US city bans use of drones

Unmanned aircraft, or drones, are widely used by the US against foreign targets. But their use inside the United States is more controversial. Privacy advocates worry that drones in America's skies will result in a surveillance society. That has led the city of Charlottesville to ban the use of drones in its airspace. Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett reports from the city.

Wealthy backers fund right-wing agenda in secret

Democracy Now!:

Since 1999, the nonprofit charity Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact it has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. The most detailed accounting to date shows Donors Trust funds a wish list of right-wing causes, prompting Mother Jones magazine to label it "the dark-money ATM of the right." We’re joined by John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity and co-author of the group’s months-long investigation into Donors Trust. "They’re essentially a pass through," Dunbar says of Donors Trust. "They act as a kind of a middleman between what are very large, well-known private foundations created mostly by corporate executives, like the Kochs, for example, and they direct the money of those contributions to a very large network of right-leaning, free-market think tanks across the country."

Drones - web press grills Obama

"President Barack Obama touched on a slew of issues in his second Google Hangout, repeating the major points from Tuesday's State of the Union speech but also directly addressing the viability of the penny, the Benghazi hearings, drone strikes on American citizens, his daughters' math and science skills, and the GOP blocking a confirmation vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense."*

In a recent Google Hangout, President Obama took questions from a handful of bloggers. The questions were tough, and they grilled the president on his drone policy, much more than any mainstream press have ever. Why were these bloggers and the daily show the only ones to pose these critical questions? Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

The NDAA and the death of the democratic state

Chris Hedges, Truthdig:

On Wednesday a few hundred activists crowded into the courtroom of the Second Circuit, the spillover room with its faulty audio feed and dearth of chairs, and Foley Square outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan where many huddled in the cold. The fate of the nation, we understood, could be decided by the three judges who will rule on our lawsuit against President Barack Obama for signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who “substantially support”—an undefined legal term—al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces,” again a term that is legally undefined. Those detained can be imprisoned indefinitely by the military and denied due process until “the end of hostilities.” In an age of permanent war this is probably a lifetime. Anyone detained under the NDAA can be sent, according to Section (c)(4), to any “foreign country or entity.” This is, in essence, extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens. It empowers the government to ship detainees to the jails of some of the most repressive regimes on earth.

Section 1021(b)(2) was declared invalid in September after our first trial, in the Southern District Court of New York. The Obama administration appealed the Southern District Court ruling. The appeal was heard Wednesday in the Second Circuit Court with Judges Raymond J. Lohier, Lewis A. Kaplan and Amalya L. Kearse presiding. The judges might not make a decision until the spring when the Supreme Court rules in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, another case in which I am a plaintiff. The Supreme Court case challenges the government’s use of electronic surveillance. If we are successful in the Clapper case, it will strengthen all the plaintiffs’ standing in Hedges v. Obama. The Supreme Court, if it rules against the government, will affirm that we as plaintiffs have a reasonable fear of being detained.

Continue reading here.

Is Mexico's war on drugs close to a real end?

The election of Enrique Pena Nieto last year marked the return to power of the Industrial Revolutionary Party (PRI) that had ruled the country for 71 years prior to the year 2000. Pena Nieto promised the PRI was no longer a party of patronage and corruption, but a modern force focused on economic growth, poverty reduction and tackling the drug-related violence unleashed during the presidency of Felipe Calderon. This week the president unveiled his plan to tackle crime and take on the cartels. He appeared to reject Calderon's policy of force, instead promising to approach the problem through a $9.2bn investment in social programs to address the root causes of crime. And in Ecuador, all indications suggest that President Rafael Correa's leadership is almost certain to continue after Sunday's presidential election. Correa is already the longest-serving president the country has had in a century, despite having only come to power in 2007.

The growing militarization of domestic policing

Democracy Now!:

The fire that killed former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner on Tuesday has drawn comparisons to the deadly 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, and the 1985 police bombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia. In Waco, federal agents denied for years they had used incendiary tear gas after a fire killed 76 people inside the compound. The MOVE bombing left six adults and five children dead. We speak to former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and Radley Balko, author of the forthcoming book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.”

Tony Benn on market forces

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Poverty, inequality are ignored by Obama

Democracy Now!:

President Obama opened his State of the Union with a call to revive the middle class and with a challenge to a divided Congress to back his economic proposals to create jobs. We get reaction from Bob Herbert, distinguished senior fellow with Demos, and Cathy Cohen, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and founder of the Black Youth Project. "Median income in the United States has gone down since the recession ended," Herbert says. "Poverty is expanding. We have nearly 50 million people who are officially poor in this country and another 50 million who are near poor. ... You’re getting close to a third of the entire population. So, there is no way to address challenges that are that enormous without making enormous investments."

Inside Story - The two sides of Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama has once again attempted to appease both sides of the political divide as he set out his agenda for 2013. His annual State of the Union address was filled with policies appealing both to progressives and conservatives, even though some like - fighting climate change and increasing oil production - appear incompatible.

Obama's Game of Drones

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Legacy of Chile's Pinochet dictatorship lives on

State repression of social movements by militarized Carabinero police force draws international condemnation.

Special ops, private sector to continue Afghan War

Democracy Now!:

As President Obama announced plans to withdraw another 34,000 troops from Afghanistan, longtime peace activist Kathy Kelly warns the war shows no end. Kelly, who just returned from Afghanistan, says the company formally known as Blackwater is now running a base just outside of Kabul used by the Special Operations Joint Task Force. On Monday, a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan killed 10 civilians. The strike hit what the NATO occupation force called a suspected Taliban hideout in the province of Kunar. Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, warns Afghan civilians continue to suffer from longest-running war in U.S. history.

Canadian unions under siege

Workers often toiled 10 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week in the 19th century. In the decades that followed the Great Depression, unions won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. 

Linda McQuaig, The Toronto Star:

Although much denigrated by the right these days, union activists are, as the old saying notes, “the people who brought you the weekend.”

The right apparently wants you to believe that the weekend is now out of date.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, along with influential members of the corporate and media world, are hostile to unions, rarely missing an opportunity to portray union leaders as autocratic “bosses.”

Yet, if you’re middle class, a union probably helped you or your ancestors get there. In the 19th century, workers typically toiled 10 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week. Unions fought to change that. In the decades that followed the Great Depression, unions won higher wages and better working conditions for their members, setting a standard with ripple effects that led to a better deal for all workers.

But in recent decades, many of the precious, hard-fought union gains — job security, workplace pensions, as well as broader social goals like public pensions and unemployment insurance — have been under fierce attack by the corporate world (where workers really are under the thumb of unelected “bosses”).

Part of the strategy has been to pit worker against worker. So, as private sector workers have lost ground, they’ve been encouraged to resent public sector workers, whose unions have generally been stronger and better able to protect them.

With workers increasingly baited into a dogfight against each other, it’s been easier to make the case that unions are no longer relevant.

But, given the intensity of the attack, unions are likely more necessary than ever. If you’ve grown attached to the weekend, not to mention the eight-hour day, this probably isn’t the time to throw unions under the bus.

In fact, they’re really the only organized line of defence against the broad right-wing assault on a wide range of social programs and government regulations important to most Canadians.

Continue reading here.

Israel plan to wall off West Bank land defied

A court in Israel is due to hear final arguments on the construction of a separation wall in a pristine valley in the West Bank. Lawyers representing Palestinian landowners and a convent say if the wall is built they will lose their land and the convent will be surrounded. Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reports from the Cremisan Valley in the Occupied West Bank.

Remembering Eslanda Robeson

Democracy Now!:

In a Black History Month special, we remember the lives of the legendary civil rights activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda, whose story is not as well known. One of the most celebrated singers and actors of the 20th century, Robeson was attacked, blacklisted and hounded by the government for his political beliefs. Eslanda Robeson, known by her friends as "Essie," was an author, an anthropologist and a globally connected activist who worked to end colonialism in Africa and racism in the United States. We’re joined by historian Barbara Ransby, author of the new biography, "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson."

Protests disrupt CIA director hearing

Protesters in the US have disrupted the hearing to confirm John Brennan as the new director of the CIA. They were condemning the controversial US drone programme, which Brennan helped to establish. Al Jazeera's Kimberley Halkett reports from Washington DC.

CodePink names victims of drones at hearing

Democracy Now!:

Thursday’s confirmation hearing for CIA nominee John Brennan was briefly postponed to clear the room of activists from CODEPINK after they repeatedly disrupted Brennan’s testimony. One woman held a list of Pakistani children killed in U.S. drone strikes. Former U.S. diplomat Col. Ann Wright interrupted Brennan while wearing a sign around her neck with the name of Tariq Aziz, a 16-year-old Pakistani boy who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Wright and seven others were arrested. We speak to CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin who also disrupted the meeting and recently visited Pakistan to speak with victims of drone strikes. “It’s not only the killing, it’s the terrorizing of entire populations, where they hear the drones buzzing overhead 24 hours a day. Where they’re afraid to go to school, afraid to go to the markets, to funerals, to weddings. Where it disrupts entire communities,” Benjamin says. “And we are trying to get this information to our elected officials, to say, 'You are making us unsafe here at home,' to say nothing about illegal, immoral and inhumane these policies are.”

Brennan hearing: citizen assassinations ignored

Democracy Now!:

President Obama’s nominee to run the CIA, John Brennan, forcefully defended Obama’s counterterrorism policies, including the increase use of armed drones and the targeted killings of American citizens during his confirmation hearing Thursday. “None of the central questions that should have been asked of John Brennan were asked in an effective way,” says Jeremy Scahill, author of the forthcoming book “Dirty Wars.” “In the cases where people like Sen. Angus King or Sen. Ron Wyden would ask a real question, for instance, about whether or not the CIA has the right to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. The questions were very good — Brennan would then offer up a non-answer. Then there would be almost a no follow-up.” Scahill went on to say, “[Brennan has] served for more than four years as the assassination czar, and it basically looked like they’re discussing purchasing a used car on Capitol hill. And it was total kabuki oversight. And that’s a devastating commentary on where things stand.

Narrowing Asia's gap between rich and poor

China and Indonesia have agreed to increase minimum wages to help narrow the gap between rich and poor. The countries' economies are among the fastest growing in the world but they are also witnessing growing social unrest. Millions remain in poverty and workers are increasingly taking to the streets, holding strikes and protests - pressing their demands for more money. We examine if raising wages in Indonesia and China could burden production cost and hurt the lowest paid.

'Wide variety of complicity' in CIA rendition

As many as 54 countries have been complicit in the CIA's extraordinary rendition operations in which terrorism suspects were held in secret prisons overseas or turned over to foreign governments for interrogation, a human rights organization has said in a report. Speaking to Al Jazeera from New York, Amrit Singh, author of the report for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said there has been a "continuum of involvement by each of these governments", ranging from hosting CIA secret prisons to the capture and detention of prisoners. These actions, Singh says, illustrate a "wide variety of complicity" from European and Middle Eastern states.