6 posts tagged “liberties”

PLA agents instigated unrest to justify crackdown

Britain's GCHQ spy agency has confirmed the fact that Chinese People's Liberation Army agents posing as monks staged violent riots in Tibet in order to justify a brutal crackdown, but that the demonstrations have now escalated beyond Beijing's control.

According to a report in today's Epoch Times, "GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer."

Fearing that legitimate demonstrators would become more active in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities planned to create a pretext to crush the movement by instigating violence that would sour global opinion towards the Tibetans.

According to the report, GCHQ's geo-positioned satellites in space were able to obtain images proving that the Chinese had infiltrated agent provocateurs into Lhasa. PLA agents posing as monks were responsible for setting fire to buildings and killing non-ethnic Chinese citizens as well as police in an attempt to demonize the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan freedom movement.

However, according to the report, "What the Beijing regime had not expected was how the riots would spread, not only across Tibet, but also to Sichuan, Quighai and Gansu provinces, turning a large area of western China into a battle zone."

Though the report seems to explain why images showed supposed Tibetans protesters inexplicably burning their own villages, it has to be cautioned that Epoch Times is a traditionally pro-Tibetan news outlet and there's no doubt that propaganda is being used by both sides.

It's probable that Chinese PLA agents instigated some of the violence but the fact that young Tibetans are engaging in violence completely of their own accord is largely accepted.

As the report points out, many of the Dalai Lama's supporters are "young, unemployed and dispossessed and reject his philosophy of non-violence, believing the only hope for change is the radical action they are now carrying out"

On a personal note, having visited Tibet myself and experienced some less than cordial interactions with the Tibetan people, it has to be said that they are certainly not deserving of the angelic tag some quarters of the media lavish upon them - being tribal, aggressive and spiteful towards foreign visitors as well as hostile towards tourists from the Chinese mainland.

As we reported on Monday, former Chinese Communist Party official Ruan Ming was the first to accuse China of staging the violent riots in order to demonize Tibetans in the eyes of the international community, justify a brutal paramilitary police crackdown and force the Dalai Lama to resign.

"The demonstration on March 10 was meant to be peaceful. You can see from the pictures that the demonstration was all monks," he explained, adding that the CCP carefully introduced violent unrest in order to "deceive the world".

Wed March 5, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general.

The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.

Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil and privacy rights, said the new report "will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies "predates the reforms we now have in place."

He added: "We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people."

Mueller offered no additional details. Several other Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with this year's findings have said privately the upcoming report will show the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years.

In contrast to the outrage by Congress and civil liberties groups after last year's report was issued, Mueller's disclosure drew no initial criticism from senators at Wednesday's hearing.

Speaking before the FBI chief, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, urged Mueller to be more vigilant in correcting what he called "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters."

"Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected," Leahy said. "There has to be a better chain of command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to."

National security letters are administrative subpoenas that can be issued under the USA Patriot Act in terror and spy investigations.

Um, "maintain" is a poor word choice mr fbi boss, as is "regain."  Try "gain" instead, that word works.

February 27, 2008

PARMA, Ohio (AP) -- A kindergarten student with a freshly spiked Mohawk has been suspended from school.

Michelle Barile, the mother of 6-year-old Bryan Ruda, said nothing in the Parma Community School handbook prohibits the haircut, characterized by closely shaved sides with a strip of prominent hair on top. The school said the hair was a distraction for other students.

"I understand they have a dress code. I understand he has a uniform. But this is total discrimination," she said. "They can't tell me how I can cut his hair."  

An administrator at the suburban Cleveland charter school first warned Barile last fall that the haircut wasn't acceptable. The school later sent another warning to her reiterating the ban.

Mohawks violate the school's policy on being properly groomed, school Principal Linda Geyer said. Also, the school district's dress code allows school officials to forbid anything that interferes with the conduct of education.

Ruda's hair became a disruption last week when Ruda arrived freshly shorn, Geyer said. Administrators called Barile on Friday telling her to pick Ruda up from school.

"This was his third infraction," Geyer said Tuesday. "We felt that we were being extremely patient."

Rather than request a hearing to appeal the suspension, Barile said she'll enroll him at another school. Changing the hairstyle is not an option, she said.

"It's something that he really likes," Barile said. "When people hear Mohawk, they think it's long, it's spiked, it's crazy looking, and it's really not."

Punk's not dead.
PARMA!

By MARK JEWELL
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The organizer of a federal hearing at Harvard Law School on Comcast Corp.'s treatment of subscriber Internet traffic on Wednesday said "seat-warmers" apparently hired by the company prevented other attendees from getting in.

Comcast has acknowledged that it hired an unspecified number of people to fill seats, but said the seat-warmers gave up their spots when Boston area Comcast employees who were advised about the hearing arrived.

But Catherine Bracy, the administrative manager at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said most of the three dozen seat-warmers who arrived hours before the Federal Communications Commission hearing's start on Monday remained during the event's opening hours, as many other members of the public were turned away.

Bracy said she saw a couple of the hired people dozing in the front row during opening remarks.

"I think it's disingenuous to say they were holding spots for Comcast employees," Bracy told The Associated Press, a day after advocacy groups that filed an FCC complaint over Comcast's network management accused the firm of trying to stifle debate at the hearing.

Bracy said when she arrived at 7:15 a.m. as doors opened for the 11 a.m. hearing, none of the 35 to 40 people waiting to get in appeared to know what the hearing's subject matter would be.

"No employees came in to take those seats when the event started," Bracy said.

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said it hired seat-holders only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

"For the past week, the Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf," Philadelphia-based Comcast said in a statement.

Fitzmaurice declined to comment further Wednesday in response to Bracy's statements.

The event featured hearty applause - some in response to comments from a Comcast executive who testified before the FCC's five commissioners, and some in response to Comcast critics' testimony.

The practice of hiring people to fill seats in advance of public hearings isn't unknown in Congress and other forums, but Comcast critics said this case was unique.

"First, Comcast was caught blocking the Internet. Now it has been caught blocking the public from the debate," said Timothy Karr, director of an advocacy campaign backed by a coalition including Free Press. "The only people cheering Comcast are those paid to do so."

FCC spokesman Robert Kenny declined to comment.

The hearing came in response to complaints before the FCC that Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, hampered file-sharing traffic on its cable-modem service. The company has repeatedly said that its traffic management practices are necessary to keep other Internet traffic, like Web content, flowing smoothly.

During the hearing, FCC commissioners signaled that they were looking for greater openness from Internet providers about their traffic management practices, and were ready to step in to enforce the agency's "open Internet" policies.

In addition to serving as the event host, Harvard's Berkman Center has another tie to the controversy. A codirector at the center, Charles Nesson, is among the parties that signed a petition along with Free Press asking the FCC to find that such practices violate agency policies.

By ANICK JESDANUN
27 Feb 2008

NEW YORK (AP) — A whistle-blower credited with providing key documents in a lawsuit over the Bush administration's secretive domestic wiretapping program is one of three recipients of the "Pioneer Awards" from a civil-rights group that brought the challenge.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued AT&T Inc., accusing it of colluding with the National Security Agency to make communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants.

As part of its case, the EFF said it obtained documents from Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who said the documents detail secret NSA spying rooms and electronic surveillance equipment in AT&T facilities.  

The EFF will give Klein a Pioneer Award at a ceremony in San Diego on Tuesday. The award does not carry a cash prize.

Also receiving the 17th annual awards is Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor whom the EFF credited with helping to stop a Canadian copyright proposal that it said would have hurt consumer rights.

A third prize goes jointly to the Mozilla Foundation and its chairwoman, Mitchell Baker. The foundation is the organization that oversees the open-source Firefox browser, a strong alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s market-dominant, proprietary Internet Explorer. The EFF credited Mozilla with promoting openness and innovation on the Internet.

Fri Jan 25, 2008
By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf cast himself as a champion of human rights and free expression on Friday -- then turned on a journalist who questioned him and said rights should have limits.

Addressing a packed audience in Britain at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank, Musharraf spent 30 minutes explaining recent Pakistan history, his battle against militants and plans for national elections set for February 18.

But it was while talking about rights and freedoms that he became most exercised, lauding himself as a true defender.

"I strongly am a believer in human rights and individual liberties and freedom of speech," he said, after being ushered late into the building by a phalanx of guards and attaches.

"The only thing that we would like is that this freedom should be in bounds and not lead to violence and destruction.

"We cannot allow anyone to destabilise us and lead us towards anarchy in the name of human rights," he said.

Sounding at times defensive and argumentative, Musharraf, who took power in a military coup in 1999, said there were three areas in which the West misunderstood Pakistan, wrongly casting aspersions on him and denigrating his policies.

The first, he said, was the conception that a judicial crisis in which he has been responsible for dismissing judges was somehow a human rights issue.

"This was not a human rights issue, it was a legal issue that was converted into a political issue and then further converted into a crisis for the nation," he said.

ELECTIONS

Other misconceptions in the foreign media were that next month's parliamentary vote might not be free or fair and that Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal was not properly secured.

"The election will be free, fair, transparent and peaceful," he said. "Any bugs in the system that could be manipulated have been removed by me and the election officials."

On nuclear weapons, he said there was no possibility of them falling into the hands of what he called extremists -- saying the only way that could happen is if somehow al Qaeda defeated the Pakistan army or won elections and came to power itself.

"Neither of which is remotely possible," he said.

An audience of dignitaries, including the Duke of Kent, a cousin of the Queen, gave him standing applause at the end of his appearance, which came just after a visit to the Davos summit in Switzerland.

But Musharraf, who denied that Pakistan's security services had anything to do with the assassination last month of Benazir Bhutto, his chief election rival, did not leave everyone contented -- particularly not the press.

He dismissed a question from Sky News about whether the election would be fair by saying: "Show me a certificate and I'll sign it." And when a Pakistani newspaper editor based in London asked him about the security services, he turned on him.

"It's people like you who cast aspersions," he said, jabbing his finger. "Then the foreign media take it up... You are trying to cast aspersions by blaming the intelligence services," he said, turning away with the question unanswered.