Victory: Activist Sue Obama, Judge Rules NDAA Unconstitutional
In a stunning turnaround for an act of Congress, a judge ruled Wednesday that a counterterrorism provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense appropriations bill, is unconstitutional. Federal district Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued an injunction against use of the provision on behalf of a group of journalists and activists who had filed suit in March, claiming it would chill free speech.
In her decision published Wednesday, Forrest, in the Southern District of New York, ruled that Section 1021 of NDAA was facially unconstitutional — a rare finding — because of the potential that it could violate the 1st Amendment.
“Plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the First Amendment,” she wrote, addressing the constitutional challenge.
Seven individuals, including Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and “Pentagon Papers” activist Daniel Ellsberg, had sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and a host of other government officials, stating they were forced to curtail some of their reporting and activist activities for fear of violating Section 1021. That section prohibits providing substantial support for terrorist groups, but gives little definition of what that means. Environmental activists were also poised to join the suit if it expanded.
The suit demands that Congress cut or reform this section of the law, which allows the U.S. military to indefinitely detain without charges anyone — including U.S. citizens — who may have “substantially supported” terrorists or their “associated forces,” without defining what those terms mean. President Obama signed the bill on Dec 31, 2011, with a signing statement saying that the law was redundant of powers already provided to the government under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (passed after 9/11), and that these powers would not be used against U.S. citizens. The next administration may decide differently, however.
(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
If we adopt international standards, not U.S. [or] American standards — say, the UN definition of human rights: economic, social, cultural, political, civil rights — if we use that criteria, it’s interesting. You will see the Iraq War is a violation of human rights. Fifty million people without insurance is a violation of human rights. China has its share of problems, but it’s always necessary to remember that when we discuss human rights, we have to first of all ask the Chinese, not Washington, not Brussels, not Paris, not London. You ask ordinary ordinary Chinese [people], whether in China, Beijing, Shanghai, or elsewhere […], “What do you think of China’s human rights? Are they better now than before?” I think, by conservative estimates, most Chinese think that their human rights are better than any time before.
China hits back on U.S. human rights
China criticized a “woeful” human rights record in the United States on Friday, a day after a U.S. report said Beijing’s own record is getting worse, with harsh crackdowns on dissidents.
“The United States’ tarnished human rights record has left it in no state — whether on a moral, political or legal basis — to act as the world’s ‘human rights justice,’ ” China said in an annual report on U.S. human rights.
The report cited the arrests of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Many protesters, it said, accused police of brutality.
It also said the United States has “fairly strict restrictions” on the Internet, saying the U.S. Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content “harmful to national security.”
Successful eviction defense of the Cruz family home in South Minneapolis. May 23rd, 2012.
For almost a month, the local Occupy Homes movement has maintained a presence in a foreclosed home in South Minneapolis. The house belongs to the Cruz family who are staying elsewhere since receiving their eviction notice. With the consent of the Cruz family, Occupy Homes has been using the house as a local social center while occupying the home and protesting an impending eviction.
On May 23rd, 5-6 sheriff’s deputies arrived at the house to carry out the eviction of the home. The deputies knocked down the back door and entered the home to find 5 people. Three of the people left peacefully, but two of them locked themselves together while straddling a window that led to a second story porch. While the deputies attempted to remove the remaining protesters, Occupy Homes alerted their network of supporters and soon there were over 50 people at the home. Some protesters blocked the street in both directions to raise awareness of the eviction, while others encircled the home, holding hands and banners to show support.
The deputies eventually gave up trying to remove the remaining protesters inside the home and left. Even more people locked themselves to the home in case more police officers were on their way. Eventually the Minneapolis Police Department came to deal with the blocked traffic, but then made an agreement with the protesters. The police officers stated that they were not there for the eviction and that they would leave if the protesters stopped blocking traffic.
With all law enforcement gone, Occupy Homes declared the defense a success and continued on with the occupation of the home.
(via amodernmanifesto)
In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.
Žižek: Resistance Is Surrender
One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible. Marx compared it to a vampire, and one of the salient points of comparison now appears to be that vampires always rise up again after being stabbed to death. Even Mao’s attempt, in the Cultural Revolution, to wipe out the traces of capitalism, ended up in its triumphant return.
Today’s Left reacts in a wide variety of ways to the hegemony of global capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. It might, for example, accept the hegemony, but continue to fight for reform within its rules (this is Third Way social democracy).
Or, it accepts that the hegemony is here to stay, but should nonetheless be resisted from its ‘interstices’.
Or, it accepts the futility of all struggle, since the hegemony is so all-encompassing that nothing can really be done except wait for an outburst of ‘divine violence’ – a revolutionary version of Heidegger’s ‘only God can save us.’
(Source: agoodwomanis, via amodernmanifesto)
Canada student protests erupt into political crisis with mass arrests
More than 500 people were arrested in Montreal on Wednesday night as protestors defied controversial new law Bill 78
Protests that began in opposition to tuition fees in Canada have exploded into a political crisis with the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators amid a backlash against draconian emergency laws.
More than 500 people were arrested in a demonstration in Montreal on Wednesday night as protesters defied a controversial new law – Bill 78 – that places restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In Quebec City, police arrested 176 people under the provisions of the new law.
Demonstrators have been gathering in Montreal for just over 100 days to oppose tuition increases by the Quebec provincial government. On Tuesday, about 100 people were arrested after organisers say 300,000 people took the streets.
But what began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations. The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours’ notice and securing a permit.
Read more
(via amodernmanifesto)
Krugman: Egos and Immorality
[L]et me take a moment to debunk a fairy tale that we’ve been hearing a lot from Wall Street and its reliable defenders — a tale in which the incredible damage runaway finance inflicted on the U.S. economy gets flushed down the memory hole, and financiers instead become the heroes who saved America.
Once upon a time, this fairy tale tells us, America was a land of lazy managers and slacker workers. Productivity languished, and American industry was fading away in the face of foreign competition.
Then square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline. Sure, some people didn’t like it, and, sure, they made a lot of money for themselves along the way. But the result was a great economic revival, whose benefits trickled down to everyone.
You can see why Wall Street likes this story. But none of it — except the bit about the Gekkos and the Romneys making lots of money — is true.
For the alleged productivity surge never actually happened. In fact, overall business productivity in America grew faster in the postwar generation, an era in which banks were tightly regulated and private equity barely existed, than it has since our political system decided that greed was good.
What about international competition? We now think of America as a nation doomed to perpetual trade deficits, but it was not always thus. From the 1950s through the 1970s, we generally had more or less balanced trade, exporting about as much as we imported. The big trade deficits only started in the Reagan years, that is, during the era of runaway finance.
And what about that trickle-down? It never took place. There have been significant productivity gains these past three decades, although not on the scale that Wall Street’s self-serving legend would have you believe. However, only a small part of those gains got passed on to American workers.
So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.
Those are, however, questions that the wheeler-dealers don’t want asked — and not, I think, just because they want to defend their tax breaks and other privileges. It’s also an ego thing. Vast wealth isn’t enough; they want deference, too, and they’re doing their best to buy it. It has been amazing to read about erstwhile Democrats on Wall Street going all in for Mitt Romney, not because they believe that he has good policy ideas, but because they’re taking President Obama’s very mild criticism of financial excesses as a personal insult.
And it has been especially sad to see some Democratic politicians with ties to Wall Street, like Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, dutifully rise to the defense of their friends’ surprisingly fragile egos.
As I said at the beginning, in a way Wall Street’s self-centered, self-absorbed behavior has been kind of funny. But while this behavior may be funny, it is also deeply immoral.
(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
What’s the point of social mobility? It still leaves some in the gutter
It’s an interesting week that sees Vince Cable accused of being a socialist (by the Tory donor Adrian Beecroft) and Nick Clegg accused of “communist tactics” (by the headmaster of a private school, Tim Hands). What would Marx say? (Coincidentally, I have this written on my mug.) Leaving Cable’s firebrand trottery aside for a second, Clegg’s Stalinism stems from his speech on social mobility, to launch the Sutton Trust’s report.
The figures in this report are stark but unsurprising – one child in five is on free school meals, but only one in 100 Oxbridge entrants is; that’s probably the most arresting statistic in terms of how poverty suffocates one’s prospects. Just as enraging is the fact that only 7% of children attend private schools, but these schools provide 70% of high court judges.
Nick “Commie” Clegg concludes that the government needs some targets; except because that word is so last century, they now talk of “annual trackers” – 17 measures, including the number of A to Cs in GCSE results among children on free school meals, and participation in higher education of those from poorer backgrounds.
