Russian and Ukrainian security services have foiled a plot to blow up Vladimir Putin shortly after this Sunday’s presidential election in Russia, it emerged on Monday.

Officials at Cairo’s international airport confiscated 420 pounds of frozen cow brains Friday from three Sudanese travelers who planned to sell them to Egyptian restaurants, authorities said.

An airport official said it was the fourth time this week that customs officers there had foiled an attempt to smuggle cow brains into the country, reflecting the growth of a moneymaking scheme made possible by some realities of international supply and demand: Cow brains are cheap in Sudan, and Egyptians like to eat them.

A pound of raw cow brains bought in Sudan for less than a dollar can be resold in Egypt for six times as much, airport officials said. That means Friday’s haul could have earned the men more than $1,500.

Restaurants specializing in liver and brains are popular in Egypt. Both items are deep fried and often eaten in pita bread with spicy red sauce.

Airport officials discovered the brains Friday while inspecting large freezer boxes brought in by three travelers on a flight from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. After inspecting the boxes, the officials confiscated the brains since they couldn’t ensure they had been preserved in a sanitary manner.

The brains would be burned, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity under airport rules.

Source: MSNBC.

*Taken from Prison Planet.

23 farmers in Honduras were slaughtered in cold blood by hired mercenaries as they tried to protect their land from being seized by a corporation who wanted to use the land to produce biofuels as part of a United Nations-accredited EU carbon trading scheme.

“Protests erupted in July when six international human rights advocacy groups presented a report to the EP detailing what they called murders and forced evictions of peasants in El Bajo Aguán Valley of northern Honduras, ” reports the New American.

“The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) report accuses UN-sanctioned palm oil mills of stealing farmland from Honduran natives and killing or wounding them when they attempt to defend their property. It says the companies, acting with government impunity, regularly target members of local land-rights movements who end up murdered in feigned car accidents or hunted down and shot by private security guards.”

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against “global warming,” a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.

The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the “carbon credits” on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directorsincludes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers.

The company claims residents of Kicucula left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner, and yet the people tell a story of terror and bloodshed.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from the Wall Street Journal.

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn’t the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian’s ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name “United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.”

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Liberty Underground.

HAMILTON COUNTY, FLORIDA – Robert Burton was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with recording a telephone conversation with Ryan Tyson, the former Chief of Staff of Florida Senator Charlie Dean.  During this conversation, Tyson allegedly admitted that state agencies were engaged in illegal activities.  Burton later posted this recorded conversation on YouTube as evidence of corruption.

Within days of this recording being published, Burton’s home was raided, and his computer and other electronic equipment were seized by the FDLE, and the YouTube videos were deleted.  At roughly the same time, Tyson’s employment with Senator Dean’s office was terminated.

See our previous story:  Whistleblower’s home raided by armed FDLE agents.

Burton is currently being held without bail at the Hamilton County jail.  The 1787 Network is investigating this developing story, and we will have more information as it becomes available.

*Taken from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Robert P. Murphy.

A shocking news report recently documented how Tennessee police were stopping drivers on the interstate and confiscating large amounts of cash, even if the drivers were accused of no crime. The report was particularly shocking because the special unit was operating far outside of its jurisdiction in exchange for giving a cut of the seized cash to the local government in question.

This episode is outrageous enough that any regular American can see the problem. Yet most people who see the report will probably conclude that the government “went too far” in this instance, and some reforms are needed. The real lesson here is that the War on Drugs — just like every other war waged by our politicians — doesn’t solve the ostensible problem, and in fact strips away other liberties.

More generally, the report is a perfect vindication of the Rothbardian point that, in a very real sense, government is a gang of thieves writ large. Such a radical viewpoint sounds crazy to most Americans in the abstract, but when they watch the video, it’s hard to deny.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

A new program being touted by the Obama administration as a solution to online identity theft actually increases the risk of identity theft while providing the government with a national ID system through the backdoor, paving the way for a world wide web in which users will need government permission to access the Internet.

The so-called “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace,” created by NIST under the auspices of the U.S. Commerce Department, purports to offer an “identity ecosystem” under which Americans will be able to protect their information not with passwords but with a “single credential” stored on a smart card, a cell phone, a keychain fob or some other kind of gadget. This will then be used to access a myriad of data, including tax returns, health information, bank accounts and more, amounting to a passport for your entire life.

Companies like Siemens developed credit card-sized gadgets years ago that enable fingerprints to be used to approve online transactions and the technology is already well established. A series of workshops are planned for June to September during which the government will nail down specifics with companies who are on board with the project and pilot projects will be launched next year.

The program bears more than a passing resemblance to a 2007 proposal by China that threatened to force bloggers to register their real identities and personal details via a single centralized ID system as a means for the Communist government to control information and punish dissenters.

That idea was scrapped for being too draconian, but the Obama administration is pushing ahead with its own Internet ID system in pursuit of a wider cybersecurity agenda that Senator Joe Lieberman has publicly stated is aimed at mimicking Chinese-style censorship of the world wide web, casting doubt on assertions in the government PR video for the program embedded above that claim, “there is no central database tracking your actions”.

The irony of the fact that the program will be managed by a government that has routinely stolen and lost personal information (including that related to personal health data) through both malevolence and incompetence is not addressed in the propaganda video. Remember cash for clunkers? This is the same government that openly admitted it had seized control of data on Americans’ computers who used the cars.gov website.

Although the program will initially be voluntary, its widespread adoption by numerous internet hub giants will eventually make its use necessary for conducting any kind of transaction, creating profiles or engaging in any interactive process on the web.

Moreover, should there be a major cyber attack that cripples the web and leaves sensitive information vulnerable, the Obama administration would have all the political capital it needs to turn the “voluntary” program into a compulsory requirement for anyone who wishes to use the Internet. Given the fact that the Stuxnet worm attack was admittedly launched by the United States and Israel, the culprits are likely to be closer to home than we think.

“Although the White House is describing the NSTIC plan as “voluntary,” federal agencies could begin to require it for IRS e-filing, applying for Social Security or veterans’ benefits, renewing passports online, requesting federal licenses (including ham radio and pilot’s licenses), and so on. Then obtaining one of these ID would become all but mandatory for most Americans,” writes CNet’s Declan McCullagh.

“Taken to its logical conclusion, the program, “Could become the virtual equivalent of a national ID card,” he adds.

Despite government assurances that the “conspiracy theory set” are wrong in highlighting privacy concerns, critics have labeled the plan an effort to impose a national ID card via the backdoor.

Writing for Network World, Mark Gibbs slammed the proposal as, “A totally ridiculous idea. A great example of rampant, over-reaching, ignorant, and ill-conceived political foolishness.”

Gibbs highlights the fact that both the IRS and Homeland Security have recently been caught abusing and mismanaging online identity systems.

“In short, the government, at the heart of its most sensitive public and administrative services, is incompetent on a biblical scale. And now they propose to provide what is, in essence, the management of a single sign-on system that would impact tens of millions of its citizens,” he writes.

In addition, the centralized nature of the system will not protect identity theft, the entire raison d’être behind the program, but will instead make identity theft far more prevalent and easier for criminals.

“It remains unclear whether the White House proposal will solve this problem or create new problems,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, warning that if the system was compromised it would be like losing your whole wallet, not just your keys or credit card. “There is the real risk that consolidated identity schemes will lead to ‘hyper’ identity theft.”

*Taken from Sites and Blogs.

In order to seize the domain names without notice to the owners, the Government uses a procedure that permits it to bring an action directly against a piece of property used in the commission of a crime–in this case the domain name–rather than the owner.  This type of action (called an “In Rem” forfeiture) is not new.  In the past, the government has used In Rem actions for purposes such as an action against an automobile used to transport bootleg whiskey.

An In Rem action does not necessarily require the Government to wait until a court hears both sides and rules that the property has been used for illegal purposes and is subject to forfeiture.  Instead, in many cases, the law is written so that all the Government has to do is to sign an affidavit that demonstrates probable cause for the forfeiture, which is signed by a magistrate judge and the Government can seize the property.

To carry out the In Our Sites program, ICE has treated these domains like any other instrument used for common theft and judges have signed off on their affidavits.  The U.S. Attorney has publicly exclaimed that website operators like Brian McCarthy are hiding “behind the anonymity of the Internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery.”

The Government’s view on the domain seizures seems to be overly simplistic and it ignores the fact that a domain is not the same as a gun or a boat used to transport narcotics.  A domain is a unique combination of different types of property, including an address, a valuable asset, a brand and a medium for speech.

Any Government seizure of private property raises Constitutional questions.  Here, I will outline the five most pressing Constitutional questions that have arisen because of the manner in which the Government has chosen to seize this unique type of property.

On the other hand, supporters of the constitutionality of ICE’s actions, such as Terry Hart, point out that the Supreme Court has permitted prior restraint of certain items, such as obscene materials or threats to national security.  However, even these supporters recognize that these exceptions are premised on the Government ensuring a prompt judicial determination.  Hart stated that “in effect, the Court recognizes the danger that too long of a temporary restraint on speech-related items can have the effect of a final restraint.”  While true, this analysis does not address the differences between obscene material and links to infringing material.  Additionally, it would not save ICE’s procedures because the Government has not, in fact, provided an immediate hearing on the seized domains.

Even if the types of sites that have been previously targeted, often consisting of links to other sites, were not a form of protected speech, there is still concern that endorsing these seizures would ultimately lead to the Government seizing the domains of sites expressing viewpoints it deems dangerous.   ICE Director John Morton told Politico that the Government was not interested in going after bloggers or discussion boards.  Morton said, “We’re not about what is being said by anybody. We’re about making sure that the intellectual property laws of the United States, which are clear, are enforced. When somebody spends hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the next movie or a billion dollars to develop the next heart medicine, the innovation and the enterprise that went into that effort is protected as the law provides. It’s that simple.”

Certain constitutional rights sometimes take a backseat to crucial practical considerations, such as the Government’s concern that property involved in a crime will disappear if it is not immediately seized.

For example, the Supreme Court has allowed seizures without prior notice or hearing in a case involving the seizure of a yacht believed to be used to transport drugs.  The Court was swayed by the fact that a yacht is the ”sort [of property] that could be removed to another jurisdiction, destroyed, or concealed, if advance warning of confiscation were given.”  However, in a later case, the Court found such a seizure against real estate ”which, by its very nature, can be neither moved nor concealed,” to be unconstitutional.

A domain is not the same as real estate.  Like real estate, a domain has an address and space within which the owner can build, but that space is not confined to finite borders or an address the way that real property is.  Despite the differences, a domain is more like real estate than it is like a yacht.  A domain can be sold, but it cannot be moved or concealed from the Government without defeating the purpose of having a domain in the first place.

ICE also unwittingly made its critics’ point last month when it mistakenly seized the domain names of 84,000 websites.  The Government had falsely accused the sites of child pornography.  This type of large-scale, disastrous mistake illustrates the constitutional deficiencies of the seizures.

To be clear, the Constitution does not demand that the Government always be right.  For the Government to be able to effectively seek justice, falsely accused and falsely punished citizens are inevitable tragedies.  However, the Constitution does require the Government to institute sufficient procedures that reasonably protect a person’s freedom and property from a wrongful taking.

In many ways, the whole point of due process is to protect citizens from wrongful Government action.  The Supreme Court has explained that the right to notice and a hearing prior to a government seizure is for the purpose of enabling an individual “to protect his use and possession of property from arbitrary encroachment-to minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations of property.”

Supporters of the ICE seizures will point to the fact that, despite the lack of notice and hearing, a seizure cannot occur without a judge finding that the Government’s affidavit demonstrates probable cause.  However, critics get no comfort from the fact that ICE cannot kick down your virtual door without a judge’s sign off.   Last week, during a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet, California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren grilled the Obama administration’s Intellectual Property Czar Victoria Espinel about the Constitutional shortcomings of the ICE domain seizures.  Espinel attempted to argue that a judge’s sign off amounted to due process.  Lofgren tersely countered by saying “With all due respect, judges sign a lot of things.”

See the exchange and Lofgren’s full line of questioning in the video below:

Lofgren makes a good point.  Several other commentators have pointed out that judges signed off on the affidavits despite numerous factual and technical errors.  The perception that the judge’s review was inadequate was certainly not helped by the fact that Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle literally used a rubber stamp, rather than a pen, to sign the December affidavits.

*Taken from Breitbart.

Iranian police have made a string of arrests in raids targeting the capital’s underground rap scene, the Tehran-Emrouz newspaper reported on Monday.

An unspecified number of “boys and girls were arrested, and Western musical instruments and alcohol seized” in Friday’s raids, the paper quoted Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia as saying.

“These bands recorded underground clips and released unauthorised songs on satellite and cyber networks,” Sajedi-nia said.

“These boys and girls used deserted and crumbling buildings, and camouflaged the place by hanging dirty curtains in order not to arouse suspicion.”

The police chief said that officers had kept several venues under surveillance in their crackdown on the “morally deviant” scene.

He accused the rappers of “using obscenities, portraying a bleak picture of society and presenting unhealthy relationships between boys and girls as normal.”

Iranian censors vet all art and music before its release and rappers are routinely denied authorisation despite their popularity among the Islamic republic’s disproportionately youthful population.

The authorities regard an array of Western musical genres as decadent, including heavy metal as well as rap. Frequent raids on illegal concerts have resulted in scores of arrests.

But underground bands have still managed to get their music heard by usinghome computers to get it aired over the Internet or on Persian-language satellite channels broadcasting from abroad.