Tuesday, June 11, 2013
LE POINT: En grève depuis le début du mouvement, les avocats s'étaient rassemblés pour protester contre l'évacuation par la force de la place Taksim.
La police a interpellé mardi une cinquantaine d'avocats qui protestaient contre l'intervention dans la matinée des forces de l'ordre contre les manifestants occupant la place Taksim d'Istanbul, a annoncé leur association. En grève depuis le début de la fronde qui vise le Premier ministre Recep Tayyip Erdogan il y a douze jours, ces avocats se sont réunis dans l'enceinte du palais de justice d'Istanbul pour dénoncer la police, qui a repris manu militari le contrôle de la place Taksim, aux cris de "Taksim est partout", "la résistance est partout", a raconté à l'AFP une avocate ayant requis l'anonymat. La police est alors intervenue dans le palais de justice pour les en déloger. Après de brèves échauffourées, une cinquantaine de manifestants ont été interpellés, a rapporté l'Association des avocats contemporains. (+ vidéo) » | Source AFP | mardi 11 juin 2013
Edward Snowden steht hinter den Enthüllungen des Prism-Überwachungsprogrammes des US-Geheimdiensts NSA. Über Jahre war Snowden für den CIA in der Schweiz tätig und stiess dabei auf Brisantes: Durch ihn kam ans Licht, wie CIA-Agenten einen Schweizer Banker absichtlich betrunken gemacht haben. Als der Banker in eine Polizeikontrolle geraten sei, hätten sie ihm ihre Hilfe angeboten. Im Gegenzug habe der Banker die CIA mit Informationen versorgt. (+ Audio) » | Dienstag, 11. Juni 2013
THE GUARDIAN: Leader is used to having things his own way but, civil society movement can no longer be suppressed, says Luke Harding
The assault was as brutal as it was predictable. On Friday and Saturday Erdoğan had hosted a European Union meeting in Istanbul. Rumour had it that Turkey's prime minister would send in riot police to clear away the demonstrators from Taksim Square – which they had peacefully occupied for 12 days — once his European guests had flown home.
And so it proved, with police encircling the square at 6am on Tuesday, firing rubber bullets and teargas, and ripping down banners calling for Erdoğan's resignation. By happy coincidence, Turkey's state media, which for days had blithely ignored the country's massive anti-government demonstrations, was on hand to record the event.
Turkish TV viewers witnessed this: a small group of four or five "demonstrators" throwing molotov cocktails at police. At one point they advance on police lines in a comic Roman-style phalanx while holding the flag of a fringe Marxist party. The "protesters" were in fact middle-aged undercover police officers, staging a not very plausible "attack" on their own for the benefit of the cameras.
But the violence meted out against the genuine protesters camped out under the plane trees of nearby Gezi Park was real enough. Dozens were left choking or injured as teargas billowed across central Istanbul. Meanwhile, some 50 lawyers acting for detained activists were themselves dragged away by police and roughed up at Istanbul's Çağlayan court.
Faced with a choice between engaging with this new, vibrant civil society movement, or crushing it, Erdoğan has picked the latter course. Indeed, his reaction to the nationwide citizens' revolt reveals ominous parallels with another autocratic leader who has recently found himself in a tight spot: Vladimir Putin.
None of this bodes well for Turkey's already tortuous EU accession prospects, for relations between secular and religious Turks, or for the country's democratic future. » | Luke Harding | Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Tommy Robinson denied claims his group had firebombed an Islamic community centre in London, where the letters EDL were sprayed on the building.
He admitted some of its tactics were "completely questionable", but said "working class people" had no choice.
The Muslim Women's Network UK said it had seen a rise in verbal abuse and intimidation since the Woolwich murder.
Mr Robinson was speaking after six men were jailed for planning to bomb an EDL rally in West Yorkshire.
The men, who all lived in or near Birmingham, were each jailed for more than 18 years. Their bomb plot failed because they arrived two hours after last year's rally in Dewsbury had finished.
'Completely questionable'
Mr Robinson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he condemned all acts of violence by EDL members and the group was about peaceful protest.
He denied his group was behind the blaze in Muswell Hill last week and said the graffiti could have been placed there to make it look as if the group was responsible.
"If something was set fire and someone wrote David Cameron on the side of it, does it mean he did it?" he said. (+ BBC audi) » | Tuesday, June 11, 2013
BBC: EDL protest policing 'the price of democracy' » | Len Tingle | Political editor, Yorkshire | Monday, June 10, 2013
BBC: Six Islamic extremists were jailed for up to 19 and half years each on Monday for plotting to attack an English Defence League rally.
The English Defence League's initials were scrawled on the mosque that was burnt down in north London last week and the Met Police has said there has been a rise in Islamophobic attacks following the Woolwich murder.
EDL Leader Tommy Robinson told the Today programme's Sarah Montague: "Our tactics are completely questionable... But what choice do we have?"
He said that he "utterly condemns" a violent act "by anyone" but also admitted that he had been "arrested for assaulting someone" after they had given a Nazi salute.
He said that he wanted "all aspects of Sharia outlawed" in the UK and explained that the idea that EDL initials were written on a mosque by his members "seems ridiculous". Listen to BBC audio » | Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The girl Snowden left behind »
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: How much monitoring is too much and at what point does freedom become compromised? With its Prism spy program, the US has crossed the line.
Shortly before US President Barack Obama's visit to Berlin, Germans are troubled by questions regarding the extent to which the United States monitors Internet traffic worldwide. Is it true, as the media claim, that the United States can access and track virtually every form of communication on the Internet at the source? The Guardian and the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) could gain direct access to and read user data with the so-called "Prism" program. An unnamed intelligence officer was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that the NSA could "quite literally … watch your ideas form as you type."
Internet giants like Facebook and Google were quick to issue denials, saying that they do not release any information without a court order. But doubts remain.
These reports are deeply disconcerting. When viewed in its entirety, this massive effort to acquire information, if it is true, would be dangerous.
On the weekend, President Obama reacted by saying that it is impossible to have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.
I don't share this view. The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is. In a democratic constitutional state, security is not an end in itself, but serves to secure freedom. » | A Commentary by German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger | Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Barack Obama was facing a mounting domestic and international backlash against US surveillance operations on Monday as his administration struggled to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history.
Political opinion in the US was split with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition from Hong Kong of the whistleblower, Edward Snowden. But other senior politicians in both main parties questioned whether US surveillance practices had gone too far.
Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the national intelligence committee, has ordered the NSA to review how it limits the exposure of Americans to government surveillance. But she made clear her disapproval of Snowden. "What he did was an act of treason," she said.
Officials in European capitals demanded immediate answers from their US counterparts and denounced the practice of secretly gathering digital information on Europeans as unacceptable, illegal and a serious violation of basic rights. The NSA, meanwhile, asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation and said that it was assessing the damage caused by the disclosures.
Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most significant leak in American history. » | Dan Roberts in Washington, Ewen MacAskill in Hong Kong and James Ball in New York | Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – DAMIAN THOMPSON: "They could pay off the Triads," says Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower interviewed by the Guardian in his Hong Kong hideout. Meaning: the CIA could use a proxy to kill him for revealing that Barack Obama has presided over an unimaginable – to the ordinary citizen – expansion of the Federal government's powers of surveillance over anyone.
Libertarians and conspiracy theorists of both Left and Right will never forget this moment. Already we have Glenn Beck hailing Snowden on Twitter:
Courage finally. Real. Steady. Thoughtful. Transparent. Willing to accept the consequences. Inspire w/Malice toward none.#edwardsnowdenSnowden will be a Right-wing hero as well as a Left-libertarian one. Why? First, he thought carefully about what he should release, avoiding (he says) material that would harm innocent individuals. Second, he's formidably articulate. Quotes like the following are pure gold for opponents of Obama who've been accusing the President of allowing the Bush-era "surveillance state" to extend its tentacles even further:
NSA is focussed on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible… Increasingly we see that it's happening domestically. The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone, it ingests them by default, it collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and its stores them for periods of time … While they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting your communications to do so. Any analyst at any time can target anyone…Read on and comment » | Damian Thompson | Sunday, June 09, 2013
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