According to David Cole, a lawyer for the organizations and individuals who challenged the law, the Court’s decision allowed for, “human rights advocates, providing training and assistance in the nonviolent resolution of disputes, can be prosecuted as terrorists,” (Egelko, The Chronicle).

Background: 

The Supreme Court’s June ruling was an extension of already existing bans on “material support” for foreign terrorists that began under Clinton in 1996 and was expanded by Bush in 2001 with the USA Patriot Act.  The parties in this specific case were HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL. v. HUMANITARIAN LAW PROJECT ET AL., with the plaintiffs case reading as follows:

As the litigation now stands, plaintiffs challenge §2339B’s prohibition on providing four types of material support—“training,” “expert advice or assistance,” “service,” and “personnel”—asserting violations of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause on the ground that the statutory terms are impermissibly vague, and violations of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association. They claim that §2339B is invalid to the extent it prohibits them from engaging in certain specified activities, including training PKK members to use international law to resolve disputes peacefully; teaching PKK members to petition the United Nations and other representative bodies for relief; and engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Kurds living in Turkey and Tamils living in Sri Lanka.

Two sides to every story:

On one side we have those who rebuke the Court’s ruling and fear its negative repercussions, such as former US President Jimmy Carter, whose own organization that has had to interact with US designated terrorist group Hamas in its Mideast diplomatic efforts, could come into question.  Carter has commented that the ruling, “threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organizations that must interact directly with groups that have engaged in violence,” (Egelko, The Chronicle).

On the other side we have those who take the more pragmatic perspective and see the Court’s ruling as positive in the way of shutting off channels of support, whether explicit or implicit and intentional or not, to terrorists.  Putting a burden of proof on NGOs and civil society actors to prove or ensure where and how their aid is being utilized in an attempt to proactively negate negative consequences of any kind of aid to these groups.  Annemarie McAvoy, a Fordham law professor and former federal prosecuter, articulated this point of view when she stated that, “by helping the terrorists, even tangentially, they’re freeing up the terrorists to focus on other things, such as violent attacks,” (Egelko, The Chronicle)  This sentiment was mirrored in the stance and comments of Solicitor General Elena Kagan (Obama’s current nominee to the court) that, “what congress decided is that when you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs,” (Egelko, The Chronicle).

Discussion:

Is the world so black and white?  Does civil society participation and assistance towards advocacy and training in the use of international law to resolve disputes peacefully and non-violently, the peaceful teaching of international human rights law, and advising on petitioning to the United Nations and other representative bodies for relief, really amount to “material support” of terrorists? 

When our class, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding, discussed this issue one of the comments made by a student during the discussion was that, when has ignoring a group or non-engagement with a group, terrorist or not, solved anything, besides cutting off dialogue?

Some of my own questions and those raised by other students in dialogue with our professor regarded:

The creation and expansion of “the other”—are we in the US making all other, the other?

Ghosts of McCarthyism—is the US defining a narrow black and white in global politics and affairs, in humanitarian assistance, and in peacemaking and peacebuilding?

Who can and does define “terrorism” and “terrorists”—is systemic and structurally entrenched monoculturalism at play in the Global War on Terror and its subsequent policies?

When all else fails—is this further security measure necessary to put the burden on organizations and individuals to prove the authenticity, legality, and constructiveness of their work, in order to take the world one step closer to safety from terrorists?

The question lurking in my mind regarding the Court’s ruling is, will these restrictions on “material support” via organizations and private individuals be applied equitably?  Or, will only the grassroots organizations and projects attempting to give legitimate aid suffer, while those with a recognizable name and friend on Capitol Hill find the convenient loopholes to slip through?

Furthermore, when this discussion came up in our class, October 26^th, our professor couldn’t help asking us why when he first introduced this Supreme Court case and ruling to us the week prior, none of us had even heard of it?  Why had we, as global affairs students studying and keeping on the verge of international news, failed to notice this issue that occurred over the summer, which is significant to activities and participation in our field?  It is apparent that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project has struck a chord of fear with NGOs and civil society who engage in peacemaking, peacebuilding, and conflict resolution, management and transformation, but what could the broader implications of such restrictions be? 

Will Big Brother bully out those truly interested in helping make the world a more peaceful place, or will civil society rally and enlighten the powers that be regarding the futility of estranging constructive peace efforts?

For further information regarding this Supreme Court case and the debate it has sparked please take a look at:

“The Supreme Court goes too far in the name of fighting terrorism.”  The Washington Post © 1996-2010.  22 June 2010.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104267.html. 

Price, Michael.  “National Security Watch: Mens Rea and Material Support of Terrorism.”  The Champion Magazine; The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).  August 2010.  http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/01c1e7698280d20385256d0b00789923/ae3a72c354740766852577c100550278?OpenDocument. 

The Humanitarian Law Project,  http://hlp.home.igc.org/ .  (Related headlines and articles).

Still, it’s difficult to overstate the significance of this decision, especially given the morally murky nature of most relationships between Chinese authorities and major Internet players that has served as the status quo over the last decade. Will it have an impact on free speech in China? Probably not much. But Google has taken a stance, which only makes it easier for other companies to start doing the same.

But the flurry of analysis and news reports on the issue has only briefly touched on what I consider to be the larger problem underneath all this: China’s growing prowess in the art of the cyberattack. I’ve expressed my skepticism of doom-and-gloom scenarios of cyberattacks bringing down electrical grids and water supplies before, but breaches of privacy, cyber espionage, and denial-of-service attacks are common and effective. Google’s public statement released on Tuesday describes the reach of the attacks that led up to their decision to reconsider working in China:

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses—including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors—have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant US authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

Reports have surfaced that Adobe, Northrop Grumman, and Yahoo could have been other victims of similar security breaches as well.

True, there is no hard evidence to prove that these recent attacks were caused by Chinese governmental authorities themselves (although nobody is shy in suspecting as much). Concerns over China’s increasing expertise in cyberattacks – especially in probing other countries’ networks – is not new. Last October, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released a report entitled “Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation.” Part of the report notes:

General James Cartwright, while serving as the Combatant Commander of US Strategic Command, testified before a Congressional commission that China is actively engaging in cyber reconnaissance by probing the computer networks of U.S.
government agencies as well as private companies. He further noted that the intelligence collected from these computer reconnaissance campaigns can be used for myriad purposes, including identifying weak points in the networks, understanding how leaders in the United States think, discovering the communication patterns of American government agencies and private companies, and attaining valuable information stored throughout the networks.

A review of the scale, focus, and complexity of the overall campaign directed against the United States and, increasingly, a host of other countries around the world strongly suggest that these operations are state-sponsored or supported.

The report goes on to detail the level of sophistication reached by the PLA’s efforts to build their information networks and exploit that of others.

Simply put, China’s use of cyber attacks has reached such a problematic point that even a major company like Google sits up and sounds the alarm to the point of threatening to pull out entirely. The silent discomfort between U.S. and China over the consistent probing of American networks may finally break into vocal protest.

We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, ‘What has happened?’… ‘A kidnapping,’ I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

Read the rest at Global Voices Online.

In other news, last week, a five-week legal battle between oil trader Trafigura and the UK’s Guardian newspaper came to a close when Trafigura ended a secret injunction with the news organization. How did this all start?

In 2006, a scientific study eventually called the Minton Report began to collect evidence that Trafigura was dumping toxic waste in the waters of the Cote d’Ivoire. The report was commissioned when hundreds of people in the Cote d’Ivoire claimed to have been poisoned and flooded the hospitals. In more detail:

The Minton report – though it was preliminary in nature – made dismaying reading for Claude Dauphin, the Trafigura director in charge of oil preparations. It said the process had been so amateurish that it had probably left a high quantity of noxious sulphur compounds in the vast quantity of stinking black waste.

Minton went on to list half a dozen potentially unstable chemical compounds which could burn or poison people who came into contact with them. Some of them could also generate the killer gas hydrogen sulphide in certain conditions.

Minton said such waste could never have been dumped legally on a landfill in Europe and ought to have received specialist and expensive chemical treatment called “wet air oxidation” to make it safe. None of this had happened.

Among the effects of the sludge, Minton listed: severe burns to the skin and to the lungs; permanent ulceration; corneal damage; vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of consciousness and death. One of the chemicals was branded “very toxic to humans and dangerous to the environment”.

About a month ago, The Guardian got word of this report. Trafigura, claiming the report’s evidence was preliminary and inaccurate, went to lengths to file an injunction on The Guardian effectively prohibiting them from publishing the content and findings of the Minton Report. And not only that, but they also filed what has become known as a “super injunction” – a gag order banning The Guardian from even disclosing that they were under an injunction. News of the Minton Report still got out in cyberspace, particularly in Wikileaks, and was circulated madly on Twitter. (For a full story of how the news leaked all over the Internet, refer to the Online Journalism Blog).

But finally, largely under pressure by social media networks and blogging communities, Trafigura released The Guardian from the injunction, and the super injunction. They even admitted that the waste could have caused a “range of short term low level flu like symptoms and anxiety.”

The obvious takeaway – in a social media world, important news is becoming even tougher to suppress. But this is still food for thought about the current state of press freedom – even in the UK – and of course, about the role of companies like Trafigura and their environmental responsibility.

Related Links:

The Minton Report, in full

The Guardian’s clause-by-clause analysis of the super injunction

Iran, still reeling from protests and extensive media repression by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is reported to have “reached the gates of the infernal trio at the very bottom – Turkmenistan (173rd), North Korea (174th) and Eritrea (175th) – where the media are so suppressed they are non-existent.”

The U.S. moved from being #36 in the rankings in 2008 to a new spot at #20 – largely due to Obama’s presidency and his “less hawkish” approach to foreign policy and the media. Still, the report warns, the U.S.’s actions towards journalists in Iran and Afghanistan is still a matter to be concerned about – the U.S. military has injured or arrested several journalists in those countries.

The film opens at the Film Forum on Wednesday, September 16 (tomorrow) and Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg will make special appearances at the 6:00pm and 8:00pm shows on Wednesday, September 16 and Thursday, September 17. Filmmaker Rick Goldsmith will make an appearance at 1:00pm on Friday, September 18.

Film Forum Website

June started off with a plane crash of an Airbus flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. President Obama went to Cairo to make a speech about Muslims and the U.S — some people thought it was pretty good while others had more measured reactions. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, widely reported to be sickly with cancer, tapped his youngest son Jong Un as successor, and his sushi chef said he’s just like his dad. Palau decided to accept a few of the Uighur Guantanamo detainees, and a few of them were also taken in by Bermuda. The Bermudans, however, weren’t so happy about how that happened. A little later, Iran had a Presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won under most likely fraudulent circumstances because more people voted in some towns than existed there. People protested, and Twittered, and protested some more, with violent repercussions. New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped after 7 months of being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In a seemingly pro-feminist move (but actually to the chagrin of many feminists), Nicolas Sarkozy supported a ban of the burqa in France. In Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup, and the U.S. military finally withdrew troops from Iraq to focus more instead on efforts to curb Taliban influence in Afghanistan.

In Urumqi, China, riots broke out between the majority Han Chinese and the minority Uighurs, and ethnic tension has remained heightened since, including recent claims that Uighurs are attacking Han Chinese with HIV infected needles. Two hotels were bombed in Jakarta, Indonesia. Hillary Clinton went to the Congo and brought attention to the use of rape and sexual violence as a tool of war (against men, too). Bill Clinton flew to North Korea and saved journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been captured in March and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. It was a good week to be a Clinton.

Former President of the Philippines Corazon Aquino died. RIP, Cory. In Taiwan, there was a really big typhoon. Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial was held over the question of whether or not she violated the terms of her house arrest when a crazy American guy swam through a lake to visit her on a supposedly divine mission. She was found guilty. The American was freed (but remained crazy). Everybody found out that private contractor organization Blackwater (now Xe) was hired by the CIA to assassinate targets. Scotland allowed the one convicted Lockerbie bomber to return to Libya because he is dying of cancer. Everybody was really, really mad, especially because it was probably because of oil. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe came down with the H1N1 virus. The Darfur conflict was reported as coming to an end. Afghanistan held Presidential elections which showed incumbent Hamid Karzai leading, but like Iran, this was probably also fraud. Unlike Iran, they’re actually recounting votes and throwing out bad ones.

Hopefully, that’s refreshed your mind with a whirlwind of memories from the past three months. But here are a couple of things that perhaps you might have missed:

China reversed its one child policy, but only in Shanghai.

Cambodia set out to host a “Miss Landmine” pageant to challenge traditional beauty standards by promoting a pageant for landmine victims. The pageant was quickly banned.

A Ukranian polka band came up with this cover of Katy Perry’s “Hot n Cold.”

Some of the lawsuits over harmful pesticide effects made by Nicaraguan farmers for Dole Food Co. turned out to be fraudulent (involving faked sterility tests, among other indicators), effectively casting doubt on all the other farmers who might have actually been harmed by the pesticides.

China tried to use electroshock therapy to cure teens of Internet addiction. The practice was quickly banned.

Canada granted refugee status to a white man from South Africa who claimed he was being persecuted in his native country on the basis of his race.

An IT company in South Africa ran a test to see what could send data faster: South African Internet service or a carrier pigeon. The pigeon won.

Anything missing? Of course. Drop a comment to add in any other summer global affairs news that slipped through the cracks!

Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International called upon Internet giants Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft to observe March 12th by not censoring their search engines or blog platforms on this day.