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The Iranian revolution occurred 41 yearsago, but its consequences endure, having triggered a set of geopolitical earthquakes that transformed the Middle East.

The regime change in Tehran in 1979 deprived the US of one of its leading strategic assets in the region. Energy markets were affected by a second oil shock after the 1973 one; a Shia revival reactivated the centuries-old Sunni-Shia confrontation within Islam; and some Middle Eastern boundaries were redrawn with blood. Another centuries-old confrontation, between Islam and the West, found new life.

The revolution ultimately generated a sequence of events in the region similar to the 17th-century Thirty Years War in Europe, with the notable difference that the Middle Eastern version - more recently carried out by the US-led Arab Nato and the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance - has now reached its 40th year, and shows no signs of ending. A new security architecture in the region is highly needed, but it seems there is no will or leadership to promote it.

The last decade has provided hopes and delusions, from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to the fears of a new regional conflict generated by the US withdrawal from that same agreement. Conflicts and tensions between two new geopolitical entities are affecting Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The meaning of the Iranian revolution goes beyond geopolitics. It is something much deeper and more difficult to grasp

To understand the revolutions impact, to an extent, it can be linked to the tragic events of 9/11 - although not in the sense promoted relentlessly by the diehard neocons who have tried for decades to hold Iran accountable for the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Rather, the thread linking these events is the reaction by the most fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, to the revolution:a panic-driven responseby Saudi Arabia causedit to launch a massive campaign of global financing and promotion of its Wahabistrand which unintentionally culminated in terrorist attacks by groups includingal-Qaeda and, later, the Islamic State.

But the meaning of the Iranian revolution goes beyond geopolitics. It is something much deeper and more difficult to grasp. One of the lesser-known, but most significant acts carried out by the revolution's leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini a few months before his death may be helpful in understanding this.

On 1 January 1989, the former supreme leader directed a letter to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as the country and its communist ideology experienced its terminal phase.

The letter, complex and imbued with metaphysical and philosophical references, contained a couple of essential messages: that communisms crisiswas due to the choice to obliterat[e] God and religion from society,and that Gorbachev had deluded himself into thinking that the solution to his countrys problems was represented by the illusory heaven of the Western world.

Revolutionary Iran thus stood as the champion in opposing the two great historical materialisms: communism and capitalism. In essence, Khomeinis Iran waged a systemic cultural war against the Western Enlightenment - specifically, its removal of religion from the lives of individuals. Western secular civilisation and modernity were contested at their roots.

Leaving aside philosophy and metaphysics, the Iranian Revolution was the culmination of a systematic opposition, going back to the 19th century, against a perceived oppressive Western hegemony - not only political and military, but above all, economic and cultural.

Forty years later, Khomeinis letter still offers cues for reflection, especially in light of current global dynamics. Russia, after a brief interlude spent in what Khomeini called the Western garden, with disastrous economic and social outcomes, has in the last two decades taken another path based on different identity values, drawn from the Christian-Orthodox religious tradition.

In the last decade, Europe and the US have been ravaged by culture wars and identity conflicts, where religious and ethical values have played a non-secondary role. These conflicts have jeopardised the European political project and its set of secular values and principles. In the US, they are leading to a polarisation not seen since the 19th century civil war, making the leader of the free world barely recognisable, even by its more faithful allies and friends.

How 1979 reshaped Iran and Saudi Arabia

In the meantime, communisms last political bastion, China, seems to have succeeded in combining the best of these two ideologies, and it aspires to a world-leading role in 2049, the 100th anniversary of its own Revolution.

Ultimately, the persistence with which the US opposes Iran, and by which Israel portrays it as an existential threat, are due precisely to Irans ideological stance.

Tehrans alleged nuclear military programme is largely a pretext. Iran is not considered a normal nation because it has refused to bow to the Western world order and the Pax Americana in the Middle East, and is the last country in the region opposing the liquidation of the Palestinian problem.

Irans capital sin has been its missionary struggle, according to its own peculiar and disputable views, against perceived oppression and injustice attributed to Western nations and their Arab proxies. Iran still claims, perhaps naively, to oppose Western neoliberal materialism and its related world order, considered sources of moral corruption and depravity (the Great Satan).

Forty years on, however, the revolutions religious fervour has greatly subsided; the population, especially the youth, show strong signs of revolutionary fatigue. However, such a feeling should not be naively morphed into a propensity for regime change.

The essentially binary Western mind should make an effort to reconcile with the fact that the people in the streets of Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut may protest against their governments heavy-handed policies, economic mismanagement and corruption, but this does not equate to their automatic embrace of an increasingly decrepit Western model.

Watching the massive scale of Iranian General Qassem Soleimanis funeral, after his assassinationon Donald Trump's orders, it is clear that many Iranians, no matter their dissatisfaction with life in the Islamic republic, have no illusions that the US will be their saviour.

Theviews expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

The rest is here:
Four decades on, the West still doesn't get the Iranian revolution - Middle East Eye

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from "unreasonableseizure" includes the right to be free from unreasonable "seizure of the person," meaning detainment or arrest. What is more, as the Court held in California v. Hodari D. (1991), "the mere grasping or application of physical force with lawful authority, whether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee," qualifies as a seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, however, apparently never got the memo. In Torres v. Madrid (2019), that court held that no seizure occurred when officers with the New Mexico State Police shot Roxanne Torres twice in the back, because their bullets did not actually stop her from getting away. According to the 10th Circuit, "an officer's intentional shooting of a suspect does not effect a seizure unless the 'gunshotterminate[s] [the suspect's] movement or otherwise cause[s] the government to have physical control over him.'"

It gets worse. The police shot Torres while she was in her car in the parking lot of her apartment building. The officers were there to arrest somebody else but claimed that they saw Torres acting in a suspicious manner. Torres thought she was being carjacked, later testifying that the officers, who were wearing tactical vests, never identified themselves when they approached her. What she saw were threatening figures standing at her car windows. So she drove away and was shot twice while fleeing for her life. Torres only learned that she had been shot by the cops when she was arrested a day later at the hospital. The excessive force complaint that Torres filed against those officers was killed off by the 10th Circuit's ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Torres's case on March 30. She deserves to prevail. There is no question that the officers engaged in the "application of physical forcewhether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee." As Torres and her lawyers point out in their brief, when the officers "shot at Ms. Torres with the intent to stop her from leaving and two of the bullets struck her body, she was in that moment seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, regardless of what happened next."

Precisely. The 10th Circuit's decision should be overruled.

Original post:
The Supreme Court Tackles Police Shootings, Excessive Force, and the Fourth Amendment - Reason

Attorneys for a woman charged with murder in a 1981 former cold case involving the death of a babywant to suppress DNA evidence police obtained from her trash, saying doing so violated her rights.

Theresa Rose Bentaas, 58,was chargedwith first- and second-degreemurder in March 2019 after DNA evidence matched her to a baby who in 1981 was foundwrapped in blankets.

Baby John Doe, named Baby Andrew by the anonymous donor who paid for his funeral, was found in what is now 33rd Street and Sycamore Avenue, with the umbilical cord still attached.

Bentaas' privately retainedattorney, Clint Sargent, on Friday filed a motion to suppress DNA extraction, testing, sequencing and profile evidence. He also filed more than 30 pages in briefs supporting the motion.

Theresa Bentaas(Photo: Minnehaha County jail)

Sargent and co-counsel Raleigh Hansman requested the following evidence be excluded from trial, saying it violated her Fourth Amendment rights:

Laboratory reports, interviews of Theresa and her husband Dirk Bentaas andbuccal swabs of Theresa and Dirk Bentaas.

"As a free member of the general public, law enforcement's extraction of Bentaas' DNA from the items pulled from the trash and the subsequent creation of her DNA profile for the testing of Baby Doe case constitutes an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment," Bentaas' attorneys wrote in the brief.

More: Theresa Bentaas posts bond, released from jail

Pulling the trash was lawful under both South Dakota and federal law, but extracting the DNA from the items from that trash pull is a "separate invasion of privacy...that must be considered a separate search under the Fourth Amendment,"the brief states.

If a Fourth Amendment violation is brought up in a case, the defendant must establish a factual connection between the alleged constitutional violation and the challenged evidence.

If Bentaas were to prove the evidence is "fruit of the poisonous tree,"the burden would shift back to the government to show that evidence is untainted.

The brief also states if there wouldn't have been an "illegal search and seizure of Bentaas' DNA," a warrant allowing law enforcement to get swabs from Bentaas or her husband wouldn't have been issued.

The brief goes on to say thatan affidavit in support of a search warrant for Bentaas' buccal swabs didn't showa "fair probability" that evidence of a crime would have been found from Bentaas' buccal swab.

"The decision to seek a search warrant for Bentaas' DNA only after receiving the DNA results from the trash pull items speaks for itself," Sargent writes.

The grave of Baby Andrew John Doe, an infant who was found dead in a ditch in 1981, is shown. Police arrested Theresa Rose Bentaas decades later on Friday, March 8, 2019 after determining through DNA that she was the mother.(Photo: Loren Townsley / Argus Leader)

The brief accuses law enforcement of exaggerating lab results. In January 2019, when Parabon Labs got a DNA match that was possibly "up to a third cousin" in the family tree for Baby Andrew, a detective took the information to put together a basic family tree, according to the brief. The family tree was shared with a Parabon genealogist, who recommended getting follow-up DNA.

Baby Andrew: Theresa Bentaas appears in court, trial date set

"Under the guise of the trash pull, Detective Mertes circumvented the search warrant requirement for DNA and deprived Bentaas of her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure," Bentaas' attorneys wrote in the brief.

The state's "failure to obtain a search warrant to extract, test and sequence the DNA on the items submitted to the SD Forensic Lab violated Bentaas' Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure," the brief states.

The state had not filed a response as of Friday.

Up until March 8, 2019, Bentaas was a member of the general public, the brief goes on to say, which gives her greater privacy interest in her DNA.

Baby Andrew's body was exhumed in 2009and sent via FedEx to the University of North Texas, were DNA was extracted. The body was returned to Sioux Falls, where it was buried at St. Michael's Cemetery on Cliff Avenue.

From 2010 to 2018, the DNA profile of Baby Andrew was run through the South Dakota DNA database once per year. No matches were found.

On Jan. 24, 2019,Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. a Virginia company to which Sioux Falls police had sent Baby Andrew's DNA completed a "Genetic Genealogy Report," a lead-generation tool to identify remains by making connections through DNA and genealogy.

A DNA profile found possible family trees, include "what they had found so far was approximately a third cousin which was fairly far out from the direct DNA of this baby," according to the brief.

That report led police to a Sioux Falls couple, Theresa Rose (Josten) Bentaas and Dirk Bentaas.

Police on Feb. 11, 2019, did a trash pull at Bentaas' home. They seized cigarettes and cigarette butts, cotton swabs, Kleenex with hair, hair with yellow cardboard, ear plugs, water bottles, glass bottles, beer cans, beer bottles and dental floss.

Theresa Rose Bentaas, 57, was arrested Friday morning after police determined through DNA that she was the mother of Baby Andrew. Argus Leader

Police obtained a search warrant for buccal swabs from Theresa and Dirk Bentaas.

Female DNAfound on a water bottle, Coors Light can and cigarette butts from the trash pull "could not be excluded as being from the biological mother of Baby (Andrew) Doe." DNA from two different men was also linked to Baby Andrew.

Police interviewed Dirk and Theresa Bentaas later in February 2019. Police did a cheek swab on both. In that interview, Theresa Bentaas said she was "young and stupid" and admitted to being pregnant in 1980-1981.

Test results from the cheek swabs showed "extremely strong evidence" to support the biological relationship between Theresa Bentaas, Dirk Bentaas and Baby Andrew.

Theresa Bentaas was arrested in March 2019. She posted bond and has been out of custody sinceMay 2019. Bond conditions included that she be required to wear a GPS ankle monitor, hand over her passport, check in at her attorney's office once a week and live with a family member.

Bentaas' trial is scheduled for April. Her next court appearance is scheduled in March.

Email reporter Danielle Ferguson at dbferguson@argusleader.com, or follow on Twitter at @DaniFergs.

Read or Share this story: https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2020/02/14/attorneys-theresa-bentaas-look-suppress-dna-evidence-baby-andrew-case/4765639002/

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Attorneys for Theresa Bentaas look to suppress DNA evidence in Baby Andrew case - Argus Leader

"The Framers ... conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men." -- Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)

While we were all consumed by impeachment, a pernicious piece of legislation was slowly and silently making its way through Congress. It is a renewal of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act of 2001 has three sections that are scheduled to expire on March 15. One of those sections is the infamous 215, which authorizedthe federal government to capture without a warrant all records of all people in America held by third parties.

Do we really want the federal government to spy without warrants? How can Congress, which has sworn to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, legislate such a blatant violation of it? Here is the backstory.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS BOYCOTT INTEL HEARING, ACCUSE SCHIFF OF IGNORING FISA ABUSE

After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, it was soon amended to recognize the existence of natural rights and to keep the government from interfering with them. As Brandeis wrote 140 years afterward, the most comprehensive of those rights was the right to be let alone, which today we call privacy.

To secure that right, the Fourth Amendment was ratified. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent the government from utilizing general warrants and to require judicially authorized search warrants issued under narrow circumstances. James Madison, who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, shared the hatred that colonists-turned-Americans had for general warrants.

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A general warrant was a document issued by a secret court in London authorizing the bearer of the document, usually a British soldier or intelligence agent, to search wherever he wished and to seize whatever he found. The applicant for the warrant needed to demonstrate to the court only that the warrant was intended to unearth something that the government wanted. Because these warrants did not specify the object of the search, there was no limit to them.

Hence Madison's language in the Fourth Amendment preserving privacy but permitting the government to invade it only upon a showing, under oath, of probable cause of crime, and then requiring the warrant to specify in writing the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

After 9/11, in the collective spirit of fear, timidity and subservience to the presidency, and in utter disregard for its members' oaths to uphold the Constitution, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. It permits one federal agent to authorize another federal agent to search and seize whatever the latter wishes to look at and capture so long as it is in the possession of third-party financial institutions.

Over the years, the definition of financial institution has been radically expanded by both legislation and presidential executive orders so as to include nearly every conceivable entity that has any records about any person in America -- from banks to hospitals to lawyers to merchants to credit card issuers to telecoms and computer service providers and even the post office.

At the same time that the Patriot Act was being expanded, the National Security Agency -- America's 60,000-person-strong domestic spy apparatus -- was not even pretending to follow legislation.

We know from Edward Snowdens revelations -- which have never been disputed by the government -- that since 2003, the NSA has captured not only the records of Americans held by third parties but also the records of every keystroke touched by every person in America and every telephone call transmitted over fiber optic cable. That includes every email, text message and piece of data -- even what was deleted. This warrantless mass surveillance continues today unabated.

Also unabated and equally unlawful and unconstitutional is the governments use of cell towers as monitors of movement. Whenever anyone travels with a mobile device in the U.S., the nearest cell tower picks up signals from the mobile device, even turned off. The government, which either owns the cell towers or, under Section 215, may captureall the data the towers amass, can effectively follow any person with a mobile device in real-time.

How does the government get away with this?

The feds have labored mightily to keep all of these constitutional violations as far from judicial scrutiny as they can. They rightly fear -- they know -- that all of this violates the Fourth Amendment.

If their nefarious behavior, which we know they have used on the president of the United States and on the Supreme Court, comes under judicial scrutiny, the feds will argue that the Fourth Amendment only pertains to criminal prosecutions and not to domestic spying; thus, they can ignore it when they spy.

They have made up this argument out of thin air. There is neither a hint in the language of the amendment nor a whiff in its history to support that argument.

Has the government lost sight of our birthright? It is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- not to mention getting into heaven. How can we do any of this if the government we have hired to preserve our liberty is surreptitiously destroying it?

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Brandeis' language about being let alone was written in 1928, in a dissent to a Supreme Court opinion that failed to recognize the right to privacy. Today, his dissent is the law of the land, but the feds ignore it.He wrote that there is more to life than owning material goods. There is the fulfillment of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goals and the achievement of intimate aspirations, none of which are the government's business.

Why do we permit the government to assault our most basic freedoms, under the law or under the table?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO

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Judge Andrew Napolitano: Government is spying on us without warrants, in violation of Constitution - Fox News

Join the Star City Thinkers discussions.

We the people have rights given by the Constitution and laws of the land. Owners of producing property, including the providers of high tech products, have rights given by the Constitution and laws of the land. BUT now as in the past laws need to be changed and interpretations of the Constitution may need to change OR the Constitution, itself, may need to be changed.

We will complete a short review of Net Neutrality whereas, there is a conflict between the property rights of original providers and those businesses who wish to hitch a ride on the train; as well as, issues of what is best for the consumers. See ProCon.org link below.

We will then look at 4th amendment issues where there is conflict with privacy issues. See Heritage Foundation link below.

KEY REVIEW MATERIAL:

Should Net Neutrality Be Restored? - Top 3 Pros and Cons

https://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005390

The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies

https://www.heritage.org/report/the-fourth-amendment-and-new-technologies

Original post:
Property, Privacy and New Technology - Roanoker