Despite evidence to the contrary, the government continues to embrace a theory that adopting radical ideas is a first step toward terrorist violence. Based on this discredited model, "preventive" policies are being pursued, resulting in discrimination, suspicionless surveillance of entire communities, and selective law enforcement against belief communities and political activists. The following is the third installment in the ACLU blog series "Radically Wrong," which highlights counterterrorism policies that are not only ineffective, but also undermine our constitutional rights.

The administration of President Barack Obama released a strategy aimed at protecting trade secrets. As White House press secretary Jay Carney stated, the strategy aims to “protect the innovation that drives the American economy and supports jobs in the United States.” He said, “We know that trade secret theft can cripple a company’s competitive advantage in foreign markets, diminish export prospects around the globe, and put American jobs in jeopardy.” That was why the White House had put together a strategy.

On April 10, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued judgement in the case of Babar Ahmad and Others v The United Kingdom, thereby making a landmark ruling on the legitimacy of solitary confinement, extreme isolation and life without parole in US supermax prisons (view ECHR press release and ruling). The ECHR denied the appeal filed jointly by six appellants, consisting of four British nationals (Babar Ahmad, Haroon Rashid Aswat, Syed Talha Ahsan, and Mustafa Kamal Mustafa—aka Abu Hamza), an Egyptian national (Adel Abdul Bary) and a Saudi Arabian national (Khaled Al-Fawwaz) who have been imprisoned in the United Kingdom, pending extradition to the United States for alleged terrorism-related activities.

The USA loves to criticize the human rights record of China and all sorts of other countries, while pretending to be the land of the free.  The USA loves to harangue various countries about treatment of dissidents, while acting as if it has no problems of its own.  The USA and the corporate media love to talk about the growing income disparity in China (which always amuses me since they also hated it when there was no income disparity to speak of, as well), while ignoring that no country has a more glaring case of "income disparity fever" then itself.

Education International, supported by international trade union organizations andlabourstart, is campaigning to stay the execution of Abdolreza Ghanbari, a 44-year-old lecturer of Payam e Nour University. If the sentence is carried out, it would mark the second execution of a teacher union activist following the May 2010 execution of Farzad Kamanger.