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The McGlynn 23 Jan
Archive for January, 2012
21 Jan
Urgent Action: Viacom Blocks Ads For The Last War Crime Movie, In A Blatant Act Of Political Censorship
No sooner had we achieved a real victory in forcing YouTube to
reinstate our waterboarding scene preview clip, now we are facing
brick wall opposition from MTV (that’s Viacom Inc., a Standard and
Poor’s 500 giant media conglomerate) in getting out our PAID
advertising for “The Last War Crime” movie. It’s about indicting
Cheney for torture . . . and isn’t that something billions of people
want to see?
See the ad MTV refuses to run on this page.
Protest Viacom Censorship Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/viacom_protest.php
Friends, the corporate political censors have their hands clenched
around the throat of our public discourse right now, and only your
valiant voices of resistance can save our democracy. The right wing’s
rogue Supreme Court says money equates to free speech, but if even if
you have the money, you cannot even BUY free speech if the
corporations don’t preapprove of your message.
This is the end game, folks. Corporate special interests already
write ALL legislation in Congress. We must raise a hue and cry so
loud with our voices that we directly force the corporations to be
accountable. Otherwise there is no chance whatsoever for meaningful
policy change.
If you want to fight back, if you want to keep them from completely
suppressing this potentially world changing movie, there are THREE
things we urgently need you to do, at the cost to you to do ALL three
of a grand total of maybe 99 cents and about three clicks of a mouse.
1) Submit the action page to protest MTV’s rejection of the ad for
their Times Square HD video screen for The Last War Crime, and here
is the link again.
Protest Viacom Censorship Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/viacom_protest.php
2) At the top of that same page is a “like” button for the Facebook
page for “The Last War Crime”. We MUST demonstrate mass numbers of
likes on that page so that the distributors know how huge the
potential audience is for this movie and we get real distribution. If
you have a Facebook account all you have to do is click the button
right there one time before you submit the action page. Please just
do it. And here is a direct link to the Facebook movie page.
The Last War Crime on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/thelastwarcrime
3) As a collateral action we have produced the most amazing theme
song track you ever heard. It’s called, “It’s A Crime”, and we pulled
together the absolute top musicians and singers in Los Angeles to cut
it live. We need each and every one of you to take just 99 cents and
buy the song over at iTunes, so we chart the song in their top 100
and create additional mass visibility for this project, and show
there is a market for this kind of political content. From this page
just click on “View in iTunes”, and if you don’t have the iTunes
application you’ll be prompted on how to get it.
Theme Song Download:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/its-a-crime-single/id495274915
We simply wanted to run a 10 second video ad on MTV’s high definition
video screen in Times Square, but first their ad manager demanded to
know the content of the film itself. Here are the incriminating
admissions we actually have in writing of blatant censorship:
The Pen: “Must MTV approve the underlying content of a movie to
accept an ad for that movie (you asked me to tender a synopsis)?”
MTV: “Yes”
The Pen: “Does that not implicate some kind of possibly arbitrary
political censorship?”
MTV: “Yes”
Can you even imagine, can you even get your mind around, the sheer
arrogance of putting such admissions in writing, as if they were sure
they could get away with it?
Viacom Inc. is comprised of approximately 170 media networks reaching
more than 600 million global subscribers. We must presume the
rejection of this ad represents banning any reference to the movie
going forward across all those wide ranging properties, an
intolerable result under any construction of free speech in our
society.
We are demanding that Viacom Inc. immediately reverse its position
with regard to this first ad, and attempt no further act of political
censorship against the producers of this movie or anyone else.
Please do ALL three things we are asking of you above. 1) Submit the
Viacom protest, 2) “like” the Facebook page for the movie, and 3) get
the movie theme song from iTunes. Then and only then can we get this
movie out there like it so deserves to be, so we can keep the voice
of real truth alive.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Contributions to The People’s Email Network are not tax-deductible
for federal income tax purposes.
21 Jan
Willard Romney—The Fool
Mitt Romney is trying to say that President Obama’s successful auto recovery is just like what he did at Bain Capital.
We’re calling his bluff—creating wealth for your investors is nothing like creating jobs.
19 Jan
Muslim College Student Reports Sexual Harassment……Expelled by Connecticut’s University of Bridgeport
Muslim College Student Reports Sexual Harassment, Gets Reported To FBI For Terrorism And Expelled
By Tanya
Somanader posted from ThinkProgress
Security on Jan 18, 2012 at 4:00 pm
In 2008, African-American Muslim student Balayla Ahmad enrolled in
Connecticut’s University of Bridgeport with hopes of becoming a
chiropractor. Instead, she became of a victim of sexual harassment.
Distressed by the repeated sexual advances and “graphic offensive
comments” of a male student, Ahmad reported the harassment and
“fears for her safety” to multiple teachers, who urged her to say
nothing, and finally the university’s president and dean. The dean
told Ahmad, “My hands are tied. What do you suggest I do?”
Rather than having her claims addressed, Ahmad received
allegations of her own. Learning of her report, Ahmad’s harasser
decided to falsely accuse her of terrorism to the FBI. And rather
than fully investigate what was happening, the University of
Bridgeport just expelled
Ahmad altogether:
After reporting the sexual harassment in April 2009,
Ahmad said she was approached by two university security directors
who told her someone had made allegations against her and they
threatened to call the FBI and have her arrested.
Later, two FBI agents knocked on Ahmad’s
apartment door, questioned her and left a business card, according to
the lawsuit. She said she learned that her harasser or his associates
had fabricated a story falsely accusing her of being a terrorist in
apparent retaliation for having made a sexual harassment complaint
against him.
“Ahmad was racially profiled and discriminated against
because of her race, color and ethnic identity as an African American
Muslim and labeled a terrorist based on false accusations provided by
the harasser and adopted without adequate investigation by the
university,” the lawsuit states.
Ahmad asked that the university provide her with
an off-site proctor for her exams, but she said the university told
her in April 2009 that her sexual harassment complaint had been
closed and that she was being referred to a disciplinary committee.
In June, she said the university dismissed her.
Ahmad filed a lawsuit against the university last week for failing
to investigate her claims, instead showing “deliberate
indifference” to her plight. The lawsuit claims that the college
even “recklessly disseminated false accusations by the harasser
that they had good reason to believe were unreliable and threatened
her with arrest by the FBI.”
Ahmad’s lawyer, Bradford Conover noted that because Ahmad
regularly wears the hijab, she was easily targeted for her religion.
“[B]ecause of that, she ended up getting targeted based on some
reckless accusations against her,” Conover said. “They never
investigated it. Had they done so, they would have discovered the
accusations against her were false and she had been subject to sexual
harassment.”
17 Jan
The FBI’s Secretive Practice
Revealed: The FBI’s Secretive Practice of “Blackballing” Files
Tuesday 17 January 2012
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Have you ever filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI and received a written response from the agency stating that it could not locate records responsive to your request?
If so, there’s a chance the FBI may have found some documents, but for unknown reasons, the agency’s FOIA analysts determined it was not responsive and “blackballed” the file, crucial information the FBI withholds from a requester when it issues a “no records” response.
The FBI’s practice of “blackballing” files has never been publicly disclosed before. With the exception of one open government expert, a half-dozen others contacted by Truthout said they were unfamiliar with the process of “blackballing” and had never heard of the term.
Trevor Griffey learned about “blackballing” last year when he filed a FOIA/Privacy Act request with the FBI to determine whether Manning Marable, a Columbia University professor who founded the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, sought to obtain the FBI’s files on Malcolm X under FOIA. At the time of his death last April, Marable had just finished writing an exhaustive biography on the late civil rights activist. Griffey filed the FOIA hoping he would receive records to assist him with research he has been conducting related to a long-term civil rights project he has been working on.
In a letter the agency sent in response to his FOIA, the FBI told Griffey that it could not locate “main file records” on Marable responsive to his request. Last November, in response to a FOIA request Truthout filed with the FBI for a wide-range of documents on the Occupy Wall Street, the agency also said it was unable to “identify main file records responsive to [our] FOIA,” despite the fact that internal FBI documents related to the protest movement had already been posted on the Internet. The FBI has been criticized in the past for responding to more than half of the FOIA requests the agency had received by claiming it could not locate responsive files.
Griffey, who also teaches US history at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is co-editor of the book, “Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action and the Construction Industry,” was baffled. He found it difficult to believe that Marable would not have filed a FOIA for Malcolm X’s FBI file. So, he sent an email to an FBI FOIA analyst asking for clarification.
The FBI FOIA analyst responded to Griffey by asking him to supply additional “keywords” to assist in a search of the agency’s main file records. The analyst then disclosed to Griffey, perhaps mistakenly, that a search for previous requests for records on Marable turned up a single file that was “blackballed” per the agency’s “standard operating procedure.”
So last May, Griffey again turned to FOIA, this time to try and gain insight into the blackballing process. He filed a FOIA request with the FBI seeking a copy of the agency’s standard operating procedure for “blackballing” files.
Two months later, he received five pages from an untitled and undated PowerPoint presentation that outlined procedures for blackballing files from FOIA requests. The FBI cited three exemptions under the law to justify withholding a complete and unredacted copy of the PowerPoint:
(b)(6) Personnel and medical files and similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
(b)(7) Records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information:
C. Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;
E. Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law …
Griffey appealed the FBI’s decision to withhold information contained in the PowerPoint under the (b)(7)(E) exemption, but it was denied.
Still, the PowerPoint pages the FBI did turn over to Griffey provide insight into the “blackballing” process. On a page titled, “Blackball Files,” it says files identified as 190 and 197 “main files,” which are FBI classifications pertaining to FOIA/Privacy Act requests and civil litigation, are blackballed unless “specifically ask[ed] for” by the requestor when an initial FOIA request is made.
Moreover, the agency deems certain “control files,” “separate files which relate to a specific matter and is used as an administrative means of managing, or ‘controlling’ a certain program or investigative matter,” that pop up and are unresponsive to a FOIA to be ripe for blackballing. However, a FOIA analyst must first get permission from a supervisor before a “control file” can be blackballed.
Finally, according to the PowerPoint, some files are automatically blackballed by an FBI FOIA analyst, but the public is not permitted to know the classification of files that fall into that category because the FBI redacted that part of the PowerPoint, claiming disclosure would reveal “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations and procedures.”
“Not only are we not told when the FBI withholds material from FOIA requests, but we are not even allowed to know all of the kinds of material it withholds,” Griffey told Truthout. “The law itself and not just its enforcement, is now effectively secret.”
But Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, told Truthout in an interview that “blackballing” is not about secrecy nor is the process used in any way to conceal responsive records, which the Justice Department revealed it has been doing for more than two decades in certain cases.
“Blackball is a term of art used by the [FBI's] FOIA section people in the records management division,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate term. It applies to people and events. It means that we pulled a file that initially looked responsive but after a review it turned out it wasn’t because the file didn’t match the requestors specific request” for records.
Carter provided Truthout with an explanation of the blackballing process as provided to him by Dennis Argall, the assistant section chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section, FBI’s Records Management Division:
“[B]lackball” is a term we typically use to describe a file (not a request) that initially looked responsive but upon review we find it’s for a different guy or event. It can also be used to describe a file that we won’t process because, i.e., a guy makes a request for his “FBI file” in 2005 and [we] process it for him. When he makes another request for his “FBI file” in 2011, we will only process his “records” but will not process the file that was created to respond to the 2005 FOIA request, which is 190 file series.
That’s exactly how the FBI described the blackballing process to attorney Kel McClanahan, executive director of Arlington, Virginia-based National Security Counselors, a public interest law firm.
McClanahan told Truthout in an email interview that he first learned about blackballing when the term was used in a set of FBI “processing notes” he requested from the agency to determine how FBI FOIA analysts had handled one of his FOIA requests.
Although McClanahan believes there is “definitely a place for blackballing in the FOIA process” he said the way the FBI “does blackballing leaves a lot to be desired.”
“First of all, even though [the FBI] may blackball 50 records and release 3, they never tell the requester about the 50,” McClanahan said, hitting on Griffey’s main complaint about blackballing. “They never mention word one about ‘and we found other records that we deemed non-responsive.’ The requester is left to wonder why the FBI only found 3 records about the subject in question and he will never know that they found 50 others that they ultimately deemed non-responsive unless he has the foresight to FOIA the FBI’s processing notes for his request. Knowledge like that is very important when a requester is trying to decide whether or not to tie up [the FBI's Office of Information Policy] with an administrative appeal, let alone litigation.”
McClanahan said his concerns would largely be addressed if the FBI “only blackballed records for good reasons.”
“If I could trust the FBI only to blackball things that were clearly non-responsive, I don’t need to know that they found completely unrelated records,” he added. “However, that’s not what the FBI does. I have seen it blackball records because they ‘weren’t FBI records,’ even though they were in FBI files (they were FBI copies of other agencies’ records, which any FOIA person worth his salt knows are still responsive to a FOIA request made to FBI). I’ve seen it blackball records because the request asked for ‘internal FBI records’ and the records in question were sent outside of the FBI, based on a strained interpretation of the word ‘internal.’”
The FBI will be forced to make a choice “if it wants to apply FOIA correctly,” McClanahan said.
“The agency can either limit its blackballing to records that nobody would think are responsive (e.g. different people with the same name, records outside a set time frame); or it can tell requesters in the administrative stage that it determined that certain records were non-responsive and why,” he said. “Failing to do either, however, is bad FOIA.”
