Stephen Lendman

[First Amendment to the United States Constitution]

"In a climate of fear and intimidation, national security concerns are trampling core legal principles, the rule of law losing out to war on terror hysteria and unchecked powers. As a result, protected freedoms are fast eroding, key among them First Amendment rights without which all others are at risk."

The ACLU has released numerous reports of illegal spying. They include federal, state and local SARs (suspicious activity reporting) programs that encourage police, intelligence and homeland security officials, emergency responders, and members of the public to spy on neighbors, reporting any "suspicious" activities to authorities.

In an environment of fear, commonplace activities may be misinterpreted, increasing chances to get innocent people on terrorist watch lists. As a result, their names and vital information will be in law enforcement/intelligence data bases, their personal safety and reputations jeopardized.

Using new intelligence sharing systems like fusion centers enables easy access of Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Information Sharing Environment (ISE), as well as local police-collected information.

In Terry v. Ohio (1968), the Supreme Court established "reasonable suspicion" of criminal activity as the standard for police stops to investigate further. Under Title 28, Part 23 of the Code of Federal Regulations, law enforcement agencies getting federal funds "shall collect and maintain criminal intelligence information (on an individual) only if there is reasonable suspicion (of involvement) in criminal conduct or activity," and what's collected is relevant.

SARs, however, threaten civil liberties by encouraging indiscriminate spying, jeopardizing innocent people unfairly.

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Denis G. Rancourt
academicfreedom.ca

Dean André E. Lalonde

"IPC rules in ATI case at U of O: Dean, VP-Academic and Legal Counsel conspired to send dubious letter questioning dissident professor’s ‘physical and mental well-being’"

INTRODUCTION

The Denis Rancourt case at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada) is a major ongoing academic freedom case being presently investigated by a Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Independent Committee of Inquiry and expected to go before the courts as a significant labour dispute. [Endnote-a]

The case has been covered by national and local media in both Canada and the US (New York Times -twice, Globe and Mail -twice, National Post, CBC radio The Current, TV Ontario). [Endnote-b]

Rancourt has presented his views on the case at a conference on academic freedom at New York University. [Endnote-c]

Academic workplace expert Professor Kenneth Westhues’ independent report concluded that Rancourt was subjected to an academic workplace administrative mobbing [Endnote-d].

The present example can be understood as one incident in the broader administrative mobbing phenomenon described by Westhues and enacted by the Allan Rock administration of the University of Ottawa. Several of the players mentioned by Westhues appear here also.

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Tom Eley
WSWS

Major US banks systematically faked documents in order to speed up foreclosures for hundreds of thousands of homeowners, a mounting body of evidence shows. It appears likely that federal and state laws were broken in the process.

The scandal speaks both to the dimensions of the social crisis and the criminality of the big banks. The immediate cause of the mortgage lenders’ rampant cheating on foreclosure paperwork is the tidal wave of families ruined by the economic crisis—a crisis itself set into motion by the banks’ predatory lending practices. The goal was to get people out of their homes as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible, skating over legal requirements relating to documentation.

Politicians have responded with calls for investigations and temporary suspensions of foreclosures. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and 30 other California representatives this week demanded a federal investigation into the mortgage lending industry in a letter sent to the Justice Department. Democratic Senators Al Franken of Minnesota and Robert Menendez of New Jersey on Tuesday requested an investigation from the Government Accountability Office into the role of government regulatory agencies in allowing the abuses to take place. Attorneys general in a number of states have launched investigations, and foreclosures have been temporarily stopped in a few.

This pre-election concern for embattled homeowners is dishonest to the core. In fact, the entire process of dispossessing Americans from their homes has been facilitated by politicians of both parties, and in particular President Obama, whose bogus “housing rescue” of 2009 did nothing to address the root cause of the disaster: the fact that mortgages are vastly overvalued and not at all symmetrical to the incomes of US workers. This has left millions of homeowners “underwater”—owing more to banks on their homes than the market value.

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Rafe Mair (Canada)
Strategic Culture Foundation

Tuesday January 23, 2013.

Today, with the weather was cold and clear in Washington, D.C. as Barak Obama was sworn in for his second term after a landslide victory where he carried all but two states. He had capitalized on his stern warnings that the United States had to get, in American football parlance, into a “hurry up offence” to wean itself off its reliance on oil as offshore supplies were looking less and less reliable.

That very afternoon, reminiscent of the day Jimmy Carter heard on the day his hated rival Ronald Reagan was inaugurated that on Iran had released its American hostages, the new fundamentalist Peoples Islamic Republic of Arabia (formerly Saudi Arabia) announced it was reducing its oil exports to the US 10% each month until the US withdrew all support, financial and military, of Israel. Mr. Obama pointed out that while out of the 30 million barrels a day the US consumes (up since he first became president in spite of efforts to reduce consumption) Saudi Arabia supplied 1.5 million barrels slightly more than Venezuela and about the same as Mexico. That day oil traded just under $200 per barrel but instantly went up to $225 on the news from Arabia. The president, in warning about the crisis, took solace in the fact that its largest supplier at just under 3 million bbls, was their old and faithful friend, Canada...

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