WikiLeaks Releases Documents on Government Surveillance Tactics
For an ongoing project called Spy files, hundreds of documents on dozens of governments and contractors have been released
by John Glaser, December 01, 2011

WikiLeaks has released secret files shining light on the mass surveillance practices of dozens of governments and the corporate contractors that provide the technology.

The whistle-blowing organization, according to a press release and a new “Spy files” section of the website, is “releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry.” This latest release – with the help of “Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries” including the Washington Post in the U.S. – includes 287 documents, but the “Spy files” project will be ongoing.

“In the last ten years,” reads the press release, “systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm.” Some national security contractors even “record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.”

The contractors and countries included in the Spy files release include SS8 and Blue Coat in the U.S, Gamma corporation in the U.K., Ipoque in Germany, Amesys and Vupen in France, VASTech in South Africa, ZTE Corp in China, Phoenexia in the Czech Republic, among others. …more

Julian Assange: iPhone, Blackberry and Gmail users are ‘screwed’
guardian.co.uk – 2 December 2011

WikilLeaks founder Julian Assange tells smartphone and Gmail users ‘you’re all screwed’ by intelligence contractors who sell mass surveillance devices for such technologies in the post 9/11 world. He also announced that his whistleblowing organisation was embarking on a new ‘source protection platform’

…source

Bahrain hires John Yates, former Met officer, to oversee reform
02 Dec 2011 – By Damien McElroy – Telegraph

Mr Yates has been asked to overhaul the controversial service with John Timoney, a former head of Miami police, to ensure its procedures meet international human rights standards.

The former assistant commissioner resigned in July over accusations surrounding his handling of the phone hacking affair and his ties with Neil Wallis, the former senior executive at the News of the World who later worked for the police force.

An independent report last week found that Bahrain’s security forces used excessive force, torture and summary justice to crush a popular protest movement that paralysed the Gulf state earlier this year. …more

John Yates resigns from Met police over phone-hacking scandal
Vikram Dodd, Sam Jones and Hélène Mulholland – guardian.co.uk – 18 July 2011

‘I have acted with complete integrity and my conscience is clear’ – John Yates Link to this video

The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner John Yates has become the second high-profile Scotland Yard officer to resign over the phone-hacking scandal.

The resignation of Yates – the country’s top counter-terrorism officer – comes a day after his boss, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, stepped down.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said: “Assistant commissioner John Yates has this afternoon indicated his intention to resign to the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). This has been accepted. AC Yates will make a statement later this afternoon.”

His decision to quit came as the Metropolitan Police Authority’s professional standards cases subcommittee held a meeting to consider a slew of complaints against him.

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said the resignations of Yates and Stephenson were “regrettable but right”. He said: “Whatever mistakes have been made at any level in the police service, now is the time to clear them up.” …more

JOHN TIMONEY – King Hamad’s, Fascist Pick for Torture State Reform

13 November, 2009 – by One People’s Project (Anit-fascist Project)

NAME: John Timoney
HOME BASE: Miami, Florida

This just might be the biggest dirt bag to wear a badge today. With his tactics against protests from New York to Philly to Miami, John Timoney has turned every police department he has ran into a garden variety Weirmacht. After what he did in Miami, however, he and many of his officers should be on the inside of a jail cell, but instead he is giving advice to other police departments on how to deal with protestors. This nets him praise among the right, and that should be the first sign that something is wrong with him.

Born in Dublin, Ireland coming to the US at the age of 13 and raised in Washington Heights, Timoney joined the New York City Police force on July 15, 1969. Rising through the ranks rather quickly, he was at the rank of Deputy Inspector when he became notorious in 1988, leading police to attack the homeless, housing activists, squatters and massive numbers of their Tent City supporters in Tompkins Square Park. In 1994, the year Rudolph Giuliani became mayor, Timoney was tapped to be second in command of the NYPD, and nothing said ‘happy days’ more to the brutal police officers out there more than the words ‘Mayor Giuliani’. In June of 1996, Amnesty International released a report titled Police Brutality in the New York City Police Department, which used official police statistics. In it, the organization noted that in 1994, the first year that Timoney was second in command at the NYPD, the city saw ‘a 34% increase in civilians shot dead.’ In the same year, there was also a ‘53.3% increase in civilians shot dead in police custody’ as well as ‘an increase in the number of civilians injured from officers’ firearms discharge during the same period.’ Amnesty also reports that the New York City Civilian Review Board ‘reported that it received 4,920 new complaints in 1994, an increase of 37.43 percent over the previous year’. Timoney’s reign as First Deputy to the Police Commissioner saw a 50% increase of complaints in communities of color.

In 1998, Timoney became the police commissioner of Philadelphia, moving from one city with a racist repressive mayor to another that honors one from their history with a statue similar to the one of Sadaam Hussein we had seen toppled in news footage in 2003. In Philly, he tried to uphold that city’s legendary reputation of police brutality, which he must have been successful in doing because just like in NYC, complaints of police misconduct shot through the roof and reached record levels. The Police Advisory Commission said complaints for the fiscal year 2000 were the most they had received in a single year. The Commission made 13 disciplinary recommendations to Timoney as well as 17 opinions, but it had no real enforcement power and in the end Timoney implemented one recommendation, a one-day suspension. He would also pull stunts like issuing decisions before he receives the Commission’s recommendations. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer commission members have complained that Timoney had rendered their work useless, and it cost the city overall. The Police Advisory Commission’s Executive Director Hector Soto has called Timoney’s behavior ‘an attack on the concept of our commission.’ …more

Forgotten Bahrain
By As’ad AbuKhalil – Mon, 2011-11-28 02:18- Angry Corner – Al-Akhbar

Bahrain is the forgotten uprising. It does not seem to figure on the agenda of any state or party. Few still remember that the Syrian regime had also supported the suppression of the Bahraini uprising: it even supported the Saudi/UAE military intervention (Syria was hoping to win favor with Saudi Arabia and GCC members and to count on their support in a future suppression within its own borders).

Other Arab governments did not express any sympathy or support for the Bahraini people: the region is still suffering from the impact of the acute campaign of Saudi-sponsored anti-Shiite agitation. The Saudi regime was able to take us back to the times when Shiites were not accepted as legitimate Muslims. Al-Azhar, which is easily controlled and bought off, seems to have forgotten that it had officially accepted Twelver Shiites as “legitimate” Muslims.

Bahrain is a special case in many ways. It has always been ahead of other GCC members in political development. It was certainly not due to any kindness on the part of the House of Khalifa, but the Bahraini population has exhibited acute political awareness over the decades. It was for decades a venue of Arab nationalist and leftist political activism. Its press was livelier than the various bulletins of Saudi princes. Labor unions in Bahrain were exemplary models of courageous political activities.

Yet, the House of Khalifa took advantage of the eruption of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 to impose a rigid and repressive rule and roll back the previous political and social advances. The House of Khalifa, like the various GCC countries, took on the formula of replacing the British colonial sponsor with the American imperial sponsor. Once the US receives financial, military, and intelligence services from those reactionary monarchies, it commits itself to firm defense of those regimes against all domestic enemies. The US defended many of those regimes, not against the Islamist extremist of recent years, but against progressive and liberal groups as well. The US rarely raises its voice against repression by Gulf countries. The Obama administration could not even feign outrage at the repression in Bahrain. ….more

How to Start a Revolution: Or the Delusions of Gene Sharp
By As’ad AbuKhalil – 2011-12-02 19:43- Angry Corner – Al-Akhbar

The documentary How to Start a Revolution by Ruaridh Arrow was screened at the Zionist Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, among other places presumably. It comes at a time when Foreign Policy magazine has decided that Gene Sharp “has inspired Arab spring protesters.” It all started with a front page story in the New York Times, which decided—without any evidence whatsoever—that Gene Sharp has inspired a non-violent revolution throughout the Arab world.

Of course, the Arab uprisings have not been non-violent at all: the Egyptian people revolted violently in Suez and other places, and government buildings and police stations have been attacked throughout the country, as were offices of Hosni Mubarak’s party. The Libyan uprising degenerated, with NATO intervention, into multiple wars inside Libya. In Tunisia, the rebels also attacked government buildings. In Syria, the situation is now regularly labeled a “civil war.” So one can easily dismiss the theory of Gene Sharp’s so-called inspiration by underlining the non-non-violent nature of the “Arab spring” — it’s more like an Arab autumn these days. But what does the documentary How to Start A Revolution say?

It is not easy to finish the movie: there is no story, really. It is also a bit disturbing. It focuses on Gene Sharp in his old age, in his house in Massachusetts. In the basement of the house works the executive director of his Albert Einstein Institution. The movie focuses on both. But the director struggles to make his case, and the movie has the feel of a promotional movie of a cult.

Sharp disturbingly has no problem in promoting himself and praising, nay exaggerating, his influence. He starts the movie by talking about the oft-used evidence of the spread of his ideas: that his books have been translated into more than 30 languages. They keep talking about the translation of one of his books (prominently featured in the film) into Arabic. But this is dishonest. Sharp knows that his books were not translated through the initiative of Arab fans. They were translated by his own Einstein Institution and through external funding provided to his organization.

Jamila Raqib (who was featured in the film as his devotee) contacted me a few years ago when the Institution funded the translation of the books. They asked me to supervise the translation process and verify the accuracy. But the books were too uninteresting for me, and I turned down the job (although I referred them to a friend). How could Sharp convince himself that the translation of his work into multiple languages is evidence of his influence when he knows that he himself commissioned the translation of his own work? …more

Counterfeit justice in Bahrain: Court of Cassation upholds the military provisions of the illegitimate National Safety Court

Military provisions against freedom of expression upheld: three years in prison for the photographer and Nurse Hassan Matooq
Despite many reports confirming the absence of the conditions for fair trials, arbitrary detention, and the occurrence of torture, hundreds are still in prison. The international community must act immediately to guarantee justice for victims in light of the vast amount of information

2 Dec 2011 – BCHR
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is deeply concerned with the news that the Court of Cassation has on November 28, 2011 upheld a provision issued by the Military Court (the Court of National Safety) which previously sentenced the nurse and photographer Hassan Matooq to 3 years imprisonment in a move that reveals the government’s intent to continue violations of human rights, in particular the right to a fair trial, protection from torture and freedom of expression. Matooq is serving a prison sentence for his photography activities during the protests.

Hassan Matooq, 30 , a pediatric nurse for more than 7 years, is married with one child and practices photography as a hobby.

On March 24, 2011, after declaring a state of national safety and the start of the mass arrests campaign, Matooq was arrested by more than 20 army masked men from the Salmaniya Hospital, where he was present on duty after midnight. Matooq was exposed to beating, kicking and verbal abuse from the moment of arrest, and even his ring was stolen from his finger by one of those involved in arresting him.

During his detention, Matooq was severely beaten and hung by his hands for up to 8 days at a time. He was prevented from sleeping and threatened that his wife and sister would be raped in front of him. His camera and all the films, as well as his wife’s car which he used to go to work on the day of his arrest, were all confiscated. …source

Saudi Riot Police Kill Shiite Civilians
by Saudi Human Rights – December 1, 2011 – Hudson New York

Since February, Saudi authorities have cracked down on protests in Qatif and Al-Ahsa in the oil-producing Eastern Province, in which protesters demanded an end of the long-lasting discrimination against Shia and the release of nine prisoners who have been held for 16 years without a trial. As a result, Saudi authorities have arrested more 380 persons, including activists and intellectuals. In addition, women and children were part of the arrested. As of now, about 50 persons are still detained, including the human rights activist, Fadhil Al-Manasif, and the writers, Nadeer Al-Majid, Ali Al-Dubaisi, and Zakaria Al-Safwan. Most of the arrested have been banned from traveling and fired from their jobs.

During the protests, riot police have beaten protesters, causing injuries and have harassed and reviled them, using anti-Shiites bigotry (like Farida, Iranian agents, and “Safaris”), reflecting a lack of integrity in dealing with protesters.

Moreover, since the protests have begun, Saudi security forces have fired live bullets at protesters (the attached table details the cases of protesters who have been shot). However, the firing of live bullets has intensified lately, causing the deaths of two persons: Nasser Al-Maharishi (19-years-old), killed near a police check-point; and Ali Al-Filfil, killed in a subsequent heated demonstration after the killing of Maharishi..

These acts violate international human rights law, including free assembly. The violating acts inclde opening fire on protesters; beating them with sticks; unwarranted arrests; firing from jobs, and banning protesters from traveling. Violations have also now reached the serious level of murdering civilians.

Since February, Saudi authorities have failed to take any legal actions to hold accountable those who opened fired on civilians.v …more – list of those murdered by Saudi Forces

Saudis accused of new repression
By mustafaisildak – 30 November 2011 – Egyptian Intifada

Saudi authorities are accused of of arresting people for demanding political and social reform. Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of reacting to the Arab Spring by launching a wave of repression. In a report, the human rights group said thousands of people had been arrested, many of them without charge or trial. Prominent reformists had been given long sentences following trials Amnesty called “grossly unfair”.

So far unrest has largely been confined to the Shia minority in the east of the country.

In its 73-page report published on Thursday, Amnesty accuses the Saudi authorities of arresting hundreds of people for demanding political and social reforms or for calling for the release of relatives detained without charge or trial. The report says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began – in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests – the Saudi government has carried out a crackdown that has included the arrest of mainly Shia Muslims in the restive Eastern Province.

Since March, more than 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in Qatif, Ahsa and Awwamiya in the east have been detained, Amnesty says. Most have been released, often after promising not to protest again. Many face travel bans.

Anti-terror law

Last week 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were given sentences ranging from five to 30 years in prison. Amnesty said they were blindfolded and handcuffed during their trial, while their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions.

“Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region,” said Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director, Philip Luther.

“While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offences,” he said.

Amnesty says that the government continues to detain thousands of people on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention are widespread, it says – an allegation Saudi Arabia has always denied.

The BBC’s Security correspondent Frank Gardner says Saudi Arabia has so far resisted the wave of change that has swept over much of the Arab world. Our correspondent says the kingdom’s ageing monarch, King Abdullah, has reacted by releasing billions of dollars into the security and religious establishments, two of the pillars that support his ruling Al-Saud family.

Amnesty says the government has drafted an anti-terror law that would effectively criminalise dissent as a “terrorist crime” and allow extended detention without charge or trial. Questioning the integrity of the King would carry a minimum prison sentence of 10 years, according to Amnesty. …source

A New Clarity for Washington
by Chris Toensing – December 1, 2011 – MERIP

Bitter Lemons International

Conventional wisdom holds that Washington is one of the big losers in the 2011 upheavals across the Arab world. Two long-time allies, Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak, have fallen, and in their place elections have empowered Islamists, precisely as the deposed dictators had warned for decades. Another important ally, Israel, is nervous about the rise of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the tumult in Syria. Perhaps worst of all from Washington’s point of view, the Obama administration has appeared largely helpless as the revolts have spread, unable to engineer face-saving “orderly transitions” in Egypt or Yemen, and upstaged in diplomacy by regional players like Turkey and tiny Qatar. All of this transpires as American troops retreat from Iraq and double down in a doomed effort in Afghanistan. The 40-year hegemony of the United States in the Middle East is at low ebb.

And yet, if US strategists are sensible, they will be of good cheer. US hegemony, after all, has been one long, exhausting exercise in crisis management. Washington has balanced its twin prerogatives, securing the supply of Persian Gulf oil and protecting Israel, upon the beam of “stability” in Arab states, which became a third end in itself. But those states’ embrace of Washington — whether the US-sponsored “peace processes” with Israel or the neoliberal economic recommendations — continuously undermined their own stability. The result was a series of brittle police states spending heavily on the means of coercion and neglecting the imperative of popular consent. Radical, even nihilist, strains of political Islam grew in these environments.

In the spring, racing against the pace of events, the White House spun a tale of US interests aligning at last with American values of liberty and justice for all. The Libya intervention was to showcase this new commitment, but it is clear to Arabs and Americans alike that Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi was a target of opportunity and not an example to make other despots quail in fear. It could hardly have been coincidental that UN diplomats passed their resolution of de facto regime change in Libya on the same day that Saudi forces crossed the causeway to crush the pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain.

Rather than win the Obama administration credit, the Arab revolts have instead lent discomfiting clarity to American conversations of Middle East affairs. The Obama administration stood by Ben Ali and Mubarak, and then the Bahraini royal family, so it is plain that US support for democracy is a value honored in the breach. The extent of the US partnership with the most anti-democratic regime in the region, the Saudis, has rarely been more obvious and more clearly damaging. Obama’s rebuff of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN — symbolically, Palestine’s right of self-determination, like Tunisia’s and Egypt’s — is likewise inexplicable in terms of values, except the Israel lobby’s. …more

Human rights group calls for release of activists in Bahrain
02 December, 2011 – PALTALK Network

All human rights defenders and those in detention as a result of the National Safety laws enacted in Bahrain should be freed immediately, said a delegation of six international rights organisations visiting the country.

In the wake of the report from the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) on 23 November, the delegation is calling for the king of Bahrain to implement the commission’s recommendations to hold accountable all those responsible for past violations, and to take action immediately to prevent further abuses such as torture of detainees.

The international mission met with numerous human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, bloggers, students, medics and other members of civil society. They detailed ongoing violations of free speech, freedom of assembly and a continuation of the “culture of impunity” cited in the BICI report.

The BICI report specifically recommends that those sentenced for peaceful, political expression must have their sentences commuted or charges dropped. As one blogger noted, “While censorship has been a fact of life in Bahrain for a long time, the criminalization of all forms of speech – even ‘liking’ something on Facebook – is a new low.”

At a meeting with Fatima Al-Balooshi, minister for Human Rights and Social Development, the delegation stressed the importance of unfettered access to Bahrain for international NGOs and media as a means of ensuring transparency and accountability. The delegation is also concerned about government officials who seem to believe that the BICI report closes the door on the past, which could prevent perpetrators of torture and other abuses from being held accountable.

The delegation also remains concerned about the reality on the ground in Bahrain, as two individuals were killed by security forces while the delegation was in-country. Non-violent demonstrators were also met with immediate and disproportionate force by riot police. The mission calls for new orders to be given immediately to police forces, in order to ensure that the rights of citizens to freedom of expression and assembly are honoured. …more

New York Times Interviews Zainab Alkhawaja, days after she stops a column of Security Forces sent to beat up and gas people marching in a Funeral Procession for Bahrain’s latest Martyr, 44 year old Abdulnabi Kadhem Al A’ali, where she was an attendant.

Last Summer, Zainab in her Courage and Defiance was in court when her father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, one of the country’s leading rights activists shouted, “The struggle will continue” as the court read out his life sentence for his leadership role in earlier protests. After he was beaten and forcefully removed from the court, Zainib stood up and chanted, ‘Allahu akbar’, God is great. She too was forcefully removed from the court and arrested. She was charged with contempt of court and was made to sign a pledge not to speak in court again before she was released.”

See the latest Interview with Zainab about her Defiant Face-Off with Bahrain’s Security Forces by NYT HERE