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Activists To Sue Obama, Others Over National Defense Authorization Act

A coalition of well-known journalists, activists and civil libertarians will sue President Obama, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other members of the U.S. government to push them to remove or rewrite this year’s defense appropriations bill, saying it chills speech by threatening constitutionally protected activities such as news reporting, protest and political organizing in defense of controversial causes such as the Wikileaks case.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was launched by former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges, claim that the new provisions, which went into effect March 1, not only put them at risk of arrest but also allows indefinite detentions of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and that the provisions are too vague.

Environmentalists have also registered their opposition. In light of many prosecutions of U.S. environmental activists under ramped-up terror laws in the past six years, many fear the new law will be used against them.

“My activities as a civil liberties, democracy advocate and independent journalist definitely leave me under the purview of the vague language of the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act],” says Jennifer “Tangerine” Bolen, one of seven current plaintiffs, along with Hedges, in the suit. A host of live panel discussions with what she calls “activists and revolutionaries” as part of independent media outlet Revolution Truth, Bolen has had ongoing contact with Wikileaks activists in an effort to get information to the public.

“I believe that could leave me in imminent danger of harm,” she says. “There was a global, trans-partisan, outpouring of distress over Obama signing the NDAA into law on Dec. 31, 2011, and I decided I had to do something.”

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Breaking: The FBI has seized a server belonging to activist, taking several websites offline.

Syria Clashes Leave 27 dead

Apr. 7 - Amateur video released on a social network believed to show shelling in Syrian cities four days before agreed troop pullout. Sarah Wali reports.

Bahrainis Rally In Support Of Hunger Striker

Bahraini security forces have fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters marching in support of a jailed famous human rights activist whose nearly two-month hunger strike has become a powerful rallying point for the tiny nation’s uprising against the monarchy.

“Freedom or martyrdom,” cried marchers who carried portraits of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, whose declining health has brought appeals for international intervention from groups such as Amnesty International.

Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike for 58 days, was moved to a hospital and fed intravenously on Friday after his health deteriorated sharply, his lawyer said.

On Wednesday, the Information Affairs Authority said Khawaja had been moved to a clinic after losing 10kg (22 pounds).

Khawaja’s lawyer said the activist had now been moved to a military hospital.

“Mr Khawaja has been moved to a military hospital which is more equipped that the Interior Ministry clinic where he was earlier,” lawyer Mohammed al-Jishi told the Reuters news agency by telephone.

“His condition has worsened … his blood pressure is down, and he is getting an IV [intravenous] drip.“

The detainee underwent surgery on his jaw after he was beaten up on arrest on April 8, 2011.

The account says that abuse resumed eight days later, including beatings on the soles of his feet and being sodomized with a stick.

The report says the detainee went on hunger strike at that time in an effort to stop the torture.

83-Year-Old Activist Priest Held in Solitary Confinement in Federal Prison

Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill Bichsel is reportedly being held in solitary confinement at SeaTac Federal Detention Center south of Seattle. According to friends, Bichsel has not eaten solid food since January 10 in protest of his treatment.

He has been arrested several times in connection with nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. Most recently, he served a three-month sentence at SeaTac for a July 2010 action at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, future site of a new nuclear weapons plant.

On January 10, Bichsel was moved to a halfway house in Tacoma. According to the Disarm Now Plowshares blog, he was told that the facility had a rule prohibiting visitors for the first 72 hours of residency. But on the evening of his arrival, a pair of Buddhist monks and a small group of students, on their way to a local protest, “made a small detour and stopped by the house Bix was in, to drum and pray for him outside the building for a few minutes.” The blog continues:

Bix was very happy to see and hear all who came to visit and wanted either to invite everyone in or go out and be with them. He had a strong sense they were angels, which gave him intense joy. He went onto comment that “it was so right they should be there.”

His captors on the other hand had a slightly different experience. First reprimanding him for being out of compliance (whatever that meant), he was told he was going to be “written up” and what happened was to be “reported.” The rest is history – in early morning he was suddenly awakened, grabbed out of bed, shackled, and returned to SeaTac by the marshals.

Their actions and manner of treatment made it known to him how he would proceed. Upon his arrival at SeaTac he made it clear he intended to be in complete non compliance with their demands; their recourse, which was to be expected, would be to place him in “protective custody or the special housing unit (SHU) “the hole!”

Bichsel, who suffers from circulation problems as well as a heart condition, reported to friends that it was “very cold for me all of the time” in his SHU cell at SeaTac, and that he was going “24 hours a day without sleep, fighting off the chill. I have asked for a jacket or a pillow or a mattress; they do not comply.” After supporters held a candlelight vigil outside of the prison last week, he was provided with additional blankets.

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Havel, the leader of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ has passed.

Havel was leading the charge to peacefully bring down communism in a regime he ridiculed as “Absurdistan” and proving the power of the people to overcome totalitarian rule.

Shy and bookish, with a wispy mustache and unkempt hair, the dissident playwright was an unlikely hero of Czechoslovakia’s 1989 “Velvet Revolution” after four decades of suffocating repression — and of the epic struggle that ended the wider Cold War.

He was his country’s first democratically elected president, leading it through the early challenges of democracy and its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, though his image suffered as his people discovered the difficulties of transforming their society.

A former chain-smoker who had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails, Havel died Sunday morning at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant Sabina Tancevova said. His wife Dagmar and a nun who had been caring for him the last few months of his life were by his side, she said. He was 75.