Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest

politics, this can't end well

Even if you’re not in Canada or in the US, this is a good read to understand the dangers of the SOPA/PIPA bills.

The bill grants the U.S. “in rem” jurisdiction over any website that does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection. For those sites, the U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and opens the door to court orders requiring Internet providers to block the site and Internet search engines to stop linking to it. 

Should a Canadian website owner wish to challenge the court order, U.S. law asserts itself in another way, since in order for an owner to file a challenge (described as a “counter notification”), the owner must first consent to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.

You can replace “Canadian” by any other country. In short, SOPA will instantly grant the US worldwide censorship powers, in a way that leaves much to be desired in terms of due process.

Seriously, this is important.

Michael Geist – Why Canadians Should Participate in the SOPA/PIPA Protest.

New US laws compared to nazi Germany

politics

An interesting comparison between the “Battlefield USA” law (seen in the context of the erosion of democracy and rise of American fascism) and Milton Mayer’s “They thought they were free (the Germans 1933-1944)”. Unfortunately, the phenomenon isn’t isolated to the USA, as we see governments acting alike in many other Western nations. Sad comparison.

I really hope Mr Obama won’t sign this law, although the scary thing is that it was even allowed to be tabled in the first place.

But Then It Was Too Late ~ “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it this separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

Apathy increases with each measured step, as it most certainly has in America, and Mayer knowingly describes the consequences for Germany in the early 1930′s ~ when the burden of self deception becomes so heavy, as it is now, that suddenly you realize that your whole world has changed and you have accepted things (out of fear) that you would never have accepted before the War on Terror.

via Nat Defense Authorization Act Confirms Battlefield USA | Dark Politricks.

How the U.S. Government assassinates its own citizens

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The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting paper in Salon that explains some disturbing facts about the recent assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, without him ever being formally charged with any crime.

Sure, he was a crazy fucked-up Al-Qaida fanatic, but the fact the U.S. Government can assassinate whomever it wants on presidential order is quite scary.

Where’s the outrage?

[UPDATE]

The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting ofAnwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aulaqi-killing-reignites-debate-on-limits-of-executive-power/2011/09/30/gIQAx1bUAL_story.html?hpid=z1