GOP Platform Takes Hard Stance Against Imaginary Sharia Threat

By Ryan J. Reilly | TMP | August 21, 2012 | [Original Article]

"The Republican National Convention adopted an amendment to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) specifically stating that Sharia posed a threat to America.

"We see it from the top where the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly quoted foreign law in interpreting our U.S. constitution and it's actually coming in at the bottom as well, it's being raised as an argument in courts around the country," Kobach said.

"I'm not aware of any court that's accepted the argument, but in cases involving either spousal abuse or assault or other crimes against persons, sometimes defenses are raised that are based in Sharia law," Kobach said. "We actually put a provision affecting Kansas statute this year and I think it's important for us to say foreign sources of law should not be used as part of common law decisions or statutory interpretations by judges in the lower state courts as well.""

Fazaga v. FBI: Eroding democracy, in two dimensions at once

By Shahid Buttar | ConstitutionCampaign | Aug 16, 2012 | [Original Article]

"On Tuesday, August 14, a federal judge issued a disturbing ruling allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to evade public accountability for infiltrating faith institutions, monitoring law-abiding people, recording sexual encounters, and then lying about all of it. Carney’s decision erodes democracy in two dimensions at once, enabling ongoing constitutional violations by the executive branch while, at the same time, eroding judicial independence.

The ruling is especially surprising given the judge’s previous criticism of the FBI for lying to him in court.

Fazaga v. FBI addressed claims by a series of southern Californians challenging a long running secret infiltration of their faith institutions by an ex-convict and undercover FBI informant named Craig Monteilh. After being promised a six figure payment to infiltrate mosques across southern California—and even to record sexual encounters with women in those communities to enable subsequent blackmail—Monteilh blew a whistle and joined a case brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations; Hadsell, Stormer, Richardson & Renick LLP; and the ACLU of Southern California..." [Read More] 

The US Government Can Track Your Location at Any Time Without a Warrant

By Adam Serwer | MotherJones | August 16, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Is law enforcement tracking your cell phone's GPS more like intercepting a phone call or tailing someone on the street? A federal court decision says it's more like following you—which means the authorities don't need to get a warrant to find out where you are at any given time.

The case involves a marijuana courier, Melvin Skinner, whose disposable cell phone was being tracked by the Drug Enforcement Agency as he moved his cargo from Arizona to Tennessee. The DEA got a court order (not a warrant) compelling Skinner's cell phone company to share his GPS information—the release of which led to Skinner's capture and arrest.

Skinner's lawyers argued the DEA tracking his cell was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure because the location information being given off by his phone wasn't publicly available..." [Read More]

What makes our NDAA lawsuit a struggle to save the US constitution

By Tangerine Bolen | Guardian.co.uk | August 10, 2012 | [Original Article]

"...I am one of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to hold any US citizen anywhere for as long as he wants, without charge or trial.

In a May hearing, Judge Katherine Forrest issued an injunction against it; this week, in a final hearing in New York City, US government lawyers asserted even more extreme powers – the right to disregard entirely the judge and the law. On Monday 6 August, Obama's lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction – a profoundly important development that, as of this writing, has been scarcely reported..."

"...In the earlier March hearing, US government lawyers had confirmed that, yes, the NDAA does give the president the power to lock up people like journalist Chris Hedges and peaceful activists like myself and other plaintiffs. Government attorneys stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up indefinitely under the NDAA..."

... I, like many in this fight, am now afraid of my government. We have good reason to be. Due to the NDAA, Chris Hedges, Kai Wargalla, the other plaintiffs and I are squarely in the crosshairs of a "war on terror" that has been an excuse to undermine liberties, trample the US constitution, destroy mechanisms of accountability and transparency, and cause irreparable harm to millions...." [ Read More]

Hate crimes on the rise

By Sherwood Ross | TheNation.com.pk | July 06, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Muslims may make up fewer than one percent of the US population, but they were nearly 13 percent of victims of religious-based hate crimes in 2010, The Nation magazine of the US reports...

...“It’s fair to say that we have in America today two systems of citizenship: one for Muslims and one for non-Muslims,” Lalami says. “Muslim citizens live under a cloud of suspicion, no matter what they do, and no matter what they say.”

Anti-Muslim attitudes have reached deep into the workplace. Muslims make up only about one percent of the US population, but account for more than 20 percent of religion-based filings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission... [Read More]

...Bayoumi warns: “Anti-Muslim attitudes are not merely absorbed by law enforcement and the military or reflected on the airwaves and in the words of our politicians. Rather, the idea that American Muslims are to be feared or loathed or excluded from the US is being actively promoted.”..."

Wiretap Stats Decrease, But Don’t Go Celebrating Yet

By David Kravets | Wired.com | July 2, 2012 | [Original Article]

"…The government has at its disposal a variety of methods to capture Americans’ communications and data without warrants or with super-secret national security wiretap warrants that aren’t covered in this report…

The government has many other tools to tap Americans’ communications, meaning the decrease in wiretaps could just be a statistical blip, or it could mean that court-ordered wiretaps are taking a back seat to other methods of warrantless, data extraction….

The data Google is coughing up includes e-mail communications, documents and, among other things, browsing activity, and even IP addresses used to create an account. And we suspect that an alarming amount of the data is being turned over without a probable-cause warrant. Google isn’t saying...[Read More]

In the United States, the law is so antiquated that a warrant is often not required to get Americans’ emails, and proposals to fix that have been met with silence in Congress.

So while it may be nice to see a significant drop in criminal wiretap orders last year, only the foolish would think there’s 14 percent less snooping going on."

Deploying Informants, the FBI Stings Muslims

By Petra Bartosiewicz | TheNation.com | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article]

According to the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, there have been 138 terrorism or national security prosecutions involving informants since 2001, and more than a third of those have occurred in the past three years. Nearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants—who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own—have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism….

After the men were convicted at trial, the judge in the case, Colleen McMahon, said it was “beyond question that the government created the crime here” and criticized the FBI for sending informants “trolling among the citizens of a troubled community, offering very poor people money if they will play some role—any role—in criminal activity.” The men were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison….

These informants operate in a post-9/11 environment of relaxed guidelines that allow the FBI to engage in lengthy and extensive surveillance of individuals and communities with little or no evidence of any wrongdoing afoot. Where once agents needed to have a “predicate” to launch such an investigation, these days none are required…

Though relatively few informant-driven investigations have led to the discovery of actual “homegrown” plots, the Muslim community for years has reported instances of people being approached by informants trying to enlist them in violent jihad. At times the informants have been so aggressive they have quickly raised suspicions. At a California mosque in 2010 one FBI informant, Craig Monteilh, advocated violent jihad so vehemently that the mosque’s members sought and received a restraining order against him. Monteilh, a former fitness instructor paid $177,000 over the course of his service with the FBI, participated in what the bureau dubbed Operation Flex, in which he was assigned to monitor gyms and mosques across Orange County, California, home to the country’s second-largest Muslim population. “We started hearing that he was saying weird things,” college student Omar Kurdi later told a reporter. “He would walk up to one of my friends and say, ‘It’s good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad.’”

… He also gave a statement in support of a suit filed against the bureau by the ACLU that named the then head of the Los Angeles office, J. Stephen Tidwell, who had made a point of visiting a mosque in Irvine in June 2006 and telling the congregants that the FBI would not spy on them. “If we’re going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you,” he said. “We don’t want you to think you’re being monitored. We would come only to learn.” The next month, agents under Tidwell deployed Monteilh to the very same mosque….

According to Monteilh, his handlers in Operation Flex instructed him to identify potential militants or, failing that, to “pay attention to people’s problems”—such as marital or business difficulties—and assess whether individuals might be susceptible to rumors about their sexual orientation “so that they could be persuaded to become informants.” His handlers also told him that “everybody knows somebody,” meaning that people from Afghanistan, for example, would inevitably have family members or acquaintances with ties to the Taliban—information the FBI could use to “threaten…and pressure them to provide information, or could justify additional surveillance.” Monteilh said the agents also gave him the green light to have sex with Muslim women for investigative purposes. “They said if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex,” he told a reporter. “So I did.” When Monteilh asked his handler, agent Kevin Armstrong, about the FBI’s broad latitude in conducting the investigation, he said Armstrong told him that on national security matters, “Kevin is God.”

In 2005 the FBI’s Office of the Inspector General found “serious shortcomings” in the bureau’s Criminal Informant Program. The report, which examined some 120 cases, including those related to terrorism, found that 87 percent of the investigations involving informants contained violations of the FBI’s own guidelines. Among the chief violations were the failure of agents to caution informants about the “limits of their activities,” the “failure to report unauthorized illegal activity” by their informants, and the issuance of “retroactive approvals” for illegal acts the informants had already committed. The report noted that since 2001 the rules had been loosened at the FBI’s request to reflect the new emphasis on intelligence gathering, and by extension the bureau’s dire need for informants. In testimony before Congress in May 2002, FBI Director Mueller argued that requiring agents to read “verbatim instructions” to their informants, “written in often intimidating legalese, [was] proving to have a chilling effect, causing confidential informants to leave the program.”

… “The FBI approaches the vast majority of our clients as potential informants to partake in mass surveillance of Muslim communities, unconnected to any real criminal investigation,” said Amna Akbar, a supervising attorney at CLEAR. “The bureau is aggressively attempting to cultivate informants in Muslim communities by using coercion, pressure tactics and intimidation.”

A First Amendment Analysis of Anti-Sharia Initiatives

Asma Uddin & Dave Pantzer | ISPU| June 14, 2012 | [Original Article]  

Executive Summary

"Ten years after September 11, 2001, the American Muslim community continues to be surrounded by a fear created and promoted mostly by a small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals. Collectively, these groups have spread their message in twenty-three states through books, reports, websites, and blogs. Other anti-Islam grassroots organizations have utilized this propaganda to “educate” their constituency. The Center for American Progress defines Islamophobia as an “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.” This Islamophobia movement’s ability to influence politicians’ talking has made mainstream that which was once considered marginal, extremist rhetoric.

The impact of the Islamophobia campaign upon the American public’s perception of Islam and Muslims has been very negative. Approximately half of all Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam. To date, dozens of bills have been introduced in more than half of the states to ban Sharia and/or international law. Some of these bills are overly broad, and some in essence would outlaw any organization that adhered to any Islamic jurisprudential school. The Muslim community pushed back, specifically because the regulations on common activities such as how to wash before prayer or how much money to give to the poor emanate from these same schools of thought and would cause great restrictions on their ability to practice their faith.

This report describes the broader climate of anti-Muslim sentiment, as promoted by anti-Islam grassroots organizations, and examines the various manifestations of this hate in light of the First Amendment. More specifically, this report analyzes the anti-Sharia bills and ballot measures proposed by numerous states and determines the extent to which they comply with free exercise and establishment principles and jurisprudence"

Key Findings

The American legal system has built-in safeguards

"The crucial feature of any kind of arbitration is that an arbitrator, whether religious or not, has no ability to enforce the arbitral decision; only state or federal courts have that power...." [Read More] 

Download Full Report 

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts

Abed Awad | TheNation | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"On May 21 Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation prohibiting judges in the state from considering foreign law in their rulings. The law declares that any court decision will be considered void if it relies “in whole or in part on any foreign law, legal code or system that would not grant the parties affected by the…decision the same fundamental liberties, rights and privileges granted under the United States and Kansas constitutions.”

The real target of the law goes unnamed. “This [bill] doesn’t say ‘Sharia law,’” Republican State Senator Chris Steineger said in a speech that condemned the legislation for discriminating against Muslims, “but that’s how it was marketed back in January and all session long—and I have all the e-mails to prove it."

"...From a legal perspective, the wave of anti-Sharia legislation should be much ado about nothing. Sharia is as much a threat to our Constitution as Bible verses calling for the stoning of adulterers or the genocidal directive in Deuteronomy to leave “alive nothing that breathes.” Like the Old and New Testaments, Sharia has its own conflicts and tensions with modern conceptions of gender equality and citizenship. To suggest that banning Sharia or the Bible is the only way to ward off the stoning of women or the execution of apostates is clearly, maliciously false...

...However absurd, the notion that radical Muslims are trying to take over the country seems to be catching on. A 2011 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 30 percent of Americans believe Muslims want to establish Sharia in the United States. The percentage was even higher—52 percent—among those who said they most trust Fox News..." [Read More]

The Long Roots of the NYPD Spying Program

Ramzi Kassem | TheNation.com | June 13, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"The stories are as remarkable for their banality as for their detail.
 
On February 8, 2006, the imam at a Bronx mosque advised congregants to boycott Danish products in response to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper. In November 2006, a member of the Muslim Students Association at the state university in Buffalo forwarded an e-mail to a Yahoo chat group advertising a conference featuring various Muslim scholars. And in April 2008, college students on a rafting trip discussed religion and prayed “at least four times a day.”

What the imam and students didn’t know was that members of the New York Police Department Intelligence Division were spying on them and recording their names and actions in secret reports forwarded to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. None of these people had done anything wrong or even suspect: they were simply Muslims practicing their constitutionally protected freedoms of religious belief and speech. But for today’s police, that was enough to earn them a place in the department’s secret counterterrorism database.

As the Associated Press revealed in a Pulitzer Prize–winning series of exposés, the New York Police Department has been engaged in a vast domestic spying operation targeting Muslims for surveillance, mapping and infiltration. Stretching from the heart of New York City to the border of Canada—by way of Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island—the program is as massive in scope as it is in ambition. In the name of total security, the NYPD treated basic acts of daily living as potential crimes, disregarding privacy and the freedom of speech and religion. Traditional barriers between foreign and domestic spying were partially collapsed. And the “war on terror” took lessons from the war on crime. In the process, the NYPD created perhaps the largest spying program by a local law enforcement agency on record—a sprawling effort to map entire communities that emerged from the toxic convergence of the permanent state of emergency gripping our society since 9/11 with the NYPD’s historic propensities..."[Read More] 

Bush’s Terror Overreach Becomes ’New Normal’ Under Obama

By Albert R. Hunt| Bloomberg.com | May 27, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"Critics of President George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism efforts, mainly Democrats and some Republicans, rejoiced when Barack Obama was elected. They were convinced that what they considered the post-Sept. 11 trampling of constitutional rights and civil liberties would end...

...Things look different today. In his new book, “Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who served in the Office of Legal Counsel under Bush and objected to some of that administration’s tactics, writes: “The Obama administration would continue almost all of its predecessor’s policies, transforming what had seemed extraordinary under the Bush regime into the ‘new normal’ of American counter-terrorism policy.” That seems only a slight exaggeration..."

Self-Correction

"...In his first week in office, Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, issued an executive order banning torture and suspended military commissions. There was tremendous political blowback to his decision to close Guantanamo and move the accused terrorists to the U.S. or try suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. courts. Congress ultimately cut off funding for any such actions..."

Rendition Reversal

"...He backed off on ending rendition -- the policy of sending alleged terrorists to other countries for interrogation -- insisting that the U.S. would ensure that torture is no longer practiced in the places they are sent and that their treatment is in accord with international laws. The administration also says it has curbed the excesses of indefinite detention without trial, which now requires judicial review..."

Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you (and they include 'pork', 'cloud' and 'Mexico')

By Daniel Miller | Dailymail.co.uk | May 26 2012 | [Original Article]

"The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S...

...However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats...

...They point out that it includes 'vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.' ...

...However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating...

...Spokesman Matthew Chandler told website: 'To ensure clarity, as part of ... routine compliance review, DHS will review the language contained in all materials to clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.'..." [Read More] 

More federal judge abdication

By Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com | May 4, 2012 | [Original Article]

"...That is how history will record the behavior of American federal judges in the face of the post-9/11 onslaught of anti-Muslim persecution and relentless erosions of core rights...

...Even worse, if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, your conviction in a federal court is virtually guaranteed, as federal judges will bend the law and issue pro-government rulings that they would never make with a non-Muslim defendant; conversely, if you’re a government official who abused or otherwise violated the rights of Muslims, your full-scale immunity is virtually guaranteed..." [Read More]

Court Rejects Obama Arguments, Enjoins NDAA Detentions

By Jason Ditz | news.antiwar.com | May 16, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"US District Judge Katherine Forrest has issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the portions of the National Defense Authorization Act 2012 (NDAA)that relate to open-ended military detention of “suspects,” rejecting the Obama Administration’s arguments that the eight plaintiffs in the case, including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, did not have standing to contest such detention practices.

...She also ruled that the NDAA’s standards were too vague and overly broad compared to the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force... [Read More] 

Yesterday, a number of top Bush Administration officials argued that any attempt to prohibit detention without charges would also be “unconstitutional” in that it would deny the president absolute and unquestionable power as commander in chief. Needless to say, today’s ruling does serious damage to that line of argument."

The enemy isn't Islam

By Chris Ingram | Tampa Tribune | May 15, 2012 | [Original Article]

"...The plight of my ancestors is similar to those of countless immigrants who settled in what would become the United States of America.

Despite the fact that most Americans have stories of their ancestors coming here under less-than-desirable circumstances, a few among us seek to deny those who don't share the same religious beliefs the very rights and privileges that make America the place to be for those looking for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Last Saturday a group of self-described "patriots" assembled in Tampa at what they billed as a "Stop the Cultural Jihad" rally. In an email announcing the event, organizers said the purpose of the rally was to protest the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which met in Tampa over the weekend...

Earlier this year the same bunch of knuckle-draggers were outraged when Hassan Shibly, a Muslim associated with a different group on the government's unindicted co-conspirator list, spoke to Steinbrenner High School students about Islam.

...While the immediate reaction of many Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks was to treat all Muslims with a suspicious eye, today, most of us accept the fact that not all Muslims are terrorists (or have an anti-American agenda), and that not all terrorists are Muslims. Remember Timothy McVeigh? He was a terrorist. He was also a Christian — and a Republican.

During the Crusades of the 11th century, Christians persecuted Muslims and Jews. For their part, Jews were called "Christ-killers" and given the choice of "accepting the cross or die." Needless to say, a lot of Jews chose the latter... [Read More] 

...For their part, the "patriots" aren't bad people; they are just ignorant. The enemy isn't Islam, and we shouldn't feel threatened by those wearing a turban, any more than Jews should fear Christians or anyone entering a federal court building should fear Christian Republicans.

It is neither Christian nor patriotic to promote all this hate, but when people live in fear, they need an identifiable enemy — whether real or perceived"

Judge acquits 7 Hutaree militia members accused of terrorist overthrow plot

By Tresa B. & David A. | Detroit Free Press | Mar 27, 2012 | [Original Article]

"In a sharp rebuke, a federal judge today acquitted seven members of a Lenawee County militia group of plotting to overthrow the U.S. government with weapons of mass destruction...

...U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said federal prosecutors failed in five weeks of trial to prove that the Hutaree had a specific plan to kill a police officer and attack law enforcement personnel...

...“It’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s supposed to be hard for prosecutors to prove seditious conspiracy. They’re trying to punish free speech, so it’s necessary to impose a significant limitation on the government’s ability to do that.”... [Read More]

...“ Some of the defendants did say things that perhaps they shouldn’t have said .. but they had a right to say it,” Weiss told the Free Press today, saying “it’s unfortunate that people are getting indicted” for speaking their minds. “It’s the thought police. The government should not be so sensitive that they take away First Amendment freedoms simply because someone says something they don’t like.”...

..."My client got locked up for two years but never gets that time back … The U.S. Attorneys office, the FBI and the U.S. government should be ashamed of themselves,” Satawa said. “This entire case was a very, very sick joke.”...

...“Watch what you say. Even the most innocent of statements can be used against you,” said Meeks, who believes the government unfairly targeted the Hutaree. “If they want to get you, they will...” [Read More]

Read the FBI Memo: Agents Can ‘Suspend the Law’

By Spencer A. & Noah S. | Wired.com | March 28, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. Which is a good thing, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong.

“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a national-security law professor at American University, says. “It might technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes.”..." [Read More]

"...The FBI discovered the document, removed it from its curriculum, and allowed aides to the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine it as part of a six-month review into improper counter-terrorism training spurred by Danger Room’s reporting. It was among hundreds of pages of training material — out of 160,000 reviewed, the FBI says — that the FBI took out of circulation for “imprecision”; inaccuracy; reliance on racial, ethnic or religious stereotypes; or conflating illegal behavior with constitutionally protected activities. No FBI official responsible for any of the discarded training material received disciplinary action"

FOIA Documents Show FBI Using “Mosque Outreach” for Intelligence Gathering

By ACLU | ACLU.org | March 27, 2012 | [Original Article]

"NEW YORK – For several years, the FBI’s San Francisco office conducted a “Mosque Outreach” program through which it collected and illegally stored intelligence about American Muslims’ First Amendment-protected beliefs and religious practices, according to government documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern California, Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian...

...“Everyone understands that the FBI has a job to do, but it is wrong and counterproductive for the bureau to target American Muslim religious groups for secret intelligence gathering and place innocents at risk of investigation as national security threats,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The FBI is casting a cloud of suspicion on American Muslim religious organizations based on their faith alone, which raises grave constitutional concerns. The bureau’s documentation of religious leaders’ and congregants’ beliefs and practices violates the Privacy Act, which Congress passed to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.”...

...“The FBI can only be successful if the American public supports its mission and methods, and community outreach plays an essential role in building the trust and mutual understanding to ensure the FBI is effectively and appropriately protecting both our security our civil rights,” said Mike German, ACLU senior policy counsel and a former FBI agent. “By exploiting the good faith of Muslim groups and their members, the FBI is undermining community support for the government’s legitimate law enforcement activities.”..."

The Feds are watching -- badly

By Y. Chanoff and N. Orenstein | SFBG | June 26, 2012 | [Original Article]

"So, you're a law enforcement officer in training for participation on a local Joint Terrorism Task Force. Or a student at the United States Military Academy at West Point, involved in the counterterrorism training program developed in partnership with the FBI. Or you're an FBI agent training up to deal with terrorist threats.

Get ready for FBI training in dealing with Arab and Muslim populations.

Take note that "Western cultural values" include "rational, straight line thinking" and a tendency to "identify problems and solve them through logical decision-making process" — while "Arab cultural values" are "emotional based" and "facts are colored by emotion and subjectivity."..." [Read More]

"...This is the first complete report with the full details on a pattern of behavior that is, at the very least, disturbing — and in some parts, reminiscent of the notorious (and widely discredited) COINTELPRO program that sought to undermine and disrupt political groups in the 1960s.

The information suggests that the federal government is using methods that are not only imprecise and xenophobic but utterly ineffective in protecting the American public.

"This is the worst way to pursue security," Hatem Bazian, professor of Near East Studies at UC Berkeley, told us."

Cultural Stereotypes
"One training presentation is titled "The Chinese." The materials give such tips as "informality is perceived as disrespectful." The presentation warns "expect your gift (money) to be refused" but advises to give "a simple gift with significant meaning- tangerines or oranges (with stems/leaves.)" But "never give a clock as a gift! (death!)"..." [Read More]

The Obama Administration and targeted killings: “Trust us”

By Micah Zenko | CNN | March 8, 2012 | [Original Article]

"...Over the past few years, I have been fortunate to speak with a number of dedicated and thoughtful officials in the executive branch about U.S. targeted killing policies...

...Without a security clearance to corroborate and verify these statements, the defense of U.S. targeted killing policies boils down to “trust me.”...

...On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a policy speech at Northwestern University Law School, in which he echoed what I have heard one-on-one...Let’s break down some of the arguments put forth by the attorney general:... [Read More]

...HOLDER: “It is preferable to capture suspected terrorists where feasible—among other reasons, so that we can gather valuable intelligence from them.”...

...Of course, this statement begs the question: if that is true, why has the United States largely stopped capturing and detaining terrorist suspects?...“The Government of Pakistan arrested and transferred to U.S. custody nearly 500 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists.” By 2004, however, the United States virtually discontinued this practice, and instead began killing terrorists with armed Predator drones...

...“To those in the Executive branch who say ‘just trust us’ when it comes to secret and warrantless surveillance of domestic communications I say remember your history.”...

...Many Americans didn’t trust the Bush administration reading their emails, and they should be even more skeptical of the current administration and the targeted killings of citizens and non-citizens..." [Read More]