Entries Tagged 'Law' ↓

Imagine that one day in the not to distant future you answer a knock on your door and find that the Police are there to arrest you for a crime that you haven’t committed, but someone has identified you as having the potential to commit that crime some time in the future. Sounds like 1984 Science fiction doesn’t it. But what if it was actually happening right then and there? What would you do? More appropriately, would there be anything you could do? Or are you one of those who loudly state “That could never happen here?” Continue reading →

Featured Post for 06/05 – 06/11

Dear President Obama,

I, like many millions of Americans, voted for you in the last general election in the hope that your promise of change would be the change that we had longed for during the previous eight years.

Powerlessly, we watched our nation being run into the ground by a runaway despotic regime. We saw wars begun under false pretenses, which have cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars; we saw our natural resources being despoiled by greedy profiteers; we’ve seen our small businesses and small farms being destroyed by bureaucratic intrusions into every aspect of their lives and businesses, apparently for the enrichment of the big megabusiness cartels.

We’ve seen most of the jobs that gave America a healthy middle-class outsourced to nations where people will work twelve hours or more for a dollar or two a day, or for a cup or two of rice to feed their family. 
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Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead. FULL ARTICLE

Little Johnny lifted his neighbor’s motorized tricycle. Pushed it home while no one was looking. He was caught before he could get any joy out of it. When confronted about the theft by his father, the boy declared that it didn’t work anyway. “You see”, dad says, “that’s why you shouldn’t steal!”

The wisdom encompassed in this fatherly advice is currently on display in the debate over torture. Many critics of torture are pointing to its “efficacy problem”. It doesn’t work. Presumably, then, if it did work its use might possibly be justified, or at least something worth arguing.

Then what are we against? Torture itself, or torture in that it demonstrates a lack of efficacy? I’ll leave it to the legal scholars but my guess is that, in all the domestic and international laws and conventions against torture, the prohibition is based on the act itself without regard to its consequences. Continue reading →

Featured Post for 05-/22-05/28:

“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

I recalled this statement while I was reading a very powerful look at the My Lai massacre that took place during the Vietnam War. The depravity of humanity gone mad is revealed in this account and one would think that we would never again commit such atrocities. But the powers that be convinced us that we should put it behind us and move on. And now it seems we have repeated the depravity again in Iraq.

Is it true that our future is shaped by what and how we react to events and realities of the present? Have we gone even deeper into depravity since My Lai? And if that is true, what did we not do that would have kept us from drifting into an open acceptance of torture and unjustified bloodletting today? If the future we get IS up to us, what failures of our past determine what we leave for our children today? Continue reading →

I recently received an e-mail from someone complaining that I was giving Obama a hard time, even though he was doing his best to help us all out of our current situation. The e-mail was heartfelt and sincere (though I’m not entirely sure which of my rants it was in response to). But it was an outstanding example of how the mental “lenses” most people wear guarantee their perpetual enslavement.  FULL ARTICLE

There are no headlines or pontificating pundits, but the real news that has become crystal clear to any but the most delusional and distracted Americans is that President Obama has no commitment to applying the rule of law where it counts. Certainly, not applying it to the large number of rich and powerful people that have violated our Constitution and plunged the nation into economic disaster. FULL ARTICLE

Dear Mr. President,

Shakespeare said it best: ” The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars….. But in ourselves.”

The fault, Mr. President, in our present situation, is ‘ not in our stars… But in our stripes.’

The American stars are something to be proud of, sir. Represented by the stars on our flag, they stand for truth and justice for all. It seems to me, that the stripes that are represented on our flag, now stand for the stripes worn by our detainees , and for the stripes that we force other nations to wear when we dominate them. Continue reading →

The US has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world.  With 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates.  Recent research by the Pew Center concludes that one in every 31 Americans is in prison or jail or on probation or parole.  FULL ARTICLE

Well, technically I suppose if committed by the US it could be called privateering.  (photo)

I am sure that most are familiar with the Somalian pirates, who have taken over quite a few merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden over the past few years with the aid of a few assault rifles and motorboats.  These criminals are mostly concerned with obtaining a ransom, and have kept ship crews and cargo hostage for fairly lengthy periods of time.  I am under the general impression that these pirates are more concerned with their ransom booty and do not really intend to take their hostages’ lives. Continue reading →