Labels: 4th Amendment, Anonymous, Bill of Rights, civil rights, extrajudicial executions, First Amendment, indefinite detention, National Defense Authorization Act
Submit To Propeller
posted by profmarcus at
12/09/2011
Labels: democracy, First Amendment, free speech, nonviolent protest, Occupy, Robert Reich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/28/2011
Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights. That’s exactly what incidents like this [UC Davis] are intended to achieve.
[...]
[T]hey are all about deterring meaningful challenges to those in power through the exercise of basic rights. Rights are so much more effectively destroyed by bullying a citizenry out of wanting to exercise them than any other means.
Labels: Bradley Manning, civil rights, First Amendment, Glenn Greenwald, Occupy Davis, pepper spray, Police State, repression, Wikileaks
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/20/2011
Labels: First Amendment, Mr. Fish, police brutality, Police State
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/19/2011
For the third night in a row, protesters with “Occupy Fresno” were arrested for gathering in a public park, apparently in violation of a county ordinance that labeled them trespassers.
At least 20 were arrested over the weekend. Nine more were led away in handcuffs on Monday night.
While they could have moved their demonstration to the sidewalks at night to avoid the arrests, they’ve steadfastly refused, equating that action with forfeiture of their constitutional right to freedom of assembly.
Labels: First Amendment, Occupy Fresno, Police State, right of peaceful assembly, U.S. Constitution
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/08/2011
I want to address the issue of "disruption," as Bloomberg is sending this issue out as a talking point brought up on Keith Olbermann's Countdown last night: the neighbors around Zuccotti Square, says Bloomberg, are feeling "disrupted" by the noise and visitors to the OWS protest, so he is going to crack down to "strike a balance" to address their complaints. Other OWS organizers have let me know that the Parks Department and various municipalities are trying to find a way to eject other protesters from public space on a similar basis of argument.
Please, citizens of America -- please, OWS -- do not buy into this rhetorical framework: an absolute "right to be free of disruption" from First Amendment activity does not exist in a free republic. But the right to engage in peaceable disruption does exist.
Citizens who live or work near protest sites or marches have every right to be free of violence from protesters and they should never be subjected to destruction of property. This is why I am always saying to OWS and to anyone who wants to assemble: be PEACEFUL PEACEFUL PEACEFUL. Be respectful to police, do not yell at them; sing, don't chant; be civil to pedestrians and shop owners; don't escalate tensions; try to sit when there is tension rather than confront physically; be dignified and be nonviolent.
But the First Amendment means that it actually is not up to the mayor or the police of any municipality, or to the Parks Department, or to any local municipality to prohibit public assembly if the assembly is peaceful but disruptive in many ways.
Peaceful, lawful protest -- if it is effective -- IS innately disruptive of "business as usual." That is WHY it is effective.
[...]
Most of us need to remember, or learn for the first time (since this information is usually concealed from us) that the First Amendment, and the Constitution in general, supersedes all the laws of municipalities in violation of the constitution, as stated in the 1925 Gitlow v. New York ruling. So the First Amendment supersedes the restrictive permit laws now being invoked against protesters. The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.
[...]
Bloomberg is flat wrong, and he doubtless knows it but hopes you won't notice: New Yorkers have no right to be free of any disruption from the peaceful but disruptive free-speech actions of their fellow citizens, and how New Yorkers lawfully and peacefully assert their First Amendment rights is actually not up to him. There is a higher authority than Michael Bloomberg, or than the NYPD, or even than the guy in the white shirt who signaled to his colleagues to handcuff me earlier this week when I stood peacefully on a sidewalk, obeying what I had confirmed to be the law: and that higher authority is called the Constitution of the United States of America.
Labels: elites, First Amendment, Michael Bloomberg, Naomi Wolf, nonviolent protest, NYPD, Occupy Wall Street, super-rich, U.S. Constitution
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/23/2011
Labels: dissent, First Amendment, Occupy Wall Street, protestors
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/21/2011
"The Plan": One Year. Three Phases. A World of Change.
This Plan will commence on the 15th of June, 2011 and continue for approximately one year, in the course of three separate phases.
Phase One begins now.
In this time, you are encouraged to educate yourselves on the injustices in this world.
Seek out iterations of freedom and human rights.
Become familiar with the corruption within your system.
Discover the enemy of true freedom.
Discover the oppressors.
The most important step of Phase One is to spread this message by sharing this video and those that preceded it.
Make your own films or videos, artwork, music, literature - resonate the voice of freedom and justice through your own creativity and bring others to this movement.
[Graphic: If the government shuts down the Internet, shut down your government].
Street artists: You have the ability to bring millions with your art and message, in your own populated centers. Your canvas is there.
My friends, begin your work. Write the tales of injustice and oppression in your blogs. Tell your friends how we can break free from this system of enslavement.
Depict the images of freedom and truth, through your art and film.
Spread the message of The Plan with your graffiti.
Share this message with the world and bring them to stand amongst us, as we rise up from the ashes of the downtrodden and unprivileged.
Tell the elite we are here and we are coming for them.
Spread the message through blogs, social networking and video diaries.
Remember, words often have two meanings, in the enunciation of the truth.
Let the truth be heard. Educate yourselves in ways of becoming more self-sufficient.
Learn and acquire the tools to free yourself from the system.
Invest more heavily in precious metals, rather than stocks, paper fiat currencies, or other products of the financial establishment.
Discover your green thumb and appreciate your ability to grow your own produce.
The sky is the limit and the only barrier is your own reliance on a system that thrives on your dependence.
Hackers within Anonymous: Begin selecting low-priority targets that have violated freedoms, both in the online realm and in the offline realm, as well.
[Graphic: Initiate low-priority cyber offensive/defensive]
Stand with our friends, taking their stance in the world and ensure that they are supported, by any means necessary.
As always, remain vigilant.
We all must all learn to "Walk the walk," if you will.
We can all tell tales of grandeur and extravagance. It is time we start becoming our own legends.
It is time we all start bettering ourselves, first, so that we may focus on the greater challenge at hand with intelligence and confidence.
As of this 15th day of June 2011, we are pleased to bring to you the beginnings of a web platform, for us all to meet and converse; to share ideas and recommendations over the course of the next year and the Three Phases, that will be unfolding:
whatistheplan.forumotion.com
If you feel as we feel and have found something inside you, pushing you toward acting upon The Plan, go there and become an active member.
Educate yourself and share your thoughts and ideas with others, so that you may help others on this same journey.
Continue to spread this video by all possible venues and ensure we are all doing our part to bring the same opportunity to all that we can.
Together, we can make a difference. Together, we can accomplish something real.
Phase Two will be initiated in approximately 5 months (November 2011).
Continue your efforts and the focus of Phase Two will be presented when that time comes.
We expect there will be large numbers of people participating in The Plan, by that point. We will prevail.
So, if you see nothing; If the crimes of these governments remain unknown to you, then we would suggest that you allow this year to pass unmarked.
But if you see what we see and if you feel what we feel and if you would seek what we seek, then you, too are Anonymous.
Stand by us this year, as we execute "The Plan" and together, we shall give them a year that shall never, ever be forgotten.
We are Anonymous, united as one, divided by zero.
Phase One initiated. The resistance is here:
www.whatistheplan.forumotion.com
Sign up and become an active member today.
Share this message and "The Plan" with everyone you can.
Labels: "The Plan", Anonymous, First Amendment, hacks, LulzSec, nonviolent protest, Sam Seder
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/20/2011
The Inevitable Collapse of Legitimacy Under Secret Law: WikiLeaks Hacks
[...]
We’re so quaint, those of us who believe in rule of law!
[...]
[T]hey have apparently chosen to persist in applying their secret laws, such that they can violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, even while prosecuting others for crimes the government has presumably committed itself.
And that, my friends, is how secret law kills democracy and the rule of law.
Labels: Anonymous, First Amendment, hacks, Marcy Wheeler, rule of law, Secret Government, U.S. Constitution, Wikileaks
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/20/2011
U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks
Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.
Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.
Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.
The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention
Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.
[...]
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.
[...]
In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture. In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture." By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."
For that reason, many Western nations -- and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses -- refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence. "It’s an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit." As Gawande documented: "A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered."
Getting to Assange through Manning
[...]
[C]laiming that WikiLeaks does not merely receive and publish classify information, but rather actively seeks it and helps the leakers, is the DOJ's attempt to distinguish it from "traditional" journalism. As Savage writes, this theory would mean "the government would not have to confront awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret — including The New York Times."
But this distinction is totally illusory. Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren't typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents.
[...]
[There is no way to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks without criminalizing journalism because WikiLeaks is engaged in pure journalistic acts: uncovering and publicizing the secret conduct of the world's most powerful factions. It is that conduct -- and not any supposed crime -- which explains why the DOJ is so desperate to prosecute.
Labels: Bradley Manning, Dick Cheney, First Amendment, George Bush, Glenn Greenwald, investigative journalism, Iraq, Julian Assange, torture, Wikileaks
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/16/2010
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), along with one Republican and Democratic senator, introduced a bill late last week that would allow the President to effectively disconnect the internet by emergency decree.
The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act would allow the President to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures.
Future US presidents would have their Internet "kill switch" powers renewed indefinitely.
The bill was introduced by Lieberman, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE). A parallel bill was drafted last year by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) which would allow the federal government to unilaterally "order the disconnection" of certain websites.
Labels: civil rights, executive power, First Amendment, internet, newspapers, radio, television
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/18/2010
Tomorrow, we’ll be in court presenting oral arguments in our challenge to the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act (FAA) — the law passed by Congress last year that gave the government virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls. As you may recall, we filed a lawsuit to stop the government from spying under the FAA less than an hour after the Act was signed into law by President Bush on July 10, 2008.
1. The defendants in our lawsuits (e.g. the people we’re suing) are John (Mike) McConnell, Director of National Intelligence; Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, Director of the NSA and Chief of the Central Security Service; and Michael Mukasey, Attorney General.
2. We’ve filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
3. Our superstar roster of plaintiffs (e.g. the people and groups we’re suing on behalf of) include The Nation magazine, journalists Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges, attorneys David Nevin, Scott McKay, Dan Arshack and Sylvia Royce, and a whole bunch of orgs that run the gamut from Amnesty International to the Global Fund for Women. (You can check out the full list of our plaintiffs online at www.aclu.org/faa.)
4. Three of our main points:
* The FAA violates the Fourth Amendment because it allows the government to gobble up the constitutionally protected communications of American citizens and residents without getting individualized warrants, and without specifying the time, place or length of the surveillance, and not specifying how the info gathered will be disseminated, or how long it’ll be kept. (You know, the who/what/where/when/why.)
* The FAA also violates the First Amendment by chilling lawful expressive speech without adequate justification by authorizing the government to intercept constitutionally protected communications without judicial oversight.
* The challenged law violates the principle of separation of powers by allowing the government to continue surveillance activities even if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has deemed those activities illegal. (Good idea, right? Asking the government to obey the law?)
Labels: ACLU, Bush Administration, Chris Hedges, First Amendment, FISA, Keith Alexander, Michael McConnell, Michael Mukasey, Naomi Klein, warrantless domestic wiretapping
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/30/2009
His presidency now a smoldering memory, Harper's contributing editor Scott Horton thinks that perhaps he wasn't kidding after all. In a March 3 column, Horton extrapolated on "George W. Bush's Disposable Constitution," expanding on his thoughts during a Thursday broadcast of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Since the Monday release of nine previously-secret Bush administration legal memos claiming that the president has the power to ignore the Constitution when fighting terrorism, experts have almost unanimously denounced both their legal reasoning and their conclusions.
"These memos provide the very definition of tyranny," Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday. "These memos include everything that a petty despot would want."
Olbermann's Thursday guest was just as strident as Turley in his view of the prior administration.
"We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship," wrote Horton in his Harper's article.
I think essentially that the Leahy commission is an excuse for non-prosecution. It’s essentially saying, “Let’s put some stuff on the public record. Let’s immunize people. And then,” as he even said, “let’s turn the page and go forward.” That’s really an excuse for non-prosecution. And in the face of what we’ve seen in this country, which is essentially a coup d’etat, a presidential dictatorship and torture, it’s essentially a mouse-like reaction to what we’ve seen. And it’s being set up really by a liberal establishment that is really, in some ways, in many ways, on the same page as the establishment that actually carried out these laws. And it’s saying, “OK, let’s expose it, and then let’s move on.”
[...]
[T]here’s a lot of pressure in this country right now for prosecutions. I mean, the polls indicate that people want to see a criminal investigation. We’ve had open—open and notorious admissions of waterboarding by people like Cheney. And we know that waterboarding is torture, even according to Obama.
So, how do you diffuse that pressure? And one way you diffuse it is you set up a, quote, “truth commission” that’s going to give immunity to people. And then, as Leahy himself says—the word he used, I think, is that he objects to those “fixated” on prosecution. Well, you know, it’s a legal requirement that you prosecute torturers in your country. And yet, he calls us “fixated” on it and wants to make this excuse.
[...]
This is not about mistakes. This is about fundamental lawbreaking, about the disposal of the Constitution, and about the end of treaties. So I think, actually, that Leahy’s current proposal is extremely dangerous.
[W]hat we see in these memos—and I recommend them to everybody, because you read these, you are seeing essentially the legal underpinnings of a police state or a dictatorship of the president. There’s no doubt about it. That’s what it is, and it’s not theoretical. ... [W]hat happened here was one of these memos said the military could operate in the United States, and operate in the United States despite the Posse Comitatus law, which prohibits the military from operating in the United States. And when it operates—this is really extraordinary—they can arrest and detain—“arrest” is not the right word—kidnap anyone they want and send them to a detention place anywhere in the world without any kind of law.
And then, on top of that, they can disregard the First Amendment. So this conversation we’re having right now, they could say, “Well, this is harmful to the national security of the United States”—that’s what these memos say—“this type of conversation is harmful, and we can ban this conversation.” And then they could put the military at the door to the firehouse and come in and say the Fourth Amendment, the one that protects us against unlawful searches, that the military could walk in here, search all of us and see if we have anything they don’t like on us. So, no First Amendment, no Fourth Amendment, no Fifth Amendment—essentially, the end of the Constitution and 225 years of constitutional history.
Labels: 4th Amendment, 5th Amendment, accountability, Amy Goodman, Bush Administration, constitutional crisis, First Amendment, Michael Ratner, Partick Leahy, rule of law, Truth Commission
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/07/2009
The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.
Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, are filing a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.
The lawsuit was inspired by some two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.
Labels: 4th Amendment, domestic spying, EFF, First Amendment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Police State, profiling, warrantless search and seizure
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/07/2008
The 911 Truth Movement is being
targeted for criminalization.
Earlier this month, special Brasscheck TV
correspondent Goodman Green posted a
short video about HR 1955.
In just three days over 100,000 people
downloaded and viewed it.
Now the bill is in the Senate under a new
name S 1959.
This bill makes it possible for the government
to criminalize free speech, by declaring it a
form of "terrorism."
Who does this bill target?
Congressional hearings show they're painting
a bulls eye on the 9/11 Truth Movement by likening
it to violent terrorist groups.
Labels: 9/11, 9/11 doubts, 9/11 Truth Movement, First Amendment, free speech, S. 1959, terrorism, US Senate, Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/22/2008
Nothing could be more relevant today.
Yet you won't see this speech on US television, nor will you hear it even referred to...even on Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday in the United States.
Labels: Civil liberties, First Amendment, Iraq, Martin Luther King Jr., oral dissent, peace, Vietnam
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/21/2008
Labels: First Amendment, free speech, HR 1955, thought crime, Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/07/2008
Labels: "black operations", 4th Amendment, America: Freedom to Fascism, conspiracy theories, file-sharing, First Amendment, snitch culture, Total Information Awareness
Submit To Propellerposted by mettle at
12/06/2007
Deputy Defense Minister of the Russian Federation, General Yury Baluyevsky and his counterpart, U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, signed a memorandum on defense cooperation in Washington.
The memorandum specifies the plan of defense cooperation and the compatibility of the armed forces of the two countries in 2008. It was a very fruitful, productive discussion that both parties benefited from, and the chairman desires to keep the content of those discussions between him and his counterpart,” Navy Captain John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen, said."
[Russian President Vladimir] Putin makes an open friendship with Iranian President Amadenijad because Putin has but one item in his geo-political agenda: He needs high oil prices and tensions in the Middle East help him to keep oil prices at an all time high. So that's why he sells nuclear technology to Iran, he sells missiles to to Hezbollah and Hamas via Syria, because it helps Putin to stay in power. If the oil price goes down, the Putin regime goes down."
Opposition activists--or just those who happen to be in the way of the [Putin] administration--are harassed and arrested on false charges of drug possession, extremism, or the latest trend, for owning illegal software."
Labels: "black operations", 4th Amendment, Arlen Specter, file-sharing, First Amendment, FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Iran, National Intelligence Estimate, Vladimir Putin
Submit To Propellerposted by mettle at
12/05/2007
These non-living, non-breathing persons are now ... fully entitled to the protections that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote into the Bill of Rights to shield human persons from abuse by such powerful institutions as governments. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, in a recent and misguided effort, argued before the Supreme Court that corporations should have the free speech right to lie (or say anything else they want) that’s granted to humans by the First Amendment.
A few of the world’s largest corporations ... successfully claimed the protection of the First Amendment, then lobbied Congress and the FCC to relax local ownership rules so they could take control of our media. Once that was done, they claimed First Amendment free speech rights to tell us whatever serves their interest and call it “news” without consideration of its truthfulness or having to worry about giving fair and equal time to other viewpoints. They claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure) so they can prevent the EPA and OSHA from inspecting factories for environmental or labor violations without first obtaining the corporation’s permission - which they say can be withheld for any reason.
They now have the protection of the Fifth Amendment so they are protected from double jeopardy and don’t have to answer questions about their own crimes. They now have the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment so they can sue local towns or counties or states that try to pass laws to protect local small businesses against their predations.
The structure for this displacement of humans by corporations under the constitution has been in place since 1886, but only since the 1980s have our largest corporations aggressively used the courts to claim human rights. (Interestingly, small and medium-sized corporations almost never use this argument: to them if corporate personhood vanished nothing would change.)
But a human backlash is now developing.
In ten Pennsylvania townships, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) has helped local governments pass ordinances denying corporate personhood in order to block large corporate factory farms from setting up in areas previously the sole territory of family farms. In the city of Point Arena, California, voters passed a resolution declaring corporate personhood a threat to democracy, and encouraging a debate on it by other communities.
The Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), America’s oldest and most prestigious women’s rights group (founded in 1919 by Jane Addams, with two Nobel Prize Winners as past presidents), declared at their July, 2002 annual meeting the kick-off of a three-year “Abolish Corporate Personhood” educational and legislative campaign.
And elected officials across the nation are discovering that meaningful campaign finance reform, effective environmental protections, and human-friendly health-care will only happen when corporations can no longer use the extraordinary power of the Bill of Rights to insinuate themselves into politics and legislation.
Labels: 14th Amendment, 4th Amendment, 5th Amendment, corporate "personhood", First Amendment, The Corporation, Thom Hartmann
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/01/2007
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