With an upcoming NATO summit in the next few days, Chicago police are taking the opportunity to kick down doors and arrest “suspected protesters” in a bizarre series of night raids that appeared to occur entirely without warrant.

The National Lawyers Guild reported that police attacked an apartment complex in Bridgeport late Wednesday night, smashing down the doors, tackling tenants and berating one suspected of planning to participate in a public protest against the summit, describing him as a “Commie faggot.” The captive “suspects” were eventually led off in chains, and the guild says search warrant for the apartment, which wasn’t even written until several hours after they broke the doors down, was never signed by a judge. The “suspects” were marched out to a police station where they remained, for over 30 hours, shackled at the hands and feet. Police initially responded to inquiries about the raid by denying that it had ever happened, and saying that they weren’t holding anybody. Later, they eventually admitted that they had captured the “suspects,” and said four of them were later released without charges. The other captives are being held pending a bond hearing, though it is still not clear what, if anything, they have been charged with.

Stephen Lendman: NATO Heads for Chicago
Glen Ford: The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago

This week, Congress is considering two pieces of legislation relating to Iran. The first undermines a diplomatic solution with Iran and lowers the bar for war. The second authorizes a war of choice against Iran and begins military preparations for it.

■ H.Res.568: Eliminating the Most Viable Alternative to War
■ H.R. 4310: Authorizing War Against Iran and Preparing the Military for it

A plain reading of these provisions in H.R. 4310 taken together with H.R. 568 makes it clear: Congress is setting the stage for war with Iran.

Even after a federal court deemed the NDAA unconstitutional, the US House of Representatives refused to exclude indefinite detention provisions from the infamous defense spending bill during a vote on Friday. - An attempt to strike down any provisions allowing for the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge from next year’s National Defense Authorization Act was shot down Friday morning in the House of Representatives. Following discussions on an amendment to the 2013 NDAA that was proposed by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan), House lawmakers opted against passing the law by a vote of 182-238. Had the Smish-Amash amendment passed, military detention for terror suspects captured in the US would have been excluded in the annual defense spending bill. Provisions that allows for that power, Sections 1021 and 1022, were inserted into the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012. President Barack Obama signed that legislation on New Year’s Eve, essentially authorizing the US Armed Forces to detain Americans indefinitely at military facilities over only allegation of ties with terrorists and subject them to enhanced interrogation tactics on par with torture.

A German man who said he was mistaken for a terrorist more than eight years ago and tortured by U.S. agents had his suit against Macedonia heard by the European Court of Human Rights after his claims were rejected in three countries.

Khaled el-Masri said the Balkan country violated the European Convention on Human Rights by torturing him, denying his rights to freedom and privacy, and refusing to adequately investigate his claims. Macedonian guards turned him over to U.S. agents after he was mistaken for a terrorist with a similar name as he tried to visit the country in 2003. Today’s case at the Human Rights court in Strasbourg, France, is the furthest el-Masri has been able to pursue his claims he was a victim of “extraordinary rendition,” a U.S. practice in which terrorism suspects are transferred to a different country. The U.S. Supreme Court refused in 2007 to reinstate his suit against the Central Intelligence Agency. There is “clear evidence of Macedonian government collusion with covering up the rendition,” James Goldston, el- Masri’s lawyer, told the Grand Chamber of the court today. “Every investigation, except Macedonia’s insignificant inquiry, has found evidence of details in his complaints.”

The Age: Rendition victim takes case to human rights court - The case of Khalid el-Masri, 48, will be heard by a panel of 17 judges in Strasbourg, the first time it has been considered in open court more than eight years after he was arrested "in error" by Macedonian border guards. He was handed over to the CIA and flown to a detention centre in Afghanistan known as the ''salt pit''. The case provoked an outcry after Mr Masri (left) was dumped on an Albanian mountain road in May 2004.

In 2007, two worried parents sent their 12-year-old daughter for counselling with Weberman, at the insistence of her school. For three years, the girl consulted him, seeing him often several times a week. The girl had been questioning her religious teachers, and her parents hoped that Weberman, who had raised his own pious, god-fearing children, would lead her back to the right path. Later this summer, a jury in Brooklyn – home to the largest Orthodox population outside Israel – will be asked to decide exactly what took place during those many counselling sessions. Whether Weberman repeatedly sexually abused the young girl as she alleges, or whether, as the defence claims, he is the object of misplaced revenge.

German police said they detained 400 anti-capitalist protesters in Frankfurt on Friday for defying a ban on demonstrations against austerity policies implemented to tackle the intensifying euro zone debt crisis. - The demonstration in the German financial capital was part of a four-day-long "Blockupy" protest, due to run until Saturday, against capitalism and austerity measures. "Hungry? Eat a banker," read one banner protesters held up outside the Messeturm skyscraper housing Goldman Sachs' offices. Reuters' Frankfurt office is also in the building. Police closed several main roads in Frankfurt - including a main artery into the city that passes by the Messeturm - and flooded the center with officers. There was no violence.

The Local: 'Blockupy' protests paralyse Frankfurt
Common Dreams: 'Blockupy Frankfurt' Protesters Cleared From Camp During Anti-Austerity Demonstration