Fighting for the Soul of Ukraine

English: Ukrainian Presidential Election October 2004 – Viktor Yanukovych (Second Round) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tim Judah | The New York Review of Books | January 9, 2014

Stas Kozlyuk/Demotix/Corbis

Antigovernment protesters with a flag showing imprisoned former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Kiev, Ukraine, November 24, 2013

“Revolution!” This is what they are shouting in Kiev. Ever since November 21 tens of thousands have been on the streets of the capital of Ukraine, defying the police and bans on demonstrations. On December 8 hundreds of thousands packed the city center, and a granite statue of Lenin was toppled in a scene recalling both Europe’s anti-Communist revolutions of 1989 and the symbolic fall of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad in 2003. Especially at the beginning of the demonstrations the riot police have reacted brutally, which brought out many more protesters. At times hard-liners among the demonstrators have resorted to violence but some of the violent actions seem to have been led by government-paid provocateurs.

As the first snows of winter fell no one knew which way the upheaval in one of Europe’s largest countries would turn. Protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square set up barricades and tents, occupied city hall, and blockaded government buildings. On December 9 security forces raided the offices of a major opposition party and took away computer servers. The websites of opposition media groups were attacked. On December 11 police tried to evict protesters from city hall before retreating. The same day, the protesters were rebuilding barricades the police had knocked down the night before. President Viktor Yanukovych was reported to have met with three former presidents and to have promised to revive talks with the EU.

Was this a rerun of the Orange Revolution of 2004–2005, which captured the imagination of the world and infuriated Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader? Or would President Yanukovych reassert control and hence reassure Putin that he had won the latest battle of Kiev?

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The Transnational Ex-Gay Movement

Friday Files | Reuters | December 20, 2013

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

FRIDAY FILE – AWID interviewed feminist researcher, Annie Wilkinson[i], about her research on sexual orientation change efforts in Ecuador and the transnational ‘ex-gay’ movement she describes as a multi-million dollar industry.

By Rochelle Jones

In June 2013, United States (U.S) evangelical Christian organization Exodus International, principally associated with the promotion of sexual orientation change efforts, announced that it would close its doors, with President Alan Chambers issuing a public apology to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans gender and intersex (LGBTI) community for its past actions. Beyond the delegitimized U.S ex-gay movement, however, the same reparative or ‘conversion’ practices have adapted, diversified, and taken root in other parts of the world.  The Scott Lively vs. Sexual Minorities Uganda case, for example, highlights the role of the evangelical Christian ex-gay movement in the persecution of LGBTI persons in Uganda, but in other parts of the world as well, such as Ecuador, the ex-gay movement is alive and well.

According to Annie Wilkinson’s research[ii]  – the “the ex-gay movement has now become a transnational, multi-million dollar industry that includes large-scale (international) conferences and workshops, pseudo-celebrities, a vast literature, and hundreds of ministries around the world. It is capable of mobilizing and distributing millions of dollars to sustain its activities.”

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Why the Miraculous Healing Properties of Weed Are Driving a Decorated Veteran on a Mission

April M. Short | AlterNet  | December 21, 2013

Perry Parks, a Vietnam combat veteran and highly decorated retired military officer of 28 years, says killing is an unnatural act.

If you take the average person off the street, he said, he will not be able to point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger.

“They have to be trained to kill, so most people will pull the gun up at the last minute and miss,” Parks said, noting that the U.S. military got hip to this trend following WWI, when which soldiers subconsciously missed the mark about 75 percent of the time.

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Bills in Congress Crack Down on Whistleblowers

Maxwell Abbott | PR Watch | Truthout | December 21, 2013

President Obama was elected on a platform that included promises for increased transparency and openness in government. Despite this rhetoric, Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any administration in history and overseen the massive growth of the NSA’s surveillance apparatus. In November, the Senate (S. 1681) and House (H.R. 3381) Intelligence Committees each released their own version of the “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014.”

This was an opportunity for Congressional leadership to address one of the defining issues of our time and either take a stand for increased transparency or continue down an Orwellian path of pervasive secrecy. A review of each chamber’s proposed legislation demonstrates that “1984” is the future.

Stopping “Insider Threats”

The bills contain provisions which will intensify efforts to stop whistleblowers or “insider threats,” no doubt inspired by Edward Snowden and his release of sensitive NSA documents. The House version of the funding bill provides $75 million of increased funding specifically for classified information protection. According to Tom Devine, Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project, “the ‘insider threat’ program is a cover for a witch hunt of whistleblowers.”

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Gov. Gary Herbert, Mormon Church Weigh In On Utah Gay Marriage Ruling

English: Seal of the Governor of Utah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Top Magazine | December 21, 2013

Utah Governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, reiterated his opposition to gay marriage following a federal judge’s ruling striking down the state’s ban.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby said in his ruling handed down Friday that the state’s 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment which limits marriage to heterosexual unions violates the 14^th Amendment.

(Related: Judge strikes down Utah’s gay marriage ban; Clerk starts issuing licenses.)

“I am very disappointed an activist federal judge is attempting to override the will of the people of Utah,” Herbert said in a statement.  “I am working with my legal counsel and the acting Attorney General to determine the best course to defend traditional marriage within the borders of Utah.”

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Bad Times for Big Brother

Image by None via CrunchBase

THE EDITORIAL BOARD | New York Times | December 21, 2013

It has been a long week for the National Security Agency. Last Monday, a federal judge ruled for the first time that the agency’s continuing sweep of Americans’ phone data — a once-secret program legally sanctioned for seven years and illegally conducted for five years before that — was very likely unconstitutional. Judge Richard Leon denounced the agency’s activities in collecting data on all Americans’ phone calls as “almost Orwellian.”

Two days later, the Obama administration released a comprehensive report that found “the current storage by the government of bulk metadata creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy and civil liberty.” And last Friday, the latest release of classified documents from Edward Snowden revealed surveillance efforts that included the office of the Israeli prime minister and the heads of international companies and aid organizations.

If the N.S.A. had not already gotten the message, the 300-plus-page advisory report, by a panel of intelligence and legal experts selected by President Obama, surely drove it home. All three branches of the federal government are now on record as recognizing that the agency has repeatedly misused, if not plainly abused, its powers, and that it must be reined in. The report’s 46 wide-ranging recommendations include stopping the bulk collection and storage of phone data, reforming the structure and processes of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, installing a civil liberties advocate to argue against the government’s position in that court, and introducing stricter oversight of the agency’s actions across the board.

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Mixed Messages Add Anxiety as Deadline Nears in Health Act

English: U.S. Health Insurance Status (Under 65) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ROBERT PEAR | New York Times | December 21, 2013

WASHINGTON — For most Americans, Monday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance that takes effect on Jan. 1. It was supposed to be a turning point in the troubled history of the new health care law, the moment when the spotlight would shift from the federal government’s online marketplace to the insurance companies providing coverage to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of people.

But as the date approaches, a series of decisions by the Obama administration to delay some of the law’s most important provisions and to extend some deadlines has caused uncertainty among insurers and confusion among consumers.

Already the enrollment of young adults appears to be lagging behind the expectations of federal officials and insurers. And insurers, struggling with problems caused by the chaotic debut of the federal insurance exchange in October, have criticized the administration’s last-minute changes, saying they could cause instability in the market.

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White House Tries to Prevent Judge From Ruling on Surveillance Efforts

The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CHARLIE SAVAGE and DAVID E. SANGER | New York Times | December 21, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved late Friday to prevent a federal judge in California from ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the Bush administration, telling a court that recent disclosures about National Security Agency spying were not enough to undermine its claim that litigating the case would jeopardize state secrets.

In a set of filings in the two long-running cases in the Northern District of California, the government acknowledged for the first time that the N.S.A. started systematically collecting data about Americans’ emails and phone calls in 2001, alongside its program of wiretapping certain calls without warrants. The government had long argued that disclosure of these and other secrets would put the country at risk if they came out in court.

But the government said that despite recent leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that made public a fuller scope of the surveillance and data collection programs put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks, sensitive secrets remained at risk in any courtroom discussion of their details — like whether the plaintiffs were targets of intelligence collection or whether particular telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon had helped the agency.

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When the Right to Bear Arms Includes the Mentally Ill

MICHAEL LUO and MIKE McINTIRE | New York Times | December 21, 2013

Last April, workers at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut called the police to report that a psychiatric patient named Mark Russo had threatened to shoot his mother if officers tried to take the 18 rifles and shotguns he kept at her house. Mr. Russo, who was off his medication for paranoid schizophrenia, also talked about the recent elementary school massacre in Newtown and told a nurse that he “could take a chair and kill you or bash your head in between the eyes,” court records show.

The police seized the firearms, as well as seven high-capacity magazines, but Mr. Russo, 55, was eventually allowed to return to the trailer in Middletown where he lives alone. In an interview there recently, he denied that he had schizophrenia but said he was taking his medication now — though only “the smallest dose,” because he is forced to. His hospitalization, he explained, stemmed from a misunderstanding: Seeking a message from God on whether to dissociate himself from his family, he had stabbed a basketball and waited for it to reinflate itself. When it did, he told relatives they would not be seeing him again, prompting them to call the police.

As for his guns, Mr. Russo is scheduled to get them back in the spring, as mandated by Connecticut law.

“I don’t think they ever should have been taken out of my house,” he said. “I plan to get all my guns and ammo and knives back in April.”

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BP, Chevron Accused of Illegally Dumping Toxic Radioactive Drilling Waste Into Louisiana Water

Woodland Plantation, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Emily Atkin | ThinkProgress | Reader Supported News | December 21, 2013

he Louisiana parish of Plaquemines is taking on a group of oil and gas giants including BP and Chevron for allegedly dumping toxic waste – some of it radioactive – from their drilling operations into its coastal waters, according to a lawsuit removed to federal court on Thursday.

Plaquemines Parish is claiming the companies violated the Louisiana State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978 by discharging oil field waste directly into the water “without limitation.” Worse, the companies allegedly failed to clear, revegetate, detoxify or restore any of the areas they polluted, as required by state law. The oil and gas companies’ pollution, along with their alleged failure to adequately maintain their oilfields, has caused significant coastal erosion and contaminated groundwater, the lawsuit said.

“I think the oil companies have an obligation to self-report, I think the oil companies are to blame and I think the oil companies took advantage of the state,” John Carmouche, on of the lead attorneys for the parish, said in November when the suit originally came out in state court. The lawsuit is just one of nearly 30 that were filed in November by both Plaquemines and Jefferson parishes, targeting dozens of energy companies and their contractors they claim helped destroy and pollute coastal areas.

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