NATO’s summit in Chicago has been greeted by crowds of activists pouring into the city streets
They’re calling for the disbandment of NATO. NATO was a relic of the past, its no longer needed, its causing more division than unity among nations, and its time for us to move beyond military solutions […] and start to become a community of nations
U.S. House passes bill giving the federal government new and sweeping powers to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. Critics claim the bill, HR 347, would make free speech a felony, and restrict political protest.
Some speculate the bill is an attempt, at least in part, to silence and intimidate the Occupy Movement that began with Occupy Wall Street.
The bill makes it a federal offense to disrupt or protest at any place or event attended by any person with secret service protection. The bill would make it a criminal offense to trespass on any “restricted buildings and grounds,” and would seriously hamper any future political protests near the White House. However, the bill goes much farther than simply protecting the president.
the bill “will seriously diminish the right of American citizens to petition their Government for a redress of grievances by outlawing protests where key government officials or other VIP’s may be nearby. Federal law enforcement agents will be empowered to bring these charges against Americans engaged in political protests anywhere in the country, and violators will face criminal penalties that include imprisonment for up to 10 years.”
We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance to all of us. These include:
- The inequity that exists between classes in our country is simply immoral.
- We are in an unemployment crisis. Almost 14 million people are unemployed. Nearly 20% of African American men are unemployed. Over 25% of our nation’s youth are unemployed.
- Many workers who have jobs have to work 2 or 3 of them just to scrape by.
- Higher education is almost impossible to obtain without going deeply in debt.
- Corporations are permitted to spend unlimited resources to influence elections while stockpiling a trillion dollars rather than hiring people.
We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and hardships borne by so many, or accurately conveying what this movement is about. All this goes on while corporate profits continue to soar and millionaires whine about paying a bit more in taxes. And we have not even mentioned the environment.
We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy.
— Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors
The privatization of America’s prison system is well on its way to complete.
Corrections Corporation of America, the largest operator of for-profit prisons in the US, is appealing to 48 states across the country with an offer to buy out their detention facilities.
The CCA says that by selling off prisons, state governments can remediate the “challenging corrections budgets.” While it could come as a saving grace for taxpayers, it also conjured up questions over the motives of a for-profit corporation that makes bank off of putting men and women behind bars.
While seeing their revenues increase quintuple over the last 20 years, the CCA has used those profits for more than just maintaining prisons. For one thing, they’ve forked over a fair share on lobbying Congress. While netting $133 million in come between 2006 and 2008, the CCA spent nearly $3 million lobbying; during that decade, the number of dollars spent in Washington amounted to around $17.6 million.
And what were they asking for? Stricter laws that will see to it that their prison cells are more easily [filled].
Mike Cantone, candidate for Orlando Mayor, is calling on Mayor Dyer and Amway officials to release their plans on using the Orlando Magic facility as a homeless shelter on off-nights, as ordered by state law. The professional basketball facility has taken massive subsidies totaling nearly $8 million in public tax dollars since 2008 in addition to the hundreds of millions the city spent to build the new Amway Center.
“Mayor Dyer’s only memorable action to help the homeless and needy has been to arrest those who attempt to feed them. It’s time to spend the money on our most needy or open the doors to Amway,” said Cantone. “The reality is people are hurting, people are suffering and I am calling on the city of Orlando to stop the demolition of the old Amway and open the doors to serve our community in this time of need. They’ve taken our money to help and it’s time to cash in on the help they owe us.”
Dyer plans to develop more luxury housing and commercial space at a time where vacancies and for lease properties are found everywhere in downtown.
“Mayor Dyer once again is caught simply giving away our tax dollars to his 1% buddies. The contrast is clear: Dyer plans to build more luxury housing and commercial space and continues to ignore the growing needs of our community and the harsh reality that residents are currently facing. Enough is enough, it’s time to scrap Creative Village and put the people first,” Cantone concluded.
Remember all that talk of how the supporters of SOPA/PIPA were “humbled” by the protests of January 18th, and how they had learned their lessons about trying to push through a bill without actually involving the stakeholders? Remember the talk of how they hoped a new tone could be found in the debate? Yeah. Apparently someone forgot to send that memo to RIAA boss Cary Sherman, who has taken to the pages of the NY Times to lash out at those who fought against SOPA/PIPA, chalking the whole thing up to a massive “misinformation” campaign by Google and Wikipedia. The whole thing is chock full of ridiculous claims, so we might as well go through it bit by bit.
Dear Mr. [U’i],
Thank you for contacting me regarding Internet piracy legislation. I would like to take this opportunity to address your concerns on this important issue.
As you may be aware, on May 12, 2011, Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) introduced the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP/ PIPA, S. 968), which is meant to curb the online theft of intellectual property, much of which is occurring through rogue websites overseas in China. As a senator from Florida, a state with a large presence of artists, creators and businesses connected to the creation of intellectual property, I have a strong interest in stopping online piracy that costs Florida jobs. It was with this in mind that I was previously a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act. I believe it’s important to protect American ingenuity, ideas and jobs from being stolen through Internet piracy. However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment that is ripe for innovation and can promote new technologies.
Last summer, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill unanimously and without controversy. Since then, I’ve heard from a number of Floridians who have raised legitimate concerns about the impact this bill could have on Internet access, as well as a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s authority to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.
Therefore, I have decided to withdraw my support for the PROTECT IP Act. Furthermore, I have encouraged Majority Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet. Please know that I will remain mindful of your concerns should this, or similar legislation, such as the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261), come before the Senate for consideration.
Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. It is an honor and privilege to serve the people of Florida. If I can be of any further help to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Marco Rubio
United States Senator
six prominent supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it’s Senate companion Protect IP Act (PIPA): Mark Rubio, Ben Cardin, Lee Terry, Roy Blunt, Dennis Ross, Ben Quayle, have removed their backing for the bills.
When asked about the anti-piracy legislation at a news conference on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said lawmakers will continue to try to find support for it, but that it’s not there now.
“It’s pretty clear to many of us that there is a lack of consensus at this point,” Boehner said.
These political moves come after Wikipedia and Google joined hundreds of other websites Wednesday in a sprawling online protest against legislation in the US Congress intended to crack down on Internet piracy.
The New York City Council symbolically passed a resolution Wednesday opposing “corporate personhood.” Resolution 1172 formally expressed disapproval of the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which declared that corporations have the same first amendment rights as people.
The bill, which urges Congress to take action against corporate personhood, was sponsored by councilmembers Brad Lander, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Steve Levin, all members of the Progressive Caucus. After the vote, the Caucus released a statement, which read in part:
“As our support of this resolution demonstrates, restoring confidence in government and strengthening democratic participation is a core principle of the Progressive Caucus. We believe that corporations should not share the same rights as people, that unlimited and unreported corporate donations meant to sway the electoral process should not be considered freedom of speech, and that the government should regulate the raising and spending of money by corporations intended to influence elections. We cannot allow corporate money to manipulate our democracy.”Occupy Wall Street’s New York General Assembly voted to support the resolution. Corporate personhood has been a target of Occupy since the movement began in September.
The non-binding resolution passed along party lines with 41 yes-votes from Democrats, five no-votes from all five Council Republicans and one abstention from Democrat Peter Vallone.
Speaking at the hearing, Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Queens) spoke against the resolution, but was nearly drowned out by the boos and hisses of Occupy Wall Street protesters in attendance, The Gotham Gazette reports. “Corporations are people,” he said. “All their money goes back to the people.”
The New York City Council joins a growing list of local governments across the US who have passed similar resolutions, including Los Angeles, Albany, Boulder and Oakland.
a United States federal law (Pub.L. 109-374; 18 U.S.C. § 43) that prohibits any person from engaging in certain conduct “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise.”
The law contains a savings clause that indicates it should not be construed to “prohibit any expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) protected from legal prohibition by the First Amendment to the Constitution.” [1] However, by its own terms, the statute criminalizes acts such as “intimidation.” And prosecutions under AETA require using evidence of otherwise lawful free speech in order to demonstrate a “course of conduct” as proof of purpose or possible conspiracy.
On November 13, 2006, the House passed the bill under suspension of the rules, a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills without voting.
The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was overwhelmingly embraced by the pharmaceutical industry.
Camille Hankins, a representative of Win Animal Rights, asserted that the legislation infringed upon the First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly: “It’s overly broad, overly vague and restricts freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”[7] She added: “I think this legislation was bought and paid for, by the pharmaceutical industry primarily.”
Despite a massive Twitter campaign and a blog post that claims “Go Daddy no longer supports SOPA legislation” the company and their CEO have dodged questions about opposing the bill.
This week, they lost around 72,000 domain registrations. At a yearly discounted rate of $6.99 (most registrations are higher), that’s over half a million dollars per year. It is apparently not enough for them to speak out against the bill.
On January 20 and 21, 2012, activists across the country are organizing to protest the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision and urge that it be overturned by amending the Constitution. The Roberts Court’s ruling in Citizens United employed right-wing judicial activism in support of corporate interests to give corporations the same free speech rights as individuals to influence elections — opening the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in our elections. With the two-year anniversary of that disastrous decision coming up on January 21, our national movement to undo the harm of Citizens United is growing rapidly as Americans are banding together from coast to coast, at every level of government and citizen organization to demand the restoration of Government By The PEOPLE.
Check out the growing list of local, state and federal resolution efforts >
GoDaddy.com has pulled its support of SOPA, aka the Stop Online Privacy Act, in the face of withering criticism and threatened boycotts.
“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation — but we can clearly do better,” GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman, said Friday. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”
The statement is a major turnaround from its previous position, which was outlined in a statement filed with the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It is for these reasons that I’m still struggling with why some Internet companies oppose PROTECT IP and SOPA,” the original statement said. “There is no question that we need these added tools to counteract illegal foreign sites that are falling outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement.”
