US Senators Pushing for 20 Years in Prison for Citizens Who Support Boycotting Israel

(ANTIMEDIA)  — United States senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties are pushing to implement a bill that would make it a felony to support boycotting Israel, punishable by up to twenty years in prison. On Monday, the ACLU issued a letter to the Senate opposing the proposed legislation, which was introduced in March by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). It was “drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC],” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.720), which has a total of 43 sponsors in the Senate (14 Democrats and 29 Republicans), seeks to broaden the the Export Administration Act of 1979 “to include in the prohibitions on boycotts against allies of the United States boycotts fostered by international governmental organizations against Israel and to direct the Export-Import Bank of the United States to oppose boycotts against Israel, and for other purposes.”

The bill in its current form would also make it illegal to even request information about boycotts against Israel, and violations would carry a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years behind bars. If passed, this legislation would effectively put U.S. citizens behind bars for up to twenty years for nothing more than their political beliefs.

“The impacts of the legislation would be antithetical to free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment,” the ACLU wrote.

The organization also pointed out the contradictory nature of the proposed measure, explaining it“cannot fairly be characterized as an anti-discrimination measure, as some would argue. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prevents businesses from discriminating against customers based on race, color, religion, and national origin. This bill, on the other hand, aims to punish people who support international boycotts that are meant to protest Israeli government policies, while leaving those who agree with Israeli government policies free from the threat of sanctions for engaging in the exact same behavior.”

It continues:

“Whatever their merits, such boycotts rightly enjoy First Amendment protection.1 By penalizing those who support international boycotts of Israel, S.720 seeks only to punish the exercise of constitutional rights.”

If passed, this tyrannical bipartisan bill would blatantly violate the constitutional rights of every United States citizen by punishing individuals based on nothing but their political opinions and decisions as consumers.

There is no coming back from that.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Nationalists Turn Into Snowflakes, Put Out $3K Bounty For Woman’s Murder Over Her Free Speech

Never has unadulterated hypocrisy marched itself to the forefront on a silver platter more efficaciously than on Independence Day in the United States — that is, until 2017, when my online friend decided to test the public mettle — by urinating on a Chinese-made American flag.

Oh, yes. She did.

And thankfully so — exercise of rights ultimately staves off their evisceration. Without occasional tests of the protections granted all U.S. citizens, those boundaries of protection shrink, unabated — because, if you don’t value freedom of expression, just wait until expressing yourself freely cannot be achieved without a consequent stint behind bars.

In that spirit, my friend, Emily Lance, placed a flag on the rim of a toilet on the 4th of July, and — using a device allowing women to stand and urinate — let loose, unleashing a torrent of urine against the Stars and Stripes as a friend videotaped the immediately-viral act.

“Fuck your nationalism,” the dedicated activist narrated on video since deleted by Facebook and YouTube, as the song, “Night Moves” by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, played in the background. “Fuck your country. Fuck your stupid fucking flag.”

Offended? You should be.

You should be offended that the U.S. military maintains a presence in 150 of 196 nations on the planet. Offended the CIA employed the grossest human rights abuses known when it psychologically, emotionally, and physically tortured detainees — even though that method has been proven utterly ineffective. Offended the Authorization for the Use of Military Force granted a blank slate for perpetual war anywhere on the globe. Offended the most heinous terrorist organization yet to manifest only did so because the West sought and hoped for a caliphate of terrorists. Offended millions of people abandoned their homes for flimsy life rafts, risking their otherwise uneventful lives to escape relentless American and allied bombs.

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You should be offended our prisons incarcerate more per capita than any other nation — fascist dictatorships, included — on the planet. Offended the police, with seemingly endless authority over our daily lives, kill with nary a consequence, even in questionable situations. Offended free speech has been forgotten to cater to those too sensitive to bear it. Offended protest is being criminalized in a growing number of states. Offended medical choice isn’t an option in a nation claiming to value choice. Offended acceptable expression has been narrowed so severely, your right to redress grievances has been summarily erased from the books — and from the hemp-based paper on which those rights were putatively enshrined.

You should be offended with your own damnable hypocrisy — calling for the bodily harm of someone committing a nonviolent act against a symbol — rather than voting out the pols excusing the wholesale murder of innocents inside the bounds of sovereign lands.

Instead, you’re offended that bodily waste met striped and starred fabric — made in China, no less.

READ MORE:  WAR IS PEACE -- Nobel Prize-Winning Obama Becomes Longest War-Time President In US History

This hypocrisy — not our farcical shreds of freedom — is why we’re so hated around the planet. In fact, it’s why blowback — not terrorism — comprises our greatest threat.

Those indelible impressions the U.S. has effected on the world — not to mention innumerable other unnamed iterations — comprise just a fraction of the motivation to carry out the one act an otherwise helpless citizen might choose to force the spotlight on the issues: desecration of the flag.

So, that’s what Emily Lance did — she chose the symbol of pain for millions around the planet who experience the full brunt of American exceptionalism to focus the rage of living only symbolically free in the one nation pompously regurgitating liberty, but failing to live up to the hype.

To call the act inflammatory would belie the altogether appalling backlash instantaneously generated the moment video of the July 4th stunt was posted to Facebook — a reaction so horrifically hypocritical, the exercise of free speech has since extended into death threats to Lance’s family members.

Threats to dissect Emily with knives, bludgeon her body, and even a $3,000 bounty for her head, rumored to be posted to Craigslist, now dot the activist’s Facebook timeline — as if she injured each individual in cold-hearted glee.

But she didn’t — she exercised an albeit fraught freedom and catapulted an astonishing hypocrisy into the world spotlight.

As furious former and current service members, their families, and other devotees to the symbolism in Old Glory crawled out of the self-aggrandizing, misbegotten cracks to wish death upon an otherwise unknown person on the Internet, Lance — obviously no shrinking violet — wrote in a post to Facebook,

“Freedom (of speech/expression) means that I’m entitled to do and say as I please, EVEN if you don’t like it, so long as I am not physically hurting someone – and no, your precious feelings don’t count, that’s your own problem. What don’t you people understand? You’re celebrating freedom while damning me for doing the same. You can’t have it both ways. FREEDOM OR NONE. Practice what you preach or shut the fuck up.”

She has a point.

Indeed, while the bulk of condemnation centered around disrespect for the flag, critics widely missed that Lance’s act not only falls under constitutional protection, desecrating the symbol of the nation embodies the freedom putatively defended by the military. Those threatening death and mutilation against the woman bold enough to express displeasure with the direction of this hopelessly self-serving government would do well to re-examine what the United States allegedly stands for — freedom.

Perhaps a nation born of the blood of the land’s original inhabitants and built upon the involuntary toil of enslaved Africans and others could never comprehend freedom as a concept on which to base its existence — though, perhaps, it should.

In propaganda — advertisements, corporate news, and Hollywood cinema — the United States can do no wrong. In reality, it rarely does right by those under its control — much less, those under the bombs dropped so readily.

Testing American mettle means teasing the bounds of acceptability and tolerance — what better way to test its willingness to stand for the ideals of freedom than by destroying the symbol so dear to so many.

Instead, Lance merely proved the laughable hypocrisy in Americans’ claiming the nation the freest of all while calling for her murder for expressing a freedom apparently untenable to the national conscience.

We must face, as citizens of these once-United States, the crimes of our government for the brazen reduction of people to commodities those wrongs encompass — failure to do so engenders only militancy in the cause of knocking the imperialist empire from its self-appointed pedestal.

This nation is not exceptional — it’s ordinary. Worse, it’s complicit in the misery of billions, and — no matter how extraordinary the somnambulant American public finds itself — this shameful fact cannot be extricated from our national identity.

We are not gods. We haven’t mastered life. Our government and military commit the worst atrocities in our name — yet, people are enraged about a piece of cloth — one not even manufactured in the United States?

To say priorities have been compromised would be gross mischaracterization and understatement.

“People are wishing illness, harm, and suffering upon me over a piece of fabric,” Lance later tellingly asserted online. “People are willing to MURDER someone over a flag. It’s so sad that people don’t realize how brainwashed they are. I’m gross for peeing on a symbol? LOOK AT YOURSELVES. You people epitomize all that is foul.”

No matter how much so many wish it so, the American flag is only a symbol — however imbued with personal meaning for any individual — the flag is just a symbol. You cannot equate military service — even the ultimate price — with a piece of colored cloth.

Not when the provocative among us aren’t offered the same platform to express distaste as those expressing pride.

The true beauty of our protected freedoms in this land are most clearly seen when someone expresses themselves in a way or on a topic on which we don’t necessarily agree — then, and only then, is its foundation and strength actually proven.

This experience proves that foundation — and the flag flying emptily above it — deserve to be condemned.

In Her First Interview, Chelsea Manning Explains Why She Went to Prison for You

In her first interview since being released from prison, whistleblower said she felt “responsibility to the public.”

(COMMONDREAMS) — US Chelsea Manning has given her first interview since being released from prison last month in which she explains her motivations for making public thousands of military documents.

Excerpts of her interview with ABC‘s “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang aired Friday on the network’s “Good Morning America.”

Asked about why she leaked the trove of documents, she says, “I have a responsibility to the public … we all have a responsibility.”

“We’re getting all this information from all these different sources and it’s just death, destruction, mayhem.”

“We’re filtering it all through facts, statistics, reports, dates, times, locations, and eventually, you just stop,” she adds. “I stopped seeing just statistics and information, and I started seeing people.”

Asked by Hing what she would tell President Obama, Manning, choking up, says, “I’ve been given a chance,” she says. “That’s all I asked for was a chance.”

Watch excerpts from the interview below:

by Andrea Germanos / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

The Intercept Has A Source Burning Problem

(MPN) Long having built its reputation on reports derived from classified information provided to them by leakers, The Intercept now finds itself in the unpleasant position of having burned – or outed – one of its anonymous sources.

The leaker, Reality Leigh Winner, allegedly gave The Intercept classified NSA documents pertaining to an investigation of Russian military intelligence hacking within the U.S. and now faces years in prison under the Espionage Act. While outing Winner could have been the result of negligence, the FBI affidavit explaining why the bureau arrested Winner shows it went beyond mere negligence.

According to FBI documents, a reporter at the paper sent the leaked documents to a contractor working for the National Security Agency (NSA) – the very agency they had been taken from – a full week before The Intercept published the story. The alleged intention was to let the NSA itself verify the documents, an unusual move for a news outlet that was originally intended to have exclusive publication rights over the Snowden leaks that exposed NSA surveillance. Upon being contacted, the NSA asked that The Intercept redact parts of the document and The Intercept complied with some of those requests.

The FBI warrant also notes that the reporter in question – who is unnamed in the document – contacted a government contractor with whom he had a prior relationship and revealed where the documents had been postmarked from – Winner’s home of Augusta, Georgia – along with Winner’s work location. He also sent unedited images of the documents that contained security markings that allowed the document to be traced to Winner.

While the reporter’s identity remains unknown, the published report has four authors – two of whom have been known to burn sources before. Journalists Richard Esposito and Matthew Cole once found themselves involved in a case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou specifically singled out Cole as having not only misled him, but having played a likely role in incriminating him. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

.@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

— John Kiriakou (@JohnKiriakou) June 6, 2017

WikiLeaks, a publishing organization committed to transparency that maintains the confidentiality of its sources, has sharply condemned The Intercept’s role in Winner’s arrest. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote that “If the FBI affidavit is accurate, the reporter concerned must be named, shamed and fired by whomever they work for to maintain industry standards.” “Source-burning reporters are a menace,” he continued. “They chill trust in all journalists, which impedes public understanding.”

WikiLeaks is now offering a $10,000 reward for information “leading to the public exposure & termination” of the responsible reporter.

WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this ‘reporter’: https://t.co/W9wijCk5d3

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 6, 2017

The Intercept responded to the situation in a statement, stating:

“While the FBI’s allegations against Winner have been made public through the release of an affidavit and search warrant, which were unsealed at the government’s request, it is important to keep in mind that these documents contain unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the government’s agenda and as such warrant skepticism. Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBI’s claims about how it came to arrest Winner.”

The paper’s most prominent journalist, Glenn Greenwald, has distanced himself from the article and claimed that he does not edit the paper – even though his bio lists him as a “founding co-editor.”

I didn’t write the article, & I don’t edit the Intercept. I don’t control other journalists. My views on it are here https://t.co/bLVvxrpc15

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 6, 2017

The Intercept’s corporate dark side

This latest debacle for The Intercept may be proving the organization’s long-time critics right. The short history of the publication shows that it was hardly set up to serve the public interest. The paper was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a billionaire and major owner of both eBay and PayPal, who gave the project more than $50 million in seed money.

This alone should have been enough to complicate its mission “to hold the most powerful governmental and corporate factions accountable.”

Its first hires were Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras – all of whom were involved in publishing the Snowden revelations, as well as other leaks. Greenwald and Poitras were the only journalists with the full Snowden cache and those secrets now belong to a single billionaire running a for-profit media company.

Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. political establishment are numerous and concerning. One of his foundation’s microcredit projects to “help” farmers in India led to an epidemic of farmer suicides that gained international headlines, as farmers became unable to pay the foundation back. His network has also funded regime change operations with USAID, most recently in Ukraine. In addition, Omidyar was well-connected to the Obama White House, which stood to lose the most from the mass publication of the Snowden cache. One of Omidyar’s main companies, PayPal, is said to be implicated in some of the NSA documents that have still been withheld.

Omidyar’s influence on The Intercept has also been established. Former Intercept writer Ken Silverstein wrote that, at the paper, “a cult of personality existed around him [Omidyar] internally that disrupted the whole organization” and that “the company’s culture centered on Omidyar.”

This background makes it less surprising that The Intercept has been caught publishing partisan stories that back U.S. establishment objectives, such as articles supporting U.S.-led regime change efforts in Syria and the very piece that outed Winner.

Outing a source only to perpetuate the “Russian hacker” narrative

The Intercept piece at the center of the controversy is particularly troubling. Titled “Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election,” it asserts that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.”

However, the NSA report that The Intercept published in tandem with the article provides no evidence for that claim, as it does not even mention of a cyberattack by “cyber espionage operations,” indicating that no one was attacked and only that information was collected. It also presents no proof that any accounts were compromised, nor were the U.S. elections. Even worse is that the document itself states that techniques were used by this cyber espionage actor that distinguish it from known Russian military intelligence operations, meaning the act in question may not have been carried out by Russian intelligence.

In addition, the piece quotes cyber security expert Bruce Schneier. However, Schneier is a well-known Clinton supporter and argued that Russia hacked the Democrats as far back as last July, a claim for which there is still no evidence. The Intercept piece fails to mention this aspect of Schneier’s background.

Essentially, The Intercept piece – which could lead to hard prison time for one very unfortunate whistleblower – does not accurately interpret the classified information at its core and instead seeks to propagate the “Russian hacker” narrative still being peddled by the parts of the U.S. establishment that are still bitter over Hillary Clinton’s loss. Given Omidyar’s cozy ties with the Obama White House and the left-leaning slant of The Intercept’s current editor Betsy Reed, this could be more than coincidence.

While The Intercept is now making headlines for outing a source, the bigger message is that the paper has revealed itself as being part of the system of establishment journalism it purports to stand against.

By Whitney Webb / Republished with permission / MintPress News / Report a typo

US, UK Both Drop In Latest 'World Press Freedom Index' Rankings

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Reporters without Borders just published its annual World Press Freedom Index rankings, and the results for both the U.S. and UK are not impressive. Both countries declined two spots from last year, with the UK at 41, and the greatest and most free nation on earth, America, down to 43.

Here’s The Guardian reporting on the UK’s decline:

Journalists in the UK are less free to hold power to account than those working in South Africa, Chile or Lithuania, according to an index of press freedom around the world.

Laws permitting generalised surveillance, as well as a proposal for a new espionage act that could criminalise journalists and whistleblowers as spies, were cited by Reporters Without Borders as it knocked the UK down two places from last year, to 40th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index.

In the past five years, the UK has slipped 12 places down the index. Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s UK bureau director, said this year’s ranking would have been worse were it not for a general decline in press freedom around the world, making journalists in Britain comparatively better off than those in countries such as Turkey and Syria.

RSF, which campaigns for free speech, warned of a general erosion of media freedom in English-speaking, democratic countries. The US, long considered a bastion of freedom of speech thanks to the first amendment of its constitution, also dropped two places, to 43rd. Canada fell four places, to 22nd, and New Zealand slipped eight places, to 13th.

Among the concerns raised by RSF was the passage of the UK’s “menacing” Investigatory Powers Act last November, which met only token resistance within parliament, despite giving UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world.

RSF said the act was a possible “death sentence” for investigative journalism in Britain, owing to its lack of protections for whistleblowers, journalists and their sources, and that it set a damaging precedent for other countries to follow.

Moving along, what about the shining city on a hill? Land of the free, home of the brave, the world’s indispensable nation!

Here’s what Reporters without Borders had to say about the U.S. as it dropped two spots to 43.

US press freedom, enshrined in the First Amendment to the 1787 constitution, has encountered several major obstacles over the past few years, most recently with the election of President Donald Trump. He has declared the press an “enemy of the American people” in a series of verbal attacks toward journalists, while attempting to block White House access to multiple media outlets in retaliation for critical reporting. Despite the bleak outlook under Trump, it bears repeating that his predecessor left behind a flimsy legacy for press freedom and access to information. Journalists continue to be arrested for covering various protests around the country, with several currently facing criminal charges. The Obama administration waged a war on whistleblowers who leaked information about its activities, leading to the prosecution of more leakers than any previous administration combined. To this day, American journalists are still not protected by a federal “shield law” guaranteeing their right to protect their sources and other confidential work-related information. And over the past few years, there has been an increase in prolonged searches of journalists and their devices at the US border, with some foreign journalists being prevented from any travel to the US after they covered sensitive topics such as Colombia’s FARC or Kurdistan.

If you think that’s bad, imagine where the U.S. will end up if the DOJ actually goes forward with charges against Julian Assange?

I discussed that troubling scenario in last week’s post, The American Empire Under Donald Trump Has Become Increasingly Desperate, Dangerous & Insecure.

Things are not headed in the right direction.

Protesters Around the US Have Started Speaking Out Against Local Representatives

(ANTIMEDIA)  —  On Friday morning, protesters blocked newly-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from entering a school in Washington, D.C.

The day before that, Representative ’s words were drowned out by taunts from a raucous crowd in Utah.

On Tuesday, over 100 protesters showed up at the congressional office of Arizona Representative Martha McSally.

And last weekend, California Representative Tom McClintock’s town hall speech was met with such hostility that he had to be escorted from the premises by police.

There may have been others. There certainly will be more in the days to come. We know that for certain because last week the Washington Post told us so.

“What’s organizing people is that they’re fearing for the country they grew up in,” Neera Tanden, Hillary Clinton advisor and president of the Center for American Progress, told the Post. “People are definitely seeing the purpose of working through the political process to oppose him.”

The him, of course, is Donald Trump. There could be no other him in a Democrat’s mind. But the “process” being referred to by Tanden is, as we speak, going through a metamorphosis — one the Clinton aide seems not to notice.

The Post’s article on Sunday opened with the following:

“A super PAC formed to reelect Barack Obama in 2012 is driving activists to congressional town halls.”

It doesn’t seem like much. Innocuous, even. But upon reflection, it’s actually a game changer.

The Post, after noting that Neera Tanden’s Center for American Progress (CAP) was “founded by Clinton administration exiles,” went on to detail the trend that’s taking shape:

“CAP Action, the political arm of Tanden’s think tank, is one of several progressive and center-left groups urging activists to attend congressional town halls.”

How many of the protesters are showing up at Republican doorsteps at the behest of progressive super PACs, and how many are there of their own volition, is an unknown. But the effect has been the same — and immediate. From a February 7 report by Politico:

“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare, sources in the room told Politico.”

Citing those sources, the news outlet continues:

“Among the suggestions: having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appoints, not to cause chaos.”

The effect has been so great, in fact, that some Republicans are now declining speaking engagements in fear of what Martha McSally — the Arizona representative who was confronted by over 100 protesters at her office last Tuesday — called a “political ambush.”

Stating that “the Democratic Party and progressive establishment have almost entirely adopted the demands of a restive, active and aggressive base,” the Washington Post, in last week’s article, said the Democrats are “hopeful that the new activism” embraces the idea of electoral politics — new activism that apparently condones super PACs spending funds on protests at enemy lines. And it’s a form of activism the Post just gave credibility to:

“Yet even now, at every level of national Democratic politics, the discussion of how the party can win back voters it lost is subsumed by the argument about how to oppose Trump,” wrote the newspaper. “The answer is always: as much as possible. And for the moment, that does seem to be engaging a broad, new population of activists.”

And it’s a form of “activism” the conservative super PACs are certain to make use of, now that the precedent has been set — and, again, sanctified by the Washington Post itself.

So it’ll be interesting, to say the least, to read the comments from Democrats when it’s their turn to worry about escape routes. And heavy doors. And deadbolts.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

As Trump Takes Power, Politicians Around the US Move to Make Protesting Illegal

January 20, 2017   |   Sarah Cronin

(ANTIMEDIA) Indiana passed a bill on Wednesday that authorizes police officers to shut down highway protesting “by any means necessary.” S.B. 285, as it is known, obliges a public official to dispatch all available officers within 15 minutes of discovering any assembly of 10 or more people who are obstructing vehicle traffic.

The bill then authorizes the responding officers to clear roads “by any means necessary.”

Critics are calling it the “Block Traffic and You Die” bill, an apt name for a bill that has co-opted the phrase “any means necessary,” used famously in speech delivered by Malcolm X during the Civil Rights movement, turning it into a threat against government dissent (with no apparent awareness of the irony).

S.B. 285 is among a collection of increasingly hostile ‘anti-obstruction’ laws that have been quietly submitted in states around the nation over the past few months. A report by The Intercept published Wednesday tracked five such anti-protest laws introduced by Republican lawmakers in different states, four of which are currently pending.

One of the most disturbing among them is House Bill N. 1203, a bill introduced earlier this month by North Dakota lawmaker Keith Kempenich in response to the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests. The bill would exempt motorists who hit demonstrators with their cars from any liability in cases where the victims were “obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway.” This twisted take on protest criminalization comes short of condoning manslaughter as a viable means of crowd control.

Also this month, Minnesota State Representative Kathy Lohmer led the effort on submitting H.F. 322, a bill that would re-classify obstructing highway traffic from a misdemeanor to a “gross misdemeanor” and would authorize government units to sue protesters for “public safety response costs related to unlawful assemblies.”

The proposed legislation is strikingly reminiscent of Washington State Senator Eric Ericksen’s proposal to punish protesters as ‘economic terrorists,’ which Anti-Media first reported on in November.

All of the proposed laws share a common trait in that they were all adopted in response to a major protest event in that state. H.F. 322 was submitted shortly after a judge dismissed the riot charges against protesters who took to the St. Paul Interstate last July in a demonstration against the police shooting of Philando Castille. Ericksen’s “economic terrorism” bill announcement came just days after anti-fracking protesters blocked railroad tracks in Olympia, Washington. DAPL protests inspired both the Indiana and North Dakota bills.

These retroactive responses on behalf of Republican state lawmakers are also seen as preemptive strikes against the threat of increased protests during the Trump presidency.

As ACLU staff attorney Lee Rowland expressed in an interview with The Intercept, these so-called ‘obstruction bills’ are but thinly disguised efforts to squash any government dissent.

“A law that would allow the state to charge a protester $10,000 for stepping in the wrong place, or encourage a driver to get away with manslaughter because the victim was protesting, is about one thing: chilling protest,” Rowland said.

Growing tension between government officials and protesters is expected to come to a culmination on Inauguration Day in D.C., where there will already be many barriers in place to limit demonstrations.

First and foremost is the Federal Grounds and Buildings Improvement Act of 2011, known as H.R 347.

H.R.-347 is a revision of a 1971 federal trespassing law that made it a crime to “willfully and knowingly” remain in an area under Secret Security protection. H.R. 347 removes the word “willingly,” a legal technicality that effectively lowers the bar on the mental state required to be found guilty under the law.

As explained by the American Civil Liberties Union:

“Under the original language of the law, you had to act ‘willfully and knowingly’ when committing the crime. In short, you had to know your conduct was illegal. Under H.R. 347, you will simply need to act ‘knowingly,’ which here would mean that you know you’re in a restricted area, but not necessarily that you’re committing a crime.”

Under current federal law, protesting in proximity to an elected official under the protection of the Secret Service, which includes President Trump, is a crime punishable by fine and up to ten years in jail.

Protesting during Trump’s inauguration comes with additional complications as the National Park Service reserves a large portion of the inaugural parade route along Pennsylvania Ave and in Freedom Plaza for ticket sales under the exclusive discretion of Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC). This means the PIC can refuse to allow protesters along the route.

An activist group called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (Answer) has been engaged in a  legal battle with the National Park Service since 2005, arguing the privatization of the Inauguration is an attempt to “sanitize” the streets of dissent.

While the National Park Service has been controversially setting aside tickets for the PIC since 1980, the issue garnered more attention this year when it was discovered that the sidewalk in front of the Trump International Hotel, a significant site for protesters, would be a part of PIC’s ticket-only area.

Adding another level of bureaucracy, the Washington Post reported the hotel and plaza in front are actually under the control of Trump’s real estate agency, meaning protesters would have to literally ‘ask permission’ to remain in the space.

As the week comes to an end, it becomes apparent that dissent is being criminalized not only nationwide but on multiple fronts. Increased regulations are appearing that limit the public spaces that can be lawfully occupied in protest. Meanwhile, legislation is also being introduced to increase the negative consequences for newly unlawful protests. Should more states follow suit with Indiana, demonstrators will soon find themselves paradoxically protesting for their right to protest at all.

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This article (As Trump Takes Power, Politicians Around the US Move to Make Protesting Illegal) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Sarah Cronin and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

5 Controversial Whistleblowers You Should Be Following on Social Media

January 12, 2017   |   Alice Salles

(ANTIMEDIA) “Whistleblowers,” former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden once said, “are elected by circumstance.”

“More critical than who you are,” he continued, “is what you see.” And when you see something wrong but choose to look the other way, you’re part of the problem. At least that’s what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seems to suggest.

Nowadays, whistleblowers are more important than ever. As more and more news organizations are outed as perpetrators of phony information, using their platforms to spread propaganda that helps boost a particular political party or politician, the whistleblower’s presence in news organizations, government bodies, and major corporations is what guarantees the truth will be exposed — sooner or later.

But to many of those who have already gone down that path, enduring soul-crushing scrutiny as a result, the work wasn’t over when they blew the whistle. Instead, they kept on going. Some even turned out to be investigative journalists, while others, like Snowden, continue to offer their expertise and input from afar. Indeed, Snowden is active on Twitter, and so are many others who have risked everything to speak out.

Here’s a list of the top five whistleblowers you should be following on social media and around the internet.

1. Jesselyn Radack

In her tenure as an ethics adviser for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Radack reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had committed an ethics violation while interrogating John Walker Lindh.

Lindh was dubbed the “American Taliban,” and he was captured in 2001 when America invaded Afghanistan.

In the book, TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the “American Taliban,” Radack explains her ordeal in detail, showing that due to her actions, the DOJ retaliated by giving her a poor performance review. She was also advised to leave and find employment elsewhere, risking a tainted reputation.

In order to reveal what she saw and experienced, she eventually went around the DOJ, releasing emails after a court order for all Justice Department’s internal correspondence concerning Lindh came up short.

Her actions in the name of truth eventually landed her in hot water, with the government “sending letters to bar associations in jurisdictions where she was licensed to practice law, referring her for a possible ethics violation, which kept her from finding work for years.”

Now, Radack heads a Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts.org. In the recent past, Radack has represented the likes of Edward Snowden and other NSA whistleblowers.

Follow her on Twitter at @JesseleynRadack.

2. Thomas Drake

A former senior executive of the NSA, Thomas Andrews Drake is also a decorated U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy veteran whose dedication to ethics and the constitution nearly turned him into a pariah.

In 2010, the former official was indicted after being accused of providing classified material to a newspaper reporter between 2006 and 2007. Drake, who was 52-years-old at the time, “was also accused of obstructing justice by shredding documents, deleting computer records and lying to investigators who were looking into the reporter’s sources,” the New York Times has noted.

At the time, the Times admitted the then-indictment of Drake proved “the [Barack] Obama administration may be no less aggressive than the Bush administration in pursuing whistleblowers and reporters’ sources who disclose government secrets.”

Within the agency, Drake was one of the few officials who preferred to employ projects such as ThinThread, which was intended to protect the privacy of individuals while intelligence was being gathered. Despite his stance, leadership moved forward with another project — the much more expensive and invasive Trailblazer Project.

“Designed to gather similar data but without the encryption feature built into the ThinThread technology to provide privacy aspects,” Trailblazer was seen as a nightmare to those within the agency who were concerned about privacy issues. Drake attempted to use formal channels to voice his concerns, but his internal complaints seemed to go nowhere. After he contacted a staffer for Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that he had met years prior to the adoption of Trailblazer, the staffer, along with three former NSA officials, filed a DoD Inspector General report that mentioned Trailblazer. Drake was a source for this report.

In 2005, Drake contacted the Baltimore Sun’s Siobhan Gorman, sending her emails regarding a variety of topics. Being careful not to give her sensitive information, Gorman used what she learned from Drake, writing several pieces on waste, abuse, fraud, and of course, the Trailblazer program.

The FBI eventually raided Drake’s home and seized his computer and files. Later, journalist Jane Mayer wrote that Drake felt president Obama’s NSA was committing crimes more serious than those committed by President Richard Nixon.

Thanks to the work of people like Radack, all original charges against Drake were eventually dropped. Nevertheless, Drake did plead guilty to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer.

Follow him on Twitter at @Thomas_Drake1.

3. Mordechai Vanunu

Vanunu is a former nuclear technician from Israel.

In 1985, after he lost his job amid government cuts, he was able to be readmitted as a technician at Negev Nuclear Research Center. At the time, Vanunu smuggled a camera into the facility and took 57 photographs. On October 27, 1985, he quit, and in 1986, he leaked the information he had obtained to British media, revealing that Israel had a nuclear program — a fact the country has long denied.

Vanunu was eventually imprisoned and remained behind bars for 18 years, “11 of which were spent in solitary confinement.” He is now under house arrest and is not allowed to “own a cell phone, enter internet chat rooms, have contact with foreigners or leave Israel.”

Follow him on Twitter at @VanunuMordechai.

4. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) senior policy analyst Marsha Coleman-Adebayo blew the whistle on dangerous conditions African workers faced at a U.S. mining company in South Africa, but the EPA failed to respond. She then went to other organizations for help.

She eventually sued the EPA, inspiring the passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). Currently, Coleman-Adebayo serves as a member of the National Whistleblower Center’s Board of Directors. The group focuses on protecting the rights of employee whistleblowers.

Follow her on Twitter at @nofearcoalition or on Facebook.

5. Daniel Ellsberg

The former military analyst for RAND Corporation was the man behind the Pentagon Papers leak.

The 7,000-page document disclosed information on the Vietnam War, showing the Lyndon B. Johnson administration “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.”

Ellsberg faced a series of felony charges, but his case was eventually dismissed in 1973. The judge at the time claimed the government had acted improperly. Ellsberg is a celebrated author and can be followed on Twitter, at @DanielEllsberg.

***

It goes without saying that Edward Snowden is a must-follow on Twitter, as is John Kirakou, who blew the whistle on the use of torture by the CIA.

Other whistleblowers who deserve honorable mention but are not on Twitter include Chelsea Manning — who released footage of American soldiers shooting at journalists in Iraq and is now forced to endure solitary confinement during her life sentence — and Jeffrey Sterling, who revealed information about the CIA’s cyber warfare.

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This article (5 Controversial Whistleblowers You Should Be Following on Social Media) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alice Salles and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

Google Sued By Employee For Illegally Muzzling Workers

A lawsuit has been filed against Google by one of its employees, alleging the company"s policies improperly muzzle workers. The suit, posted on the website of the plaintiff"s lawyer, challenges the legality of Google’s policies and seeks damages for 12 alleged violations of California labor code under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act. The case was filed by Google product manager identified only as “John Doe,” who says he was falsely accused by a Google manager of ‘‘leaking” information to the press.

Coming at a time when media giants and social networks like Facebook and especially Google - whose executive chairman was recently revealed to have a close relationship with the Clinton campaign after he created a "strategic plan" to help the Democrats win the election and track voters - have a come under intense pressure for their treatment of freedom of speech, and role in the dissemination of "fake news", the lawsuit is sure to be scrutinized by the general public especially if it gets to a discovery phase.

According to the lawsuit, Google’s employee confidentiality agreement fails the company’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto by making it a firiable offense to whistle-blow or to disclose salaries, work skills or experience to future employers. The plaintiffs accuse Google of illegally muzzling workers by threatening dismissal for speaking about wages, working conditions or to government regulators, lawyers or the press. 

As the lawsuit notes, "as a condition of employment, Defendant Google, Inc. requires all of its employees, including supervisors and managers (collectively “Googlers”), to comply with illegal confidentiality agreements, policies, guidelines, and practices. These illegal policies and agreements restrict the Googlers’ right to speak, right to work, and right to whistle-blow. The policies prohibit Googlers from speaking plainly – even internally – about illegal conduct or dangerous product defects, because such statements might one day be subject to discovery in litigation or sought by the government. The policies prohibit Googlers from telling a potential employer how much money they make, or what work they performed, when searching for a different job. The policies prohibit Googlers from using or disclosing all of the skills, knowledge, acquaintances, and overall experience at Google when working for a new employer. The policies prohibit Googlers from speaking to the government, attorneys, or the press about wrongdoing at Google. The policies even prohibit Googlers from speaking to their spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job."

This case does not concern Google’s trade secrets, consumer privacy, or information that should not be disclosed under the law (such as material non-public information under the securities laws). This case instead concerns Google’s use of confidentiality and other policies for illegal and improper purposes. Google defines essentially everything as “confidential information.” However, a publicly-traded company with Google’s reach, power, and close ties to the federal government cannot be permitted to declare to its workforce that everything it does and everything that happens – from the location of a water cooler  to serious violations of the law – is “confidential” upon pain of termination and the threat of ruinous litigation.

Among some of the claims in the filing, is the explosive allegation that Google is a dominant, politically powerful entity, "particularly at the national level."

Google is politically powerful – particularly on the national level. According to a recent newspaper article, “[Google] executives enjoyed lavish parties and regular contact with the highest-ranking people in the executive branch. Personnel seemingly moved from one entity to the other and back on a regular basis. More than 250 individuals have left the government for Google or vice versa during [President] Obama’s tenure. This kind of integration with one company and the executive branch is extraordinary.”   

Google engages in a concerted effort to prevent both internal and external whistleblowing. Specifically, Google restricts what Googlers say internally in order to conceal potentially illegal conduct. It instructs employees in its training programs to do the following “Don’t send an e-mail that says ‘I think we broke the law’ or ‘I think we violated this contract.’” The training program also advises employees that they should not be candid when speaking with Google’s attorneys about dangerous products or violations of the law. The program advises Googlers that some jurisdictions do not recognize the attorney-client privilege, and “Inside the U.S., government agencies often pressure companies to waive the privilege.” Google advises Googlers that they “should write e-mails with the assumption that somebody outside of Google, who may not be friendly to us, will get to read it.”  

Additionally, the lawsuit claims that Google policy prevents employees communicating directly with regulators such as the SEC about potential law violations, in effect making whistleblowing impossible. 

Courtesy of the lawsuit we also learn that Google’s Investigations Team engages in a ‘‘Stopleaks’’ campaign to enforce confidentiality policies by asking employees to file “suspicious activity reports” about colleagues, according to complaint, in other words engage in internal witch hunts:

Google’s Investigations Team is in charge of “Stopleaks,” Google’s companywide effort to prevent the disclosure of any information about Google and enforce its illegal policies. According to Google, “non-malicious leaks happen when an employee shares information with an external person they trusted, and other times internal and confidential information is accidentally marked public. If you know you were inadvertently responsible for a leak, let us know quickly by emailing stopleaks@. We understand that mistakes happen!”

The Stopleaks program is managed through an internal website that includes a Chrome extension to facilitate the reporting of alleged “leaks” on the internet. Employees are required under Google policies to report “leaks” to Stopleaks. A violation of Google’s policies can result in termination.

Under its “Stopleaks” program, after a Googler submits a leak report to the Stopleaks site, Google’s “team of Stopleaks super sleuths investigate every leak. . . . The Stopleaks team researches the project/product that was leaked and aims to determine the leak’s origin. From here, [the Stopleaks team] often liaise with other cross-functional Google teams that may contribute additional context to the investigation.”

In addition to “leaks,” Google also asks Googlers to file “suspicious activity reports,” which Google states can include “strange things you observe or strange things that happen to you – like someone asking you really detailed questions about your project or job.”

The purpose of Google’s “Stopleaks” program is to deter employees from asking questions (even of one another), or disclosing any information about Google in violation of their constitutional and statutory rights.

The lawsuit makes it clear that the crackdown on "leakers" will be severe:

Google also enforces its illegal confidentiality policies with dire warnings and the threat of termination. A Google co-founder has assured Googlers in all hands meetings that anyone who “leaks” “confidential information” will soon be an ex-Googler. Google’s attorneys and executives advise Googlers by email and orally that they will be terminated if they disclose “confidential information.” Brian Katz assures Googlers by email and otherwise to “[b]e aware of the company information you share and with whom you share it. If you’re considering sharing “confidential information” to a reporter – or to anyone  externally – for the love of all that’s Googley, please reconsider! Not only could it cost you your job, but it also betrays the values that makes us a community.”

And yet somehow this organization, which openly preaches paranoia and threatens retaliation against anyone even considering blowing a whistle on the company, has been deemed, together with FaceBook, the guardian of the biggest privilege an American has: free speech.

Below is the statement on the Google "blackout" case made by the plaintiff"s attorney Baker Curtis & Schwartz:

Google claims that everything at Google is "confidential." Indeed, in its Data Classification Guidelines, Google instructs its employees - upon threat of termination - that they must treat even public information as "confidential" by default.

Fortunately for Googlers, it is illegal for an employer to declare everything "confidential." California law gives employees the right to disclose information about their wages and working conditions. Cal. Labor Code §§ 232, 232.5. The law gives them the right to blow the whistle both inside and outside the company. Labor Code § 1102.5. The law gives them the right to engage in lawful conduct during non-work hours. This includes the constitutional right to free speech. Cal Labor Code §§ 96(k) and 98.6.

Google"s illegal confidentiality agreements, policies, and practices have real-world consequences. They harm employees. They restrict competition and freedom of speech. They suppress the legal right of employees to blow the whistle when they see something wrong.

There is a dedicated "Investigations Team" at Google - led by a former government operative - who is charged with tracking down every supposed leak. This team asks employees to preemptively confess to potential violations of illegal policies. The team directs employees to report or inform on one another. This is unnecessarily authoritarian.

Google can do better. It must change its illegal agreements and policies. It must allow fair competition, even from former employees. It must clearly advise employees of their rights under California law, and then it must act accordingly. To date, Google has steadfastly refused to do so.

Full lawsuit is below (link)

FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat

October 30, 2016   |   admintam

(ZHE) In the 24 hours since FBI Director Comey dropped perhaps the biggest bombshell of the entire Presidential campaign, sending Democrats (and media) scrambling headless-chicken-like for answers (and blame-scaping), does anyone else find it odd that ‘FBI Emails’ does not appear to be a hot topic, trending, big deal on any social media?

Snapchat…”Hot”

Facebook… “Trending”

Twitter…”Top Moments”

Buzzfeed… “Trending Now”

As Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger recently asked (and answered), why are these things happening in the first place?

Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives – including CEO Tim Cook – actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.

Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt—chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.

Of course, I covered Groundwork earlier this year. See: Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President

Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.

Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”

The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles – including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.

Many people have pointed out the exact shenanigans described above for other Clinton-related hashtags. In fact, it’s been my self-described progressive friends who have been most up in arms about it.

“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”

This new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.

Personally, I’ve definitely noticed a big-time pro-Clinton bias in my Twitter stream on a daily basis, and I don’t follow people/organizations that would define themselves as overtly pro-Clinton. That’s my honest perception, and I don’t have a dog in this fight.

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This article (FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.