January 13, 2015 archive

Anonynous Launches #OpCharlieHebdo

Fighting fire with cyber attacks:

On January 9th, the hacker group Anonymous launched #OpCharlieHebdo to take down websites and social media networks of Islamic extremist groups] as avenge the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The announcement was made on You Tube

The threat has produced results:

Anonymous blocks jihadist website in retaliation for Charlie Hebdo attack

By David Goldman and Mark Thompson, CNN Money

Hackers claiming to be with the group Anonymous say they have hacked a jihadist website in retaliation for the terror attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The website ansar-alhaqq.net, a French jihadist site, currently redirects to Duck Duck Go, a search engine. Hackers using the Twitter handle @OpCharlieHebdo claimed responsibility.

Anonymous also named dozens of Twitter accounts that the hacktivist group says belong to jihadists.

The hackers posted the Twitter handles on Pastebin, a website that lets people post information anonymously online.

Voltaire Redux

“Circus of Hypocrisy”: Jeremy Scahill on How World Leaders at Paris March Oppose Press Freedom

“What we saw on display on the one hand was very heartening, to see so many people come into the streets,” says Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept. “But on the other hand, this is a sort of circus of hypocrisy when it comes to all of those world leaders who were marching at the front of it. Every single one of those heads of state or representatives of governments there have waged their own wars against journalists.”

Fox News’ Hebdo confusion: Why its new “free speech” obsession is a sham

David Dayen, Salon

Tuesday, Jan 13, 2015 07:00 AM EST

(T)here’s a giant gap in this newfound war on censorship. It neglects the most prominent recent example of this country shutting down free speech. I’m talking about the repression of public protest movements, most notably the violent dismantling of Occupy Wall Street encampments, a censorship directed by the state.

The right to peaceable assembly is as much a part of the First Amendment as the right to free speech, and in fact they intersect. In 2011 the tens of thousands of Occupiers across the country had no access to a printing press or real estate in a newsweekly. So they used their collective voice, basically all they had to use, to call attention to an economic system that doesn’t work for the 99 percent. In their view, the best way to maximize the reach of that opinion was through an ongoing protest, using public spaces to register dissent.

This was not welcomed as a new addition to the public debate, or an example of boldly exercising the sacred, inalienable right to speak out. In fact it was immediately seen as a problem to be solved. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on Occupy protests from even before it began, coordinating this surveillance with local police nationwide and even the New York Stock Exchange and private businesses. City councils subsequently passed a host of new laws, presented as protections for health and safety, to criminalize assemblies and justify evictions from encampments.



With public protest undergoing a renaissance in America, this is more than a rhetorical point. You cannot pick and choose which free speech is worthy of defense and which can be allowed to wither. You cannot vow eternal support of the right to blaspheme the Prophet Mohammed and go silent with that support when someone questions the secular religion of our economic and political system.

The dissolution of Occupy is rarely discussed as a free speech issue. But maybe amid a new round of protests for justice and dignity, we can get a reassessment. The marketplace of ideas shouldn’t have a boundary around it to keep out anything outside the range of acceptability. If you tweet #JeSuisCharlie, to be consistent you should add #JeSuisOccupy.

Terror Attacks: Rogue Actions or Global Conspiracy

The Paris Mystery: Were the Shooters Part of a Global Terrorist Conspiracy?

By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept

n the days since the siege at the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, the press and social media sites have been consumed with the possible answers to one question: Beyond the two shooters, Said and Cherif Kouachi, who is responsible for the attack that killed 12 people at the magazine’s offices?

On Friday, shortly after the gunmen were killed by French forces in a raid on a printing plant outside of Paris, a source from within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) provided The Intercept with a series of messages and statements taking responsibility for the attacks, asserting that AQAP’s leadership “directed” the raid on the magazine to avenge the honor of the Prophet Mohammed.

Moments after The Intercept published these statements, an AQAP official, Bakhsaruf al-Danqaluh tweeted, in Arabic, the exact paragraphs the AQAP source provided us. Within an hour of that, AQAP’s senior cleric, Sheikh Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari, released an audio statement through AQAP’s official media wing, praising the attack. “Some of the sons of France showed a lack of manners with Allah’s messengers, so a band of Allah’s believing army rose against them, and they taught them the proper manners, and the limits of freedom of speech,” Nadhari declared. “How can we not fight the ones that attacked the Prophet and attacked the religion and fought the believers?” While heaping passionate praise on the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Nadhari stopped short of making any claim that AQAP directed or was in any way involved with the planning.

Historically, when AQAP has taken credit for attacks, it has used al Qaeda central’s al-Fajr Media to distribute statements and video or audio recordings through the AQAP media outlet al-Malahim to a variety of jihadist forums. But over the past year, AQAP has broadened its distribution strategy and has begun using Twitter and other social media sites. While AQAP continues to use al-Malahim, “the vast majority if not all of the releases are now released onto Twitter first via authenticated Twitter accounts that have become the first point of release,” says Aaron Zelin, an expert on al Qaeda and other militant groups and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “This has been the case ever since late July 2014, though AQAP had been making a slow transition going all the way back to early 2014.” Zelin’s analysis of this new distribution strategy tracks with how AQAP sources began to assert responsibility for the Paris attacks last week, with the one caveat being that an AQAP source provided the tweets in advance to a media outlet, The Intercept.

In the past, AQAP publicly took responsibility through its official media and communication channels. None of that has happened yet in the case of the Kouachi brothers’ Paris attack. [..]

In analyzing AQAP’s potential role in the Paris attack, it’s worth remembering the four-month delay between the group praising the 2009 underwear plot and the group releasing evidence it actually orchestrated the act. Short of such video or photographic documentation, and even with an official statement from AQAP’s leadership, it would be difficult to prove that AQAP indeed sponsored the raid on Charlie Hebdo.

Scahill, the co-founder of The Intercept, spoke with Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman about these claims

Transcript can be read here

Cartnoon

The Breakfast Club (We Will Not Walk In Fear)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Hubert Humphrey dies; Japan apologizes for WWII Korean sex slaves; L. Douglas Wilder becomes America’s first elected black governor; J’accuse published.

Breakfast Tunes

On This Day In History January 13

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 13 is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 352 days remaining until the end of the year (353 in leap years).

It is still celebrated as New Year’s Eve (at least in the 20th & 21st centuries) by countries still using the thirteen day slower Julian calendar (Old New Year).

On this day in 1898, French writer Emile Zola’s inflammatory newspaper editorial, entitled “J’accuse,” is printed. The letter exposed a military cover-up regarding Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain, had been accused of espionage in 1894 and sentenced in a secret military court-martial to imprisonment in a South American penal colony. Two years later, evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence surfaced, but the army suppressed the information. Zola’s letter excoriated the military for concealing its mistaken conviction.

Dreyfus Affair

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish artillery officer in the French army. When the French intelligence found information about someone giving the German embassy military secrets, anti-semitism seems to have caused senior officers to suspect Dreyfus, though there was no direct evidence of any wrongdoing. Dreyfus was court-martialled, convicted of treason and sent to Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

LL Col. Georges Picquart, though, came across evidence that implicated another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, and informed his superiors. Rather than move to clear Dreyfus, the decision was made to protect Esterhazy and ensure the original verdict was not overturned. Major Hubert-Joseph Henry forged documents that made it seem that Dreyfus was guilty and then had Picquart assigned duty in Africa. Before leaving, Picquart told some of Dreyfus’s supporters what he knew. Soon Senator August Scheurer-Kestner took up the case and announced in the Senate that Dreyfus was innocent and accused Esterhazy. The right-wing government refused new evidence to be allowed and Esterhazy was tried and acquitted. Picquart was then sentenced to 60 days in prison.

Émile Zola risked his career and even his life on 13 January 1898, when his “J’accuse“, was published on the front page of the Paris daily, L’Aurore. The newspaper was run by Ernest Vaughan and Georges Clemenceau, who decided that the controversial story would be in the form of an open letter to the President, Felix Faure. Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse” accused the highest levels of the French Army of obstruction of justice and antisemitism by having wrongfully convicted Alfred Dreyfus to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Zola declared that Dreyfus’ conviction came after a false accusation of espionage and was a miscarriage of justice. The case, known as the Dreyfus affair, divided France deeply between the reactionary army and church, and the more liberal commercial society. The ramifications continued for many years; on the 100th anniversary of Zola’s article, France’s Roman Catholic daily paper, La Croix, apologized for its antisemitic editorials during the Dreyfus Affair. As Zola was a leading French thinker, his letter formed a major turning-point in the affair.

Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel on 7 February 1898, and was convicted on 23 February, sentenced, and removed from the Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, Zola fled to England. Without even having had the time to pack a few clothes, he arrived at Victoria Station on 19 July. After his brief and unhappy residence in London, from October 1898 to June 1899, he was allowed to return in time to see the government fall.

The government offered Dreyfus a pardon (rather than exoneration), which he could accept and go free and so effectively admit that he was guilty, or face a re-trial in which he was sure to be convicted again. Although he was clearly not guilty, he chose to accept the pardon. Émile Zola said, “The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it.” In 1906, Dreyfus was completely exonerated by the Supreme Court.

The 1898 article by Émile Zola is widely marked in France as the most prominent manifestation of the new power of the intellectuals (writers, artists, academicians) in shaping public opinion, the media and the state.

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