by Stephen Lendman

ACTA's worse than SOPA and PIPA. Net Neutrality and free expression are threatened. In October 2007, negotiations began secretly.

At issue is establishing a new intellectual property enforcement treaty - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). If adopted, fundamental freedoms will be lost. Privatized online censorship will rule. Internet actors will be copyright enforcers. Offenders will face harsh criminal sanctions.

Read more »

by Stephen Lendman

Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languish in Israeli prisons. Virtually daily, more arrests are made. Those incarcerated face torture, appalling prison conditions, and other forms of abuse.

Some react in response. Khader did his way by refusing food for multiple reasons, including:

● his rights and identity were violated;

● his lawless arrest and abusive detention; and

● Israel's illegal administrative detention system.

Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association calls him a "prisoner at risk."

Read more »

Eric Walberg

All the meticulous plotting to avoid Ukraine’s Orange Revolution resulted in -- Russia’s very own coloured one. But Russia is not Ukraine.

Russia’s electoral scene has been transformed in the past two months, without a doubt inspired by the political winds from the Middle East and the earlier colour revolutions in Russia’s “near abroad”. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s casual return to the presidential scene was greeted as an effrontery by an electorate who want to move on from Russia’s political strongman tradition, and to inject the electoral process with ballot-box accountability.

Read more »

By Alan Hart

Arising out the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite, the Nobel Prize is universally recognized as the most prestigious award in the fields of peace-making, economics, chemistry, physics, medicine and literature. How about an international award - without the gold medal, the diploma and the money - for hypocrisy?

Such an award could be called the Lebon Prize (reversing Nobel).

If there was such an award, the statements of European and American leaders in the immediate aftermath of Russia and China’s veto of the Security Council resolution to end the killing in Syria suggest two most obvious nominees for it.

Read more »

by Stephen Lendman

Under repressive occupation, Military Orders govern virtually all aspects of life. Freedom is entirely restricted. Police state authority runs Palestine.

Although Oslo called Palestine one territorial unit, Israel maintains total control of people and goods movement in and out of Gaza.

In June 1989, Israel began restricting free movement between Gaza and Israel through magnetic ID cards not given former prisoners.

In 1991, Palestinians had to apply for personal exit permits. They were required to enter or leave Palestine and how long they could stay in Israel. Over time, numbers issued decreased.

Read more »