A Palestinian protester shot dead. It had nothing to do with a threat to the life of the Israeli soldier who shot him
nor to Israel’s national security. The massacre is the work of a bribe-taking prime minister who needs a distraction.

Reckless criminals who need a war

A huge prison whose hungry and desperate inhabitants occasionally lob missiles back and their tormentors, usually not making distinctions between enemy combatants and innocent bystanders — that’s the reality of Gaza under Israeli blockade. It’s facile enough to talk about the twisted, demagogic politics that arise in such a place but those who have created those conditions with a blockade — an act of war under international law — have no standing to complain.

Meanwhile, Israeli police accuse their country’s prime minister and members of his family of multiple bribe-taking crimes. Meanwhile, members of the US president’s erstwhile inner circle are pleading guilty to criminal charges and turning state’s evidence. We shall see what the full charges are, eventually, but there were unseemly relations with foreign powers seeking to steer the 2016 US elections and US policy since then and all sorts of criminal lies told in the denials of that. Both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump want a war because they need the distraction. That’s what the Israeli massacre of more than a dozen people — some not even protesters but farmers working in their fields who became the targets of Israeli tanks because the orders were to kill Arabs and it didn’t much matter which ones — and the wounding of hundreds more — at Gaza’s Land Day protest was all about. The Trump administration and its weird fanatic ex-settler ambassador to Israel cheered while most of the rest of the world recoiled in horror.

With appointments of war criminals as National Security Advisor and CIA director, and with an announced intention of abandoning the nuclear deal with Iran in mid-May, Donald Trump is sliding the United States toward a war, wherein it is hoped that the Saudi-led Sunni jihad will join forces with Israel to take on Iran, Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthi government in Yemen and the Lebanese Hezbollah. This would be a proxy war, or maybe a direct conflict, between the United States and Russia. It would be interesting to see what the Palestinians, the Qataris, the Turks, the Kurds and the wider Muslim world might do. It is the height of madness. Three to five nuclear-armed belligerents could be drawn in.

Antiwar activism in a time of war hysteria is always difficult and dangerous. Despite all of the personal and political risks, however, Israeli and American doves need to mobilize now.

Moving toward a Honduran-style election

The Electoral Tribunal, which does not count on experts at deciphering signatures, has thrown out the great majority of signatures on petitions to put Miguel Antonio Bernal on the ballot because they say that they don’t match the signatures on their records. Of course, no two signatures by the same person are exactly the same, but a competent handwriting expert can readily determine whether two signatures are by the same person. There is apparently a great fraud being perpetrated here, either by people at the Electoral Tribunal or by people in the Bernal campaign. International handwriting experts need to be brought in, the truth determined and those who committed fraud need to face criminal proceedings about it.

It’s no good to ask our system to deal with it. The magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal are from the political parties and have manifested their bias against independents. The Electoral Prosecutor is a sneering criminal who supported all of the Martinelli camp’s 2014 election crimes and should be in prison rather than in public office for that performance.

There is a problem with international assistance, of course. Certainly the United States has the expertise, but then the Trump regime is a major backer of the Honduran election fraud, and moreover, back in 1989 US forces stole Panama’s public archives and have kept them under lock and key, among other things to protect Manuel Antonio Noriega’s election fraud apparatchiki. (Recall that the Reagan administration supported Noriega’s 1984 election theft.)

Is there an acceptable broker? In the end, only the Panamanian people. The discredited power brokers intend to have everything arranged but they run the great risk of things being decided outside that law and on the streets rather than in an orderly and fair election process. But then, banana republic strongman like Mr. Hernández in Honduras or Mr. Ortega in Nicaragua is the role to which so many of them aspire.

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“Fake News” offers Latin American powers an opportunity to censor opponents

by Katitza Rodriguez and Veridiana Alimonti – Electronic Frontier Foundation

Today’s headlines are dominated by the role of misinformation campaigns or “fake news” in undermining democracy in the West. From ongoing accusations of Russian meddling in Trump’s election to Russian efforts to sway the Brexit and French Presidential election votes, these countries are confronting “fake news” as an ongoing and urgent threat to democracy. Yet in Latin America, where misinformation campaigns have prevailed throughout the twentieth century, concerns over “fake news” are hardly new. Latin American media concentration, disinformation campaigns, and biased coverage have long undermined informed civic discourse.

“Fake News” as a pretext for curbing free expression in Latin America

In 2018, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica, among others, will undergo electoral processes involving their respective presidencies. These governments are beginning to exploit concerns over “fake news,” as though it were a novel phenomenon, in order to adopt proposals to increase state control over online communications and expand censorship and Internet surveillance. Such rhetoric glosses over the fact that propaganda from traditional Latin American media monopolies has long been the norm in the region, and that Internet companies have played a critical role in counterbalancing this power dynamic. Frank La Rue, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Free Expression, remarked at the 2017 Internet Governance Forum on the inherent risks of importing the term “fake news” to Latin America:

I don’t like the term “fake news” because I think there is a bit of a trap in it. We are confronting campaigns of misinformation. So we should talk about information and disinformation.

La Rue believes that when distinctions between fake and real news are drawn, they are done ultimately to dissuade the public from reading news or thinking independently. He argues that “the problem again is that fake news becomes a perfect excuse to just silence or shut down any alternative or any dissident voice.” To respond to this threat, EFF co-signed an open letter along with other 34 Latin American NGOs at the end of last year.

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When Brazil set up a council to counter fake news, the Army and the Brazilian intelligence agency –entities with a long track record of crushing minority or dissenting voices – were invited to join. The specter of “fake news” has also been a pretext for draconian bills in Brazilian parliament. The latest one, a recent proposal of unknown authorship, led to a great controversy when it was submitted to the Communication Council of National Congress’ analysis without prior notice. The text defined as a crime the creation or sharing of false news, imposing detention penalties for those who propagate information the government deemed false. It also sought to modify a key component of Brazilian civil rights framework, the Marco Civil da Internet, by making companies liable for failing to remove or block reported posts within 24 hours or for not providing an easy tool by which the user can check whether the news is trustworthy. Internet companies would be subject to a staggering fine of up to 5% of their revenue in the previous fiscal year if they failed to remove content. Although the proposal was withdrawn as a reaction to public outcry, other bills with similar content remain in the parliament.

Mexico is also approaching election season; the country is set to hold the largest election in its history. In July 2018, Mexicans will elect not only a new president but also all federal legislators and nine state governors. The country’s National Election Institute (INE) has recently signed an agreement with Facebook Ireland to fight fake news. The INE is expected to sign similar agreements with Google and Twitter. The agreement, a copy of which was obtained by the newspaper El Universal, includes the use of Facebook’s tools to measure civic participation, access to real-time data of voting results granted by INE, and the provision of a physical space in the Institute’s office where, on election day, the company is expected to perform activities such as posting live videos. While neither party is meant to get involved in deciding what is true or false, transparency is a must. Luis Fernando Garcia, of Mexican NGO Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales, told EFF:

We need complete transparency about the nature of the relationship between INE and Facebook. Facebook should also refrain from adopting measures that discriminate against some media outlets and benefit others in the name of combating “fake news”.

We need an Internet where we are free to meet, create, organize, share, associate, debate and learn. And we also need elections to be free from manipulation. As we have said before, people should be empowered by the tools they use, not left passive by others’ use of such technology. But platforms should remain wary of purporting to validate news even in the face of calls to do so; if they assume this role, it will raise obvious concerns about how they’ll respond to political pressures.

Like “fake news,” policies around hate speech are often used as cover for censorship. It has served as a convenient pretext for advancing a repressive Honduran draft bill on Internet content regulation. After fraud accusations marred 2017 Honduras’s presidential elections, Honduras finds itself in a grave political crisis. Amidst the turbulence, a bill regulating online speech was introduced in the Honduran National Congress in February 2018. The bill, which was widely criticized by civil society, provides broad leeway for Internet companies to block Internet content in the name of protecting users from hate speech, discrimination, or insults. The bill compels companies to take down third-party content within 24 hours in order not to be fined or even find their services blocked. This pro-censorship bill has also spurred recent debates on the creation of a national cybersecurity committee assigned to deal with, among other issues, fake news.

Efforts to keep “fake news” in check are spreading across Latin America. Disinformation campaigns cannot serve to wreck democracy and free speech. EFF will be monitoring this issue as this year’s Latin American elections progress.

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A reckless decision

by Tom Perez — Democratic National Committee

[From a ‘get on our database’ and ‘send money’ email by Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, with those features redacted but republished because he has something important to say.]

This week, the Trump administration announced that they intend to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census — and now it’s up to us to stop them.

Adding this question to the census, especially at this point in the process and without any testing, is extremely reckless. It could decrease response rates in communities with large immigrant populations and produce inaccurate results due to incomplete counts. Congress depends on those results not only to decide how to distribute federal resources — but also to determine the number of congressional districts in each state.

This calculated move is a clear attempt by Republicans to maximize their political power and undermine fair representation in government. We must do everything we can to stop it.

Many immigrants are already fearful of deportation under the Trump administration. Including a citizenship question on the census will spread more fear among immigrants who are worried the information will be used against them.

But this move is not only another attempt to intimidate immigrants — it is an attempt by Republicans to sabotage important census data to rig our political system in their favor. It is critical that we speak out against it.

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