Last Straw

Freedom of speech is on the offensive.

What an idea, a new business model for Iceland:

On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.

Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it.

Professor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implications of advances in neuroscience that have made it possible to communicate with those in a vegetative state:

Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.

There’s a campaign under way in the U.S. to “restore the First Amendment to its original purpose: to protect people, not corporations.” They need to hurry. The U.S. has long taken the road to corporatocracy. The longer this goes on the less likely they’ll ever be able to turn back.

Great piece by George Monbiot on the campaign to arrest Tony Blair:

Already the campaign has borne fruit. Outside the Chilcot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the website, tried to apprehend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qualifies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to relevant charities. The fund will remain open until Blair is officially prosecuted, and we will keep paying out to those who follow Grace’s example.

You can donate here.

Press TV:

Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.

According to Iraqi experts, the U.S. and Britain, being the lovers of freedom and democracy that they are:

… bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.

Finally. Let’s hope this guy is good.

Here’s another reason why I opposed the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Give war criminals like Blair an inch and they’ll take the rope and go on to invade the rest of the world:

Wood told the inquiry that some ministers and even the then prime minister, Tony Blair, used to privately claim that the Nato bombing of Kosovo in 1999 provided a useful precedent for going to war in Iraq.

In 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the same constitutional rights as a person. This was the beginning of the end of any meaningful form of democracy in the U.S.

David Korten alludes to the reason:

The private-benefit corporation is an institution granted a legally protected right—some would claim obligation—to pursue a narrow private interest without regard to broader social and environmental consequences. If it were a real person, it would fit the clinical profile of a sociopath.

The basic design of the private-benefit corporation was created in 1600 when the British crown chartered the British East India Company as what is best described as a legalized criminal syndicate to colonize the resources and economies of distant lands to benefit wealthy investors far removed from the social and environmental consequences. That design has ever since proven highly effective in advancing the private interests of the world’s wealthiest people at enormous cost to the rest.

The private-benefit corporation uses its economic power to privatize (internalize) gains and socialize (externalize) cost.

The power afforded to corporations in the U.S. has, until now, been slightly curtailed by limits imposed on corporate spending in political campaigns. In a sweeping decision a right-wing majority U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to lift these limits.

Corporations, and the rich behind them, finally own America. Democracy for the rich.

The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
—Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy

Solicitor Daniel Machover, after politicians—including Gordon Brown—hatch a plan to insulate fellow politicians from universal jurisdiction:

I feel honest revulsion at the idea of a case where a judge has granted an arrest warrant and a politician gets on the phone and apologises. They have got to stay out of individual cases and legal decisions.

Of course Gordon Brown and the government he is a part of played an integral role in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s just looking out for his own kind.

Tony Blair has admitted on TV his intention was to commit the international crime of unilateral war for regime change. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Asked if he would have gone on had he known there was no WMDs, he replied:

I would still have thought it right to remove [Saddam Hussein]. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.

Two world wars, tens of millions dead, the subsequent entrenchment of international law under the Charter of the United Nations and Tony Blair thinks that the decision to go to war should come down to his own personal beliefs about right and wrong.

Click through to read more and view a video excerpt of the interview.