We protest the G-8 and NATO, but not Bilderberg.  Why?

The original Hotel Bilderberg. Photo by M.M.Minderhoud / Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have to be xenophobic, paranoid, isolationist, or libertarian to protest a secretive gathering of over 100 billionaires, industrialists, media barons, and politicians working to shape our public sphere, or has the left dropped the ball?  Is it time for Occupy to step in?

From May 31 to June 3, 2012, at the Westfields Marriott Washington Dulles Hotel, in Chantilly, Va., the Bilderberg Group is expected to gather behind closed doors.  This exclusive club will rent the entire hotel, encircle it with armed guards, and keep everyone far away, including the media — except for those special members of the media who will take part but never report a word of what goes on.

Wikipedia calls Bilderberg: “an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications. Meetings are closed to the public.”

Bilderberg calls itself: “leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic that Western Europe and North America” who hold “regular, off-the-record discussions” of “common problems – from trade to jobs, from monetary policy to investment, from ecological challenges to the task of promoting international security. . . . There usually are about 120 participants of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications.”

Does this group of “leading citizens” look representative of the people’s interests?

Bilderberg says this was its agenda four years ago:

Cross posted from Frederick Leatherman Law Blog.

ABC News reported last night that George Zimmerman sought medical treatment at a family clinic the day after he shot Trayvon Martin.

George Zimmerman. Photo by Seminole County Sheriffs / Wikimedia Commons.

According to the medical report, which was part of the court file made public yesterday, he requested the appointment to obtain a medical clearance to return to work. However, according to Wikipedia, he was employed as an insurance underwriter at the time of the shooting and attending his final semester at Seminole State College in their Criminal Justice program.

The diagnosis: a closed fracture of the nose, two black eyes and two cuts to the back of his head.

[Note: a closed fracture means that the fracture did not penetrate through the skin and black eyes are a common symptom of a fractured nose]

The Christian Science Monitor reports today:

As the Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday, prosecutors in the Trayvon Martin shooting began to sketch an outline of their case against George Zimmerman on Monday, citing new video evidence, a long list of witnesses and experts, and hints of a trail of facts, forensic details, and witness observations that they hope will lead a jury to a second-degree murder conviction.

But after weeks of national introspection into what really happened between Mr. Martin, an unarmed black teen, the guts of the hefty Zimmerman file remain secret. The prosecution, for its part, wants to keep it that way, having asked Judge Kenneth Lester to waive Florida court transparency laws in order to keep some witness names secret.

ABC News with Diane Sawyer broke the story last night.

Portions of the medical report are visible in the background and highlighted in yellow.

Apparently, no photograph was taken of the injuries noted in the medical report, no Xray was taken of his head and the cuts on the back of his head did not require stitching. The only recommended after-care, according to ABC, was a recommendation to obtain counseling.

Since the report mentioned that Zimmerman was taking Adderall and Temazepam, he probably was seeing a psychiatrist for ADHD and, if he followed-up with that aftercare recommendation, he likely would have done so by informing his psychiatrist regarding the event.

There was no reference to a psychiatric report.

I also did not see any indication that the doctor at the family clinic prescribed any pain medication.

I am still waiting to see the autopsy report and the forensic report on the examination of Zimmerman’s gun and his clothing. According to Wikipedia, the police kept his gun. However, his clothing might have been returned to him.

Evidently, the prosecution does not want the autopsy and forensic reports released at this time. We will have to wait and see whether the judge orders them released.

Photo by Ken Teegardin

I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. All the critics I know, like Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Mark Thoma and myself, have been very specific that the European Central Bank (ECB) will have to provide some form of guarantee for the debt of the crisis countries. It will also have to promote higher inflation in the euro zone as a whole and particularly in Germany and other core countries. The former step would allow countries to borrow, while the latter would provide the basis for regaining competitiveness in the long-run.

In my case, I have been regularly ridiculing the ECB’s obsession with fortifying its Maginot Line of keeping inflation under 2.0 percent. That accomplishment will be long remembered after the collapse of the euro.

Anyhow a Post editorial told readers that:

“In their demand for growth, however, the critics fail to explain how to fund it.”

This raises the question of what critics the Post is referring to. Is the Post referring to the most prominent economists who have been arguing against European austerity and somehow cannot figure out what they are saying, or is there a whole different group of people whom the Post turns to as the major critics of austerity? Inquiring minds want to know.

Written by Mony Ruiz-Velasco for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center provides legal services under the Violence Against Women Act to hundreds of victims and their children each year. We are appalled at the immigration provisions that the judiciary committee in the House of Representatives passed in HR4970. This bill erodes protections available to immigrant victims.

Photo by epsos.de

Abusers frequently use immigration status as a weapon against their undocumented victims by threatening to have the victim deported or refusing to complete an application for status. A VAWA self-petition allows a victim of violence to apply for lawful status on her own behalf, without relying on her abusive spouse, if she can show that she has been a victim of violence at the hands of her husband who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. HR4970 eliminates important confidentiality protections that are critical to ensure the victims’ safety. Immigration officials would notify abusers that the victim is seeking protection from the abuse. This is particularly dangerous for victims who are still living with their abusers or have children, as many immigrant victims have very limited options to leave an abusive situation until they obtain legal status. To seek protection, the victim will also reveal her whereabouts even if she managed to escape.

In addition, HR4970 would make a major change to how these applications are processed. HR4970 decentralizes the processing of these applications and gives local immigration offices authority to adjudicate VAWA petitions. For many years now, VAWA adjudications are centralized in the Vermont Service Center. Staff in Vermont receive extensive and highly specialized training on domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking and are trained to adjudicate petitions filed by victims without re-traumatizing the victims.  Local district offices are ill equipped to handle these highly sensitive cases. Proposed changes in HR4970 are detrimental to immigrant victims.

Finally, HR4970 ignores the dearth of access to legal counsel and language barriers many immigrant victims of violence face and exacts severe punishment for anyone who makes a mistake in the process. HR4970 raises the standard of proof required to succeed in a VAWA application to a standard higher than has been set for asylum applicants. In addition, if the government finds “material misrepresentation” in an application, the victim and her derivatives, including young children, will be permanently barred from all immigration protections, she will also be referred to the FBI for criminal prosecution, and will be removed on an “expedited basis.” Let me repeat: this bill would criminally prosecute victims of violence who make a mistake on their application for protection. To provide further punishment, applicants’ children also would also be permanently barred from immigration benefits, including prosecutorial discretion and deferred action.

Under these circumstances, as an immigration attorney who has handled hundreds of these cases over more than 15 years, I cannot imagine a situation where I would advise a client to apply for protection under VAWA if HR 4970 becomes the law. The risk to their safety would be too great and they would not be able to achieve permanent protection from dangerous abusers, which will be extremely dangerous.

HR4970 is not VAWA – it is an attack on immigrants, women and in particular, women of color. By passing this bill, Congress is abandoning thousands of victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking and leaving them vulnerable to further abuse and harm.

Hi, y’all.

Tomorrow is the third meeting of the Occupy Austin Conscious Relationships Discussion Group. So far the discussions have been deeply thought provoking, just by virtue of getting a bunch of people with wildly different viewpoints together — people choosing to live their lives in different ways, with different abilities, orientations, upbringings … (Here are the notes from the second meeting about assumptions)

The next meeting is about gender roles and how they fit, or don’t our actual lives. In preparation, I’ve posted some conversation starters on my Facebook, like this classic CRIMETHINC Gender subversion poster or John Scalzi’s recent article on privilege and straight white male geeks. You can imagine the lively discussion that has resulted.

I keep feeling though that I have to defend myself against the idea that we should just transcend our differences overnight — stop talking about sexual orientation, race, or maybe even class and just recognize our common humanity. Perhaps it’s a beautiful idea, but how do we get there without working (fighting!) to dismantle the old systems, the old ways of thinking about all these divisions? To me, it feels like a position of privilege to make this argument — I’ve never struggled with that (gender, sexual orientation, bigotry of many kinds), so you should just get over your struggles with it.

In a way, it’s similar to what Occupy Wall Street itself faces. We can imagine that “A Better World Is Possible,” but unless we have serious discussions about what that would look like, and what’s wrong with this world, I don’t know how we’ll ever get there.

That’s what’s on my mind today, what’s on yours?

This is today’s open thread.

Originally published at AlterPolitics

Most private prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs. From the collection of Dave Connor.

The $182 million private prison industry in Louisiana thrives from a system rife with conflicts of interest, not unlike the kinds found in the most corrupt third world countries. According to a scathing article this Sunday in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the very people entrusted to enforce the law in the state have deep financial ties to the for-profit prisons, which house a majority of all Louisiana inmates.

The article states that “most prison entrepreneurs happen to be rural sheriffs,” and the “prison business model is built on head counts.”

In the early nineties, prison overcrowding had become such a massive problem for the state, that the cash-strapped government decided to forego building new state prisons, and instead encouraged sheriffs to pay for private prison construction. In return, they would, of course, enjoy a cut of all future profits. “The financial incentives were so sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought after, that new prisons sprouted up all over rural Louisiana.”

Two decades later, this now-entrenched private prison system has helped to double Louisiana’s prison population. In fact, the state wins the distinction of imprisoning more of its residents than any other legal jurisdiction on the planet.

Despite Louisiana having the highest murder rate in the country, it surprisingly “has a much lower percentage of people incarcerated for violent offenses [when compared to the national average], and a much higher percentage behind bars for drug offenses [when compared to the national average] …”

Why, you ask? Because violent criminals (murderers, rapists, armed robbers, etc) get sent to state prisons, whereas the non-violent offenders are housed at private ‘for-profit’ prisons. The sheriffs therefore have a financial incentive to find and charge non-violent offenders.

TPP Protest in Addison, Texas. Photo by Kit O'Connell.

Despite a petition with over 44,000 signatures, as well as recommendations by NGOs, legal experts, and congressmen, the Office of the United States Trade Representative still refuses to release the text of the TransPacific Partnership:

The first question, from Citizens Trade Campaign, was a request that text be made available to the public so that stakeholders could have more informed positions when speaking with negotiators. Weisel said that while the U.S. position is that constantly evolving TPP chapter texts cannot be released to the public.

While activists continue to work to obtain a list of those who have seen the complete text, Congressman Darrell Issa made the dramatic move to release the copyright and intellectual property portion of the agreement. Pieces of this chapter had been previously leaked, angering activists with  Electronic Frontiers Foundation, Anonymous, and supporters of an accessible, open Internet. They see the agreement as reproducing or worsening many of the more destructive portions of defeated laws like the Senate Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

In his press release, Issa said:

At a time when the American people and Internet users all around the world are rightfully wary of any closed-door negotiations that could adversely impact their ability to freely and openly access the Internet, the Obama Administration continues to pursue a secretive, closed-door negotiating process for the Trans Pacific Partnership.

My contacts suggest that this release, apparently the entire chapter on intellectual property, is more than most outside the shadowy negotiations have seen before today. The chapter is hosted on Keep The Web #Open, where the public is invited to read it and give the feedback, a process many believe should have been possible from the beginning.

Thanks to Anonymous for drawing my attention to these stories.