Noam Chomsky on the Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights and the Common Good

Along with much of English law, the Act was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, which affirms that “the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended” except in case of rebellion or invasion. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the rights guaranteed by this Act were “(c)onsidered by the Founders as the highest safeguard of liberty.”

More specifically, the Constitution provides that no “person (shall) be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law (and) a speedy and public trial” by peers.

The Department of Justice has recently explained that these guarantees are satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch, as Jo Becker and Scott Shane reported in The New York Times on May 29. Barack Obama, the constitutional lawyer in the White House, agreed. King John would have nodded with satisfaction. 

The underlying principle of “presumption of innocence” has also been given an original interpretation. In the calculus of the president’s “kill list” of terrorists, “all military-age males in a strike zone” are in effect counted as combatants “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent,” Becker and Shane summarized. Thus post-assassination determination of innocence now suffices to maintain the sacred principle.
This is the merest sample of the dismantling of “the charter of every self-respecting man.”

Read it at AlterNet
Noam Chomsky on the Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights and the Common Good

This is exactly what the founders of American fought a revolution against the crown, risking their lives, their honor, and their fortunes to establish. Now we witnessing the trashing it.

The founders recognized that government is necessary but that it should be by the people, of the people, and for the people, and neither arbitrary government nor a government based on privilege.

Glenn Greenwald — Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure

Read it at Salon
Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure
by Glenn Greenwald
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

(1) It’s wildly under-appreciated how unrestrained is the Government’s power to do what it wants, and how little effect these debates over various proposed laws have on that power.

(2) The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole.

Here's the crux of it:

...what distinguishes a tyrannical society from a free one is whether the government is first required to prove guilt in a fair, adversarial proceeding. This is a precept Americans were once taught about why their country was superior, was reflexively understood, and was enshrined as the core political principle: “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It’s simply not a principle that is believed in any longer, and therefore is not remotely observed.

It is simply not possible to have free enterprise in a tyrannical society. The US is kneecapping itself. Eventually this leads to powerful interests taking down competition politically, thereby stifling innovation.

Joseph Schumpeter saw the risk to capitalism as late-stage capitalism stifling innovation.

Washington's Blog — Megaupload Takedown: The Real Meaning

...Numerous top entertainment celebrities endorsed Megaupload (major stars like Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas sung Megaupload’s praises)… so it’s not like the entire business was criminal. On the other hand, some people accuse Megaupload’s founder as being a serial criminal.

But the take down of Megaupload was wrong. It should have gone through the normal court process, and a judge should have ruled on the site before anything was done to kill the business. This is especially true because the. countries involved are signatories to international copyright and extradition treaties, not “rogue” nations.

It should be the courts which examine the evidence and determine whether the business used a criminal business model, or was mainly a legitimate business. Whatever happened to due process of law?

Read it at Washington's Blog

Megaupload Takedown: The Real Meaning

Disturbingly authoritarian. Given that the up and coming generations are strongly libertarian, either left or right, this is fool's errand in trying to perpetuate a status quo that is moribund.

As Ernesto at TorrentFreak writes:

Do the feds realize that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people used the site to share research data, work documents, personal video collections and much more?

What will happen to these personal non-infringing files?People are outraged on Twitter and are demanding access to their files immediately.

Followed by many Twitter posts complaining of loss of private files, including work files.

Bad scene.