Archive for the ‘law’ Category
California Penal Code Section 12403.7 (a) (8)
(g) Any person who uses tear gas or tear gas weapons except in self-defense is guilty of a public offense and is punishable byimprisonment in a state prison for 16 months, or two or three years or in a county jail not to exceed one year or by a fine not to exceed one thousand [...]
Giving it away
There’s no privacy Imagine the U.S. Census as conducted by direct marketers – that’s the social graph. Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire [...]
In: law, society · Tagged with: facebook, google+, privacy, social-graph
Asheville Occupy Wall Street
Asheville’s Occupy Wall Street, day one. The story, with images and statements from protesters, is here on Image Asheville
Rape culture
This essay by Latoya Peterson is essential reading: This is how the Not Rape epidemic spreads – through fear and silence, which become complicit in perpetuating the behaviors described here. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars [...]
Submission to the Tasmanian Human Rights Project
What follows is my submission to the Colin Brown Human Rights Project. This is a community consultation process carried out by the Law Reform Institute of Tasmania, at the behest of the Tasmanian State Government. The project is described here in more detail. It will culminate in a recommendation to Parliament for human rights legislation. [...]
In: law, philosophy, society
Tasmania considering human rights legislation
Tasmania is considering bringing in a bill or charter of human rights, following the lead of the Australian Capital Territory and the state of Victoria. It has asked the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute to investigate the matter, consult with the community, and produce recommendations and a summary of the submissions it receives. Australians don’t enjoy [...]
Censorship in Australia
Freedom of speech in Australia is in far worse shape than generally understood. Frank Moorhouse, researching his essay, “The writer in a time of terror” came across first one and then a large number of extremely frightening examples of Orwellian censorship and government interference. The following article is based on an interview Moorhouse did with [...]
When good memes go bad
Complex systems can have emergent properties. In other words the interactions between the constituent elements of the system can give rise to events, patterns, and behaviours which are not easy to predict by examination of the individual elements in isolation. In fact I would say two other things about this: To predict the future state [...]
Imprisonment by executive order
This week I’ve found myself by turns angry and sad about politics for the first time since the Israeli bombardment of civilians in Lebanon. This time the reason, I think, is that I had begun to believe that the right wing assault on the foundations of democracy, freedom, and human rights had ground to a [...]
In: law, observations, society
Loss of ideals
From Comment is Free a summary of Bush’s true failure: America is dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Had Thomas Jefferson never written those words, it would be hard to invent better ideals to set against the philosophy of those who attacked America five years ago. Those seduced by terrorism believe in [...]
In: law, observations, world
Keep off the grass
Australia is probably typical of the English speaking west in that it’s citizens are being buried in an avalanche of red tape. The litigious society meets the risk-averse society and the answer seems to be bureaucracy. We have occupational health and safety (OH&S); a whole raft of accounting related to the goods and services tax [...]
In: law, philosophy, society
Earth First! and the FBI
Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually? Rorschach: Yes. Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain’t the kind of cancer I got. Judi Bari and Earth First! In the 1980s some environmental activists, including Dave Foreman, in the western part of the United States began consider using direct [...]
In: environment, law, society
George Galloway tells it like it is
Funny and sad. George Galloway has a few things to say to the US Senate.
In: law, observations, world
The ethics of altruism
The Ethics of Selfishness was always intended as an introduction to this article, which broadly speaking deals with altruism. I wanted to outline a proposal for a system of public ethics which was sufficient in scope to provide a useful framework for legislation of society, business, and government – even between nations – but at [...]
In: law, philosophy, society
Censorship in the UK, torture in Uzbekistan
Craig Murray was a UK diplomat who protested Britain’s complicity in torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. He was subject to a smear campaign, although eventually cleared, and lost his job. He has written a book about the issue, but sections of it were changed at the insistence of the UK Foreign Office, who [...]
In: law, observations, world
How to flout international law
States are sovereign; they determine their own laws and regulate their own actions. Interactions between states are therefore always to some extent a matter of realpolitik. Nevertheless there is a collegial system of law based on treaties, decisions by the United Nations along with whatever enforcement the members of that body agree on a case [...]
Continuing occupation atrocities
A catalogue of continuing atrocity by the US in Iraq. An AP report including allegations of a multiple murder to conceal a rape. This seems to be passing unnoticed, but the repercussions are disastrous. The story is here. Update: The story has been changed on AP, to a rather more innocuous one about casualties. The [...]
In: law, observations, world
Is big brother watching?
TheWaz recently posted an article giving the link to the Wired magazine leaking of the documents involved in the AT&T NSA wiretap case brought by EFF. It boils down to the idea that if your internet traffic goes through any of the big US backbones then it is being reconstructed and monitored by the NSA [...]
In: law, net, observations
IP and abundance
Some things have always been abundant, and some things have been abundant from time to time. Think about fresh air and water, or grazing land in the early part of white settlement of North America. Economics, however, can be defined in terms of managing scarcity. Abundance makes economists nervous. There’s a feeling that people might [...]
Ballot stuffing in Ohio
Good proof that the Bush win in 2004 was fixed in Ohio has surfaced here. Should be the biggest story on US news at the moment. I wonder if it is?
In: law, observations, world
