(2 comments)        Saturday, July 9, 2011
Judge on Suspicionless Laptop Searches & Seizures: Better Off Leaving Devices at Home   SHARE District Judge Edward Korman weakly defended a person's right to not be subjected to unreasonable searches or seizures, suggesting, according to Reuters, "Travelers who want to keep U.S. border agents from seeing sensitive documents on their laptops and cell phones may be better off leaving those devices at home."

       Thursday, June 30, 2011
5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment   SHARE In the 10 years since the Sept. 11th attacks, the FBI has expanded its powers, transforming into a massive domestic spying agency. The FBI is claiming the authority to exercise more surveillance powers, which include undocumented database searches, lie detector tests, trash searches, surveillance squads, investigations of public officials, scholars and journalists and rules that would provide more freedom for agents and informants to not disclose participation in organizations that are targets of FBI surveillance. Here are five cases of FBI abuse that show the FBI deserves more scrutiny, not a free pass to continue fighting the so-called "war on terror."

       Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Students Lead Struggles for Freedom in Middle East and North Africa   SHARE Students have put themselves on the front lines of the struggle in countries in the Middle East and North Africa to rid the region of monarchies and strongmen who have ruled, in some cases, for decades. Inspired by uprisings for freedom in Tunisia and Egypt, young people are taking on repressive regimes in hopes that their countries can be free from tyranny.

       Sunday, January 30, 2011
ROTC's Response to WikiLeaks Threatens Academic Freedom   SHARE A US Army Cadet Command (USACC) memo prohibiting cadets from using classified information found in WikiLeaks cables for course assignments is creating a struggle over academic freedom at colleges and universities. For students at Stanford University, the memo is adding a new dimension to the campus' deliberations over whether to allow ROTC to return to campus. At an undergraduate senate meeting on January 25, Samuel Windley, president of the student organization Stanford Says No to War [1], handed a recent op-ed [2] written by University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes to Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee on the ROTC Ewart Thomas. The op-ed, which referenced the ROTC memo, made Thomas "very concerned."

(1 comments)        Friday, January 28, 2011
Georgia Tech Dorm Room Raided in Connection with WikiLeaks Sympathizer Investigation   SHARE Early Thursday morning, agents raided dozens of targets from the UK to the US. Five young men in Britain were arrested as part of the investigation into cyber attacks designed to bring down websites that have cut off funding for WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. In the US, the FBI executed search warrants on 40 different locations, including a dorm room at Georgia Tech. The FBI isn't saying anything, but the startled Tech students spoke with 11Alive's Center for Investigative Action.

       Friday, January 28, 2011
Al Jazeera's Live Stream of Egypt Uprising   SHARE Tune in to see protests unfolding in Egypt. Al Jazeera is broadcasting from Cairo. It is currently night in Egypt at 11 am ET.

       Sunday, January 23, 2011
Military Detains Bloggers Trying to Visit Bradley Manning at Quantico Brig   SHARE Jane Hamsher and David House, both with Firedoglake, were trying to visit Bradley Manning at Quantico Brig when the military detained them for nearly two hours. They had the car they drove to the brig impounded by a tow truck. The tow truck driver said not only do they have to pay for cost of towing but also for time they had to wait for Quantico marines to release them from detention. 44 minutes ago · reply

       Sunday, January 16, 2011
Remembering Judy Bonds | The Topless America Project   SHARE With Video Celebrating the Activism and Life of Judy Bonds | Julia "Judy" Bonds inspired thousands as a community organizer and activist who dedicated her life to protecting the mountains of Appalachia from the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. She was the director of Coal River Mountain Watch and winner of the prestigious Goldman Featuring a Video in Celebration of the Activism and Life of Judy Bonds Julia "Judy" Bonds inspired thousands as a community organizer and activist who dedicated her life to protecting the mountains of Appalachia from the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. She was the director of Coal River Mountain Watch and winner of the prestigious Goldman Prize for Excellence in Protecting the Environment. Judy was a mother, a grandmother, and is considered the "Godmother" of the national movement to end MTR.

       Friday, January 14, 2011
The Search for BP's Oil   SHARE Naomi Klein reports for The Nation on scientists who continue to find BP's oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Her report illuminates BP's attempts to hide the oil while also highlighting how we as a society deal with environmental destruction. From the report: "For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill's impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean."

       Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Israel blacklists 163 foreign charities suspected of supporting terrorism   SHARE The Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority has located 163 organizations contaminated with funds related to terrorism over the past three years, and issued specific orders prohibiting receiving money from them, Defense Ministry data shows.

       Tuesday, January 11, 2011
A Recent History of Hate in Arizona   SHARE A detailed timeline of the growing violence and hate in Arizona put together by Alto Arizona!.

       Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Tears and gas: a call to mobilise   SHARE Faced with the reality that they are talking to a government that uses blunt repression to avoid its responsibilities, Israel's Palestinian solidarity activists are now abandoning the failed attempts to be marginally heard in Israel's national discussion and choosing to push for global direct action. (From Al Jazeera English)

       Wednesday, December 29, 2010
US refuses cooperation with Poland's CIA "black site' probe   SHARE The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected a request from prosecutors in Warsaw for assistance in the investigation into the alleged CIA prisons in Poland, where captives claim they were tortured.

       Wednesday, December 29, 2010
My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act   SHARE Robert Meeropol explains why people must protect Julian Assange. He explains that the "Espionage Act is a huge danger to our open society; it's been used to send hundreds of dissenters to jail just for voicing their opinions, transforming dissent into treason." Read the article on AlterNet.

       Sunday, December 26, 2010
WikiLeaks: How U.S. tried to stop Spain's torture probe   SHARE The case is still open, on the desk of a Spanish magistrate, awaiting a reply from the Obama administration on whether it will pursue a probe of its own. But the episode, revealed in a raft of WikiLeaks cables, was part of a secret concerted U.S. effort to stop a crusading Spanish judge from investigating a torture complaint against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other senior Bush lawyers.

       Thursday, December 23, 2010
FBI Expands Probe into Antiwar Activists   SHARE From Democracy Now! -- "The FBI's probe into antiwar activists is growing. In September, FBI agents raided the homes and offices of activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. Subpoenas that were withdrawn have been reactivated, and a new subpoena was served to a Palestinian solidarity activist in Chicago. We speak with two of the people targeted and two former FBI agents."

       Thursday, December 23, 2010
A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I'm An Atheist   SHARE Wow. No God. If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. I learned of evolution - €" a theory so simple that only England's greatest genius could have come up with it.

       Monday, December 20, 2010
The Government's one-way mirror   SHARE One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.

       Saturday, December 18, 2010
Assange begins mansion arrest, but his 'source' feels the heat   SHARE The Independent reports -- "Bradley Manning spent yesterday, his birthday, alone in a tiny, bare prison cell, without a pillow or sheets on his bed, in weak health and wracked with anxiety at the prospect of a prison sentence of 52 years."

(1 comments)        Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention   SHARE From Glenn Greenwald - Details on Private Bradley Manning, who is thought to have leaked the WikiLeaks war logs, cables and "Collateral Murder" video. He has been held for months and experienced solitary confinement usually 23 out of 24 hours of the day. What he has experienced, Greenwald explains, amounts to torture.