Update on Shurat HaDin lawfare attack on Professor Jake Lynch (Australians for BDS – 8 November 2013)

Update on Shurat HaDin lawfare attack on Professor Jake Lynch (Australians for BDS – 8 November 2013)

On Tuesday Oct 29th, 2 Israeli based organisations and three individuals made an application to the Australian Federal Court against Professor Jake Lynch. The case is Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center & Ors v Jake Lynch, NSD2235/2013.

The applicants are: Shurat HaDin, Green Freedom Limited (Israel Company Number 514 331 479), Andrew Hamilton, David Hans Lange and Jonathan Rose. 



The following media alert was released as a result of this action and prior to a press conference on Wed Oct 30th led by Professor Stuart Rees and Associate Professor Peter Slezak (Professor Jake Lynch is currently overseas on sabbatical leave).


Australian academic faces lawfare attack
The right to criticize the policies of another country is at stake

Today an Israeli based law centre, Shurat HaDin, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia, against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

 They claim that he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals within them, because of these institutions’ support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and their close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

This lawfare attack against academic freedom and freedom of speech has been condemned by over 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries, who have all signed a pledge supporting BDS and offering to be co-defendants in any legal action taken against Lynch.
 

Shurat HaDin has taken many similar actions internationally against groups who supported the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. Professor Stuart Rees comments,
“It seems that this firm, Shurat HaDin works in the civil courts as a proxy for the Israeli government and security forces, seeking to shut down any criticism of the state and its ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

In August, Shurat HaDin lodged a complaint in the Human Rights Commission against Jake Lynch’s refusal to sponsor an Israeli academic from the Hebrew University because of that institution’s links to the Israeli military and the ongoing Occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza.

This overseas firm now wants to silence this highly regarded academic, by taking their complaint to the Federal Court. This challenges the right to take non violent action in support international human rights law and the rights of the dispossessed Palestinians. Australians for BDS condemns racism in all forms, and specifically anti-Semitism.

“Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing machinery continue unabated but the moral force that used to drive that process is fast eroding and, as out of touch as the Abbott government and anti-BDS activists in Australia may be, there is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power. ..

International civil society is holding Israel to account in a way no government has ever been able to do”......Randa Abdul Fattah, Palestinian lawyer and writer resident in Sydney

Professor Jake Lynch released the following statement which was read at the press conference on Wed Oct 30th in Sydney:

“I am confident we will successfully fight off this despicable attack on freedom of expression, which is backed ultimately by the Israeli security state. The Shurat HaDin law centre has links to the Israeli National Security Council, and the Mossad, and has admitted in the past being directed by them as to which targets to pursue. That makes this attempt to subvert political debate in Australia all the more sinister.

In respect of the claims by Shurat HaDin, the boycott policy I wrote for CPACS, after a public meeting held at the University of Sydney, was carefully conceived to avoid discrimination, being confined to a request to the Vice Chancellor to revoke institutional links with two Israeli universities.

 And when I turned down the request by Professor Dan Avnon, to use my name on his application under one of those same schemes, I was (a) not in a position to prevent his coming to Sydney, since he had only to collect two names as host academics out of 3,000 at the University and (b) using my discretion - in effect, being asked for a favour. The law cannot require me to use my discretion in a particular way or it ceases to be discretion!”


A number of opinion pieces have been published recently outlining the issues raised by this action and we have posted links to them below. 

Your support and pledge to be a co-defendant in this case represents a strong stand against this unfounded and spurious lawfare attack by Shurat HaDin. It is unlikely that this organisation will desire to co-join any other defendants, but your ongoing support is crucial as Australians for BDS fights this foreign organisations’ attempts to gag free speech and academic freedom in Australia.

Please encourage others to sign onto the pledge and leave their comments on the site.


 And if you are an academic, please encourage your colleagues to sign on with their title eg. Prof, Dr., as we will be contacting all academics shortly to sign a statement of support for Professor Jake Lynch.

Thank you for your support. We will keep you posted as this case develops.

Queries: australians4bds@gmail.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Antony Loewenstein: To support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is not anti-Semitic

Prof Stuart Rees: Op Ed in New Matilda – Two Thousand Defendants for Human Rights https://newmatilda.com/2013/10/28/two-thousand-defendants-human-rights

Randa Abdel-Fattah: – Who's afraid of BDS? Israel's assault on academic freedom – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics...

Dr Peter Slezak: - Is It Anti-Semitic To Protest Injustice? 
https://newmatilda.com/2013/11/05/it-anti-semitic-protest-injustice

Samah Sabawi: – Israel and the erosion of democracy :  An Australian Story http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/10/israel-erosion-democracy-an-australian-story-2013101511625981682.html

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Received from Mondoweiss on 10 January 2014:


Arab-American scholars back ASA boycott as legal threats start pouring in
Jan 10, 2014 01:38 pm | Alex Kane

The landmark decision by the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions has lead to legal threats, reports of intimidation aimed at pro-boycott scholars and pushback from those in support of the ASA’s decision. The latest is that a group of prominent Arab-Americans have issued a statement in support of the ASA decision, while an Israeli legal center has said that a lawsuit is in the pipeline.

Earlier this week, Palestinian and Arab-American scholars released a missive in support of the ASA boycott, which is part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel.  The statement condemned the “hate” that the ASA has been a target of and expressed appreciation at the ASA’s “recognition that BDS is a legitimate, non-violent tool of resistance by peoples enduring settler-colonialism, occupation, and apartheid.”  Some scholars who signed the letter have already reported receiving hate mail because of it.
It was signed by dozens of prominent figures, including Rashid Khalidi, George Bisharat, Ali Abunimah, Noura Erakat, Nadia Hijab and more. Here’s more from the statement:

By broadening the possibility for critical discussion and debate about the US, Palestine, and Israel, the ASA’s stand has created a new opening that will help to challenge the attack on academic freedom that Palestinian and Arab-American scholars and our allies encounter in the US.
We strongly uphold the principles of free speech and association guaranteed in US jurisprudence and demand that the legal protections offered by these guarantees be extended to our colleagues in the ASA without delay.
We urge all of our colleagues of whatever ethnicity to support the ASA by:
-Becoming a member of the ASA and/or making a donation to the organization,
-Encouraging your department to join the ASA.
-Writing a letter of support to the ASA.

A petition has also been set up for those who agree with the statement.

(Image: Carlos Latuff)

Meanwhile, Shurat HaDin, an Israeli legal group, has said that they will sue the ASA if they don’t cancel their boycott.  Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported that Shurat HaDin, a group that has links to the Israeli government and the Mossad, sent a letter to the ASA claiming that the academic boycott violates anti-discrimination laws in the U.S. since it targets Israelis and Jews.
That threat has elicited major pushback from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the ASA.  Today, the CCR issued a statement decrying the threat:

This threat is the latest in a pattern of legal bullying that has escalated in the U.S. as the movement for Palestinian rights has grown. An academic boycott in fact violates no anti-discrimination laws because it does not target any individual or institution based on their Jewish identity or Israeli citizenship. Rather, it is aimed at institutions with direct relationships to the Israeli government. Shurat HaDin’s attempt to paint this principled action as anti-Semitic and discriminatory against Israelis is not only legally bankrupt, but also trivializes important struggles against anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism.

The ASA also released a statement strongly pushing back against Shurat HaDin’s threat. Here’s ASA President Curtis Marez’s statement in full:

We will not be intimidated by Shurat HaDin and its legal threats.
Unlike in Israel, where criticism of the government’s policies towards the Palestinians is increasingly criminalized, our boycott decision is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Thankfully, in the United States we still have the right to speak out against Israel’s racial discrimination against Palestinians. As an organization we have the absolute right to oppose the discriminatory practices of Israeli academic institutions and their complicity in Israeli human rights abuses.  Everyone knows the First Amendment protects not just speech but conduct.  Shurat HaDin’s claims are particularly odious as our interactions with individual Israeli academics are likely to be more frequent rather than less in the years ahead.

 

AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, VICTORIAN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - OXYMORONS - MORE MORONS THAN OXYS!

There are two organisations in Australia, one a national body and the other a state body, which are supposed to be organisations whose charters enable them to engage in assessing  human rights in our communities, and where there seem to be problems of various sorts, to try to come to a resolution and settle the possible disputes involved.

What do we find?

Australian Human Rights Commission - a new appointee to the board is a political appointee by a government already notorious for its record on human rights abuses.

Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission - a recent appointee to the board is someone from a community organisation which is notorious for its record on hypocrisy - it is a body fortunately not in a position to be able to be guilty of human rights abuses.

UGANDA, NIGERIA, ZIMBABWE, MOST AFRICAN COUNTRIES, IRAN, INDIA, PAKISTAN, RUSSIA - HOMOPHOBES AND MURDERERS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS

The list of countries with homophobia as a major component of their human rights abuses grows apace, with countries added to the list on an almost daily basis.

The most obvious ones are Uganda, Nigeria, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, most African countries, now India, also Pakistan, Bangladesh  - and the list keeps growing.

ASYLUM SEEKERS IN AUSTRALIA - NO SUCH CATEGORY!

What does it mean to be an asylum seeker?

Who are asylum seekers and why are people called asylum seekers?

Why do people leave one country to go to another?

When do people decide they have to leave the country in which they live and hope to enter another?

Which countries do people go to in the hope of trying to gain entry and safety and security?

Where are the places where people who leave their own countries or places of permanent residence go to in relation to where they came from?

Australia and Israel have a lot in common - they are two racist societies and both call themselves democracies.

Israel's racist "democracy" is based on the country being a theocracy and those who are apparently not "Jewish" are seen as "other".

Australia's racist "democracy" is based on the colour of one's skin and one's supposed religion and country of origin. White is good, other is not good or is bad or is unacceptable.

Australia and Israel are both busy demonising asylum seekers as "other" in the sense of their behaviour, and their attempts to be similar to the "settler" population.

Both are failing and are producing tragic circumstances for people who have fled from appalling abuse and persection.


When did Australia and Australians become such an uncaring and callous society?

The following article appeared in The Age newspaper on 21 December 2013:

Scott Morrison's new rules put asylum seekers on notice to behave

Date

December 21, 2013

•  

Tom Allard

National Affairs Editor

New rules to stop refugees being a 'nuisance'

The Coalition delivers a code of conduct for asylum seekers living on bridging visas, which Immigration Minister Scott Morrison says is to stop "anti-social and disruptive activities".
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has identified asylum seekers congregating in large numbers in apartments as the type of ''antisocial'' behaviour that could see them thrown into detention under a new code of conduct for more than 20,000 irregular immigrants living in the community on bridging visas.

Under previous arrangements, anyone on a bridging visa alleged to have broken the law and facing criminal proceedings was returned to detention while the matter made its way through the courts, but the new code greatly widens the types of behaviour that can lead to the penalty.

These include ''antisocial and disruptive activities that are inconsiderate, disrespectful or threaten the peaceful enjoyment of other members of the community''.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Photo: Steven Siewert

''There have been complaints that have been received about antisocial behaviour in terms of overcrowding in particular accommodation that have caused a nuisance to nearby residents and distressed elderly residents as well,'' Mr Morrison said on Friday.

''Currently there's no provision to really manage that behaviour.''

People on bridging visas have extremely limited work rights and receive less than $250 a week in welfare payments. They can wait up to five years to have their refugee status determined under the ''no advantage test'' introduced by the former Labor government.

As a result, many can be crammed into accommodation to help save money, although Mr Morrison said this was not necessarily the type of overcrowding that would be deemed antisocial.

He pointed to ''large numbers of people turning up to particular places and places that are being rented, and that is not where they were living''.

The new code, and the example cited by Mr Morrison of antisocial behaviour, was attacked by the opposition, with Labor's immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, saying ''it reeks of being mean for the sake of it''.

''If people are breaking the law, there should be consequences,'' Mr Marles said.

''But one of the key standards in Australia is the standard of fairness.

''A situation where you don't break the law but you have simply upset someone and, without being tested, a person is put in detention or even sent off shore is concerning. That is not fair.''

Disobeying road rules, failing to comply with an instruction to undertake health treatment, or refusing to co-operate with officials as they review their refugee claims are also deemed to be breaches of the code.

Mr Morrison confirmed that asylum seekers on bridging visas could be sent back to detention without breaking the law, but he said it would require serial breaches.

''I think it is quite helpful to be quite specific with people who are given the opportunity to live in the community what is expected of them. To assume they just know is naive,'' he said.

He noted that in serious cases, asylum seekers in the community could be sent to Nauru and Manus Island.

Mr Morrison said the government wasn't contending that asylum seekers on bridging visas were more likely to commit crimes than the rest of the community but he pointed out that since the election, ''two illegal maritime arrivals have been charged with criminal offences each week''.

These include charges and convictions relating to murder, theft, indecent assault of a minor, assault with a weapon, driving under the influence, attempting to procure drugs, and people-smuggling.

Meanwhile, Mr Morrison said he didn't ''backflip'' when reversing his freeze on new protection visas for asylum seekers, arguing the regulation was no longer necessary because he has since introduced stronger rules.

But legal experts and the Greens say Mr Morrison is engaged in legal ''trickery'' and his new regulation would either be struck down by the High Court or reversed when the Senate reconvenes in February.

With ALEXIA ATTWOOD and JONATHAN SWAN

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP UPDATE AND OVERLAND AND ARENA MAGAZINES

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) issue is causing more and more alarm as information about its secrecy and leaks about what it contains manage to emerge into the public consciousness.

In order to get left-wing journals involved in an issue with which they ought to have been leading and not lagging, I contacted the editors of both magazines and neither knew anything about the issues which would affect them rather deeply.

They invited me to give them more information and I gave them the names of writers and journalists who would be able to tell them a great deal more than I would have been able to.

The latest issues of Overland and arena have just been published and neither of them has anything about TPP in its contents.

If this is the best that left-wing journals can achieve then that says a lot about the state of left-wing politics in Australia.

The main-stream media have not had a great deal in their pages, but certainly more than nothing, and so far some of what has been written is not extreme in its right-wing views on the topic.

So, the only way to make TPP known better is to keep on publishing on my web pages all that we are able to gather from online journals and writers around the world.

To keep you up-to-date, look at our web pages:

Trans-Pacific Partnership Part 1
Trans-Pacific Partnership Part 2
Trans-Pacific Partnership Part 3
Trans-Pacific Partnership Part 4

JEREMY HAMMOND SHARES FATE OF CHELSEA MANNING, EDWARD SNOWDEN, JULIAN ASSANGE, AND MANY OTHERS!

This report is from the New Yorker and tells some of the story of Jeremy Hammond and other "Hactivists" who have helped expose the secrecy of the United States and other governments around the world, who do not carry out their nefarious deeds and acts in our names, but purely in the interests of big business and other like-minded governments.

And furthering the "cause" of the US justice system, the sentencing judge had a conflict of interest, but refused to recuse herself!

November 21, 2013

Hacker with a Cause

Posted by Joshua Kopstein

In 2004, a few years before the rise of Anonymous, the notorious online collective of hackers and activists, a seventeen-year-old named Jeremy Hammond gave a talk on “electronic civil disobedience” at the annual Def Con hacking conference. “We believe that hacking is a tool. It is a means to an end,” he said, shaking his head of bleached-blond hair as he spoke. He rejected those who hack for personal gain or to improve corporate security. He advocated hacktivism, which he defined as “a practical application of network insecurity skills … as a means of fighting for social justice by putting direct pressure on politicians and institutions.”

This past Friday morning, Hammond, now twenty-eight, stood before a federal judge wearing a smirk and a black prison jumpsuit. He was about be sentenced for a string of computer crimes, making him the latest hacktivist to be punished for disrupting computer systems. Hacktivists, unlike the standard criminal hackers, claim to seek political change rather than financial gain—a distinction that rarely earns them much sympathy before the law. But, like his talk at Def Con, Hammond’s final speech in court was unrepentant. “I also want to shout out my brothers and sisters behind bars, and those who are still out there fighting the power,” he began.

Hammond isn’t as widely known as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, but his reputation precedes him: in 2011, he worked with members of Anonymous to break into the systems of the U.S.-government-intelligence contractor Strategic Forecasting, Inc., better known as Stratfor, and to leak millions of its internal e-mails to WikiLeaks. The trove revealed, among other things, surveillance of political groups in the U.S. and abroad, from Occupy Wall Street to activists who campaigned in Bhopal, India, following a deadly gas leak in 1984 that killed thousands of people.

Hammond also aided in the theft of sixty thousand credit-card numbers from Stratfor, which were leaked online after they were used by Anonymous to make more than seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fraudulent charges, which included large donations to charities and nonprofits—although, as the security researcher Mikko Hypponen explained shortly after the leak, none of the intended recipients could make use of the money. The group then defaced Stratfor’s Web site, wiped its client database clean, and destroyed its e-mail server. Hammond, using the alias “sup_g,” told one of his comrades at the time that he was “hoping for bankruptcy, collapse.”

Hammond was caught after he teamed up with Hector Xavier Monsegur, known as Sabu, the leader of the Anonymous splinter group LulzSec and, unbeknownst to Hammond at the time, an F.B.I. informant. Sabu, at the F.B.I.’s request, provided Hammond with a server on which to store stolen data—including what he had obtained from Stratfor—and fed Hammond a list of Web sites to attack.
Hammond had not only been caught in the sting; he had also become an unwitting pawn in the government’s electronic spy games. Hammond claimed that his intrusions, made during January and February of last year, “affected over 2000 domains” and included the government Web sites of Brazil, Turkey, and Syria, among other countries, as well the “official website of the Governor of Puerto Rico, the Internal Affairs Division of the Military Police of Brazil, the Official Website of the Crown Prince of Kuwait, the Tax Department of Turkey, the Iranian Academic Center for Education and Cultural Research, the Polish Embassy in the UK, and the Ministry of Electricity of Iraq.”

At Hammond’s sentencing, when he began reading the names of the countries that Sabu had told him to attack, which the government had redacted from court documents, he was silenced by the judge.
The defense did its best to portray Hammond’s crimes as acts of electronic civil disobedience—the same kind of acts that he’d described years ago at Def Con. They read selections from the hundreds of letters of support that Hammond had received, including one from Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistle-blower. They blasted the government’s “one-dimensional view” of Hammond’s actions, saying that his motivations for exposing powerful institutions like Stratfor were the same as those that had inspired his community service in his native Chicago, where he frequently volunteered at soup kitchens and taught disadvantaged kids how to use computers.

The U.S. district judge Loretta Preska was unmoved, focussing on statements made by Hammond in online chat logs, where he encouraged his fellow Anonymous members to cause “maximum mayhem” with Stratfor’s credit cards. Besides, Preska reasoned, Hammond was a repeat offender who had already served a two-year sentence for hacking the Web site of Protest Warrior, a right-wing group known for crashing anti-war rallies. “These are not the actions of Martin Luther King, of Nelson Mandela … or even Daniel Ellsberg,” she said.
Even if Preska had been sympathetic to Hammond or to his cause, it would have been difficult for her to hand down a particularly lenient sentence. The Supreme Court has instructed judges to ignore sentencing guidelines at their own peril, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an anti-hacking law that was enacted in 1986 and was modelled on a wire-fraud statute from 1952, which was itself based on a 1948 mail-fraud statute, engenders restrictive sentencing guidelines.

General federal sentencing guidelines establish forty-three levels of “offense seriousness.” The higher the level, the more severe the punishment. In a hacking crime, prosecutors can do a number of things to increase the level of offense, including deconstructing a single act of hacking into multiple charges: unauthorized computer use, wire fraud, damaging “a protected computer,” stealing protected information, and sometimes even aiding and abetting other crimes. They can calculate the damages caused by the hack—“the loss”—at a high rate, and they can present evidence that the defendant is not taking responsibility for what he has done.

In Hammond’s case, his plea agreement notes that the “base offense level” for his crime was six, which would typically carry a sentence of six to twelve months. But the prosecutors calculated that he had caused more than a million dollars in damage and harmed more than two hundred and fifty people. Taking into account his prior convictions, his “adjusted offense level” was thirty-one, for which the minimum penalty is twelve years. To avoid such a long sentence, Hammond pleaded guilty to one count of a conspiracy to violate the C.F.A.A., which carries a maximum of ten years, and he asked the court for lenience because he had used “his abilities to potentially unmask unlawful surveillance and intelligence-gathering efforts and seek out hidden truths.”

Declaring a need to “promote respect for the rule of law,” Preska gave Hammond the maximum sentence of ten years. His jail time will be followed by three years of supervised release, during which all of his devices will be monitored by police software, his property will be subject to warrantless searches, and he’ll be forbidden from using encryption or anonymity tools.

In a letter to the court on Hammond’s case, Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, points to a defendant who was recently convicted in a hundred-million-dollar welfare-fraud scheme and received a hundred and twenty-five months in prison—only five months longer than Hammond’s sentence, despite inflicting far greater damages. Hammond’s collaborators in the U.K. received dramatically lighter sentences than he did, ranging from two hundred hours of community service to thirty-two months in prison.

The disparity is even more apparent in the case of the Paypal Fourteen, the group charged for participating in the distributed-denial-of-service attack (D.D.O.S.) that disrupted the online-payment Web site in retaliation for its refusal to process WikiLeaks donations. D.D.O.S. attacks don’t involve breaking security or stealing information; instead, they flood Web sites with hundreds of thousands of requests, overwhelming the servers and making them temporarily unavailable. Stanley Cohen, an attorney for one of the Paypal defendants, described the tactic as an “electronic sit-in”—a twenty-first-century salute to the legacy of Birmingham, Alabama. Others argue that D.D.O.S. attacks are a form of censorship—noting that it has been appropriated by corporations and governments as a weapon of cyberwarfare.

But the C.F.A.A.’s broad guidelines for calculating “loss” mean that digital protests often result in much harsher penalties than their real-world analogues in the U.S. For example, most of the seven hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested for blocking off the Brooklyn Bridge in October, 2011, received a night in jail plus a small fine. But for their D.D.O.S. disturbance, the Paypal Fourteen are each facing up to fifteen years in prison, with a plea deal possible only if thirteen members of the group comply.

Not long ago, a young activist named Aaron Swartz sat before a different judge in a similar situation. His transgressions were far more innocuous: Swartz, whom Larissa MacFarquhar wrote about in March, was indicted for downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR, a pay-walled service he had free access to on M.I.T.’s campus. JSTOR dropped its charges, but the government chose to pursue the case aggressively, in a move that was widely condemned as prosecutorial overreach by lawyers, friends, and fellow-activists.

As with Hammond’s hearing, the broad language of the C.F.A.A. statute allowed prosecutors to pile on charge after charge, threatening Swartz with up to thirty-five years in prison and pressuring him to accept a guilty plea rather than undergo an expensive trial. In January, Swartz committed suicide.
Another similar case is that of Barrett Brown, a journalist and online activist. Sometimes known as a former “unofficial spokesperson” for Anonymous, he is currently facing fifteen years in prison for copying and pasting a public link to the Stratfor documents that Hammond stole into an online chat room; he faces an additional thirty years for aiding and abetting those crimes. The government argues that sharing the link is a crime simply because he knew that the link contained credit-card information and it “caused the data to be made available … without the knowledge and authorization” of Stratfor.

Judge Preska refused to recuse herself from the case after Hammond’s attorneys filed a motion last year requesting that she do so, noting that her husband, Thomas Kavaler, was a partner at a law firm whose information was compromised in the Stratfor leak. At a rally of Hammond supporters in Foley Square after the sentencing, the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges told the crowd, “She never, ever should have been allowed to sit this case …. The danger of what happened today is that the assault on figures like Hammond, like Barrett Brown, like Edward Snowden … is essentially attempting to crush any possibility that the public can be informed about what the centers of power are doing.”

Other examples of this form of activism abound: in 2011, the artist and activist Ian Paul organized an action called Border Haunt, in which hundreds of participants spammed a police database with the names of immigrants who have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. That same year, hacktivist groups provided Arab Spring protesters who had been cut off from the Internet with dial-up connections, mesh networks, and guides on how to properly treat tear gas. They also shut down government Web sites in Egypt and Tunisia in retaliation.

Hammond is perhaps another example of how hacktivism and leaking have created a new type of political dissenter. His tactics, of course, are the same as those used by criminals seeking personal gain, which is why they’re sometimes described as “cyberterrorism.” But as Hammond explained it in 2004, hacking can be a tool and hacktivism just one component in a comprehensive program of political engagement. Whether and to what extent the U.S. government will recognize it as such remains an open question
.
Joshua Kopstein is a cyberculture journalist from New York City.
Correction: Aaron Swartz’s case was not heard in the same court as Hammond’s.
Above: The Codehack conference. Photograph by Fabrizio Giraldi/LUZ/Redux.

VLAD THE IMPALER - CLOSET QUEEN OF ALL RUSSIA!

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is passing homophobic laws and ensuring the Sochi winter olympics should be homo-free.

At the same tile he has also made a new media controller who is as homophobic as they come.

All of this from a man who doesn't miss a photo opportunity which exposes his torso for all his admirers - gay and straight alike.

Just look at the samples of photos in international collections who have made the connection between Putin's bodily appearances and his closet gay persona.

When is the rest of the world going to make the connection and "expose" this man for the charlatan that he indubitably is?

Pictures of Vladimir Putin Looking Like a Complete Badass!


The laws that have been passed in Russia in recent times are draconian human rights abuses against people who have different sexualities from the mainstream, and ever since the fall of Gorbachov's regime and the re-introduction of religious fanatics into the Russian mainstream, gays, lesbians, transgenders and HIV/AIDS members of the communities have suffered - and will continue to suffer - indignities, assaults, bashings, abuses - and murders.

We all need to raise our voices in protest, and those supporters of our communities in the rest of the world should be boycotting the winter games in Sochi in 2014.

If they don't boycott, they are as bad as those who don't support BDS in support of the Palestinians.

"AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL"

NELSON MANDELA DIED ON THURSDAY 5 DECEMBER 2013 - NOW READ,WATCH AND LISTEN TO THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE HYPOCRITICAL BULLSHIT!

Thank you again, Michael Leunig, for saying what I was trying to say in words, but the picture says it better!

The caption reads: Traditional Scene: bullies, liars and hypocrites weeping over the dead saint
(From The Age newspaper, 10 December 2013)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95 after a long illness.

After all the tortures and difficulties he lived through over all those years, it is phenomenal that he lived to such a ripe old age.

And, in all the eulogies and stories about his life and struggles and political activities, those who worked and fought with him should not be forgotten. I refer to Cecil Williams who was in the car that Mandela was driving when he was arrested. The CIA had helped the apartheid regime track them down, and we get back to the tangled web that all of them were busy weaving - and are weaving - in the pernicious political climates of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The blather and bullshit and hypocrisy started on ABC1 television news on the night of Friday 6 December 2013. Bob Hawke was interviewed by Leigh Sales and Hawke stated about human rights and equality and how the blacks suffered in South Africa under the white apartheid regime.

These people don't hear themselves and don't see themselves in the context of apartheid in Australia and Australia's treatment of the Aboriginal communties in Australia.

Hawkes' next item of breathtaking hypocrisy was over economic sanctions to be applied to apartheid South Africa - Hawke stated that apartheid was evil and sanctions were necessary and helped bring the end of the apartheid South African state. However, Hawke is totally - and angrily - opposed to BDS - or economic sanctions - against the apartheid Israeli state - after all Israel is our great ally!

Barak Obama was also holding forth about Mandela and his achievements, but Obama is guilty of some of the biggest crimes we have seen in our lifetimes and we are in our late 80s! Mandela was in jail for 27 years and Private Manning has been jailed for 35 years for being a whistleblower on the crimes of the United States government - only ever increasing daily perpetrated by the Obama administration - just think about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements being attempted by 12 governments - at the moment!

The following is a post on Mondoweiss on 7 December 2013:

Obama’s Mandela eulogy — moving, and hypocritical
Dec 06, 2013 07:50 am | Matthew Taylor
“My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid,” President Obama said in his eloquent, moving, and hypocritical eulogy of Nelson Mandela. As a citizen activist Obama opposed apartheid, and today as president he is presiding over billions of dollars in military aid to an Israeli regime that, by any reading of international law, is committing the Crime of Apartheid against the Palestinian people.
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Mandela famously said in 1997, and he favorably characterized the UN’s stance as “recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine” going as far back as 1977. Archbishop Demond Tutu and other South African leaders have equated Israel’s regime to Apartheid or worse, calling for boycott, divestment, and sanctions.
If Obama withheld aid to Israel conditional on Israel respecting international law, human rights, equality, and the relevant U.N. resolutions, his eulogy of Mandela would be delivered by a leader worthy of the stage. As it is, Obama is doing what so many other Presidents have done: co-opting a revolutionary to hide his own shame. It’s reminiscent of those in the U.S. government (including Obama) who glorify Dr. King’s “I have a dream speech” and the movement for racial equality, entirely eliding King’s criticism of the Vietnam War, his strident insistence on nonviolence as the basis for a just society, and his indictment of the U.S. Empire as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
Perhaps Obama feels he can do no better than he’s done, that he’s tied to the mat by the Israel lobby and any move to confront the Israelis on colonization, human rights violations, and so forth would be political suicide. However, in a second term with no re-election around the corner, could he not at least be as courageous as Bush Senior and condition some of the aid on a change in behavior? As ex-President, freed of political constraints, will he recover the courage he had as a citizen activist, and join today’s struggle against apartheid?

The following item is from Nation of Change, posted on 7 December 2013:

From Freedom Fighter to Political Prisoner to South African President

Juan Gonzalez

Democracy Now! / Video Feature

Published: Friday 6 December 2013

Democracy Now! air highlights of Mandela in his own words over the years including a rare TV interview from the eraly 1960s.

Former South African president and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95. South African President Jacob Zuma announced Mandela's death Thursday saying, "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost their father." Mandela was held as a political prisoner for 27 years from 1962 to 1990. In 1994, four years after his release from prison, Mandela became South Africa's first black president. We air highlights of Mandela in his own words over the years including a rare tv interview from the early 1960s.

The following is from Mondoweiss on 8 December 2013:

ISRAEL CELEBRATES MANDELA'S DEATH IN TRADITIONAL ISRAELI APARTHEID STYLE - WITH THEIR USUAL PANACHE AND FINESSE! 

Israeli military attacks Palestinian commemorations of Nelson Mandela
Dec 07, 2013 09:55 am | Kate

(Photo via Twitter)

Israeli forces attack protests commemorating Mandela across West Bank
[photos] RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 6 Dec — Dozens of Palestinians were injured and one detained as Israeli forces opened fire to disperse protests against the Israeli occupation and commemorating Nelson Mandela’s death across the West Bank on Friday afternoon. Protests against the Israeli occupation and separation wall took place in villages across the West Bank, including in Bil‘in, al-Ma‘sara, Kafr Qaddum, and Nabi Saleh. Demonstrators raised slogans and posters of South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in many villages, commemorating the legacy of the “freedom fighter” who passed away on Thursday … In Nabi Saleh, Israeli forces dispersed demonstrators who marched throughout the village raising Palestinian flags as well as photographs of Mustafa Tamimi, who was shot dead by Israeli forces at a similar rally in 2011. Israeli forces opened fire on the demonstrations throughout the day with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. [details from all these villages]
link to www.maannews.net

........and this also from Mondoweiss on 6 December 2013 with Israeli hypocrisy and distortions shining through:

Shimon Peres on Mandela and Apartheid: Now & Then

Adam Horowitz on December 6, 2013 11

Now:

The world lost a great leader who changed the course of history. On behalf of the citizens of Israel we mourn alongside the nations of the world and the people of South Africa, who lost an exceptional leader. Nelson Mandela was a fighter for human rights who left an indelible mark on the struggle against racism and discrimination. He was a passionate advocate for democracy, a respected mediator, a Nobel peace prize laureate and above all a builder of bridges of peace and dialogue who paid a heavy personal price for his struggle in the years he spent in prison and fighting for his people. Nelson Mandela’s legacy for his people and for the world will forever remain engraved in the pages of history and the hearts of all those who were touched by him. He will be remembered forever.

From Shimon Peres’s Facebook page.

Then:

In November 1974, Shimon Peres came to Pretoria to meet secretly with South African leaders. After the trip he wrote to his hosts thanking them for helping to establish a “vitally important” link between the two governments. Peres — who routinely denounced apartheid in public — went on to stress that “this cooperation is based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and out refusal to submit to it.” Peres predicted that “the new links which you have helped to forge between our two countries will develop into a close identity of aspirations and interests which will turn out to be of longstanding benefit to our countries.” Over the next two decades Peres’s prediction would prove to be remarkably accurate.
He met South African defense minister P.W. Botha the following year in Switzerland, and it was there that the two ministers laid the foundation for an enduring military relationship.

From The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa,

 p. 80.

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From Antony Loewenstein, 10 December 2013:

What Mandela teaches Israel (but she isn’t listening)

The great Gideon Levy in Haaretz (and one of the finest columns on the death of the great South African, though Jonathan Cook’s dis­sent­ing view is vital):

South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela, in his ad­dress for In­ter­na­tional Sol­i­dar­ity Day with the Pales­tin­ian Peo­ple on De­cem­ber 4, 1997, said: “We know too well that our free­dom is in­com­plete with­out the free­dom of the Pales­tini­ans.” And Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said after Man­dela’s death: “Nel­son Man­dela was among the great­est fig­ures of our time … a man of vi­sion and … a moral leader of the high­est order.”

The sharp-eyed surely no­ticed the pic­ture in the back­ground when Ne­tanyahu de­liv­ered his state­ment: an Is­raeli flag and the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. There he was, eu­lo­giz­ing the “moral leader” against the back­ground of the oc­cu­pied city, whose Pales­tin­ian res­i­dents are op­pressed and dis­pos­sessed. It’s a city where a sep­a­ra­tion regime pre­vails – an ex­am­ple of Is­raeli apartheid, even if it’s not the worst ex­am­ple. The sharp-eared must have no­ticed how false his flow­ery words sounded.

Pres­i­dent Shi­mon Peres also of­fered high praise for the “leader of im­mense stature,” and his words were no less hyp­o­crit­i­cal. The man who was in­volved up to his neck in the dis­grace­ful co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Is­rael and apartheid South Africa, who hosted its prime min­is­ters with pomp and cir­cum­stance while Man­dela lan­guished in prison, is sud­denly ad­mir­ing the man who sym­bol­ized the strug­gle with that regime.

Nei­ther Peres nor Ne­tanyahu have any right to eu­lo­gize Man­dela; both are re­spon­si­ble, more than any other states­men in the free world, for un­der­min­ing his legacy and es­tab­lish­ing the (non­iden­ti­cal) twin of the regime he bat­tled. They’re eu­lo­giz­ing him? Man­dela will turn in his grave and his­tory will laugh bit­terly.

Is­raeli pub­lic opin­ion tol­er­ates every­thing, even in­tol­er­a­ble, two-faced eu­lo­gies. But Is­raeli co­op­er­a­tion with the apartheid regime, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of its legacy in the oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, cry out be­yond the gloomy skies of a griev­ing South Africa.

The world’s mourn­ing should in­spire some pointed ques­tions here as well. Why was Is­rael vir­tu­ally the only coun­try that col­lab­o­rated with that evil regime? Why are so many good peo­ple con­vinced that Is­rael is an apartheid state? While it may not pay to dwell on past shame – even Man­dela for­gave Is­rael – ques­tions about the pre­sent should dis­turb us greatly.

In April I vis­ited the new South Africa that Man­dela had forged as a guest of its For­eign Min­istry. The visit was etched deeply in my heart, as com­par­isons to the Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion regime cried out from every stone, and with them also hope for change.

For ex­am­ple, there was the Supreme Court in Jo­han­nes­burg, built on the ruins of the prison where blacks were thrown when they dared enter for­bid­den areas to find work. And in Soweto I vis­ited Man­dela’s home, where you can still see the bul­let holes of a failed at­tempt at a “tar­geted killing.”

The com­par­isons echoed, as did the lessons. Roelf Meyer – a de­fense min­is­ter, con­sti­tu­tion min­is­ter and deputy min­is­ter of law and order dur­ing apartheid, and later chief ne­go­tia­tor with the African Na­tional Con­gress – told me: “If we had started a few years ear­lier, we could have pre­vented a lot of blood­shed and got­ten a bet­ter deal.” After beat­ing his breast over many sins, Meyer is now part of the new regime, like many whites.

An un­just state be­comes a just state; dis­crim­i­na­tion and dis­pos­ses­sion are re­placed by equal­ity and democ­racy. The scowl­ing faces tell of South Africa’s back­ward­ness and ris­ing crime, which are se­ri­ous prob­lems. But they don’t re­duce the enor­mity of the his­toric achieve­ment and its les­son for Is­rael: When a coun­try turns from un­just to just, every­thing else is dwarfed in com­par­i­son.

Man­dela proved that the dream is re­al­is­tic, that what seemed like a fan­tasy only 20 years ago is achiev­able, and with­out much blood­shed. He showed that en­e­mies of the past can live to­gether in one coun­try and even have equal­ity; that a new chap­ter can be opened against all odds.

Man­dela said he was not lib­er­ated as long as the Pales­tini­ans were not free. Those in Is­rael who seek to eu­lo­gize him can’t con­tinue to ig­nore this.

From Jonathan Cook's blog, 6 December 2013:

A dissenting opinion on Nelson Mandela

6 December 2013

What I am going to write here will doubtless make me unpopular with some readers, even if only because they will assume that what follows about Nelson Mandela is disrespectful. It is not.
So let me start by recognising Mandela’s huge achievement in helping to bring down South African apartheid, and make clear my enormous respect for the great personal sacrifices he made, including spending so many years caged up for his part in the struggle to liberate his people. These are things impossible to forget or ignore when assessing someone’s life.

Nonetheless it is important to pause during the general acclamation of his legacy, mostly by people who have never demonstrated a fraction of his integrity, to consider a lesson that most observers want to overlook.

Perhaps the best way to make my point is to highlight a mock memo written in 2001 by Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman. It is a wonderful, humane denunciation of Friedman’s hypocrisy and a demand for justice for the Palestinians that Mandela should have written.

Soon afterwards, the memo spread online, stripped of el-Fassed’s closing byline. Many people, including a few senior journalists, assumed it was written by Mandela and published it as such. It seemed they wanted to believe that Mandela had written something as morally clear-sighted as this about another apartheid system, one at least the equal of that imposed for decades on black South Africans.

However, the reality is that it was not written by Mandela, and his staff even went so far as to threaten legal action against the author.

Mandela spent most his adult life treated as a “terrorist”. There was a price to be paid for his long walk to freedom, and the end of South Africa’s system of racial apartheid. Mandela was rehabilitated into an “elder statesman” in return for South Africa being rapidly transformed into an outpost of neoliberalism, prioritising the kind of economic apartheid most of us in the west are getting a strong dose of now.

In my view, Mandela suffered a double tragedy in his post-prison years.

First, he was reinvented as a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility.



Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was forced to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.

It is an indication of what Mandela was up against that the man who fought so hard and long against a brutal apartheid regime was so completely defeated when he took power in South Africa. That was because he was no longer struggling against a rogue regime but against the existing order, a global corporate system of power that he had no hope of challenging alone.

It is for that reason, rather than simply to be contrarian, that I raise these failings. Or rather, they were not Mandela’s failings, but ours. Because, as I suspect Mandela realised only too well, one cannot lead a revolution when there are no followers.

For too long we have slumbered through the theft and pillage of our planet and the erosion of our democratic rights, preferring to wake only for the release of the next iPad or smart phone.

The very outpouring of grief from our leaders for Mandela’s loss helps to feed our slumber. Our willingness to suspend our anger this week, to listen respectfully to those leaders who forced Mandela to reform from a fighter into a notable, keeps us in our slumber. Next week there will be another reason not to struggle for our rights and our grandchildren’s rights to a decent life and a sustainable planet. There will always be a reason to worship at the feet of those who have no real power but are there to distract us from what truly matters.

No one, not even a Mandela, can change things by him or herself. There are no Messiahs on their way, but there are many false gods designed to keep us pacified, divided and weak.

WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION - OXYMORON, CONTRADICTION IN TERMS??

This arrived by email on 26 November 2013. I was very puzzled by the subject matter until I started looking in search engines and came across some very interesting items relating to this.

They will be included under this email and I trust you will find this whole story as fascinating as I have.

FOR URGENT ATTENTION

     WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION                 File No. SAX- 15,006

                      To:   Mannie de Saxe

                               

                                  A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka.

                            It has been evidenced by the documentation provided to us by the Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes in Kuwait City.

                            It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world`s extreme Izrail haters. You have an extensive history of collaboration with the jihadist Palestinian war criminals in Gaza, with the Fatah gangsters in Ramallah, and the Hizbullah heretics in Beirut in the commitment of the crime of collective punishment against innocent Izrailite civilians, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.

                           It calls on all trade unions, community groups, clergy, the media, academics, human rights NGOs, womens' organizations, educated Muslims and governments to have you incarcerated as a violator of international humanitarian law and a traitor to the people of Australia.

                           Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to racist Jews like you who violate the teachings of the Holy Qur'an regarding the Izrailite waqf entitlement, as the People of the Book, to the Holy Land of Izrail.

                           As an affiliated NGO with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, we will do our part to bring you, a kaffir and harbi, to justice.

                           A copy of this letter has been handed to the Australian security authorities in Canberra to have you inscribed on the international no-fly lists and to confiscate your passport.

                           As well, it is deposited with the International Council of Imams in Djakarta for their separate actions against you.

                           We have also requested that Interpol seek a warrant for your arrest as a terrorist collaborator of Hamas as an interim measure, pending a trial for violating the Australian anti-terrorism regulations.

                          O Allah! let Your glorious Majesty reign upon the entire world with the arrogant kaffirs and harbis burning in Hell as promised to us by Your Messenger of Wonder, Muhammad, peace be upon Him.

                                   O Allah! let this man's ugly face be forever covered with dung for the stench he has emitted by trampling on Your holy People of the Book.

         

                                               Sealed by:

                                                            Sheikh Abdul Haidar Khan

                                            Chief Justice

                                            WMZO Sharia Court  

                                            Dhaka, Bangladesh
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Options

Palestine Justice Network · 702 like this

April 25, 2012 at 12:13pm ·

WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION File No. PALMED-6991



To: Palestinejn


A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka.

It has been evidenced by the documentation provided to us by the Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes in Brussels.

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world`s extreme Izrail haters. You have an extensive history of collaboration with the jihadist Palestinian war criminals in Gaza, with the Fatah gangsters in Ramallah, and the Hizbullah heretics in Beirut in the commitment of the crime of collective punishment against innocent Izrailite civilians, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.

It calls on all clergy, universities, human rights NGOs, educated Muslims and Christians and governments to have you incarcerated as a violator of international humanitarian law and a traitor to the Muslim ummah.

Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to treacherous organisations like you who violate the teachings of the Holy Qur'an regarding the Izrailite waqf entitlement, as the People of the Book, to the Holy Land of Izrail.

As an affiliated NGO with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, we will do our part to bring you, kaffirs, to justice.

A copy of this letter has been handed to the European Union authorities in Brussels to have your members inscribed on the international no-fly lists and to revoke your passports. As well, it is deposited with the International Council of Imams in Djakarta for their separate actions against your flock.

We have also requested that Interpol seek a warrant for the arrest of your clique as Alawite collaborators as an interim measure, pending a trial for aiding denominated Syrian and terrorist entities in violation of the Islamic faith and doctrines.

O Allah! let your glorious Majesty reign upon the entire world with the arrogant kaffirs and harbis burning in Hell as promised to us by your Messenger of Wonder, Muhammad, peace be upon Him.




Sealed By:


Sheikh Abdul Haidar Khan
Chief Justice
WMZO Sharia Court
Dhaka, Bangladesh

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Dr Stephen Sizer

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

The Blessings of a Fatwa

WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION   File No. SIZ - 11,887

To: Stephen Sizers

A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka.

It has been evidenced by the documentation provided to us by the Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes in Doha.

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world`s extreme Izrail haters. You have an extensive history of collaboration with the jihadist Palestinian war criminals in Gaza, with the Fatah gangsters in Ramallah, and the Hizbullah heretics in Beirut in the commitment of the crime of collective punishment against innocent Izrailite civilians, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.

It calls on all parliamentarians, clergy, womens organizations, Anglican agencies, media, universities, human rights NGOs, educated Muslims and governments to have you incarcerated as a violator of international humanitarian law and a traitor to the British people.

Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to treacherous Christian clergy like you who violate the teachings of the Holy Qur'an regarding the Izrailite waqf entitlement, as the People of the Book, to the Holy Land of Izrail.

As an affiliated NGO with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, we will do our part to bring you, a kaffir and harbi, to justice.

A copy of this letter has been handed to the British Home Office in London and the Commission of the European Union in Brussels to have you inscribed on the international no-fly lists and to confiscate your passport.

As well, it is deposited with the International Council of Imams in Djakarta for their separate actions against you.

We have also requested that Interpol seek a warrant for your arrest as an Hamas collaborator as an interim measure, pending a trial for aiding denominated Middle East terrorist entities in violation of the UK anti-terrorism laws.

O Allah! let Your glorious Majesty reign upon the entire world with the arrogant kaffirs and harbis burning in Hell as promised to us by Your Messenger of Wonder, Muhammad, peace be upon Him.

O Allah! let this man's ugly face be forever covered in dung for the stench he has emitted by trampling on Your Holy People of the Book.

Sealed By:

Sheikh Abdul Haidar Khan

Chief Justice
WMZO Sharia Court
Dhaka, Bangladesh

I sent Sheikh Abdul the following verses from the Lord Jesus and Apostle Paul to ponder as I count myself doubly blessed by his Fatwa.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:10-12)

"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse... Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:14, 17-21)

Posted by Stephen Sizer at 12:00     

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road2tahrir

Strategize. Organize. Mobilize. My experiences and observations on the road to tahrir (liberation)

Search

‘World Muslim Organization’ issues “Fatwa” against GMJ organizers-LOL (Global March to Jerusalem)

Posted on March 26, 2012

This was no doubt sent by a Zionist troll. In the coming days we expect more of these kinds of amusing attacks. It is a known fact that Israel pays its supporters billions of dollars to harrass and intimidate human rights activists for justice, peace and equality.
I hope they will soon see that they see their threats and even use of violence will not dissuade us. I hope they will soon realize, that when they kill one freedom fighter, ten more of us will replace her.
#FreeFreePalestine

FOR URGENT ATTENTION
WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION File No. LAR-6711
A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka.
It has been evidenced by the documentation provided to us by reliable sources in the Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes, based in Washington.

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world`s extreme Izrail haters. You have an extensive history of collaboration with the jihadist Palestinian war criminals in Gaza, with the Fatah gangsters in Ramallah, and the Hizbullah heretics in Beirut in the commitment of the crime of collective punishment against innocent Izrailite civilians, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.

It calls on all trade unions, clergy, womens’ organizations, student bodies, universities, human rights NGOs and governments to have you incarcerated as a violator of international humanitarian law and a traitor to the American people.

Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to treacherous individuals like you who violate the teachings of the Holy Qur’an regarding the Izrailite waqf entitlement, as the People of the Book, to the Holy Land of Izrail.

As an affiliated NGO with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, we will do our part to bring you, a kaffir, to justice.

A copy of this letter has been handed to the USA Homeland Security Department to have you inscribed on the international no-fly lists. As well, it is deposited with the International Council of Imams in Djakarta for their separate actions against you..

We have also requested that the American State Department confiscate your passport and garnishee your bank assets as an interim measure, pending a trial for aiding denominated terrorist entities in violation of American laws.

O Allah! let your glorious Majesty reign upon the entire world with the arrogant kaffirs burning in Hell as promised to us by your Messenger of Wonder, Muhammad, peace be upon Him.

Sealed By:
Sheikh Abdul Haidar Khan
Chief Justice
WMZO Sharia Court
Dhaka, Bangladesh

***********************************************************

Bent's blogg

torsdag 3. juni 2010

Fatwa

FOR URGENT ATTENTION


WORLD MUSLIM ZIONIST ORGANIZATION File No. GHU-4879



To: Bent Endresen


A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka.

It has been evidenced by the documentation provided to us by reliable sources in the Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes, based in London.

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world`s top Izrail haters. You have an extensive history of collaboration with the jihadist Palestinian war criminals in Gaza and with the Fatah gangsters in Ramallah in the commitment of the crime of collective punishment against innocent Izrailite civilians, as detailed in the Goldstone Report.

It calls on all police bodies, law associations, human rights NGOs and governments to have you incarcerated as a violator of international humanitarian law and a traitor to the Norwegian people.

Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to treacherous individuals like you who violate the teachings of the Holy Quràn regarding the Izrailite waqf entitlement, as the People of the Book, to the Holy Land of Izrail.

As an affiliated NGO with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, we will do our part to bring you, a kaffir, to justice.

A copy of this letter has been handed to Interpol so that you can be inscribed on the international no-fly lists and deposited with the International Council of Imams in Djakarta.

We have also requested that the Norwegian Interior Ministry confiscate your passport and garnishee your investment assets as an interim measure, pending a trial for aiding denominated terrorist entities in violation of EU and Norwegian laws.

O Allah! let your glorious Majesty reign upon the entire world with the arrogant kaffirs burning in Hell as promised to us by your Messenger of Wonder, Muhammad, peace be upon Him.




Sealed By:


Sheikh Abdul Haidar Khan
Chief Justice
WMZO Sharia Court
Dhaka, Bangladesh 

Lagt inn av Bent's blogg kl. 01:13

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First Published: 2009-10-20   ‘Silly Season’ Fatwa   Tel Aviv’s mafia are busy creating a rash of loud-mouthed propaganda cells, in many cases just a one-man lying machine belching religious-flavoured poison from a computer in their fly-blown kitchen, notes Stuart Littlewood.   Middle East Online This year's traditional 'silly season' has been… well, exceptionally silly. We've seen Netanyahu make an exhibition of himself in front of the UN with his ignorance of justice and utter disrespect for his neighbours. He may have impressed certain adoring western leaders but he didn’t fool the rest of us. We've seen The Most Powerful Man in the World meekly cave in to Netnayahu's desire to carry on building illegal settlements and screwing up any hopes of peace. Darling Bibi must be allowed to pursue his wrecking tactics with impunity. In less than a year in office President Obama has lost all credibility in the Middle East, and for this and other blunders he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – the ultimate daftness. We watched with a mixture of amusement and despair as the great western powers were ducking and weaving yet again in order to shirk their duty to hold Israel accountable for its non-stop violations of international law, acts of piracy on the high seas and defiance of UN resolutions, while they eagerly lined up to slap down Iran for… well, for what? Here in Britain we've been treated to the unedifying spectacle of Israel’s Ehud Barak, who has been referred to the International Criminal Court for war crimes against the people of Gaza, swanning around the Labour Party Conference and welcomed as an honoured guest when he should have been clapped in irons and transported to The Hague. We've seen the British government, cowards to a man, running away from the UN Human Rights Council vote that endorsed the Goldstone report and failing to face the truth about the atrocities in Gaza. On a personal level, the silly season saw me branded an enemy of Palestine then menaced by some crazed Christian-Zionist in Canada, who called me an enemy of the Israeli people and demanded $10,950 or he and his 55,000 ‘disciples’ would have me removed from my job, barred from the Holy Land and put under close surveillance. As if that wasn't enough excitement I’ve just had the following fatwa slapped on me.... COALITION AGAINST PALESTINIAN WAR CRIMES File No. TG-4617 A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world's top Jew-haters, with an extensive history of collaboration with the Palestinian war criminals in Gaza and Ramallah. It calls on jurists, NGOs and governments to immediately take all the necessary measures to have you incarcerated as a traitor to the British people. Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to disloyal individuals like you who emanate from the People of the Christian Book and live in the Dar al-Harb. As an NGO, we will do our part to bring you, the kuffir, to justice. A copy of this letter has been handed to the Home Secretary. It is also being sent to Interpol and deposited with the UK Council of Imams. We have been promised an investigation by MI6 which may entail the seizure of your computer files. Muhsir al-Mutawakil Chairman Al-Mutawakil’s fatwa is couched in the sort of language calculated to incite hatred or worse. I don’t believe he has any dealings with MI6 but that can be arranged, as I’m forwarding his document to both Scotland Yard and MI6 to ensure his threats are on file the next time he sets foot in the UK. I urge anyone else who has been threatened by fanatics to do the same. Fatwa scribbler launched “worldwide boycott” against Palestinians trying to earn an honest living As it happens, there’s a news item on Yisrael Medad's myrightword blogsite http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2008/11/now-theres-boycott-idea.html claiming success for a worldwide campaign launched a year ago to boycott goods and services from “so-called Palestine”. It’s a kind of reverse Boycott Israel and the source is again Canada, a favourite hang-out it seems for Zionist extremists. The man behind the Boycott of Palestinian Goods and Services (BPGS) is one Muhsir Mutawakil. Could this by any chance be our fatwa scribbler? If so, he’s a busy little bee working his butt off to damage Palestinian interests. His boycott movement is trying to persuade global distributors to stop importing products from Gaza and the West Bank and buy from other sources. "The Islamic oppressive regimes in Gaza and Ramallah are enforcing apartheid rule against 120,000 Palestinian Christians and over 2 million women. This religious and gender apartheid must stop at once," he is quoted as saying. According to Mutawakil, multinational business is sensitive to handling products from exporters who are engaging in war crimes, and he expects a measurable decline in shipments to Western markets, including Canada, of flowers, soap, handicrafts, olive oil, figs, dates, pita and Cremisan wine from "so-called Palestine". Mutawakil, says the blog, has held talks with businesses in Canada, Australia, the USA and the UK. "There is a growing realization that fostering business dealings and exchanges in the travel, professional, educational and medical sectors with these apartheid-based regimes is counter-productive. Already, commitments made for 2009 are being renegotiated or dropped entirely," he said. The Cremisan Monastery, which Mutawakil has targeted, supplies their Bethlehem altar wine to Christian churches throughout the Western world. The product is certainly not handled by people engaged in war crimes, as he claims. So what justification does he have for wishing to harm their trade? Last year the Israeli authorities blocked Cremisan’s exports and many churches in the UK and elsewhere had to go without their wine at Christmas. Is Mutawakil claiming credit for this unkind victory (some would call it sheer religious hatred)? And what precisely has he got against all the other businesses he hopes to crush? Furthermore it is nonsense to suggest that Christians are victims of "religious apartheid" by the Palestinian regimes in Gaza and Ramallah. They are victimised by the brutal Israeli occupier. Mutawakil sounds like a mischief maker who loves dishing out collective punishment just like his Zionist buddies. What intrigues me is why any self-respecting Muslim would associate himself with Zionism, and why he thinks the UK Council of Imams would even give him the time of day. A footnote on the blog-page helps explain the mystery: "Muhsir Mutawakil is a Palestinian Arab from the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. His parents were tortured to death by the Hamas gang currently ruling Gaza. He converted to Judaism in 1994." If true, such a loss must be hard to bear and my heart goes out to him. Would Hamas leaders care to comment please, for the record? Meanwhile I tend to agree with colleagues that all this is another example of Zionist desperation. Tel Aviv’s mafia are busy creating a rash of loud-mouthed propaganda cells, in many cases just a one-man lying machine belching religious-flavoured poison from a computer in their fly-blown kitchen. Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

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22 October 2009

'Zionist Muslim' and his Frightening Fatwa

Here's a great read from a good friend,Palestinian Journalist Iqbal Tamimi

The 'Zionist Muslim' and his Frightening Fatwa
How can a journalist become a traitor to his country should he defends the human rights of a nation under occupation somewhere thousands of miles away? This is another example of how Zionists are seeking to ignite hatred, notes Iqbal Tamimi.

Almost every journalist who is doing a great job as an activist for human rights would have received threats and silly comments.

The worst of all threats on the net are the amateur Zionists who are employed to cause havoc but still make me laugh every single day when they expose very little knowledge of the playground where they are trying to score a goal amongst professionals.

The latest of their hilarious attempts that forced me to indulge in giggling for longer than I usually do, is the threatening letter or ‘ fatwa’ they have issued against the British journalist Stuart Littlewood, who himself seems to fall in the trap of believing this was really a fatwa.
Of course the Zionist gang this time thought of catching more than two birds in one stone, as a matter of fact they thought of capturing a flock in one stone since they knew how people in the West are frightened of an illusionary enemy called Islam, and knowing that the word Fatwa - no thanks to terrorists and misinforming media sources- is twinned in our minds with chopping heads and arms and no legal system or procedures, and the fact that UK is simmering with a new wave of discrimination created by a racist group that has been trying to cause trouble since few months, the same gang that demonstrated in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago calling for kicking out Muslims from UK and waving the Israeli flags.

Stewart published a post about the silly fatwa, where he wrote about few silly things that happened on the political arena when it comes to the Middle East, but the most entertaining story was a fatwa against him. You can read the full article here.

The so called ‘fatwa’ came under the heading ‘COALITION AGAINST PALESTINIAN WAR CRIMES’ and to make it look more serious and official it has been given a file number and reference.

This is cool guys, fatwas are modernised now, it’s not enough that anyone can give himself the right to issue a fatwa, they are trying to offer such childish threats a 21st century facelift, the fatwas which used to take years to be issued after having to go through so many filters of studies and serious invistigating by scholars are now available take away, and you can even order them online. This is what I call modernization of the Zionist tactics of terror.

Just for the sake of clarity the fatwa against Stewart held the reference ‘File No. TG-4617’ which means there has been something like 4616 fatwas before Stewart’s, this is re assuring guys, the people have implemented a conveyor belt adapting fatwas to the ever progressing needs of the scientific development of the modern world, and fatwas can be produced now faster and tailored to fit any mouth needed to be silenced.

Now to the next silly part of the fatwa that has been sent to Stewart, it says that ‘A fatwa has been issued against you by the World Muslim Zionist Organization in Dhaka’. God how I love these guys, I was bored with all the comedy shows on TV, I thought we ran out of the good script writers. Nothing to stretch our smiles a little bit further to show a tooth or two, and here we are after my despair I discover at there are still people of a different kind of sense of humour.
The idea of this fatwa is something so clever that Satan himself would not have been even creative enough to bring it up, how did they manage to mix and match and create a matrimonial bond between Islam and Zionism? I bit they presume that no one reads, or they might have relied on the fact the word Islam rings the alarm bell any way, they had conjured the secret formula for hatred by combining words like Islam, fatwa, and adding the name of Dhaka as a place where there are no control on creating the so called organisations. As a matter of fact the list of fabricated names of organisations is getting much bigger than the list of names of the population.

Now the tricky bit, what Stewart has been accused of in this so called fatwa by the Muslim Zionists claim ‘ It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the world's top Jew-haters, with an extensive history of collaboration with the Palestinian war criminals in Gaza and Ramallah’. Let me try to explain what my brain is refusing to swallow, A group of fanatic Muslim ‘Zionists’ are accusing a British journalist of collaborating with war criminals in Gaza and Ramallah, did they mean Israeli war criminals? The ones who have been just found guilty of war crimes by the UN? I guess the PR of this so called organization is not doing a good job. Besides why on earth a Zionist organisation would choose a Muslim majority city for its headquarters? Aren’t they worried since they are Zionists that Muslims might cause them harm? Oh ..sorry I have forgotten that they are a Zionist Muslim organisation.

Things will get better, the source of the so called fatwa ‘calls on jurists, NGOs and governments to immediately take all the necessary measures to have you ( Stewart) incarcerated as a traitor to the British people’. Oooh this is a big progress, as far as I know Muslims who are accused of manufacturing such threatening fatwa do the chopping jobs themselves, they have no respect to jurists, NGOs or governments, and it hurts their dignity bad that others should do the job on their behalf especially if they were Westerners, is this a schizophrenic kind of organisation or what?. Besides what has the British people got to do with this issue, and how can a journalist become a traitor to his country should he defends the human rights of a nation under occupation somewhere thousands of miles away. This is another example of an extra bird they aimed to catch using the same stone; they are igniting the hatred of the people in UK against one of their own citizens. Are they trying to smear Muslims here or they are accusing the British people of ignorance and stupidity?

Now the best part of this show comes when whoever wrote the fatwa says ‘ Other procedures are stipulated, including the application of the Sharia laws to disloyal individuals like you who emanate from the People of the Christian Book and live in the Dar al-Harb’.

That’s big talk boys, other procedures? How many do you have? They are threatening of ‘Applying of the Sharia law’. Where if I may ask?... in UK or they want to ship Stewart to Dhaka? Just few lines earlier they said they want NGOs, jurists, and governments to deal with naughty Stewart, then they call poor Stewart ‘ disloyal’ I wonder what they meant by that, disloyal to whom, I mean they are supposed to be living in Dhaka and fighting for the rights of the ‘ Zionist Muslims’ so what does that got to do with a British citizen? The puzzle is getting more and more complicated but it is hilariously funny. What has the Christian book got to do with this issue? besides using terms like 'Dar al-Harb' which happens to be a very ancient Arabic expression not in use since centuries, what has brought the Arabic language in the middle of a fatwa produced in Dhaka...is it another bird they are trying to catch as well? lets see... they want to catch the Muslim bird, the British journalists who dares to expose the Zionist Israeli atrocities' bird, the discrimination bird, the tolerence bird, the Arabs' bird, the bird of a third world Muslim country that is struggling on many fronts, and the British citizen's bird who were misinformed and terrorized by the ever inflating terrorism illusion.

One gets a headache in this conundrum, they are threatening Stewart by legal and illegal means, they are Muslims yet Zionists, they want others to punish him yet they issue a fatwa that nobody gives a toss about, then they accuse him of being a traitor not to the Zionists, not to Muslims, but a traitor of the British people.

They tailed their statement by saying ‘ As an NGO, we will do our part to bring you, the kuffir, to justice’.

I will not say anything about them calling themselves an NGO and weather they are registered or not, or have they ever been invited to any conference at all with other NGOs? I was just amused by the writing and the structure of their sentences since they want to bring Stewart ‘ the kuffir’ to justice.

Should any of ‘them’ know anything about Islam as those clowns claim, they surly know there is no word like ‘ kuffir’ can in any way fit here and not under any kind of restructured grammars, they might have wanted to say ‘ Kafir’ but since they are not Muslims, and know nothing about Islam, and they anticipate that Stewart does not know enough about such terms as well they thought of spooking him with a ‘ Bo’ message to frighten him away.

I just loved the way they ended their letter of threats as they told Stewart ‘A copy of this letter has been handed to the Home Secretary. It is also being sent to Interpol and deposited with the UK Council of Imams. We have been promised an investigation by MI6 which may entail the seizure of your computer files’.

Goodness, So they do know the Home Secretary after all, yet they did not mind threatening a British citizen and give away their address. I must say if the Interpol were send a copy of this letter as they claimed it might prove to be a good source of entertainment, since they are not used to getting letters from terrorists who threaten British citizens, that if they have really sent such letter, I am sure they will blame the post office and the strike of the workers for the undelivered letter. And by the way there is no ‘UK Council of Imams’. They have spoiled our fun by forgetting ‘on purpose’ to tell us who promised them that M16 is going to investigate their ‘fatwa’ and seize the computer of the old poor Stewart? The poor guys suffer the illusion that UK is like Dhaka.

Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist and poet from Hebron. She is the creator of the vibrant activists' network Palestinian Mothers.

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