Author: RJ

All Posts by RJ

Mediterranean axis of anarchism blamed for Italy terror attacks Reply

Anarchism/Anti-State

theweek.co.uk
Andrea Vogt

Police probe six to ten Greek and Italian anarchists following kneecapping of Genoa nuclear engineer

anarchists in Greece

ROME – A week after an Italian nuclear engineer was kneecapped in a bold terrorist attack in Genoa, investigators are narrowing their focus to a small but violent axis of Mediterranean anarchists.

Police are studying the mobile phone, internet and university activities of six to ten Italian Greek and Italian activists operating as the Informal Anarchist Federation (in Italian, the Federazione Anarchica Informale or FAI), which claimed responsibility for the Genoa attack in a letter sent to an Italian newspaper and deemed credible by authorities.

That letter prompted authorities to widen their investigation over the weekend to include an international network called the Conspiracy Cells of Fire, a loose coalition of anarchists, imprisoned activists and their supporters in Greece, Spain, Serbia, Germany and elsewhere.

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American Terrorist’s Mom Wants Him Back Home Reply

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

abcnews.go.com
(@brianross) and LEE FERRAN

PHOTO: Omar Hammami

American-born Islamist militant Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansur al-Amriki, speaks during a news conference held by the militant group al-Shabab at a farm in southern Mogadishu’s Afgoye district in Somalia, May 11, 2011. (Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo)

An Alabama mother whose son joined an al Qaeda group in Africa said she can’t turn her back on her boy even though he advocates attacking America and hasn’t been in direct contact with her in years.

“If I could touch him for five minutes, I would be thrilled,” Debra Hammami of Daphne, Ala. said of her son Omar who this week published a 127-page account of his road to terrorism from a small town in the American South.

“The silence has been devastating,” she told ABC News. “I don’t agree with the ideology of any of that, but I do love my son and I do have that motherly love.”

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Nasrallah wants it both ways Reply

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Fourth Generation Warfare, Religion and Philosophy, Strategy

nowlebanon.com
Lee Smith

Hezbollah’s goal, in the words of its senior officials, has always been to create a society of resistance among Lebanese Shiite Muslims—one that would share in the setbacks as well as the victories of the militia’s fighters. So, why is Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah now complaining that Israel committed war crimes against civilians? In a culture of total resistance, surely no one is an innocent bystander.

Yet at a celebration this past Friday for the rebuilding of portions of Beirut’s southern suburbs destroyed in the 2006 war with Israel, Nasrallah asked his followers: “Why wasn’t [Israel] content with the killings in the battlefield, or with bombing military bases? Why did it expand its aggression to destroy homes and schools?”

Nasrallah apparently wants it both ways. He runs a guerrilla organization that stores its arms in homes and schools and hides among a civilian population that supports Hezbollah’s brand of asymmetric warfare. At the same time, he seeks to prick the conscience of the international community in order to have Israel sanctioned for crimes against the same population that his group uses as human shields.

But there’s something else behind his Friday remarks: Nasrallah is more sensitive than ever to the devastation to which he has exposed the Shiite community because he fears that the culture of resistance Hezbollah has cultivated may be on the wane. Or, as anti-Hezbollah Shiite activist Lokman Slim told me “The shelf-life of the resistance has reached its expiration date.”

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Brandon Darby, Left Anarchist To Conservative Activist Reply

Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties

From leftoid, to FBI informant, to teabagger.

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blog.chron.com

Brandon Darby is probably not a name you are familiar with. After you read this you will wonder why you aren’t familiar with him. His story, to say the least, is fascinating. I met Brandon when he spoke at BlogCon a few weeks ago. The short version is this. Darby was approached by the FBI in late 2007 and asked to infiltrate a group of Leftwing anarchists Austin activists planning to protest and disrupt the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. Based on information Darby provided, FBI agents arrested and charged two men on domestic terrorism charges in a plot to firebomb at the convention. Their house was raided, the bombs seized, and Bradley Crowder and David McKay were arrested, charged, accepted plea bargains, and served several year long incarcerations.

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Next generation of “Jetsons”-style machines could create guns, illegal keys, narcotics — and even organs Reply

Science and Technology

Salon runs an article on 3d printing

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salon.com
Dennis Draeger

3-D printing’s radical new world

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

3D printing is a hot topic right now, especially with reports of this incredible technology entering the consumer marketplace. The prices are dropping as more companies attempt consumer-grade machines. Is it time to start looking forward to a time when we all have a Star Trek-like replicator at home to produce everything we want, when we want it?

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The Pirate Bay denounces Anonymous attacks on Virgin Reply

Strategy

theverge.com
Joshua Kopstein

Criticism of a recent Anonymous DDoS offensive that hit Virgin Media after the ISP blocked The Pirate Bay is coming from an unusual source: The Pirate Bay. The renowned torrent tracking service, while disagreeing with the actions, is nevertheless asserting that censorship can not be fought with more censorship, and has implored the various branches of Anonymous involved to cease their attack on the ISP in a post on their Facebook page.

We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us.

So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.

The outrage may indeed be misdirected: in November of last year, a group of ISPs including Virgin refused a request by the British Phonographic Institute to voluntarily block their customers from accessing the site. It wasn’t until after a recent ruling from the British High Court that the law forced ISPs to comply. Virgin Media itself followed the court order, but insisted that “changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”

The Pirate Bay also offered its own advice:

If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.

 

The spectacle of terror and its vested interests Reply

Police State/Civil Liberties

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk

A cycle of overhyped terror plots involving government agency entrapment feeds a multimillion-dollar surveillance industry

New York police commissioner Ray Kelly holds pipe bomb allegedly made by Jose Pimentel

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly holds pieces of a pipe bomb confiscated from alleged ‘lone wolf’ terrorist Jose Pimentel. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

The news stories, which quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about “bumbling fantasists”, hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants.

They have become a litany in recent years. The terrifying 2003-2004 national news stories that a Detroit “sleeper cell” had sent Muslim terrorists to blow up Disneyland and other landmarks, including in Las Vegas, was later thrown out of court, with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, to almost no press attention – the same cycle of hype and failed convictions that have characterized many such stories. The evidence had included a home video taken in Disneyland, “doodles”, and a guy with a credit card fraud problem, who had been pressured to diminish his own sentence by accusing his buddies.

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Pirate Party Gets Its First Mayor Reply

Electoralism/Democratism

techdirt.com
Mike Masnick

We’ve been talking a bit about the rise of the Pirate Party (mainly in parts of Europe) and how it may change politics, even if the party itself never goes mainstream. However, the party continues to score victories, especially in Germany. The latest, while not an electoral victory, involves the mayor of the town of Eixen, who has changed his affiliation from nothing to Pirate Party — meaning that the Pirate Party now has a mayor.

Mayor Andre Bonitz, who was elected in 2009, has switched from being non-partisan to the Pirate Party of Germany. For the citizen itself nothing changes in the first place, but that the newly converted mayor have announced to start a regular pirate meeting open to everyone, where the people can discuss with him and fellow pirates directly.

I’m sure some will mock this as not important or bandwagon jumping or something else — and to some extent, all of that may be true. But it is another sign of just how much The Pirate Party has been able to shake up politics in Germany.

In Case You Really Have To Flee the Authorities… Reply

Immigration, Police State/Civil Liberties

sovereignman.com
Simon Black

When most people think of Brazil, it’s the incredible beaches that come to mind. Or the crazy parties of Carnival. Or the spectacular vistas and great weather. Or how indescribably gorgeous (and welcoming) the locals are.

But here’s a little known fact, and it’s something that sets Brazil apart from most other places: Brazil’s constitution prohibits the extradition of Brazilian citizens to other countries. This is a rare gem in the world… I’ll explain.

Believe it or not, most countries are happy to sell their citizens down the river to another government. If you have been charged with a crime in another country, or are even simply ‘wanted for questioning’, your home government in all likelihood will comply with the request to round you up and ship you off.

For example, only 7% of all extradition requests that the US government made to the British government between 1 January 2004 and 31 July 2009 were denied. The US government denied ZERO extradition requests from the British government over the same period.

You may also be familiar the ongoing case of Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for “questioning” related to bizarre sex case.

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