Portside

Portside's posts did not go out as scheduled Saturday and Sunday. Our service provider, May First, upgraded all of their servers Saturday, to prevent coordinated hacking and DOS - Denial of Service attacks. Unfortunately there were conflicts between the new server software and the software that Portside uses to send posts. We have identified the problem, and are now working to correct it. Below is an Index of the posts that were posted to our website over the weekend.

On March 8, 1971—while Muhammad Ali was fighting Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, and as millions sat glued to their TVs watching the bout unfold—a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document they could find. These documents revealed an FBI conspiracy—known as COINTELPRO—to disrupt and destroy a wide range of protest groups, including the Black freedom movement.

Security specialists say the case carries enormous consequences, for privacy and the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, and that the National Security Council directive, which has not been previously reported, shows that technology companies underestimated the resolve of the U.S. government to access encrypted data.

Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist for peace, civil rights, labor rights and the environment, left us just two years ago - January 27, 2014. Recently, Seeger's FBI file has been released. Included in the file is Pete's correspondence with Victor Grossman. The Editors of The Volunteer, founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, asked Grossman if he had any recollections of Pete's visit to East Berlin in 1967. Here's his story.

Like almost all 11th hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go off is a DOJ criminal complaint that’s released to the press. Statements from the accused or their lawyer very rarely reach the public. And the criminal complaint and FBI press release are framed to deliberately deceive the media.

He first became a target of government snoops merely because he was upset about a racist and unconstitutional idea and, as a private citizen, wrote a letter about it.

With the US government pressing for prison and deportation, Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh needs our solidarity now more than ever.

Reader Comments: Response to Occupy; Greece and Debt Forgiveness; Why Bernie Sanders; Confederate Flags, Symbols, and Racism; U.S. Torture Program; Death Penalty; and more... Announcements: Benefit Concert for Civil Rights; Rally for Eric Garner; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and The Voting Rights Act at 50; Rosenberg Case Bombshell - Key Witness Lied; Robert Meeropol statement

The case, filed in 2002, was the first broad legal challenge to the policies and practices that swept hundreds of mostly Muslim men into detention on immigration violations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The defendants include John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director. Orders came from officials at the highest levels of government. Now we have the chance to ensure that they are held accountable.