I think this NPR story comes close to getting everything right about the dilemmas of involuntary treatment of psychiatric illnesses. I highly recommend it.
The Russian republic of Chechnya has banned music that goes above or below a certain tempo. Minister of Culture Musa Dadayev said that this to ensure music will “conform to the Chechen mentality.” Semafor has more detail on the Chechen government's ongoing campaign against civil liberties, and which songs will make the cut: "Texas Hold 'Em" is fine, but the Russian national anthem is out.
Begging the question aside, this is just 2005's crap arguments reheated with an added side dish of false analogy. And isn't there too much personal data being collected already?
"Would ID cards be such a bad idea if they made things work a bit better?
"Libertarian politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg are out of touch with a public comfortable with sharing its personal data..."
MAGA and the new GOP complain about the burdens of "political correctness," but they’re fully prepared to make “woke-ness” into a prosecutable thought crime.
Hey all, in case you weren't aware, the awesome Civil Liberties Defense Center is now here on Mastodon at: @CLDC - give 'em a follow! #CivilLiberties#CLDC
In June 1975, Indira Gandhi, the third Prime Minister of India, imposed a State of Emergency throughout the country in response to what she called a “conspiracy” against her. Convicted of corruption and threatened by a growing opposition and mass demonstrations, Gandhi acted ruthlessly. Basic civil liberties were suspended, thousands were detained without trial, censorship imposed, and corruption reached new heights. Surprisingly lifted after twenty months, the Emergency became an anomaly in India’s democratic history—and was all but forgotten for many years, except, significantly, from literary fiction.
Refracted in the pandemic emergency, it became clearer in my study that emergencies worldwide are not only similar to past emergencies, but that they are constructed on a template of “emergency”: a structure within which an emergency could be comprehended despite its ostensible singularity. In other words, emergencies are unprecedented, but need to be recognizably so.
Building on existing scholarship, I argue, for example, that the neither-left-nor-right opposition to the Emergency was pivotal in legitimizing the fringe elements of this Hindu right, paving the way to the rise of today’s BJP government. I also show how the mass forced sterilization campaign, which is often seen as emblematic of the Emergency, was in fact a continuation of a long-standing globally-funded project of population control. Relatedly, the Emergency was central to family and class politics in India, revealing that there were individual elite families that need to be guarded and preserved and lower-class families of populations that need to be limited and curtailed.
The question of unprecedented political emergencies brings us to our present crisis in Israel/Gaza. I wish to speak about it with care, both because it is ongoing and shifting all the time, and because I speak of it from a very personal and very painful place. As an Israeli, I am in anguish about the people and places decimated by Hamas’ attack on October 7. At the same time, I am paralyzed by my feelings of shame and complicity in the senseless carnage that Israeli has unleashed on Gaza.
The current deadly violence is not, in fact, either a singular moment of crisis, nor an inevitable result of a two-sided “conflict” in which we must line up to take sides. It is deeply embedded in a complex historical context, inextricable from occupation of Palestinians by Israel, with its attendant apartheid regime and ethnic cleansing.
There's little public scrutiny when private donors pay to give police controversial technology and weapons. Sometimes, companies are donors to the same foundations that purchase their products for police.
by Ali Winston and Darwin Bond Graham, special to ProPublica Oct. 13, 2014
"In 2007, as it pushed to build a state-of-the-art #surveillance facility, the Los Angeles Police Department cast an acquisitive eye on software being developed by #Palantir, a startup funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency's [#CIA] #VentureCapital arm.
"Originally designed for spy agencies, Palantir's technology allowed users to track individuals with unprecedented reach, connecting information from conventional sources like crime reports with more controversial data gathered by surveillance cameras and license plate readers that automatically, and indiscriminately, photographed passing cars.
"The LAPD could have used a small portion of its multibillion-dollar annual budget to purchase the software, but that would have meant going through a year-long process requiring public meetings, approval from the City Council, and, in some cases, competitive bidding.
"There was a quicker, quieter way to get the software: as a gift from the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a private charity. In November 2007, at the behest of then Police Chief William Bratton, the foundation approached #TargetCorporation, which contributed $200,000 to buy the software, said the foundation's executive director, Cecilia Glassman, in an interview. Then the foundation donated it to the police department.
"Across the nation, private foundations are increasingly being tapped to provide police with technology and weaponry that -- were it purchased with public money -- would come under far closer scrutiny.
"In Los Angeles, foundation money has been used to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of license plate readers, which were the subject of a #CivilRights lawsuit filed against the region's law enforcement agencies by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the #ElectronicFrontierFoundation. (A judge rejected the groups' claims earlier this year.)
"Private funds also have been used to upgrade 'Stingray' devices, which have triggered debate in numerous jurisdictions because they vacuum up records of cellphone metadata, calls, text messages and data transfers over a half-mile radius.
"New York and Los Angeles have the nation's oldest and most generous police foundations, each providing their city police departments with grants totaling about $3 million a year. But similar groups have sprouted up in dozens of jurisdictions, from #AtlantaGeorgia, to #OaklandCalifornia. In #Atlanta, the police foundation has bankrolled the surveillance cameras that now blanket the city, as well as the center where police officers monitor live video feeds.
"Proponents of these private fundraising efforts say they have become indispensable in an era of tightening budgets, helping police to acquire the ever-more sophisticated tools needed to combat modern crime.
"'There's very little discretionary money for the department,' said Steve Soboroff, a businessman who is president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the LAPD's policies and operations. 'A grant application to the foundation cuts all the red tape, or almost all of the red tape.'
"But critics say police foundations operate with little transparency or oversight and can be a way for wealthy donors and corporations to influence law enforcement agencies' priorities.
"It's not uncommon for the same companies to be donors to the same police foundations that purchase their products for local police departments. Or for those #companies also to be #contractors for the same police agencies to which their products are being donated.
"'No one really knows what's going on,' said Dick Dadey of #CitizensUnion, a good government group in New York. 'The public needs to know that these contributions are being made voluntarily and have no bearing on contracting decisions.'
"Palantir, the recipient of the #LosAngelesPolice Foundation's largesse in 2008, donated $10,000 to become a three-star sponsor of the group's annual 'Above and Beyond' awards ceremony in 2013 and has made similar-sized gifts to the #NewYorkPolice foundation. The privately held Palo Alto firm, which had estimated revenues of $250 million in 2011 and is preparing to go public, also has won millions of dollars of contracts from the Los Angeles and New York police departments over the last three years.
"Palantir officials did not respond to questions about its relationships with police departments and the foundations linked to them. The New York City Police Foundation did not answer questions about Palantir's donations, or its technology gifts to the NYPD.
"Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York #CivilLibertiesUnion, said she saw danger in the growing web of ties between police departments, foundations and private donors.
"'We run the risk of policy that is in the service of #moneyed interests,' she said."
Peaceful coal port protesters prosecuted like bikie gang on bail
"Sixteen Rising Tide protesters who were arrested in a peaceful (and approved) blockade of Newcastle Coal Port on Sunday were held in custody until they agreed to oppressive and unclear bail conditions." Wendy Bacon reports
"If our government fails in that duty to protect my generation against the greed of the coal and gas barons, we have a duty to stand up – because unionists, suffragettes, and civil rights campaigners fought and died for our right to do so."
I recently read a toot about the burden of being a caregiver for a person with Alzheimer’s disease and can sympathize with their perspectives since I was once a caregiver for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. My brother and I moved our parents into a retirement community when the symptoms of my father’s Alzheimer’s disease became too much for my mother to handle. My father had recently struck my sister-in-law. My mother lived in the assisted living part of the facility and my father moved into a memory care unit. My mother visited my dad almost daily. My brother and I visited him most weekends and took him out bowling or golfing. It was tiring and stressful—as working parents, my wife and I had two young children to drag along for those visits that occupied one day of most weekends. Yes, being a caregiver for a parent with Alzheimer’s was stressful for the 5-6 years the disease lasted until his death.
When we moved our father into the Alzheimer’s unit, he was too mentally incompetent to consent. My brother walked him through signing his name onto an admission form, letter by letter. Notably, no disability rights attorney or judge was there to object, to defend his civil rights. No disability rights advocates argued he would be better off homeless or imprisoned. I suspect this is how things work for most families that make the difficult choice to move an aging parent into such a place. My reason for bring up the absence of such bureaucratic impediments will be clearer a bit later in this thread.
My father lived in that memory care unit for the last 5 years of his life and my family was fortunate that he recognized us until about the last six weeks. On some days, he delusionally believed that he was back living in his childhood home with brothers and sister. On other days he was more in touch with reality. He probably would not have chosen to live the last years of his life in such a place. But he quickly got accustomed to it. When we returned from our bowling or golf outings with him, he willingly returned to his new home and waved goodbye with a smile on his face.
Texts in Context: Ayelet Ben-Yishai on the Historicization of Crisis - Asymptote Blog (www.asymptotejournal.com)
I know that the violence today, and the occupation of which it is part, has a history and a politics which are man-made and can thus be unmade.