December 23, 2012

Iceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF

Originally posted by Jeff Neilson for thestreet.com on August 15, 2012

VANCOUVER (Silver Gold Bull) — For approximately three years, our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with “austerity” in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites — at any/all costs.

Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure, Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.

Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland’s approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland’s approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

The bankers told us that no amount of suffering (for the Little People) was too great in order to make sure that the Bond Parasites got paid at 100 cents on the dollar. Iceland told the Bond Parasites they would get what was left over, after the people had been taken care of (by their own government).

The bankers told us that our governments could no longer afford the same education, health care and pension systems which our parents had taken for granted. Iceland told the bankers that what the country could no longer afford was to continue to be blood-sucked by the worst financial criminals in the history of our species. Now, after three-plus years of this absolute dichotomy in economic policymaking, a clear picture has emerged (despite the best efforts of the propaganda machine to hide the truth).

In typical fashion, the moment that the Corporate Media is forced to admit that it has been serially misinforming us for the past several years; the Revisionists are immediately deployed to rewrite history, as shown in this Bloomberg Businessweek excerpt:

…the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said.

In fact, from the moment the Crash of ’08 was orchestrated and our morally bankrupt governments began executing the plans of the bankers, I have written that the only rational strategy was to put People before Parasites. While I wouldn’t expect national policymakers to take their cues from my writing, when I wrote out my economic prescriptions for our economies I didn’t base my views on compassion, or simply “doing the right thing.”

Rather, I have consistently argued that it was a matter of simple arithmetic and the most-elementary principles of economics that “the Iceland approach” was the only strategy which could possibly succeed. When Plutarch wrote 2,000 years ago “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics,” he was not parroting socialist dogma (1,500 years before the birth of Socialism).

Plutarch was simply expressing the First Principle of economics; something on which all of the modern capitalist economists who followed in his footsteps have based their own theories. When modern economists produce their own jargon, such as the Marginal Propensity to Consume; it is squarely based on the wisdom of Plutarch: that an economy will always be healthier with its wealth in the hands of the poor and the Middle Class instead of being hoarded by rich misers (and gamblers).

So when the Bloomberg Revisionists attempt to convince us that Iceland’s strong (and real) economic recovery was a “surprise”; this could only be true if none of our governments, none of the bankers and none of the media’s precious “experts” understood the most-elementary principles of arithmetic and economics. Is this the message the media wants to convey?

What is even more disingenuous here is the congratulatory tone in this exercise in Revisionism, since nothing could be further from the truth. As I detailed in a four-part series one year ago, the campaign of “economic rape” perpetrated against the governments of Europe over the past two and half years (in particular) has been expressly designed to take away “the Iceland option” for Europe’s other governments.

IMF headquarters in Washington, DC

One of the reasons for Iceland being able to escape the choke-hold of the Western banking cabal is that its economy (and its people) still retained enough residual prosperity to tough it out — as the banking cabal tried to strangle Iceland’s economy as retribution for rejecting their Debt Slavery.

Thus, austerity has been nothing less than a deliberate campaign to destroy these European economies so that the Slaves would be too economically weak to be able to sever their own choke-holds. Mission accomplished!

One can only assume that neither the Corporate Media nor their Banker Masters would have allowed this clear acknowledgment that Iceland was right and we were wrong to appear within its own pages, unless it felt secure in the knowledge that all the remaining Debt Slaves had been crippled beyond their capacity to ever escape this economic oppression.

Indeed, for evidence of this we need only look to Greece: the one other European nation where there had been “rumblings” (i.e. riots) aimed at toppling the Traitor Government that served the banking cabal. After two elections, the combination of fear and propaganda bullied the long-suffering Greek people into choosing another Traitor Government — which had expressly pledged itself to reinforcing the bonds of economic slavery. When the Slaves vote for slavery, the Slave Masters can afford to gloat.

Here, the purpose of this Bloomberg propaganda was not to praise Iceland’s government (when both the bankers and Corporate Media despise Iceland with all of their considerable malice). Rather, the goal of this disinformation was to manufacture a new Big Lie.

Instead of the Truth: that from Day 1 Iceland’s approach was the only possible strategy which could have succeeded, while our own governments chose a strategy intended to fail; we get the Big Lie. Our Traitor Governments were acting honestly and honourably; and Iceland’s success and our failure was yet another “surprise which no one could have predicted.”

We saw precisely the same Revisionism following the Crash of ’08 itself, where the mainstream media trotted out all their expert-shills to tell us they had been “surprised” by this economic event; while those within the precious metals sector had been predicting precisely such a cataclysm, in ever more-assertive terms, for several years.

The real message here for readers is that when an economic strategy of People before Parasites succeeds that there is nothing the least-bit “surprising” about this. As with all the remainder of the world around us, promoting the health of Parasites is only good for the Parasites themselves.

Source: https://www.thestreet.com/story/11665082/1/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf.html

FBI Agents Take Virginia Resident for Facebook Posts, Roommate says,“he goes before a judge at the hospital from what we have been told.”

by Ezra Van Auken of www.SpreadLibertyNews.com on Aug 20, 2012

Chesterfield Police, the FBI and Secret Service agents have detained Brandon Raub of Richmond, Virginia who spent tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, known as a “respected” Marine and squad leader. On August 16th, at around seven in the afternoon, law enforcement agencies arrived and unlawfully arrested Raub at his house, alone at the time while his roommates were doing other things.

Despite not having any actual reasoning as to why Brandon was arrested, law enforcement did question the 26-year-old about his recent Facebook posts, which overall criticize the nature of what the United States government is today. Making the arrest a very suspicious one.

After calling the Chesterfield police station, an officer noted that their department is not involved with the case; FBI officials are undergoing the investigation.

According to Kati Wood, Raub’s close friend and roommate, “he was taken, the local police said they were charging him with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer,” although Wood believes Raub never countered the agents entering the house with any force. Just the next morning, Raub’s family and loved ones called the Chesterfield PD to learn that he wasn’t even booked at the jail, showing the lack of transparency.

Kati explained, “When we called the morning of 8/17 they told us he had never been booked. We had to contact FBI agent to find out where he was.” Which led the family to discovering Brandon was at John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell, VA. Today around 10:00-10:30AM, “he goes before a judge at the hospital from what we have been told. We believe this is going to take place early in the morning.”

The mother, brother and girlfriend of Brandon Raub have all commented on his state of mind, which Kati described as, “sound minded, level headed and logical,” and in an interview done by WTPN Brandon’s mom said his mind was, “completely healthy” when discussing the situation on Saturday.

When visiting the hospital, Brandon told his girlfriend; “I love the American people with all my heart.” Showing his persistence to remain peaceful through what is going on, although struck by the power grab US government officials have taken. While visiting, Raub also reminded Wood that he was never read his Miranda rights nor did officers present a warrant during the arrest.

“The land of the free and the home of the brave where good men triumph and bad men fall. Come, you brave men and women. Let your hearts guide you. It is time to stand. If there ever was a time to stand for what you believe in. Now is that time. Love and Peace. Prayers for Brandon” - Kati Wood, close friend and roommate to Brandon Raub

Original post: https://spreadlibertynews.com/fbi-agents-take-virginia-resident-for-facebook-posts-roommate-sayshe-goes-before-a-judge-at-the-hospital-from-what-we-have-been-told/

Facebook court ruling: What you share on Facebook is admissible as evidence

Originally posted by tecca.com on August 15, 2012

Author: Fox Van Allen

Did you know that what you say on Facebook can be used against you in a court of law? If you’re sharing something with your friends, you may as well be sharing directly with the judge and jury: A recent ruling in a U.S. federal court says that if you post something on Facebook, your friend can share that information with the police — it’s not a violation of your privacy.

Accused gang member Melvin Colon had argued in court that investigators violated his constitutional right to privacy when they viewed his Facebook profile via one of his friends’ accounts. But US District Judge William Pauley III ruled that Colon’s messaged threats and posts about violent acts he committed were not private, and indeed fair game for prosecutors. To some extent, the ruling makes logical sense: When you say something publicly on Facebook, you’re often sharing a thought with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. There’s not much that’s private about that.

Courts have settled a number of questions pertaining to Facebook and our legal system this year. Courts have ruled that it is improper to deliver a court summons via Facebook, even when it’s the best method of reaching someone. A court has also ruled that a Like on Facebook isn’t constitutionally protected free speech — something Facebook is vigorously appealing.

Source: https://www.tecca.com/news/2012/08/16/facebook-privacy-court-ruling/

First Amendment: Invalid – Anaheim Protesters Rights Violated

Editor’s note: In this article I am just going to bring up one example of how our first amendment rights are being violated. The one example is this: How every protest is being oppressed by authoritarian police state measures.

Right now in our once free and open America every plank of our first amendment is being violated by our corrupt government who is very obviously controlled by the banking mafia on Wall Street and the ruling class families.

You may be asking yourself how is it that our first amendment rights are being violated by a government we vote into office consecutively in hopes that they represent us? Well, the answer is quite simple. It comes down to the fact, as I said before, that our government is controlled by the Wall Street banking mafia and ruling class families which don’t have any interest in the us, the American people. However, one obvious interest they have in us is to oppress us with authoritarian police state/martial law measures.

A perfect example of this is the protests in Anaheim against the police shootings. Here is an excerpt from www.scpr.org describing the events:

Hundreds rallied Sunday to denounce two fatal police shootings and to issue a call for community peace, obstructing traffic in Anaheim.

Some 200 vocal protesters rallied in front of police headquarters while a separate group of about 100 people marched along a two-mile stretch of a main thoroughfare, The Orange County Register reported.

We are now seeing photos surface of the police militarized and dressed in military uniforms. They are as follows:

You see, this is just one example of the oppression our first amendment rights are/have been facing. I mean seriously do these people look like a threat to society and the police? I think not. They are just Americans pissed off about police brutality and who are now advocating community peace.

My question to you is: What will it take? What will it take for people to realize that when you have police militarized and dressed like military (or it could be the military playing the role as police officers) with weapons and armor/armored vehicles for a peaceful protest that you are NOT in a free society and open society any more. You are in fact are under authoritarian control!

So, please my fellow Americans. WAKE UP!

Related posts:

  1. Modern Warfare Three: Propaganda Exposed
  2. Supreme Court Forces U.S. To Take A Giant Step Toward A Totalitarian Socialist Government
  3. DHS emergency power extended, including control of private telecom systems
  4. Woman Convicted Of Battery For Pat Down Of TSA Worker
  5. It’s Official: Presidency Now a Dictatorship
  6. Rockefeller Foundation Predicts 13,000 Dead at London 2012 Olympics
  7. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Obamacare
  8. Martial Law Called For By U.S. Army Chief of Staff and CFR Member

Source: https://weare1776.org/1139/us-news/1139/

Republican presidential candidates slam SOPA, Protect IP

In response to question from CNN's John King, Republican presidential candidates find little to love in SOPA or Protect IP.

All four Republican presidential candidates today denounced a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills, lending a sharp partisan edge to yesterday’s protest against the legislation by Wikipedia, Google, and thousands of other Web sites.

The bills are “far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening (to) the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet,” former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said during tonight’s CNN debate in South Carolina.

Romney’s rivals offered similar criticisms of the Senate measure, Protect IP-scheduled for a floor vote next week-and the House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said that while he’s “weighing” the bills, having “the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations” is exactly the wrong thing to do. Former senator Rick Santorum said that while there is a “role” for the government in protecting intellectual property, SOPA and Protect IP go “too far.”

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas Republican, publicly opposed SOPA long before nearly any other member of Congress, as CNET reported in November. Paul said tonight that “the Republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue”-SOPA’s author is Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, Hollywood’s favorite Republican-and he’s glad to see that changing.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, calls Protect IP an “extremely important” piece of legislation, and is planning a floor vote for next Tuesday despite objections from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican warned today that there are “serious issues” with the bill.

Wikipedia’s English-language pages went completely black on Wednesday with a splash page saying “the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet” and suggesting that readers contact members of Congress. (See CNET’s FAQ on the topic.)


Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the debate, conducted by CNN’s John King:

KING: Let’s continue the economic conversation with some input from a question from Twitter. If you look up here you can see it, CNNDebate.

“What is your take on SOPA and how do you believe it affects Americans?”

For those who have not been following it, SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, a crackdown on Internet piracy, which is clearly a problem. But opponents say it’s censorship. Full disclosure, our parent company, Time Warner, says we need a law like this because some of its products, movies, programming, and the like, are being ripped off online.

Let me start with you, Mr. Speaker. There’s two competing ends, two engines, even, of our economy here at on this.

How do you deal with it?

GINGRICH: Well, you’re asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: And I’m weighing it. I’m weighing it. I’m not rushing in. I’m trying to think through all of the many fond left- wing people who are so eager to protect.

On the other hand, you have virtually everybody who is technologically advanced, including Google and YouTube and Facebook and all the folks who say this is going to totally mess up the Internet. And the bill in its current form is written really badly and leads to a range of censorship that is totally unacceptable.

Well, I favor freedom. And I think that if you — I think we have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds that it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue. But the idea that we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations, economic interests, strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Mr. Speaker, Governor Romney, these companies complain — some of them are based in Hollywood, not all of them are — that their software, that their publishing, that their movies, that their shows are being ripped off.

ROMNEY: I think he got it just about right. The truth of the matter is that the law, as written, is far too intrusive, far too expensive, far too threatening, the freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet. It would have a potentially depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America, which is the Internet, and all those industries connected to it.

At the same time, we care very deeply about intellectual content that’s going across the Internet. And if we can find a way to very narrowly, through our current laws, go after those people who are pirating, particularly those from off shore, we’ll do that.

But a very broad law which gives the government the power to start stepping into the Internet and saying who can pass what to whom, I think that’s a mistake. And so I’d say no, I’m standing for freedom.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: I mean, it’s a big issue in the country right now.

Congressman Paul and Senator Santorum, your views on this one quickly.

PAUL: I was the first Republican to sign on with a host of Democrats to oppose this law. And we have worked -

(APPLAUSE) PAUL: We have had a concerted effort, and I feel like we’re making achievement. This bill is not going to pass. But watch out for the next one.

And I am pleased that the attitude has sort of mellowed up here, because the Republicans unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this issue. And this is a good example on why it’s good to have somebody that can look at civil liberties and work with coalitions and bring people together. Freedom and the Constitution bring factions together. I think this is a good example.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Those who support the law, Senator, argue tens of thousands of jobs are at stake.

SANTORUM: I don’t support this law. And I agree with everybody up here that is goes too far. But I will not agree with everybody up here that there isn’t something that can and should be done to protect the intellectual property rights of people.

The Internet is not a free zone where anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people, and particularly when we’re talking about — in this case, we’re talking about entities offshore that are doing so, that are pirating things. So, the idea that the government — that you have businesses in this country, and that the government has no role to try to protect the intellectual property of people who have those rights in this country from people overseas pirating them and then selling them back into this country, it’s great.

I mean, I’m for free, but I’m not for people abusing the law. And that’s what’s happening right now, and I think something proper should be done. I agree this goes too far.

But the idea that, you know, anything goes on the Internet, where did that come from? Where in America does it say that anything goes? We have laws, and we respect the law. And the rule of law is an important thing, and property rights should be respected.

KING: All right.

Gentlemen, I want to thank you.

Source:

Photo credit: CNN

China Villagers Defy Government In Standoff Over Death

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Villagers in southern China on Thursday defied authorities and continued protests over a death in custody and land dispute in the latest outburst of simmering rural discontent that is eroding the ruling Communist Party’s grip at the grassroots.

Many hundreds of residents in Wukan Village in Guangdong province held an angry march and rally despite moves by authorities to halt a land project at the centre of the months-long unrest and detain local officials involved.

“The whole village is distraught and enraged. We want the central government to come in and restore justice,” said one resident who described the scene.

He and another resident, both speaking on condition of anonymity, said villagers remain enraged over last weekend’s death in custody of Xue Jinbo, 42, who was detained on suspicion of helping organize protests against land seizures.

“We won’t be satisfied until there is a full investigation and redress for Xue Jinbo’s death,” said the second resident.

“If you say he wasn’t beaten to death, then you can show us the body,” another villager who had his face hidden from the camera by the hood of his jacket told Hong Kong’s Cable TV.

“If there really isn’t any injury on the body, then why would you not return the body to us?”

Rural land in China is mostly owned in name by village collectives, but in fact officials can mandate its seizure for development in return for compensation, which residents often say is inadequate and does not reflect the profits reaped.

The government of Shanwei, a district including Wukan, said on Wednesday a “handful” of Communist Party members and officials accused of misdeeds over the disputed land development were detained and that the main land development project had been suspended, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In a bid to allay suspicions that other villagers detained over protests in September had been abused, the local government put online footage of four suspects being visited by relatives and reassuring them of their wellbeing.

FURY

But for the two residents interviewed it was not enough to defuse fury over the death of Xue, whom villagers believe was the victim of police brutality — a charge the government denies, citing an autopsy that found he died of heart failure.

Wukan has been surrounded by police and anti-riot units.

China’s leaders, determined to maintain one-party control, worry that such outbursts might turn into broader and more persistent challenges to their power.

But they usually stay local and Beijing’s grip remains strong, said Kenneth Lieberthal, an expert on Chinese politics.

“Is there a risk of disruption? Yes, absolutely. Is this a place just waiting to explode? No,” said Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. think tank.

“The chances of long-term, systemic instability are very, very small. The chances of some major disruption — like 1989, but on a much larger scale — are considerably greater, but still the odds are they can avoid it,” he said.

Wukan, with its clannish unity and big stake in rising land values, is an example of the kind of slow-burning discontent that is corroding party power at the grassroots.

Residents say hundreds of hectares of land was acquired unfairly by corrupt officials in collusion with developers. Anger in the village boiled over this year after repeated appeals to higher officials.

Although China’s Communist Party has ruled over decades of economic growth that have protected it from challenges to its power, the country is confronted by thousands of smaller scale protests and riots every year.

One expert on unrest, Sun Liping of Tsinghua University in Beijing, has estimated that there could have been over 180,000 such “mass incidents” in 2010. But most estimates from Chinese scholars and government experts put numbers at about half that in recent years.

The Chinese government has not given any unrest statistics for years.

The real worry for Beijing is not the sheer number of such protests, but their tendency to become more persistent and organized - both features on display in the unrest in Wukan, where there were torrid riots in September.

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/china-villagers-defy-government-standoff-over-death-141649453.html;_ylt=AuxeBhruiTXMTq4kB4qFQ9HOfMl_;_ylu=X3oDMTNxdjlzdmg1BG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBXb3JsZFNGBHBrZwMxNmZiZDA5Yy0yODEzLTNlMTYtYTFiOC0xYWY3NWM2ZGVlNDkEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDOWM4ZGViZTAtMjcyNy0xMWUxLTlmNmUtNWFkNTVkYzhlYWFk;_ylg=X3oDMTFwcGsyZXJqBGludGwDZ2IEbGFuZwNlbi1nYgRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN3b3JsZARwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0Aw-;_ylv=3

Afghan Woman Jailed After Being Raped Is Freed After Two Years In Kabul Prison

By in Kabul

Woman sentenced to 12 years in prison for ‘adultery’ after reporting rape to police is finally released.

An Afghan woman who was jailed after being raped by a cousin has been released from the Kabul prison where she has spent more than two years, although her lawyer has warned her future remains far from certain.

Gulnaz, a 20-year-old who is known by one name, was set free on Tuesday night, nearly two weeks after Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president, ordered her release. Her case has highlighted the issue of “moral crimes“, which lawyers say have no basis in Afghan law.

Despite being the victim of a rape at the hands of a cousin, a day labourer called Asadullah Sher Mohammad, she was charged with “adultery” after reporting the attack to police and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

For two years and three months Gulnaz had been living in the Badam Bagh prison in Kabul with her daughter, who was conceived by the rape.

Karzai had come under growing pressure in the weeks leading up to the recent conference on Afghanistan held in Bonn to release Gulnaz, who has become a symbol of the highly conservative Islamic country’s failure to substantially improve the lot of women in the last 10 years.

Although the government said she would be released without any conditions, she has come under heavy pressure, including from a judge, to marry Sher Mohammad, who is in another prison in Kabul serving a rape sentence.

Kimberley Motley, an Kabul-based American lawyer who has worked on Gulnaz’s case, said she had “major concerns” about the extraordinary pressure her client has come under since Karzai announced her clemency – including from Sher Mohammad’s father.

“He was allowed to have continued access to her while she was in prison, and he has been in there in the last five days to try and make her sign a document,” she said. “We have no idea what this document is, and neither does she because she was unable to read it.”

No decision has been made whether Gulnaz, who has been moved to a safe place in Kabul that her supporters do not wish to be identified, will agree to marry her attacker, although she has previously said she might do so for the sake of her daughter.

She has also demanded a dowry before agreeing to marry her attacker, and suggested that one of Sher Mohammad’s sisters should marry her brother in order to protect her from reprisals.

Motley said she should not have to marry her rapist. “There are women in Afghanistan who are single mothers who are able to work and to survive,” she said. “She definitely has an uphill battle to fight, but it is ridiculous to say that if she does not marry this man her life is ruined.”

Efforts to bring her plight to public attention were first made by Clementine Malpas, a British film-maker who was commissioned by the European Union to produce a documentary about women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The EU, however, refused to allow the film, called Injustice, to be distributed or broadcast, saying it would jeopardise the lives of the women involved.

 

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/14/afghan-woman-raped-freed-prison

Leadership for Social Change Lecture: Behind the Swoosh

Jim Keady, theologian, activist, educator and former elected official, is the founding director of Educating for Justice, Inc.

This interactive multi-media presentation details the month Keady spent in an Indonesian factory workers slum living on $1.25 a day, a typical wage paid to Nike’s subcontracted workers.

Along with personal accounts, the presentation includes the latest information on Nike’s labor and environmental practices and challenges the audience to deal in human terms with the women, men, and sometimes children, who are the foundation of global manufacturing.

For more information regarding Jim Keady and his organization, please visit www.teamsweat.org or on facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsweat.

Woman Jailed, Ostracized After Resorting to Self-Administered Abortion: What Is This, Puritan America?

By Amanda Marcotte

When we deprive women of access to abortion, shun them, and even throw them in jail, we as a society become weaker.

Jennie McCormack, a resident of Idaho and a mother of three, has spent the past few months of her life in a legal and social situation that calls to mind the trials of Hester Pyrnne, the heroine of The Scarlet Letter. As reported by Nancy Hass of Newsweek, McCormack’s ordeal started when she learned she was pregnant by a man who was doing time for robbery.

Realizing that she couldn’t afford another baby, nor the $500 fee and two trips to get an abortion (because Idaho requires women to wait 24 hours after their first visit to the doctor to “think it over”), McCormack resorted to buying RU-486 from a vendor online. The police eventually arrested McCormack and charged her with an illegal abortion, claiming that she was over Idaho’s legal limit of 20 weeks for an abortion. Since the exact gestational age can’t be determined, charges have been dropped for now, but prosecutors are retaining the right to re-charge McCormack. In the meantime, she’s become a pariah in her community, been fired from her job, and even had to face social workers who are basically denying her aid to care for her children.

Even in super-liberal New York City, a woman is being prosecuted (albeit in a less drastic way) for a self-abortion after the legal limit. The desperate woman, accused of aborting after six months, threw the fetus in a trash can, presumably because she was not aware of her other options for disposing of it.

In the United States, abortion is technically a legal right, but as these cases show, it’s not functionally a right. If abortion were actually a right, women wouldn’t have such a difficult time getting a legal abortion that they resort to drastic measures that land them in jail. These cases demonstrate why abortion needs to be more than a right for those who have the means to jump through all the hoops put in place to keep them from obtaining legal abortions. Making sure women who want abortions can get them in a timely and safe fashion helps more than the women in question. We all do better if women can get the abortions that are supposedly their right.

Abortion’s long descent from being a true right to being only a technical right began in 1976, when Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. Once you needed to be able to get the cash together to pay for an abortion, it stopped really being a right and instead became a commodity, out of reach of those who often need it the most. Since then, anti-choice activists have been chipping away at access to abortion, putting up legal restrictions that usually cost time and money to get around, and now even moving to prevent insurance companies from covering abortion, expanding the number of women whose access is limited because they can’t afford it.

In the anti-choice imagination, the only people who pay for this are women who want abortions, whom anti-choicers generally believe deserve to suffer for not “keeping their legs closed,” to quote a favorite colloquialism of the anti-choice set. In reality, women’s lack of access to affordable, safe abortion hurts all of us, and not just those who accidentally find a fetus abandoned in a trash can by a woman who had simply run out of legal, safe options. When women who want abortions can’t afford them, they often go on to have the baby, instead. In the short term, that means higher costs for Medicaid and other social welfare programs. But there’s also long-term costs to all of us. Having children they don’t feel ready to have often limits women’s employment and educational opportunities, depriving society of their talents and labor. If women can’t have children until they’re ready, they’re often limited in their abilities to educate and care for those children as well as they’d like to, which increases the burden for everyone.

Criminalizing women who need abortion care just makes the situation exponentially worse, as Jennie McCormack’s situation demonstrates. So far, her brush with the legal system has been devastating for her entire family. She has three small children to take care of, but because she’s been “outed,” she can’t hold down a job that would help feed and house them. If Idaho successfully prosecutes her and sends her to jail, that would leave her three children without any parents to care for them. This tragedy could have been averted. If there were no Hyde Amendment and Medicaid paid for abortion, and if there weren’t a bunch of useless legal restrictions on abortion, McCormack could have aborted her pregnancy in a timely fashion, leaving her free to get a job and take care of her kids. Instead, there’s a strong possibility that she’ll be forced to abandon her children, and all because she couldn’t access an abortion that was supposed to be her legal right.

Women who need abortions aren’t some foreign creatures whose wellbeing can be sacrificed so politicians can score points in the culture war. They’re mothers, wives, workers, students, volunteers. When we deprive women of access to abortion, shun them from society, and even throw them in jail for taking matters into their own hands, we as a society become weaker. The Jennie McCormacks of the world are trying to live up to their responsibilities. Putting restrictions on abortion only serves to make that impossible for them.

 

Source: https://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/153433/woman_jailed%2C_ostracized_after_resorting_to_self-administered_abortion%3A_what_is_this%2C_puritan_america/?page=2

“If a Tree Falls”: New Documentary on Daniel McGowan, Earth Liberation Front & Green Scare

A new documentary, “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” tells the story of environmental activist Daniel McGowan.

Four years ago this month, McGowan was sentenced to a seven-year term for his role in two acts of politically motivated arson in 2001 to protest extensive logging in the Pacific Northwest—starting fires at a lumber company and an experimental tree farm in Oregon.

The judge ruled he had committed an act of terrorism, even though no one was hurt in any of the actions. McGowan participated in the arsons as a member of the Earth Liberation Front but left the group after the second fire led him to become disillusioned. He was arrested years later after a key member of the Earth Liberation Front—himself facing the threat of lengthy jail time—turned government informant.

McGowan ultimately reached a plea deal but refused to cooperate with the government’s case. As a result, the government sought a “terrorism enhancement” to add extra time to his sentence. McGowan is currently jailed in a secretive prison unit known as Communication Management Units, or CMUs, in Marion, Illinois.

We play an excerpt from the film and speak with the film’s director, Marshall Curry. We also speak with Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist who was imprisoned at the same CMU as McGowan, and with Will Potter, a freelance reporter who writes about how the so-called “war on terror” affects civil liberties.