
The malware inserted itself into the browser via a compromised website and immediately began broadcasting the infected computer's MAC address, user name, IP address, and any websites visited subsequently to an IP address in Herndon Virginia owned by Verizon and block leased to SAIC, a major defense and intelligence contractor.