All posts by alternativefreepress

Music, Tyranny

Pussy Riot – Putin will teach you how to love the motherland / Путин научит тебя любить Родину

Pussy Riot’s new video, called “Putin will teach you how to love the motherland” includes footage of the band’s protests.

The band told a news conference their treatment in Sochi is symptomatic of dissent being stifled in Russia:

“The Olympics has turned the police state into a total police state and the authoritarian regime into a totalitarian regime with preventive arrests,” Tolokonnikova said. “The Olympics has created an environment of sweeping violations of human rights in Russia. We are banned from speaking out here.”

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Alternative Free Press

Health/Environment

Nuclear site whistleblower fired after complaining about safety conditions

RT: February 19, 2014

The termination of a safety manager from a Washington state nuclear facility this week marks the second time in four months that a whistleblower was fired from there after speaking out.

Donna Busche, 50, was fired Tuesday morning by URS Corp, a federal subcontractor hired by the United States government to build a $12.3 billion plant that will make glass from the waste being held at the old Department of Energy-owned Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the southeastern part of the state. Construction of the plant is currently on hold because of safety concerns, and the facility has been previously referred to as the most-polluted nuclear weapons production site in the US.

Busche’s termination this week comes nearly five years after she first started working at the plant. Most recently she was employed there as a manager of environmental and nuclear safety at the facility’s construction site, and directed a staff of 140 engineers, scientists and technicians, according to the Los Angeles Times, often raising concerns about safety issues at Hanford during her half-decade tenure. Now she says her willingness to speak honestly about her work there is what got her into trouble.

URS says they had cause to terminate Busche, and told her it was due to “unprofessional conduct.” She is already speaking out about the matter, though, and says she lost her job because her employer wanted to retaliate in response to comments she made publically about the plant in the past.

Busche has been vocal for years about conditions at Hanford. In October 2010 she testified before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent federal agency, and made remarks about Hanford contrary to those offered by her superiors at the Department of Energy. She later said she was “openly admonished by former DOE Assistant Secretary Inés Triay for her testimony,” and the following year filed a complaint of discrimination with the Department of Labor alleging her employer retaliated against her for reporting problems at Hanford. The Labor Department is currently considering that complaint, while the Department of Energy has been tasked with investigating the safety claims made by Busche before her termination.

Walter Tamosaitis, a colleague of Busche’s who also raised safety concerns about the plant, was fired last October from URS after 44 years of employment. On Tuesday, Busche told the Associated Press that she has expected for a month now that she would be the next to go.

“We raised technical issues and have received harassment, retaliation. The fact that he was terminated, it sent a resounding message to me, right? And heightened my sense of awareness that I was probably next,” she told CBS News last year after her co-worker was removed from the job.

(read the full report at RT)

Source: http://rt.com/usa/busche-nuclear-whistleblower-fired-772/

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Health/Environment

New Leak: 100 tons of toxic water leaked at Fukushima plant

100 tons of toxic water leaked at Fukushima plant

RT: February 20, 2014

Around 100 tons of highly radioactive water leaked from one of the tanks at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said on Thursday.

The water reportedly spilled beyond the barrier that is set up to block it from flowing out of tank. TEPCO believes the leakage has not reached the adjacent sea, as there is no drainage nearby that flows out to the sea.

A process to stop the radioactive leak is underway. The spill is said to contain 230 million becquerels per liter of strontium and other beta ray-emitting radioactive substances.

The leak was discovered by workers on patrol at around 11:25 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

It is the latest in a series of leaks that TEPCO has struggled to control at the stricken nuclear power plant. According to previous statements from the company, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion becquerels of tritium have found their way into the sea by way of groundwater leaks between May 2011 and August 2013.

TEPCO has been at the center of a storm of criticism over its management of Fukushima in the wake of the 2011 earthquake-triggered tsunami that decimated the plant. Last week it was revealed that TEPCO had held back reports of dangerously high radiation levels at the plant since September.

Last Thursday the company announced it detected 5 million becquerels per liter of radioactive strontium-90 in a groundwater sample taken some 25 meters from the ocean as early as last September, Reuters reports. The legal limit for releasing strontium into the ocean is just 30 becquerels per liter.

(read the full report at RT)

Source: http://rt.com/news/fukushima-new-leak-toxic-832/

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Privacy, Tyranny

Attorney for Edward Snowden Interrogated at U.K. Airport, Placed on “Inhibited Persons List”

Democracy Now: December 18, 2014

Four journalists who revealed the National Security Agency’s vast web of spying have been awarded the 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post were among the winners announced on Sunday. Even as the journalists who broke the stories based on Edward Snowden’s leaks were awarded one of journalism’s highest honors, a lawyer who represents Snowden was recently detained while going through customs at London’s Heathrow Airport. Jesselyn Radack joins us today to tell her story. Radack says she was subjected to “very hostile questioning” about Snowden and her trips to Russia. Radack also learned she might be on an “inhibited persons list,” a designation reportedly used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to require further vetting of certain passengers. Radack is just one of a growing number of people who are being stopped, harassed and interrogated for their work around Snowden, WikiLeaks and National Security Agency documents. Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower support organization.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Four journalists who revealed the National Security Agency’s vast web of spying have been awarded the 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post were among the winners announced on Sunday. Even as the journalists who broke the stories based on Snowden’s leaks were awarded one of journalism’s highest honors, a lawyer who represents Snowden was detained while going through customs at London’s Heathrow Airport. Jesselyn Radack told Firedoglake she was subjected to, quote, “very hostile questioning” about Snowden and her trips to Russia. Radack also learned she might be on an inhibited persons list, a designation reportedly used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to require further vetting of certain passengers. After the Polk Awards were announced, Glenn Greenwald tweeted, quote, “In the UK government, this is known as the George Polk Award for Excellence in Terrorism.”

Jesselyn Radack is just one of a growing number of people who are being stopped, harassed and interrogated for their work around Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and National Security Agency documents. In this clip, we hear from journalist Laura Poitras, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, and then journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, who have all been stopped and interrogated in airports.

LAURA POITRAS: I’ve actually lost count of how many times I’ve been detained at the border, but it’s, I think, around 40 times. And on this particular trip, lately they’ve been actually sending someone from the Department of Homeland Security to question me in the departing city, so I was questioned in London about what I was doing. I told them I was a journalist and that, you know, my work is protected, and I wasn’t going to discuss it.

JACOB APPELBAUM: I was targeted by the U.S. government and essentially, until the last four times that I’ve flown, I was detained basically every time. Sometimes men would meet me at the jetway, similarly, with guns.

DAVID MIRANDA: [translated] I stayed in a room with three different agents that were entering and exiting. They spoke to me, asking me questions about my whole life. They took my computer, my video game, cellphone, everything.

AMY GOODMAN: That was journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda; before him, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and journalist Laura Poitras. You can go to our website to see our interview with Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras at democracynow.org. But all of them have been interrogated at airports, as has most recently Jesselyn Radack, the attorney representing Edward Snowden, joining us from London. She is a former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush, currently director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization.

(read the full transcript at Democracy Now)

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/18/attorney_for_edward_snowden_interrogated_at

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Geopolitics/War

Rise of the Anti-Government Flash Mobs: First Ukraine, Now Venezuela

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research: February 20, 2014

The US-supported opposition in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is taking its cue from the anti-government protests taking place across the Atlantic Ocean in Ukraine. Failing to win any of Venezuela’s elections by earning a popular mandate from the majority of the population in the last few years, the leaders of the mainstream opposition are now resorting to colour revolution tactics and a Ukraine-style disruption strategy. The aim of these opposition leaders in Venezuela is to manipulate the galvanized anti-government protesters into creating a political crisis in Caracas. Mainstream opposition leaders are doing this by instigating the protesters into taking steps that are geared at toppling the Venezuelan government.

The same opposition leaders and their foreign supporters are using the cover of the undeniable misgivings about rising crime rates, political corruption, and economic turmoil in Venezuela as a disguise for what is essentially looking like an attempted coup. The socio-economic misgivings of a segment of the population are being used as a pretext to legitimize street action and violence aimed at toppling the government

It is ironic that many of those opposing the Venezuelan government in the name of democracy, equality, and security were once supporters of autocratic and openly corrupt governments before the Chavez era. Memory loss or outright hypocrisy is at play. When the same oligarch’s that form and finance the Venezuelan opposition that is supporting and instigating the current anti-government protests were in charge of Venezuela, corruption was widespread, poverty rates were much higher, inequality was greater, and there was much higher inflation. Nor was Venezuela even a functioning democracy.

Despite the Venezuelan governing party’s democratic mandate, which includes winning most the municipal seats during the country’s December 2013 elections, the US-supported Venezuelan opposition wants to use flash mobs to oust the government and to take over the country. Of the 337 mayors elected in December 2013, the final vote counts awarded 256 mayor positions to the ruling party and its coalition of pro-government forces. This amounted to a win of seventy-six percent of the mayoralties in the South American country’s municipal elections, which confirms that the majority of the population supports the current Venezuelan governing party and its political allies.

Despite their short comings, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its political allies have one of the most democratic mandates in the world. In relative terms of fair voting, the government in Caracas has much more democratic legitimacy than the governments in countries like Britain, Canada, France, and the United States, which portray themselves as champions and models of democracy. The governing United Socialist Party and its coalitions, including the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) coalition, have gone to the poles more times and for more issues than any of the current governments in Britain, Canada, France, or the US. On any occasion where constitutional issues or major issues involving Venezuela’s political structures were being contemplated, the government and governing party let the Venezuelan voters make the decisions through popular referendums.

From 1999, the period that the Chavez era started in Venezuela, until the 2014 there has been six referendums dealing with the country’s national constitution, union structures, and even an opposition motion to have President Hugo Chavez removed from office through an electoral recall at the polls. Four presidential elections, four parliamentary elections for the National Assembly, and four regional-level elections for state governors and legislatures have all taken place too. Nicolas Maduro’s election as president in April 2013, just a few months after Hugo Chavez had won the presidential elections in October 2012, reconfirmed the support and confidence that over half of the population had for the government. Moreover, not only has there been four municipal-level elections, but municipal leaders began to be democratically selected by election ballots instead of being appointed; it was the leaders of the US-supported opposition that preferred to appoint municipal leaders outside of electoral mechanisms instead of letting the people decide themselves through voting.

What the US-supported opposition has been trying to do is to take over Venezuela outside of electoral mechanisms. It does not care about democracy or what the majority of Venezuelan citizens want. Where the mainstream opposition leaders have failed to get popular support or to win via the ballot box, they have used trickery and every option available to them for taking over the South American country. This includes the use of force, instigation of violence, attempted coups, intense propaganda campaigns, continuous collusion with the US government, and deliberate price hikes.

(read the full article at Global Research)

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/rise-of-the-anti-government-flash-mobs-first-ukraine-now-venezuela/5369691

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Drugs

B.C judge rules mandatory drug sentences unconstitutional

By Jeremy Nuttall
24 hours Vancouver: February 19, 2014

A B.C. provincial court judge ruled mandatory minimum sentences for drug convictions are unconstitutional and instead handed down a 191-day sentence on top of time served to an offender Wednesday.

The controversial one-year minimum sentences were part of 2012’s federal Safe Streets and Communities Act.

But in January, Judge Joseph Galati gave Crown lawyers time to come up with an argument to prove the legislation wasn’t unconstitutional after a low-level drug dealer’s lawyer applied to have the minimums ruled they were.

Crown attorneys were unable to convince the judge Wednesday and the 191-day sentence for Joseph Lloyd was handed down.

Lloyd was convicted on Sept. 13, 2013, for possession of small amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.

He has a “lengthy string of criminal convictions over a relatively short period of time,” the judge said.

Lloyd’s lawyer David Fai said the judge found the minimum sentences were not a reasonable limit to rights infringements in a free and democratic society.

“The crime rate is down to the 1972 levels, it’s been steadily dropping since 1991 — there’s no justification for bringing in this draconian legislation except political,” Fai said. “This appeals to the Conservatives’ base — they can say they’re tough on crime.”

Fai said he expects the Crown to appeal the ruling. If an appeal is successful his client could end up having to finish the full-year sentence, even if his 191-day sentence has already been completed.

“I assume the Crown is going to file an appeal because of the national implications this could have,” he said.

In November, an Ontario judge struck down a similar sentence for a weapons offence, but B.C. is the first province to have the drug offence sentences quashed.

(read the full report at The Sun)

Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/19/bc-judge-rules-mandatory-drug-sentences-unconstitutional

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Privacy

NSA Vows To Spy Even More

NSA Weighs Retaining Data for Suits

Rule That Evidence Can’t Be Destroyed Would Lead to Expansion of Controversial Phone Program

By Devlin Barrett and Siobhan Gorman
WSJ: February 19, 2014

The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of Americans’ phone records—an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program, according to officials.

A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records, according to people familiar with the discussions. As a result, the government would expand the database beyond its original intent, at least while the lawsuits are active.

No final decision has been made to preserve the data, officials said, and one official said that even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and not be subject to searches. The government currently collects phone records on millions of Americans in a vast database that it can mine for links to terror suspects. The database includes records of who called whom, when they called and for how long.

President Barack Obama has ordered senior officials to end the government storage of such data and find another place to store the records—possibly with the phone companies who log the calls. Under the goals outlined by Mr. Obama last month, the government would still be able to search the call logs with a court order, but would no longer possess and control them.

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander has said the program, if it had existed in 2001, would have uncovered the Sept. 11 plot. Critics of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have sued the government, saying the program violates the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Patrick Toomey, an ACLU lawyer, said no one in the government has raised with his group the possibility the lawsuits may actually expand the database they call unconstitutional. “It’s difficult to understand why the government would consider taking this position, when the relief we’ve requested in the lawsuit is a purge of our data,” he said.

Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which also is suing over the program, said the government should save the phone records, as long as they aren’t still searchable under the program. “If they’re destroying evidence, that would be a crime,” she said.

Ms. Cohn also questioned why the government was only now considering this move, even though the EFF filed a lawsuit over NSA data collection in 2008.

In that case, a judge ordered evidence preserved related to claims brought by AT&T Inc. customers. What the government is considering now is far broader.

“I think they’re looking for any way to throw rocks at the litigation,” added Ms. Cohn. “To the extent this is a serious concern, we should have had this discussion in 2008.”

Another person who has filed a class-action suit over the program is Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.). Mr. Paul’s lawyer, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, called the approach under consideration “just silly.” He said he was sure his clients would be happy to agree to the destruction of their phone records held by the government, without demanding those records in pretrial discovery.

(read the full report at WSJ)

Source: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579393413176249186

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Music, Tyranny

Pussy Riot attacked with whips by police at Sochi

Russian punk group Pussy Riot is attacked by government security forces as they try to perform under a sign for the Sochi Olympics

Cossack militia attacked the Pussy Riot punk group with horsewhips on Wednesday as the group staged an impromptu performance under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.

Six group members — five women and one man — donned their signature ski masks and were pulling out a guitar and microphone when at least 10 Cossacks and other security officials moved in.

One guard appeared to use pepper spray, another whipped several group members while others ripped off their masks and threw the guitar in a rubbish bin.

Police arrived and questioned witnesses, but no one was arrested.

The Cossacks violently pulled masks from women’s heads, beating group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova with a whip as she lay on the ground.

(read the full report at The Telegraph)

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10649037/Pussy-Riot-attacked-with-whips-by-police-at-Sochi.html

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Tyranny

Boston Hospital Takes Custody Of Mutiple Children Against Parents’ Will

Exposed: Boston Hospital Takes Custody Of MULTIPLE Children Against Parents’ Will

By Kristin Tate
BenSwann.com

It has been over a year since 15-year-old Justina Pelletier was taken custody by the Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Her parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier, are still fighting to get their daughter back.

Years ago doctors diagnosed Justina with mitochondrial disease, which causes loss of muscle control. Despite this diagnosis, Justina was able to live a happy and relatively normal life with her family in Connecticut. She was very active and enjoyed various sports such as ice skating.

When Justina got the flu last February, she was taken to Boston Children’s Hospital. Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital claimed that she has somatoform disorder, not mitochondrial disease. Somatoform disorder is a mental disorder — not a physical one, like mitochondrial disease.

After this diagnosis was made, the hospital ordered that Justina be taken off all of her mitochondrial and pain medication. Lou and Linda did not think this was the best plan of action and wanted to bring their daughter home. Officials would not allow that. The parents were subsequently escorted out of the hospital by security personnel. Only four days later, they found out they had lost custody of their daughter due to “both parents’ resistance towards recommended treatment plans” and “overmedicalizing” the girl. They are heartbroken and furious.

Justina’s case has the attention of many citizens around the nation, but it turns out there are other children in similar situations.

According to the Boston Globe, in the last 18 months Boston Children’s hospital took custody of children or seriously threatened to do so at least five times. The Globe reported, “It happens often enough that the pediatrician who until recently ran the child protection teams at both Children’s and Massachusetts General Hospital said she and others in her field have a name for this aggressive legal-medical maneuver. They call it a ‘parent-ectomy.’”

The Boston Globe reported that in most cases where hospitals take custody of a child, parents reject the suggested medical treatment. This typically occurs when doctors diagnose the child with a psychiatric disease, but the parents think the condition is a physical one.
Pediatrician Carole Jenny said, “If the parent won’t work with you, and you really think the child is suffering, you’ve got to act.”

Boston Childen’s Hospital took custody of one 5-year-old around the same time that Justina was admitted. Just like Lou and Linda, the girl’s parents were also escorted out of the facility by security. The 5-year-old’s first night in the hospital was the first time she had ever spent a night without a family member.

In another case, the hospital tried to take custody of Jessica Hilliard’s son Gabriel, who is being treated for mitochondrial disease. Hilliard said, “The fact that Children’s has so much power that they can get us in trouble with a totally different hospital across the city is appalling.”

Boston Children’s Hospital and its representatives refuse to comment on any specific cases, but maintain that decisions are made in the child’s best interest in every case.

But who really knows what is in the child’s “best interest?” Critics of the hospitals’ actions argue that such decisions should be left up to parents.

Those who favor parents’ rights see taking custody as an absurd action where the hospital acts completely out-of-line. Such situations become even more controversial when the parents’ views are backed by other pediatricians.

(read the full report at Ben Swann)

Source: http://benswann.com/exposed-boston-childrens-hospital-takes-custody-of-multiple-children-against-parents-will/

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