"It's Viral!": Watch the Hilarious YouTube Campaign to End Corporate Personhood via Alternet January 15, 2012
Comedian Lee Camp and the We People Campaign collaborated to create a create a viral video to end corporate personhood. To go viral, of course, they had to include just a few internet gimmicks, like a baby who editor/publisher of the Nation Katrina van den Heuvel was unsure was cute enough for its role. Cats, meat, eruptions, and the real Ben and Jerry from Ben and Jerry's delicious ice cream all make appearances alongside major names in Progressive media.
Revoke the "humanity" from corporations, with humor: The national week of action to revoke corporations of their "humanity" kicks off Monday, January 16th. It's viral, baby!
Writer journalist Chris Hedges is taking Obama to court to question the legality and the constitutionality of the extension of extraordinary unprecedented powers to the Executive to deem anyone a "terrorists" or a possible danger theoretically to the American government.
Hedges points out that these various bills from the Patriot Act to National Defense Authorization Act which violate the US Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.
In fighting the elusive Terrorists the US government and its agencies including local police forces are doing all they can to intimidate and essentially terrorize those US Citizens who object to foreign or domestic policies of the USA.
Under such draconian laws journalist such as Chris Hedges may be indefinitely incarcerated for doing their job by talking to people on both sides in any conflict. So an American journalist talking to a terrorists ie Al Qaeda, Hamas, the PLO, Taliban or an Iranian who supports the current government there all in order to obtain a credible story for publication could easily be considered a traitor and giving aid and comfort to the enemy as defines by the President or a CIA operative.
But even members or supporters of Human Rights groups could be arrested and tossed into some Hell Hole for the rest of their lives for having direct or indirect contacts with so-called terrorists This could lead to arrest of anyone who is a member of various NGOs and human rights activists organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, the RED Cross (ICRC) or even a subscriber to Al Jazeera or Al Arabia or any news agency which dares to present a reasonable coherent views of all sides
Why I’m Suing Barack Obama by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig January 16, 2012
Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.More proof America is falling beyond other nations in taking care of its people that is the 99% not just the 1% for which the US government has sold out to.
The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.
I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.
Section 1031 of the bill defines a “covered person”—one subject to detention—as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”
The bill, however, does not define the terms “substantially supported,” “directly supported” or “associated forces.”
Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying “terrorists” and sent to Guantanamo.
But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.
US Ranks 27th in Social Justice by: Jim Hightower, Other Words Blog
Being at the bottom of the heap in terms of social justice confirms the reality of both economic and political inequality that the Occupy movement is protesting.------------------
"USA: We're No. 1!"
Oh, wait — Iceland is No. 1. But we did beat out Poland and Slovakia, right? Uh...no. But go on down the rankings and there we are! No. 27, fifth from the bottom. So our new national chant is, "USA: At Least We're Not Last!"
A foundation in Germany has analyzed the social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ranking each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty. The overall performance by the United States — which boasts of being an egalitarian society — outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the United States on the prevention of poverty.
Our bottom-of-the-heap ranking in social justice confirms the economic and political inequality that the Occupy movement is protesting. It also helps explain why this grassroots uprising in America has spread so rapidly to more than 600 communities and has generated such broad public support. After all, our nation is fabulously rich, ranking well ahead of nearly every other OECD member in national wealth, so there's no excuse for us sitting at the bottom of the list in education, health care, poverty, and other measures of a democratic and egalitarian society.
Police abuse and brutality without any accountability has become the norm in America.
The Taser for example is used much more often than it should be .
Taser is supposed to be used on suspects who are violent, out of control and belligerent and not on someone arguing over a traffic ticket or someone who is jaywalking or even shop lifting. But now the police are allowed to use this weapon on anyone and all the police officer has to do is to invent after the fact a rationalization.
The entire judicial and policing system in the USA vigorously defend their actions not by claiming the suspect is a danger to the public but to the police officers themselves.
The work of the police isn't primarily to do as they please to ignore the rule of law and to use their authority to protct themselves above all else.
First responders such as police officewrs are supposed to accept that they will enter situations which civilians might be afraid to and so the police take risks sometimes they are injured or even killed .
So some citizen giving a police officer the finger or telling the officer to f...off is not a reason to shoot them, beat them up or taser them.
Unfortunately this battle against police brutality and abuse is an uphill battle since most people believe the police would never stop and search a person or car without justification and further they believe that no police officer would shoot with a gun or beat up or Taser someone without a good reason.
But police across the USA use unnecessary brute force on a dily basis and few dare question them because if you do so in the streets or in a park or in your own home they will Taser you.
Anyway we have seen for instance the mixed reaction on the part of the public and media for instance in the way the police have handled the Occupy movements activities with brutal unnecessary force in many instances. And we Canadians saw the same sort of police state tactics adopted by Canadian police at the G20 in 2010 which has left a lingering chill and fear and reluctance to speak out about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government's policies domestic or foreign. Under the Umbrella of NATO Canada has become entangled with conflicts which are anything but strait-forward no matter what lies, nonsense the CTV and CBC spew out daily . 25 years ago the CBC ensured a balance in journalism and sometimes a fearlessness in taking on controversial subjects -now it is a bastion for lackeys, quislings, conformists ,has-beens, old sell-outs and those committed more to their career track than to journalism or truth. Or you having a talking head like Rex Murphy who is too erudite for his own good as he parses everything that comes down the pike sifted through his own addled Uber-Neo-Liberal ie fascist admixture.
So Rex Reed and other proto-fascist and Euro-supremacists act as gatekeepers and the voice of the ruling class who are far superior to the rest of us. In fact we could say the same thing about Harper and Obama .
The problem with Canadians as one scholar once put it Canadians are encouraged to show deference to all those in positions of authority since we the people are a little less than fully human as it were.
see for example : Deference to Authority Edgar Z. Freidenberg, pub. 1980 and http://www.grubstreetbooks.ca/essays/octobercrisis2.html">The October Crisis :Deference To Authority (1980) by Morris Wolfe: Essays ,New and Selected
Obama gives us a wink and a nod to supposedly let his supporters know that he hasn't sold out while he engages in seemingly pointless unwinable wars to feed the Military Industrial Complex .
New Years Day In America: More Taser Use, Less Accountability digby at Hullabaloo via Alternet.org, January 10, 2012.
...analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold in the city since 2008 and suburban agencies that were surveyed were on pace to double their use, as departments equipped more officers with the devices. Chicago police were deploying Tasers at a rate of more than twice a day in 2011.
And oversight has not kept pace with the explosion in use. Departments are on their own in developing policies on when and how electroshock devices should be deployed, with no state regulation.
...Sadly, most people that sort of thing happens to assume it's just the way things are --- that in America it's perfectly normal for police to shoot you with electricity if they feel you aren't cooperating regardless of whether you are suspected of a crime or posing a danger. That's just the way it is.
And it's becoming more and more common:
Like almost all states, Illinois does not track the weapons' use by local police, and departments have been left to monitor and govern electroshock devices with a patchwork of policies. In Chicago, the leap in the number of police carrying Tasers coincided with the scaling back of post-shock investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority.
In 2009, officers logged 197 incidents. A year later, after hundreds more weapons were passed out, Chicago police reported 871 incidents. As of fall, the department was on pace for 857 uses in 2011, which works out to 2.3 per day.
The growth in the weapons' use should not come as a surprise, given their rise in popularity.
Several companies make electroshock weapons, which override the target's central nervous system by firing wire-tethered probes that deliver electrical jolts. Arizona-based Taser International makes the most popular models. About 576,000 of the devices are used by more than 16,500 law enforcement and military organizations, nearly all in the United States, said spokesman Steve Tuttle. Only 500 or so agencies used the weapons in 2000, he said.
In Illinois, a little fewer than half of the municipal police agencies that responded to a 2007 survey reported they were using electroshock weapons, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, and more departments have since bought the weapons. Several suburban agencies contacted by the Tribune appear to have started using them in 2008 or 2009.
Taser International and police departments have faced lawsuits over safety. And though many fatalities following electroshock weapon use have been attributed to other causes, human rights group Amnesty International has counted 490 deaths after electroshock device use in the U.S. since 1990, said Debra Erenberg, Midwest regional director for the group. In some 50 cases between 2001 and 2008, coroners listed the weapons as a cause or contributing factor in a death.
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