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Where Does Your State Rank In Equal Pay?

April 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by on April 17, 2012

Today marks Equal Pay Day and an opportunity to take a closer look as the wage disparities between the genders. The bottom line: the wage gap is real and it is persistent.

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) released a new state-by-state report on equal pay rankings, along with an interactive map that shows wage disparities in each state. How does your state rate? Some of the rankings may surprise you.

Overall the wage gap is the narrowest in Washington D.C., where women earn 91 cents on the dollar to men and worst in Wyoming where women make just 64 percent of men’s earnings. As expected, the numbers get worse when you account for race. African American and Hispanic women earn much less–just 70 percent and 61 percent of what white men on average earn. Nationally women earn just 77 percent of their male peers.

This discrepancy in pay costs working women and their families tens of thousands of dollars a year. It directly impacts women’s retirement security and ability to save for emergencies and college and it reinforces an outdated and offensive world view that women’s work is simply not of the same value as men’s.

Source: https://www.care2.com/causes/where-does-your-state-rank-in-equal-pay.html

Filed Under: Economy, Equality, Income Inequality, Money, Sexism, USA, Women

Could CISPA Be the Next SOPA?

April 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alex Fitzpatrick for Mashable on April 8, 2012

A bill introduced to the House of Representatives late last year could become the centerpiece of the next SOPA-style struggle between the tech community and Washington, D.C.

The bill already has over 100 co-sponsors and the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies, including Microsoft and Facebook — support which SOPAnever enjoyed.

It’s called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA, for short). CISPA would alter the existing National Security Act of 1947 to allow private businesses and the government to share information about cyberthreats — including “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” vital networks or “threat or misappropriation” of information owned by the government or private businesses, such as intellectual property.

To ensure that business-government information sharing happens on a two-way basis, CISPA requires the Director of National Intelligence to set up ways for the intelligence community to pass along threat information to private companies and make sure they actually go ahead and do that. To prevent sensitive information from being shared willy-nilly, CISPA requires that any recipient of such threat reports have a security clearance and a valid need for the information.

Finally, CISPA allows third-party cybersecurity firms (which provide cyber protection to the government and private businesses) to “use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information in order to protect the rights and property” of their clients. They’re also allowed to share that information with any other business or government department, provided their client gives them permission to do so.

SEE ALSO: SOPA 2.0: Why the Fight for Internet Freedom Is Far From Over
 

CISPA prevents these private firms from using shared cybersecurity information to gain an advantage, and if they share information with the federal government, they don’t have to disclose it to the public. Meaning, if Company X is hacked, they can tell the government about it without alerting employees, shareholders or the public at large.

As long as a cybersecurity firm acts in “good faith” according to these stipulations, it’s immune to civil or criminal lawsuits regarding information sharing.

Rep. Mike Rodgers (R-Mich.), who introduced the bill along with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), has framed CISPA as a bill to protect American intellectual property from state-sponsored digital theft of intellectual property.

“Every day U.S. businesses are targeted by nation-state actors like China for cyber exploitation and theft,” said Rodgers in a statement. “This consistent and extensive cyber looting results in huge losses of valuable intellectual property, sensitive information, and American jobs. The broad base of support for this bill shows that Congress recognizes the urgent need to help our private sector better defend itself from these insidious attacks,” he said.

Facebook called CISPA a “thoughtful, bipartisan” bill in a letter of support written in February.

“Effective security requires private and public sector cooperation, and successful cooperation necessitates information sharing,” wrote Joel Kaplan, vice president of U.S. Public Policy at Facebook. “Your legislation removes burdensome rules that currently can inhibit protection of the cyber ecosystem, and helps provide a more established structure for sharing within the cyber community while still respecting the privacy rights and exceptions of our users.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, feels differently.

According to the EFF, the language in CISPA is worded so broadly that it could be interpreted to allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and companies such as Google and Facebook to intercept your messages and transmit them to the government.

They also warn that CISPA could be used as a blunt instrument against copyright infringement, similar to concerns about SOPA. Finally, they’d rather not see the Director of National Intelligence in charge of information sharing — they feel a civilian position would provide for more transparency and accountability.

“The idea is to facilitate detection of and defense against a serious cyber threat, but the definitions in the bill go well beyond that,” said the EFF in a blog post. “The language is so broad it could be used as a blunt instrument to attack websites like The Pirate Bay or WikiLeaks.”

You can read the full text of CISPA for yourself at the Library of Congress.

Do you think CISPA is a welcome tool to ward off cyberattacks, or are you concerned it will be used to clamp down on Internet freedom? Sound off in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov

Source: https://mashable.com/2012/04/08/could-cispa-be-the-next-sopa

Filed Under: CISPA, Featured, USA

Navy builds 50,000 square foot lab to simulate desert, jungle to test military robots

April 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

By Kurzweil AI on April 9, 2012

The 50,000 square foot

Tropical High Bay at NRL's Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research is a 60' by 40' greenhouse that contains a re-creation of a southeast Asian rain forest (credit: NRL)

Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR) at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. is a real-world testing lab for robots, where they’ll be tested in sandstorms, jungle humidity, and water.

It can be used for small autonomous air vehicles, autonomous ground vehicles, and the people who will interact with them. A motion capture video system allows engineers to track up to 50 objects and gather high-accuracy ground truth data of all positions of these tracked objects.

The facility includes four human-systems interaction labs that can be used as control rooms for human-subject experiments, or for development of autonomy software.

An audio system allows for injecting directional sound into the environment, such as the sound of troops marching or environmental background noises.

The labs also contain eye trackers (useful for studying how people work with advanced interfaces for autonomous systems) and multi-user/multi-touch displays.

Sounds like a great place to test those taco-delivery drones. — Ed.

Source: https://www.kurzweilai.net/navy-builds-50000-square-foot-lab-to-simulate-desert-jungle-to-test-military-robots

Filed Under: Artificial Intelligence, Military, Neuroscience, Robotics, Technology

Republican presidential candidates slam SOPA, Protect IP

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Censorship, Justice, Law, Protests, SOPA/PIPA, USA

Corporate Control? Not in These Communities

January 7, 2012 By 1 Comment

by Allen D. Kanner from Yes! Magazine

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process—democracy.


Citizens of Mt. Shasta, California have developed an ordinance to keep corporations from extracting their water.

Photo by Jill Clardy.

The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.

Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that explicitly put their citizens’ rights ahead of corporate interests, despite the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution). Four municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into the human body.

When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances.

These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney general proclaimed, “there is no inalienable right to local self-government.”

Bigger cities are joining the fray. In November, Pittsburgh’s city council voted to ban corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas as a result of local concern about an environmentally devastating practice known as “fracking.” As city councilman Doug Shields stated in a press release, “Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It’s not—it’s about our authority as a municipal community to say ‘no’ to corporations that will cause damage to our community. It’s about our right to community, [to] local self-government.”

What has driven these communities to such radical action? The typical story involves a handful of local citizens deciding to oppose a corporate practice, such as toxic sludge dumping, which has taken a huge toll on the health, economy, and natural surroundings of their town. After years of fighting for regulatory change, these citizens discover a bitter truth: the U.S. environmental regulatory system consists of a set of interlocking state and federal laws designed by industry to serve corporate interests. With the deck utterly stacked against them, communities are powerless to prevent corporations from destroying the local environment for the sake of profit.

Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit public interest law firm that champions a different approach. The firm helps communities draft local ordinances that place the rights of municipalities to govern themselves above corporate rights. Through its Democracy School, which offers seminars across the United States, it provides a detailed analysis of the history of corporate law and environmental regulation that shows a need for a complete overhaul of the system. Armed with this knowledge and with their well-crafted ordinances, citizens are able to return to their communities to begin organizing for the passage of laws such as Mt. Shasta’s proposed ordinance.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is collaborating with Global Exchange, an international environmental and workers’ rights organization, to help supporters of the Mt. Shasta ordinance organize. In an interview for this article, I asked Shannon Biggs, who directs Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program, if she expected ordinances of this type to be upheld in court. Biggs was dubious about judges “seeing the error of their ways” and reversing a centuries-old trend in which courts grant corporations increased power. Rather, she sees these ordinances as powerful educational and organizing tools that can lead to the major changes necessary to reduce corporate power, put decision-making back in the hands of real people rather than corporate “persons,” and open up whole new areas of rights, such as those of ecosystems and natural communities. Biggs connects the current municipal defiance of existing state and federal law to a long tradition of civil disobedience in the United States, harkening back to Susan B. Anthony illegally casting her ballot, the Underground Railroad flouting slave laws, and civil rights protesters purposely breaking segregation laws.

But the nascent municipal rights movement offers something new in the way of political action. These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology. The best place to start, I would suggest, is with banning corporations from making campaign contributions to local elections.

The municipal movement could provide one of the most effective routes to building nationwide support for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the movement is already expanding. In Pennsylvania, people are now organizing on the state level and similar stirrings have been reported in New Hampshire.

What about your community?

Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is a cofounder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, co-editor ofPsychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology, and a Berkeley, California child, family, and adult psychologist.

This article originally appeared in Tikkun.

Sources:

https://organicconnectmag.com/wp/corporate-control-not-in-these-communities

https://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/corporate-control-not-in-these-communities

https://www.tikkun.org/article.php/jan2011kanner

Filed Under: Corporations, Environment, Featured, Positive, USA

Foreclosed Homeowners Re-Occupy Their Homes

December 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

San Francisco – Carolyn Gage was evicted from her foreclosed home in January. Earlier this month, she moved back in.

“I’ve been in here for 50 years. I know no other place but here. I left and it was just time for me to come back home,” said Gage, who is in her mid-50s.

Gage’s monthly payments spiked after her adjustable rate mortgage kicked in, and she could no longer afford the payments on her three-bedroom house in the city’s Bayview Hunters Point district. She says she tried to modify her loan with her lender, Florida-based IB Properties, but to no avail.

When Gage initially left about 10 months ago, she took some personal items with her, but left most of the furniture and continued paying for some utilities.

“It didn’t feel right for me to move. I just left my things because I knew I was going to return to them eventually,” she said.

She had to re-activate a few utilities when she returned, like the water, but found the process fairly easy.

Walking back into the house was an emotional moment for Gage, but a joyous one.

“I was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; there’s no place like home,” Gage said. “It’s a family home; I plan to stay there.”

Gage was one of about two dozen homeowners who gathered Tuesday for a community potluck on Quesada Avenue for residents facing foreclosure and are refusing to leave their homes.

Homeowners expressed outrage at the way predatory lenders have targeted their community.

Residents of the Bayview are starting to see how the African-American community was especially victimized in the foreclosure crisis.

Gage believes that single women and elders in the black community were targeted for predatory loans. At the peak of the housing boom she was solicited for an adjustable rate loan to do some home improvements, even though she told the loan agent that she was on disability and did not have a steady income.

According to a report released last week by the Center for Responsible Lending, African Americans and Latinos were consistently more likely than whites to receive high-risk loan products. About a quarter of all Latino and African-American borrowers have lost their homes to foreclosure or are seriously delinquent, compared to under 12 percent for white borrowers.

Bayview residents Reverend Archbishop Franz King and Reverend Mother Marina King, who are founders of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, are also facing foreclosure. Their eviction date is set for Dec. 22.

King expressed deep anger and sorrow at the situation facing the black community in the Bayview.

“First redevelopment moved us out of the Fillmore and now we’re losing our properties too? It’s like there’s nowhere for us to go,” he said.

Grace Martinez, an organizer with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) who helped to arrange the event, commented that banks have become increasingly hostile to their efforts. “They call the police on us; they laugh at us.”

Vivian Richardson, a homeowner on Quesada Avenue whose house was also foreclosed on, also has no intention of leaving. Her current eviction date is set for Dec. 31, but she, like many of her neighbors, is asking her lender to reduce the principal on her loan in order to make the monthly payments more affordable.

Richardson has been attempting to modify her home loan for the past two years. Earlier this month, tired of the lack of communication from the lender, Aurora Loan Services based in Delaware, she worked with ACCE to coordinate an e-mail blast to Aurora’s chairman.

On Nov. 3, over the span of one to two hours, approximately 1,400 emails were sent and more than 100 phone calls made, imploring Chairman Theodore P. Janulis to stop Richardson’s eviction. A spokesperson from the bank called her an hour after the blast and asked her to send an updated set of financial information so that they could review her case.

Two weeks have passed and she has yet to hear anything further. The bank spokesperson commented that Richardson’s case is still being reviewed internally and they hope to get back to her by the end of next week.

However, Richardson has lived in her house for 13 years and plans to stay regardless of the bank’s decision.

“I will defend the home,” she said.

On Dec. 6, there will be a national day of action, “Occupy Our Homes,” where people across the country facing predicaments similar to Gage and Richardson may follow their lead.

Partly inspired by the Occupy movement, the day of action is supported by various community organizations like Take Back the Land and ACCE. The call to action is for people to move back into their foreclosed properties and to defend the properties of families facing eviction.

Martinez commented on the growing anger people are feeling. “The idea is, ‘I want what’s mine.’” She said many homeowners had trusted the banks and ultimately, “People were buying into a lie.”

Source: https://www.truth-out.org/foreclosed-homeowners-re-occupy-their-homes/1322246348

Filed Under: Debt, Housing, Occupy, USA Tagged With: ,

Senator Bob Casey says the NDAA will NOT be used against the American people

December 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The following is a copy of an email from Bob Casey with the correspondents name blanked out:

Dear Mr. *****:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes policy and annual expenditures for the Department of Defense. The House of Representatives and the Senate recently passed the final version of the 2012 NDAA with broad bipartisan support. It is currently awaiting the President’s signature before it becomes law.

The Department of Defense is responsible for overseeing the United States Armed Forces and ensuring that our Nation is able to effectively respond to threats. It is critical that Congress provides the Department of Defense with sufficient funding to protect American lives, defend our Nation and support our servicemembers and their families. While our overseas military engagements continue, it is particularly important to provide the resources our servicemembers need to successfully conduct operations and ensure their own safety.

As your United States Senator, I am committed to ensuring the safety and security of all Americans. Since 2001, United States counterterrorism efforts have helped to ensure our national security. Our brave servicemembers and intelligence personnel work tirelessly to protect our nation against the threat of terrorism. However, it is essential that the executive branch operate with transparency and ensure that our counterterrorism efforts do not infringe on the civil liberties of American citizens. We must not sacrifice our fundamental values and ideals in the face of this critical threat.

The custody and detention provisions in the NDAA are the result of thorough consideration and bipartisan agreement. These provisions, including Sections 1021 and 1022, will allow the United States to deal effectively with the threat posed by al Qaeda, a terrorist group that has inflicted devastating harm on our Nation and continues to seek to attack our citizens, our allies, and our interests both here at home and around the world.

Section 1021 of the NDAA does not expand the executive branch’s authority to detain suspected terrorists. This section states explicitly that it is not intended to limit or expand the authority that Congress granted the President in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The definition of a ‘covered person’ in this section is ‘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.’ This is the position that has been adopted by the Obama Administration and upheld in U.S. courts since 2001. In addition, it requires the executive branch to brief Congress regularly on the individuals and groups to whom this authority is being applied.

It is important to note that Section 1021 does not create any ‘new’ or ‘unprecedented’ presidential power, nor does it create any ‘permanent’ detention power. The legislation explicitly states that Section 1021 shall not ‘affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’

Section 1022 of the NDAA requires that persons who are members of al Qaeda and have participated in planning or carrying out an attack against the United States or its allies be held in military custody. However, the executive branch can exercise a waiver of this requirement if the President certifies to Congress that holding a particular suspect in civilian custody will better serve U.S. national security interests. In addition, this provision applies only to non-US citizens and non-lawful resident aliens who are al Qaeda operatives and who plan or carry out attacks against the United States. It explicitly does not apply to American citizens and those who reside here lawfully.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California proposed an amendment which would have limited the requirement of military custody in Section 1022 to suspected terrorists captured abroad. This proposal was rejected in the Senate by a vote of 55 to 45. I voted against this amendment because the waiver provision provides flexibility to the executive branch to determine whether a suspected al Qaeda operative captured on U.S. soil should be transferred to civilian custody.

Senator Mark Udall of Colorado offered an amendment to remove the detention provisions in Section 1021 from the bill altogether. This amendment would have essentially allowed the executive branch to continue to engage in existing detention practices without codification in law. By codifying the detention practices already in use, Congress is exercising its critical responsibility to oversee and create a legal framework for executive branch action. For this reason, I joined a majority of Senators in voting against this amendment.

Senator Feinstein also offered an amendment to explicitly prohibit the indefinite detention of American citizens. I voted in favor of this amendment out of concern that authorizing the government to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens was at odds with fundamental American values. Unfortunately, this amendment was rejected by a vote of 55 to 45. Finally, Senator Feinstein proposed an amendment to clarify that nothing in the bill ‘shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’ I also voted for this measure, which passed the Senate by a vote of 99 to 1 and was included in the final version of the bill.

On December 15, 2011, Senator Feinstein introduced S. 2003, the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011. This legislation would clarify that an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States. S. 2003 would also require Congress to make a ‘clear statement’ about the limitations on authority to detain U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. This legislation has been referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am not a member. Please be assured that I will examine this legislation closely.

Nothing in the NDAA authorizes the U.S. military to patrol our streets, detain ordinary Americans in their homes or conduct any law enforcement functions inside the United States. Section 1022 says only that a specific group of persons, narrowly defined as those who are ‘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’ should be subject to military custody, unless the executive branch determines that civilian custody is more appropriate in a particular case. The NDAA does not address when or where a person may be captured, and does not authorize the military to exercise unprecedented powers on U.S. soil.

In addition, the NDAA will not disrupt ongoing interrogations, intelligence gathering functions and surveillance activities, and it does not require military commissions in terrorist prosecutions. The administration raised concerns that certain provisions would limit its ability to collect vital information and limit its prosecutorial options. In response, the Senate Armed Services Committee clarified that no such limitations would be placed on the President?s authority.

The NDAA absolutely does not authorize torture of detainees, irrespective of citizenship. Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire proposed S. Amdt. 1068 to the NDAA to authorize certain enhanced interrogation techniques. However, the U.S. Constitution prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ and we must not tolerate the use of torture under any circumstances. I believe strongly that the United States has a moral obligation to uphold its commitments under the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners. We must, therefore, hold all executive branch officials accountable for alleged violations of these commitments. I am pleased that S. Amdt. 1068 was not included the final version of the NDAA that passed the Senate. Please be assured that I support efforts to prohibit the use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ practices, and that no such practices have been endorsed in this bill.

The NDAA also does not change the fundamental, constitutional right of habeas corpus review. The writ of habeas corpus is a legal doctrine that allows individuals to challenge their detention in a court of law. The U.S. Constitution explicitly provides this right to American citizens, and the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld its applicability, even with respect to suspected terrorists. Any American citizen or lawful permanent resident held in U.S. custody will have the right to habeas corpus review. Similarly, the courts have established that persons detained under the Authorization of the Use of Military Force, including those held at Guantanamo Bay, have the right to such review. Nothing in the NDAA undermines this critical right.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.

If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, https://casey.senate.gov. I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office, or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.

Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator

Filed Under: Featured, Martial Law, Military, Police, Politics, USA

Lieberman Says U.S. Needs Chinese Style Internet Kill Switch

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Censorship, China, Internet, Surveillance, USA Tagged With:

27 Years: No Deaths from Vitamins, 3 Million from Prescription Drugs

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Anthony Gucciardi

Over the past 27 years — the complete time frame that the data has been available — there have been 0 deaths as a result of vitamins and over 3 million deaths related to prescription drug use.

In fact, going back 54 years there have only been 11 claims of vitamin-related death, all of which provided no substantial evidence to link vitamins to the cause of death. The news comes after a recent statistically analysis found that pharmaceutical drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the US. In 2009, drugs exceeded the amount of traffic-related deaths, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide.

The findings go against the claims of mainstream medical ‘experts’ and mainstream media outlets who often push the idea that multivitamins are detrimental to your health, and that prescription drugs are the only science-backed option to improving your health. While essential nutrients likevitamin D are continually being shown to slash your risk of disease such as diabetes and cancer, prescription pharmaceuticals are continually being linked to such conditions. In fact, the top-selling therapeutic class pharmaceutical drug has been tied to the development of diabetes and even suicide, and whistleblowers are just now starting to speak out despite studies as far back as the 80s highlighting the risks.

Mainstream medical health officials were recently forced to speak out over the danger of antipsychotic drugs, which millions of children have been prescribed since 2009. U.S. pediatric health advisers blew the whistle over the fact that these pharmaceuticals can lead to diabetes and even suicide, the very thing they aim to prevent. What is even more troubling is that half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental condition during their lifetime thanks to lack of diagnosis guidelines currently set by the medical establishment, of which many cases will lead to the prescription of antipsychotics and other similar medications.

Covering up the side effects

In order to protect sales, the link between suicide and antipsychotic drugs was completely covered up by Eli Lilly & Co, the makers of Prozac. Despite research stretching as far back as the 1980′s finding that Prozac actually leads to suicide, the company managed to hide the evidence until a Harvard psychiatrist leaked the information into the press. The psychiatrist, Martin Teicher, stated that the American people were being treated like guinea pigs in a massive pharmaceutical experiment.

Greedy and oftentimes prescription-happy doctors are handing out antipsychotic medication like candy to adults and young children alike. In 2008, antipsychotics became the top-selling therapeutic class prescription drug in the United States and grossing over $14 billion in sales.

Antipsychotic drugs are not the only dangerous pharmaceuticals. The average drug label contains 70 side effects, though many popular pharmaceuticals have been found to contain 100 to 125. Some drugs, prescribed by doctors to supposedly improve your health, come with over 525 negative reactions.

Ritalin, for example, has been linked to conditions including:

  • Increased blood pressure
  • Increased heart rate
  • Increased body temperature
  • Increased alertness
  • Suppressed appetite

Perhaps the hundreds of negative side effects is part of the reason why the FDA announced last year that it is pulling more than 500 cold and allergy off the market due to health concerns. Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents, and come with up to 525 negative side effects. Avoiding these drugs and utilizing high quality organic alternatives like whole food-based multivitamins and green superfoods will lead to a total health transformation without harsh side effects and an exponentially increased death risk.

 

Source: https://naturalsociety.com/27-years-no-deaths-from-vitamins-3-million-prescription-drug-deaths/

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, USA

Military Given Go-Ahead To Detain Us Terrorist Suspects Without Trial

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By

Civil rights groups dismayed as Barack Obama abandons commitment to veto new security law contained in defence bill.

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”.

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the “war on terror” to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation’s supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law’s critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

“It’s something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. “It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent.”

There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.

The law applies to anyone “who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces”.

Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.

“We’re facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life,” he said. “When you join al-Qaida you haven’t joined the mafia, you haven’t joined a gang. You’ve joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat.”

Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.

But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said “detaining citizens without a court trial is not American” and that if the law passes “the terrorists have won”.

“We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk,” he said. “Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts.”

Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge,” she said. “We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge.”

Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.

“There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist,” Paul said. “If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?”

Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial “until the end of hostilities”. They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.

The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would “cause confusion” in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.

But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.

Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year’s election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.

Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.

“The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people’s minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is,” Malinowski said. “It wasn’t asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs.”

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.

“The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.

Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”, Umar Farouk, the “underwear bomber”, and Faisal Shahzad, the “Times Square bomber”.

Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.

Malinowski said “vague language” was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. “The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law,” he said.

 

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama

 

 

Filed Under: Law, USA Tagged With: , ,
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