Kucinich jeers: Congress is ‘complicit’ in violating Americans’ constitutional rights
Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Friday, February 26th, 2010

In the wake of congressional Democrats’ reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.
Leave it to stalwart House progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to raise a rallying cry against what he called America’s love of its fears.

“This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate,” he declared in a media advisory.

The specific provisions he cited are the Patriot Act’s powers to conduct roving wiretaps, conduct surveillance of people not thought to have any association with terrorism and tap into your personal records, such as library accounts.

The extensions were approved by Congress and sent to President Obama on Thursday, several days before the Patriot Act’s most nefarious portions were set to expire. President Obama had yet to sign the bill at time of this writing.
The Associated Press called the votes a “political victory for Republicans.”
Some Senate Democrats did attempt to propose some modifications to the legislation that would have allowed for greater oversight, but they were ignored. Democratic leadership bowed to the wishes of Republicans and conducted a voice vote on Wednesday, upon which the one-year extension was passed. The House voted 315-97 in favor on Thursday.
“Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records,” AP added. READ FULL STORY

A turning point in Europe
26 February 2010
wsws.org

Wednesday’s general strike in Greece, involving two million workers in the public and private sectors, marks a turning point in the political situation throughout Europe. It represents the most significant manifestation of a growing movement of resistance to the attempt by Europe’s governments and corporations to make workers pay for the economic crisis and the multibillion-euro bailout of the banks.

At the very onset of this new movement of the working class, two fundamental characteristics have emerged: the movement assumes a cross-border and international character, and the workers immediately come up against the bankruptcy of their old trade union and political organizations—all of which are wedded to a nationalist program.

Indeed, austerity measures are being imposed by governments of the official “left” no less than those of the “centre” and “right.”
This week saw a succession of strikes and protests throughout Europe:
On Monday, Lufthansa’s 4,500 pilots in Germany struck. In France, air traffic controllers struck alongside workers at six French oil refineries. British Airways cabin crew voted by over 80 percent to strike.

On Tuesday, protest rallies took place in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia against the austerity measures of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government of José Zapatero. Trade unions in the Czech Republic announced that public transport would be halted next week.
A one-day general strike of the public sector is planned for March 4 in Portugal over the extension of a wage freeze as part of measures to cut the deficit from 9.3 percent of gross domestic product to 3 percent by 2013. French pilots have also announced plans to strike later this week.
READ FULL STORY

Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
Posted: 2010/02/25
From: Mathaba

Global trade rules don`t protect the poor. They struggle to keep jobs they know will harm or kill them because of no choice...
by Stephen Lendman

In its mission statement, the National Labor Committee (NLC) highlights the problem stating:

"Transnational corporations (TNCs) now roam the world to find the cheapest and most vulnerable workers." They're mostly young women in poor countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Haiti, and many others working up to 14 or more hours a day for sub-poverty wages under horrific conditions.

Because TNCs are unaccountable, a dehumanized global workforce is ruthlessly exploited, denied their civil liberties, a living wage, and the right to work in dignity in healthy safe environments. NLC conducts "popular campaigns based on (its) original research to promote worker rights and pressure companies to end human and labor abuses. (It) views worker rights in the global economy as indivisible and inalienable human rights and (believes) now is the time to secure them for all on the planet." READ FULL STORY

Blackwater Wants to Surge its Armed Force in Afghanistan
A newly released State Department audit of Blackwater praises the firm’s work as the US government weighs expanding Blackwater’s operations in Afghanistan.
By Jeremy Scahill

A just-released US State Department Inspector General’s report [PDF] on Blackwater’s work in Afghanistan reveals that Blackwater is proposing increasing its private armed forces in Afghanistan, particularly in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat where the US is opening consulates. Blackwater is currently in the running for a $1 billion contract to train Afghanistan’s national police force.

In general, the report praises Blackwater’s work in protecting US diplomats and aid officials, saying its “personal protective services have been effective in ensuring the safety of chief of mission personnel in Afghanistan’s volatile and ever-changing security environment.” The Inspector General, however, criticized Blackwater for providing “inappropriate” training for its Afghanistan personnel pre-deployment, saying “before arriving in the country, personal security specialists did not receive a speci?c type of security training unique to operating in the Afghanistan environment,” saying that “rather than taking courses in cultural awareness for Afghanistan, the specialists had been trained in Iraq cultural awareness.”

The IG’s report, which was completed in August, makes no mention of the May 2009 incident where Blackwater operatives allegedly killed two Afghan civilians sparking their arrest in the US on murder charges. That could be because those men worked on a Department of Defense training contract (not a State Department diplomatic security contract) for Blackwater subsidiary Paravant. Blackwater works for multiple federal agencies in Afghanistan. The IG’s report focuses on the work of Blackwater’s recently renamed US Training Center (USTC). “No one under U.S. Training Center’s protection has been injured or killed, and there have been no incidents involving the use of deadly force,” according to the report. The report was released before the December 30 suicide bombing of the CIA station in Khost, Afghanistan where at least two Blackwater operatives were killed while reportedly doing security for the CIA. READ FULL STORY

Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan
Establishment mouthpiece calls for web ID system that would outstrip Communist Chinese style net censorship
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.

As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.

His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.

“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”
Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments. READ FULL STORY

Afghan Resistance against US Invaders
US surge goes full steam ahead in Marjah
by Eric Walberg
Global Research, February 24, 2010

Apart for Abu Ghraib, Fallujah is perhaps the Iraq war’s defining moment. The hatred and resentment of the occupied people found a catalyst in the four Blackwater mercenaries, who were killed and strung up, and no doubt deserved their fate, certainly as symbols of a cynical, illegal invasion. The US soldiers -- who are just as mercenary, being a professional army invading a country sans provocation -- came and "destroyed the village to save it."

The "success" of the blitzkrieg war in Iraq has been difficult to duplicate in Afghanistan, "the heart of darkness", one British commander quipped to his troops as they went into battle, despite dropping far more bombs -- many of them radioactive. The unflagging resistance of the Afghans, their refusal to submit to the occupiers, is that because they realise the invaders are not there for their purported altruistic motives. The thousands of civilians and resistance fighters who have been killed by airstrikes -- none of them guilty of anything more egregious than defending their homeland -- is more than ample proof, as is the craven propping up of a US-imposed government, and the proliferation of US bases in the country. The unapologetically un-Islamic ways of the invaders, their lack of even the remotest understanding of the people they are occupying, is a constant insult to a proud and ancient people.

The new exit plan, so it goes, involves "clearing" all regions of Taliban -- US Marines call it "mowing the grass", acknowledging that as soon as they murder one group of resisters and leave, more pop up. The "new" strategy is to bring in ready-made Afghan administrators and police to create a prosperous, peaceful society once the "enemy" have been destroyed, "winning the hearts and minds" of the locals. "We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in," said chief honcho General Stanley McChrystal. READ FULL STORY