Law

Anti-drone Protesters Jailed On Bonds Up To $10,000

July 28, 2014 Patrick O'Neill, www.ncronline.org Resist! Drone, Law, Protesters Arrested, Protests

Five people, including the granddaughter of Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day, are being held on bonds ranging from $2,500 to $10,000 after a protest at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, N.Y., home of part of the U.S. drone program. Seven people, among them Martha Hennessy, Day's granddaughter, and Elizabeth McAlister, a longtime peace activist and widow of Philip Berrigan, were arrested after crossing onto base property Wednesday. During a court appearance before DeWitt, N.Y., Judge Robert Jokl, McAlister, 74, and William Ofenloch, 64, were released without bail, but the other five are being held pending Aug. 5 and 6 court dates. All seven were charged with trespassing. Hennessy, 58, and Clare Grady, 55, are both being held on $10,000 bail. They face up to one year in jail because they were under a court order to stay off base property, where both have been arrested in prior anti-drone demonstrations. In addition to trespassing charges, Hennessy and Grady were charged with violating an order of protection that bars protesters from going near Col. Earl Evans, a base commander.

Coal Giant Ordered To Cease Mining Operations In Tennessee

July 26, 2014 Sierra Club, www.content.sierraclub.org Resist! Coal, Environment, Law, Tennessee

The federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) has issued 39 cessation orders against three Jim Justice owned companies in Tennessee. The subsidiaries in question - National Coal, Premium Coal and S&H Mining - have also been issued "Notice of Violations” from OSMRE under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) for failing to report water monitoring data and for road maintenance violations and a failure to meet mine reclamation requirements. The total financial cost of the violations is not known at this time. OSMRE recently held public hearings on cessation orders against Premium Coal mining operations in Anderson County, Tenn. The hearings were held to address the company's failure to meet reclamation requirements when they did not plant trees and other vegetation on disturbed areas at two mine sites within the timeframe required by their mining permits. Since the hearings, a letter of decision for both permits has been issued by OSMRE denying Premium Coal's request to drop the cessation orders. "You’d think a coal billionaire could hire firms that can plant a tree the right way around. Sadly, Premium Coal's reasoning for not meeting permit requirements was simply that they ran out of time and hired a bad crew that planted trees upside down with the roots sticking up," said Sierra Club Organizer Bonnie Swinford. “Justice and his firms have a legal responsibility to ensure adequate reclamation of strip-mined land in our state—and upside-down trees don’t cut it. Justice owned companies should hire local tree-planting companies and use the best possible reclamation practices.”

The Constitutional Nightmare Of The Terror Watch List

July 25, 2014 Conor Friedersdorf, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Civil Liberties, Law, NSA, Surveillance, Terrorism

At long last, Americans know more about how people end up on a terrorist watchlist—though still not much. Early on in a just-leaked 166-page U.S. government guide to officially declaring someone a terrorist or suspected terrorist, a passage acknowledges that "watchlisting is not an exact science." The whole enterprise has "inherent limitations," in part because "analytic judgments may differ regarding whether subjective criteria have been met," the document states. "Given these realities, the U.S. government's watchlisting process attempts to safeguard the American people from a TERRORIST attack while safeguarding privacy, civil rights and civil liberties." Despite this explicit, official recognition of the system's inherent dangers, the Bush and Obama administrations both conspicuously failed to incorporate basic safeguards to protect innocent U.S. citizens and foreigners from inclusion. Their gross negligence stems from disregard for longstanding legal norms and protections and from unwarranted faith in the federal bureaucracy. This hubris is at direct odds with the logic of checks and balances within the American system that go back to the founding of the country. Consider the features of the U.S. system that have traditionally distinguished us from repressive regimes where innocents are wrongfully labeled enemies of the state, or from Franz Kafka's stories:

Pennsylvania Report Finds State Unprepared For Fracking Impacts

July 25, 2014 Pennsylvania Department Of The Auditor General, www.auditorgen.state.pa.us Educate! Fracking, Law, Pennsylvania, Regulation

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale today said that a recent audit shows that the meteoric growth of the shale gas industry caught the Department of Environmental Protection unprepared to effectively administer laws and regulations to protect drinking water and unable to efficiently respond to citizen complaints. “There are very dedicated hard-working people at DEP but they are being hampered in doing their jobs by lack of resources – including staff and a modern information technology system -- and inconsistent or failed implementation of department policies, among other things, “DePasquale said. “It is almost like firefighters trying to put out a five-alarm fire with a 20-foot garden hose. There is no question that DEP needs help and soon to protect clean water.” The audit covered the period of 2009 through 2012 and was launched by DePasquale in January 2013 immediately after he became auditor general. The audit’s purpose was to assess DEP’s ability to protect the water quality in the wake of greatly escalated shale gas well drilling. The audit revealed that DEP failed to consistently issue official orders to well operators who had been determined by DEP to have adversely impacted water supplies. After reviewing a selection of 15 complaint files for confirmed water supply impact, auditors discovered that DEP issued just one order to a well operator to restore or replace the adversely impacted water supply.

Dutch State Liable For 300 Srebrenica Massacre Deaths

July 19, 2014 AP, www.theguardian.com Resist! Bosnia, Genocide, Law, Netherlands, UN

A court on Wednesday ordered the Netherlands to compensate the families of more than 300 men turned over to Bosnian Serb forces and later killed in the Srebrenica massacre 19 years ago. In an emotionally charged hearing at a civil court in The Hague, Presiding Judge Larissa Alwin said Dutch UN peacekeepers should have known that the men deported from the Dutch compound by Bosnian Serb forces on 13 July, 1995, would be killed because there was already evidence of the Serbs committing war crimes. "By cooperating in the deportation of these men, Dutchbat acted unlawfully," Alwin said, referring to the name of the Dutch UN battalion. The court cleared the Netherlands of liability in the deaths of most of the 8,000 Bosnian Muslims killed after Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic overran the town of Srebrenica on 11 July in what was to become the bloody climax to the 1992-95 Bosnian war that claimed 100,000 lives. Two days later, the outnumbered Dutch peacekeepers bowed to pressure from Mladic's troops and forced thousands of Muslim families out of their fenced-off compound. Bosnian Serb forces trucked the males away and began executing them. Their bodies were plowed into hastily made mass graves in what international courts have ruled was genocide.

Swedish Court Upholds Detention Order On Julian Assange

July 18, 2014 Karl Ritter, www.ctvnews.ca Resist! Journalism, Julian Assange, Law, Sweden, Wikileaks

A Swedish court on Wednesday upheld its detention order on Julian Assange, reaffirming the legal basis for an international warrant for the WikiLeaks founder which has kept him hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for two years. Assange's defence team said it would appeal. Defence lawyer Per Samuelson said they would study the judge's decision in detail and then "write a juicy, toxic appeal" to a higher court. Julian Assange's lawyer Tomas Olsson, centre, talks to media prior to a public court hearing in Stockholm on Wednesday July 16, 2014. (AP / Roger Vikstrom) "Our legal arguments are solid and powerful," Samuelson told The Associated Press. "That they didn't work could be because the judge didn't give herself enough time to think." Last month, Assange's lawyers filed a court petition to repeal the detention order -- imposed by the Stockholm district court in November 2010 -- on the grounds that it cannot be enforced while he is at the embassy and because it is restricting Assange's civil rights. Assange has not been formally indicted in Sweden, but he is wanted for questioning by police over allegations of sexual misconduct and rape involving two women he met during a visit to the Scandinavian country in 2010. He denies the allegations.

First Nation Pulls Out Of Grand Rapids Hearings

July 16, 2014 ACFN Challenge, www.acfnchallenge.wordpress.com Resist! Canada, First Nations, Indigenous Rights, Law, Pipeline

Today the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) announced they will no longer participate in the TransCanada Grand Rapids Pipeline hearing citing impossible timelines and prejudice within the process. The First Nation is referring to the project as the “Mother of All Pipelines” feeding projects like the Energy East Pipeline and the controversial Keystone XL pipeline projects. “The AER put us in an impossible position. I am dumbfounded by this process,” stated Adam before he continued to speak about the obstacles the ACFN has faced in trying to get action from both government and industry to adequately address their concerns. Adam spoke about how TransCanada consistently showed little regard to actually addressing the concerns raised by the ACFN and were more concerned with how much it would cost to “buy us off.” Adam added, “this new [Alberta Energy Regulator] regulatory process is fundamentally flawed. It is supposed to be the test of the new regulatory regime for oil and gas and pipelines in Alberta. Yet, it has seriously undermined our efforts to address any concerns about First Nations impacts.”

Navy Nurse Refuses To Force-Feed Guantánamo Captive

July 16, 2014 Carol Rosenberg, www.miamiherald.com Resist! Guantanamo, Law, Navy, Prison, Torture

In the first known rebellion against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.” A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.” “There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.” Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.

Illinois To Sue Predatory Student Debt Settlement Corps

July 15, 2014 Rachel Abrams and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, www.dealbook.nytimes.com Resist! Corporatism, Law, Student Debt

Student loan debt hovers at more than $1 trillion, a threefold surge from a decade ago, and a record number of college students who graduated as the financial system nearly imploded have an average debt load of more than $20,000. More than half of recent graduates are unemployed or have low-paying jobs that do not require that expensive college degree. Some Americans, including baby boomers whose savings were devastated by the financial crisis, are still struggling to pay off their student loans well into their 50s. For the debt settlement industry, all this means a tantalizing gold mine of new customers. “Your entire student loan can be forgiven,” Broadsword Student Advantage of Carrollton, Tex., boasts in radio ads. Debt settlement companies, which offer to help borrowers lower their monthly loan payments for a hefty upfront fee, have long been fraught with problems. But federal and state regulators are spotting new instances of abuse as the companies shift away from their traditional targets — credit card and mortgage debt — to zero in on student loans.

Video: Sentencing Hearing For Drone Protester

July 14, 2014 Upstate Drone Action Reports, www.upstatedroneaction.org Resist! Afghanistan, Drone, Law, Protest

Mary Anne Grady Flores Sentencing Hearing following her conviction on the charge of ‘Contempt’ by a 6 person jury in DeWitt Town Court before Judge David S. Gideon. Mary Anne was charged for walking in the highway in front of the access road leading to the guard shack, taking pictures of protesters who were protesting the piloting of MQ-9 Reaper drones from Hancock Air National Guard Base. These drones fly over Afghanistan where they target and execute people on the ground. Targets often include civilians in their homes and cars going about the business of daily life.

Citizens Sue Over Suspicious Activity Program

July 12, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! ACLU, Law, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five United States citizens challenging a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals. The federal government has a National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) that, according to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], “encourages state and local law enforcement agencies as well as private actors to collect and report information that has a potential nexus to terrorism in the form of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports [SARs].’” Any individual who is flagged as having a “potential nexus to terrorism” will automatically be subject to “law enforcement scrutiny, which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents.” Plus, “Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years.”

Hobby Lobby Draws Protests Over Recent Supreme Court Ruling

July 11, 2014 Susan Abram, www.dailynews.com Resist! Hobby Lobby, Law, Protesters, Reproductive Rights, Women's Rights

One protester brought a hanger. Another dressed like a vagina. And dozens carried signs to demand that the U.S. government stop the war on women. The graphic costumes, props and banners were part of a demonstration on Monday of about 50 people who marched and chanted outside of a new Hobby Lobby store in Burbank. Protesters said they were angry with last week’s Supreme Court ruling that will allow some for-profit companies with strong religious beliefs such as Hobby Lobby to opt out of covering birth control under the Affordable Care Act. The decision, many said, gives corporations too much power on deciding what women employees can and can’t do with their bodies and it throws reproduction rights far back into the past. Protesters called on customers entering the store to turn around and shop elsewhere. “It’s very obvious that the five males on the Supreme Court want to return to a time when women were barefoot and pregnant,” said Lauren Steiner, who organized the demonstration, and who dressed in pink to mimic a vagina.

How Movements Can Win More Victories Like Gay Marriage

July 10, 2014 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! culture, Gay Marriage, Law, LGBTQ, Movement

Not long ago, same-sex marriage in America was not merely an unpopular cause; it was a politically fatal one — a third-rail issue that could end the career of any politician foolish enough to touch it. The idea that gay and lesbian couples would be able to legally exchange vows in states throughout the United States was regarded, at best, as a far-off fantasy and, at worst, as a danger to the republic. It can be difficult to remember how hostile the terrain was for LGBT advocates in even recent decades. As of 1990, three-quarters of Americans saw homosexual sex as immoral. Less than a third condoned same-sex marriage — something no country in the world permitted. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman and denied federal benefits to same-sex couples, passed by an overwhelming 85-14 margin in the U.S. Senate. Figures including Democratic Sen. Joe Biden voted for it, and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the act, affirming, “I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages.”

U.N. To Confront US On Persistent Racial Discrimination

July 10, 2014 Chandra Bhatnagar, www.aclu.org Educate! Indigenous Rights, Law, Native Indians, Racism, UN

Imagine the government taking away your two children in a hearing that lasts less than 60 seconds. Madonna Pappan and her husband, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, don’t have to imagine it, because it happened to them. And they’re not alone: An American Indian child in South Dakota is 11 times more likely to be sent to foster care than a non-Indian child. Imagine receiving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for serving as a go-between in the sale of two small $5 bags of marijuana. That’s exactly what happened to Fate Vincent Winslow, an African American homeless man who says that he accepted the offer of an undercover police officer for a $5 commission in order to earn some money to get something to eat. Mr. Winslow is now serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in Louisiana for this and his other prior non-violent crimes. In that state, African Americans are serving life without parole sentences for nonviolent crimes at approximately 23 times the rate of whites. Nationwide, an estimated 65.4 percent of the prisoners serving such sentences are African American.

Texas Sheriff Wants Criminal Charges Filed In Fracking Pollution Case

July 10, 2014 David Hasemyer, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Fracking, Law, pollution, Texas

A Texas waste hauling company that is already facing civil charges for a March accident that spread toxic drilling waste along a rural road could also be facing criminal charges. Karnes County Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva said he will ask county prosecutors to file a criminal complaint against On Point Services LLC after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Texas Railroad Commission close their civil cases against the company. "We are prepared to ask the district attorney's office to review the case for action," Villanueva said. "There are two different levels of enforcement here: the civil by the state and the criminal by the county." The incident occurred March 10 when investigators say 1,260 gallons of liquid waste from an On Point truck coated eight miles of roadway near the rural communities of Falls City and Hobson. Roads were closed for three days and the Texas Department of Transportation conducted a costly cleanup. The incident highlights the growing problem of how to dispose of the billions of gallons of contaminated fluids left over from the nation's hydraulic-fracturing or fracking boom.

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