Freedom // Current TV

SOPA/PIPA; How we got here and where we go from here

Good video reviewing how SOPA/PIPA came to be and what the power of the peoples'... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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9 comments

Stand Together: The Gaming Community vs. SOPA/PIPA

I stand with the participants of this video against SOPA/PIPA. I AM FOR A FREE AND... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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70 comments

What Is SOPA - Stop Online Piracy Act (VIDEOS)

Beginning earlier this morning at midnight, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 some major... more

dryeraser
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4 months ago
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3 comments

Why Wikipedia is going down at midnight (and others) - CNN.com

Go to Wikipedia at midnight and you won't find any of the usual encyclopedia... more

technospunky
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4 months ago
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0 comments

Stop SOPA: Protect Your Online Rights!

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is... more

disembedded
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4 months ago
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5 comments

Journalist Chris Hedges sues Obama over National Defense Authorization Act

By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, January 16, 2012

Less than a month after the National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law, President Barack Obama faces a lawsuit because of its highly controversial provisions regarding the detention of suspected terrorists.

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint against Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on behalf of journalist Chris Hedges. The complaint states that the law violates the First and Fifth Amendments.

The $662 billion defense spending bill contained a controversial section that required terrorism suspects to be detained by the military without trial, regardless of where they were captured.

Despite language in the law that states it does not affect existing authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens or others captured within the U.S., Hedges claims that it still allows the government to detain Americans indefinitely without trial.

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” Hedges explained at TruthDig. “I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.”

While signing the bill, Obama issued a signing statement in which he pledged that the new laws would not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. But human rights advocates said that did not prevent future administrations from abusing the law.

The complaint alleges that Hedges could fall within the scope of the law. As part of his job as a journalist, he has direct communications with persons who are likely to be deemed engaged in hostilities with the United States. The detention provisions cover anyone who has “substantially supported” or “directly supported” “al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

Hedges said at TruthDig that the controversial bill passed “because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/16/journalist-chris-hedges-sues-obama-over-national-defense-authorization-act/

"Take your Civil Liberties, at no Cost!!!"By Eric W. Dolan Monday, January 16, 2012 Less than a month after the National... more

KB723
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4 months ago
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61 comments

Angelo Mozilo Settlement Brilliant Work by Countrywide CEO - Indictment? Ha!

Oli Garch says former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo is brilliant. At the... more

thenakedemperor
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4 months ago
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2 comments

Aware Guide - I Have a Dream

I have a dream today!...With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of... more

AwareGuide
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4 months ago
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0 comments

How about this for an Occupy theme song?

Change the last words to 'Occupy is her name' and we have a song to march... more

dinm76
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4 months ago
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8 comments

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free.

The Us is going all over the world purporting to be supporters and defenders of... more

nardo1224
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4 months ago
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3 comments

Occupiers target "Mayor 1% Emanuel's" anti-protest ordinance in Chicago

Occupy Rogers Park, Occupy the South Side campaign against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's NATO/G-8 ordinance; "This measure is a permanent attack on public protest in the City of Chicago."

Last month Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced anti-protester legislation for the upcoming NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago.
photo: Justin Bianchi
Chicago's WBEZ reported:

"During the summits, which could draw thousands of protesters, Emanuel wants to increase the minimum fine from $25 to $200 and double the maximum fine to $1,000. His proposed ordinance would also close parks, playgrounds and beaches overnight for longer periods of time."

This past Tuesday, Emanuel clarified that these measures would in fact be permanent, and not just during the time of the summits. From WBEZ:

In fact, Emanuel said his proposal to dramatically increase fines for protesters who resist arrest - even passively - should be permanent. Some of the other sweeping powers the mayor is seeking - one would allow his office to unilaterally approve some city contracts - would expire once the May summits are over, he said.
This morning, Occupy Chicago reacted harshly to Emanuel's plan, which they call the 'Sit Down and Shut Up' ordinance. From the Occupy Chicago website:

This ordinance consists of a host of bureaucratic tools created by and for the 1% to relegate, abridge, fine, arrest, and silence our speech. It is an attempt to bully and intimidate with increased police power and fines the brave working people who demand the ability to participate democratically in the organizing of our society. It is an attempt, by the 1%, to restrict and regulate the voice of the people when it upsets the structure that put them in power. The timing of the ordinance demonstrates that it has nothing to do with public safety but that its sole purpose is to stifle the voice and trample upon the constitutional liberties of all the people of Chicago. It is the blatant criminalizing of any public assembly that does not serve the interest of the 1%. It is the handcuffing of democracy. Occupy Chicago condemns this ordinance and demands that they be revoked. Those who are on the side of the democracy of the 99% will stand with us.

This morning, Occupy the South Side and Occupy Rogers Park delivered a warning to all of the city's aldermen, indicating that if they supported the mayor's resolution, they should expext strong resistance.

More at the linkOccupy Rogers Park, Occupy the South Side campaign against Chicago Mayor Rahm... more

JanforGore
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5 months ago
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5 comments

Sexual Liberation - an interview with VenusPlusX

the activist group believes that sexual repression is at the root of all... more

googygood
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5 months ago
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0 comments

Perpetual Energy VS. Nikola Tesla Censored?

” Einsteins relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates,... more

Anarchadiator
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5 months ago
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1 comment

The Truth About Ron Paul

WARNING: Due to the Highly Controversial Nature of this article, it is recommended... more

Anarchadiator
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5 months ago
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4 comments

With Congress on break, SOPA fight continues - CNN.com

If it were all about foreign intervention and theft, that would be one thing. Its... more

technospunky
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5 months ago
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1 comment

What Some Black People Think About Ron Paul

YouTube mashup of what some black people really think of Ron Paul instead of how many... more

rodstradamus
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5 months ago
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1 comment

Ron Paul Revolution (The Joe Rogan Experience) NSFW

This is a must-watch video. This pretty much sums it up for me.

JRBarilla
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5 months ago
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13 comments

Obama pledges to exempt Americans from indefinite detention law

By Stephen C. Webster Saturday, December 31, 2011 President Barack Obama signed on... more

KB723
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5 months ago
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154 comments

Ralph Nader endorses Ron Paul

It’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in low regard for decades now: the marginally more palatable alternative in an ugly duopoly, he claims, is still quite ugly. But lately Nader’s disdain has reached a new high. “It’s gotten so bad,” he tells me, “that you can actually say a Republican president—with a Democratic Senate—would produce less bad results than the present situation. That’s how bollixed stuff has gone.”

Not that he was ever particularly optimistic about the Obama administration, especially its potential to make headway on curtailing corporate welfare, now Nader’s signature policy objective. But in that, as with so many aspects of Obama’s presidency, the adjectives “disappointing” or “inadequate” don’t even begin to capture the depths of progressive disillusionment. Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, one might assume that Nader has little to be cheerful about.

Yet he says there is one candidate who sticks out—who even gives him hope: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

That might sound counterintuitive. Nader, of course, is known as a stalwart of the independent left, having first gained notoriety for his 1960s campaign to impose greater regulatory requirements on automakers—a policy act that would seem to contravene the libertarian understanding of justified governmental power. So I had to ask: how could he profess hope in Ron Paul, who almost certainly would have opposed the very regulations on which Nader built his career?

“Look at the latitude,” Nader says, referring to the potential for cooperation between libertarians and the left. “Military budget, foreign wars, empire, Patriot Act, corporate welfare—for starters. When you add those all up, that’s a foundational convergence. Progressives should do so good.”

I thought I’d bring up the subject of Ron Paul with Nader after seeing the two jointly interviewed on Fox Business Channel in January. Nader had caught me off guard when he identified an emergent left-libertarian alliance as “today’s most exciting new political dynamic.” It was easy to foresee objections that the left might raise: if progressives are in favor of expanding the welfare state, how well can they really get along with folks who go around quoting the likes of Hayek and Rothbard?

“That’s strategic sabotage,” Nader responds, sharply. “It’s an intellectual indulgence. … If they’re on your side, and you don’t compromise your positions, what do you care who they quote? Franklin Delano Roosevelt sided with Stalin against Hitler. Not to draw that analogy, I’m just saying—why did he side with Stalin? Because Stalin went along with everything FDR wanted.”

There may be an insurmountable impasse between the camps on social-safety-net spending. “But,” Nader says, “you could get together on corporate entitlements, subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts. Ron Paul is dead set against all that. So are a lot of libertarian-conservatives. In fact, it’s almost a mark of being a libertarian-conservative—in contrast to being a corporatist-conservative.”

“Do you read all these right-wing theoreticians?” he goes on. “Almost every one of them warned about excessive corporate concentration. Hayek did, [Frank] Meyer did, even Adam Smith did in his own way.” He leaves the mechanics of a left-libertarian political coalition to be sussed out later.

If the issues around which progressives and libertarians can coalesce, I ask Nader, are the most intractable, deeply entrenched problems, is he proposing that such a coalition would be more tenable than the one currently cobbling together the Democratic Party, with its many Blue Dogs and neoliberals?

“Exactly,” Nader says. “Libertarians like Ron Paul are on our side on civil liberties. They’re on our side against the military-industrial complex. They’re on our side against Wall Street. They’re on our side for investor rights. That’s a foundational convergence,” he exhorts. “It’s not just itty-bitty stuff.”

Nader cites opposition to “the self-defeating, boomeranging drug war” as another source of common ground, in the face of both parties’ indifference—with the scant exceptions of a few House Democrats who favor decriminalizing marijuana—to drug prohibition’s many ills. Ron Paul’s rejection of the very notion that personal drug use should be a criminal offense is something that has resonated with younger supporters, often catalyzing their first moment of political consciousness.

More at linkIt’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in... more

AmericanStandard
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5 months ago
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126 comments

This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of oppression

Illustration by Daniel Pudles It's the disguise used by those who wish to... more

Vierotchka
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5 months ago
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0 comments

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