Super 'Dela

sustainableprosperity:

Obama’s One-Way Mirror

Monday, 17 June 2013 11:56By Shayana Kadidal, Truthout | Op-Ed

There is something very wrong with this picture: Today I am in a federal court arguing that the press and public have a right to have access to daily transcripts and court documents in the trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning; meanwhile, Verizon is under government orders to turn over people’s calling records on a daily basis.

Similarly, next month, my colleague will argue in federal court that the government can’t simply place American citizens on secret “kill lists” without due process; meanwhile, the National Security Agency can go to hand-picked FISA judges to get direct access to the servers of Apple, Google, Facebook, Skype and others. 

We’re on the wrong side of a one-way mirror: The government can see us through it, but from our side we can’t see much of what it does in our name and with our tax dollars. Seven years into the self-styled “most transparent administration in history,” our lives - and the news media’s phone records - are as transparent as ever to the NSA, while the government is more opaque than ever.

We have become a nation in which massive surveillance of millions of citizens is deemed necessary to safeguard our democracy, while whistleblowers who uncover government wrongdoing are prosecuted as traitors. In this Orwellian world, the government has the right to know everything we are doing, but we do not have a right to know much of anything about what the government is doing.

This problem of one-way transparency is exemplified by how the government is dealing with the most important criminal trial involving leaks of classified information since the Pentagon Papers: the court-martial of Bradley Manning.

The government has refused to provide daily transcripts or audio tapes of the proceedings and media access to the briefs and court orders, making it nearly impossible for journalists to cover the trial accurately. In the pre-trial proceedings, the military judge went so far as to read her decisions out for hours at a time rather than provide transcripts. The situation is so bad that internet activists have raised almost $60,000 to pay for their own stenographer in the media room - and that will only pay for half the trial.

In ordinary criminal trials in federal courts, the media have access to daily transcripts against which they can check their notes of what happened in court; they have access to the parties’ briefs so they can read them beforehand and make sense of what is being said; and the judges publish their orders so people can read and understand their legal decisions. In Manning’s case, none of those things were made available by the government until, in a desperate attempt to fend off our lawsuit, they released several thousand pages of papers a week into the trial (so arbitrarily redacted that the judge’s name was blacked out of all of her own orders).

The reason for these efforts to suppress the ability to cover the trial is simple: The administration wants to make an example out of Manning, and if the process were open, as our Constitution requires, his example would be an inspiring one and not the deterrent one the government wants.

As the Supreme Court has said repeatedly, openness enhances the accuracy and fairness of judicial proceedings. It is essential for the proper functioning of a democratic government and society. If our current lawsuit fails, Manning’s trial will continue under conditions where journalists and the public will be unable as a practical matter to follow what is going on in the courtroom.

Having the public watching means that judges and prosecutors will carry out their duties diligently and fairly; but it also means that witnesses will be less likely to perjure themselves knowing that the whole world is watching, and in fact, that new witnesses may come out of the woodwork. In effect, the public serves as a fact-check on what is transpiring in the court. That can’t happen if dozens of prosecution witnesses testify in secret, as is planned, or if the pretrial filings are only released with massive, arbitrary redactions - all of which is happening in Manning’s case. This is precisely the kind of dangerous government secrecy that convinces people that leaks are essential for the preservation of our democracy.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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SHAYANA KADIDAL

Shayana Kadidal is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo project at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he has been employed since 2001. He works on the center’s case against the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, CCR v. Obama, and represents journalists Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Kevin Gosztola, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange and Chase Mada in a lawsuit challenging government secrecy in Bradley Manning’s court-martial.

(via theyoungradical)

anarchyagogo:

(Source: getinvolvedyoulivehere, via politicsd00d)

anarcho-queer:

Nike Hired Military to Intimidate Company Workers in Indonesia

Workers at a Nike shoe factory in Indonesia say the factory paid military personnel to intimidate them into working for less than the minimum wage.

After millions of workers went on strike last year in Indonesia over low pay and cost of living increases, the government lifted wage rates.

But workers at the Nike factory in the west Java city of Sukabumi say they were made to sign a petition supporting the factory’s claim to be exempt from paying the new wage.

In mobile phone footage of the factory, shown to the ABC, a man standing over workers can be heard telling them, “you all have to sign it”.

The woman who took the footage does not want to be named, but says she and other workers tried to reject the pay restriction.

“We got summoned by military personnel that the company hired to interrogate us and they intimidated us,” she said.

“The first thing that scared me was his high tone of voice and he banged the table.

“And also he said that inside the factory there were a lot of military intelligence officers. That scared me.”

Unions in Indonesia say at least six Nike-contracted factories have applied to be exempt from paying the increased rate.

The Trade Union Rights Centre’s Surya Tjandra says there is a loophole to get an exemption.

“You have to provide financial conditions of the company in the last two years which show some not profit, and then you have to accept some consent from the workers directly, which is not that easy because for the workers, the new wages is actually better and fairer,” he said.

If the factory gets an exemption, the employees will get paid $3.70 a day instead of $4.

Activists say that after rent and transport to work, it is only enough to afford one meal.

(via theyoungradical)

fotojournalismus:

Kekchi Aborigines from Coban protest a day before the Oxlajuj Baktun celebration at the Tikal Mayan ruins in Peten, Guatemala on Dec. 20, 2012. Indigenous activists protested outside Guatemala’s ancient ruins of Tikal on Thursday as members of the country’s poverty-stricken Mayan communities sought to draw international attention to their plight ahead of festivities to mark the end of the Mayan calendar, Reuters reports.

[Credit : William Gularte/Reuters]

(via theyoungradical)

think-progress:

On women’s issues, men are quoted overwhelmingly more often than women. 

(via politicsd00d)

theyoungradical:

politics-war:

The Kayapo being expelled from their homes for the construction of the Belo Monte Dam, which will flood 400.000 acres of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil.

People talk about change but we’re still going backwards at rocket speed.

Monsanto’s GM seeds contributing to farmer suicides every 30 minutes
October 28, 2012

In what has been called the single largest wave of recorded suicides in human history, Indian farmers are now killing themselves in record numbers. It has been extensively reported, even in mainstream news, but nothing has been done about the issue. The cause? Monsanto’s cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest — if not the largest — cause of the quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years.

According to the most recent figures (provided by the New York University School of Law), 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 — about one death every 30 minutes. In 2008, theDaily Mail labeled the continual and disturbing suicide spree as ‘The GM (genetically modified) Genocide’. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt the poor farmers, struggling Indian farmers began to kill themselves. Oftentimes, they would commit the act by drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with — a gruesome testament to the extent in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and traditional farmers.

To further add backing to the tragedy, the rate of Indian farmer suicides massively increased since the introduction of Monsanto’s Bt cotton in 2002. It is no wonder that a large percentage of farmers who take their own lives are cotton farmers, the demographic that is thought to be among the most impacted. Dr. Mercola, an osteopathic doctor that has been educating the world about natural health for many years, recently saw the destruction of traditional Indian farmers first hand. Dr. Mercola found out about the notorious ‘suicide belt’ of India, where 4,238 farmer suicides took place in 2007 alone.

Many families are now ruined thanks to the mass suicides, and are left to economic ruin and must struggle to fight off starvation:

‘We are ruined now,’ said one dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’

In India, around 60 percent of the population (currently standing at 1.1 billion) are directly or indirectly reliant on agriculture. Monsanto’s intrusion into India’s traditional and sustainable farming community is not only concerning for health and wellness reasons, but it is now clear that the issue is much more serious.

Source

(Source: thepeoplesrecord, via theyoungradical)