Sunday, December 23, 2007
"an assault on the poor"
A loss for privacy rights
28 Nov 2007
The Constitution of the United States protects individuals against unreasonable searches, but for this protection to have practical meaning, the courts must enforce it. This week, the Supreme Court let stand a disturbing ruling out of California that allows law enforcement to barge into people's homes without a warrant. The case has not prompted much outrage, perhaps because the people whose privacy is being invaded are welfare recipients, but it is a serious setback for privacy rights.San Diego County's district attorney has a program called Project 100 Percent that is intended to reduce welfare fraud. Applicants for welfare benefits are visited by law enforcement agents, who show up unannounced and examine the family's home - including the insides of cabinets and closets. Applicants who refuse to let the agents in are generally denied benefits.
The program does not meet the standards set out by the Fourth Amendment, which rejects unreasonable searches. For a search to be reasonable, there generally must be some kind of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. These searches are done in the homes of people who have merely applied for welfare and have done nothing to arouse suspicion.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, rejected a challenge brought by welfare recipients. In ruling that the program does not violate the Constitution, the majority made the bizarre assertion that the home visits are not "searches."
The Supreme Court has long held that when the government intrudes on a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, it is a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. It is a fun-house mirrors version of constitutional analysis for a court to say that government agents are not conducting a search when they show up unannounced in a person's home and rifle through the bedroom dresser.
Judge Harry Pregerson, writing for himself and six other Ninth Circuit judges who voted to reconsider the case, got it right. The majority decision upholding Project 100 Percent, Pregerson wrote, "strikes an unprecedented blow at the core of Fourth Amendment protections." These dissenters rightly dismissed the majority's assertion that the home visits were voluntary, noting that welfare applicants were not told they could withhold consent, and that they risked dire consequences if they resisted.
The dissenting judges called the case "an assault on the poor," which it is. It would be a mistake, however, to take consolation in the fact that only poor people's privacy rights were at stake. When the government is allowed to show up unannounced without a warrant and search people's homes, it is bad news for all of us.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/28/opinion/edprivacy.php
'some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia'
Excerpts from 'Press Statement and Answers to Journalists’ Questions Following the Talks between Russia and Greece':
" ... QUESTION: Today, you have been saying that relations between Russia and Greece are developing successfully on almost all fronts. At the same time, some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia, considering them to be too close. In this regard, how do you see the development of further contacts between your two countries?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Recently, I have been involved with the government’s attempts to balance the budget for 2008, 2009, and 2010, with social problems, with pensions. And somehow I have not had the opportunity to acquaint myself with the views of these particular officials, even the distinguished ones who work in Brussels, and do not intend to comment on them.
On the whole our relations with the European Union are developing reasonably well. We are satisfied with them. I hope that soon we will be able to sign the agreement on long-term cooperation that Russia wants. We are hoping for the understanding and support of our European partners. Europe, too, is interested in this. With regard to bilateral relations between Greece and Russia, we are pleased with our relationship and the nature and pace of its development. It yields tangible results for our economies and our citizens. Not to mention energy: Greece will be able to satisfy its needs in the energy sector in large measure by drawing on our energy resources.
But there are other very important and promising directions. And in this sense both Russia and Greece can play a very important role in Europe by supporting the stability of the European energy market. And if we implement major infrastructure projects in this area, then it should be quite clear that we are working not only for our countries but also for the benefit of all of Europe. I think that we can ignore those who have not properly understood the nature of our cooperation and not bother trying to make sense of their concerns.
KONSTANTINOS KARAMANLIS: Greece is a European country which operates within the framework of European policy. However, bilateral relations are conducted on the basis our country’s national interests. Having a particularly good relationship with Russia is good for our country, and I would like to believe that it is good for Russia and useful for all of Europe. Thus, Greece is one of the countries that has actively worked to realize the benefits of closer cooperation between Russia and the European Union. ... "
~ Link ~
Hoover had plan for mass arrests
'A Brave New Vision'
And we do have a gaggle of prophets busily at work like a swarm of termites gnawing away at democracy’s support beams.
All prophets, both old and new, foresaw the eminent collapse of a way of life. The prophets of the Bible saw the fall of Israel because she had strayed from God. Our prophets see the collapse of the United States because of corporatism’s multiple excesses. Where old prophets demanded change, our demand that we stay the course.
Our prophets whispered in 1974, and nobody heard. That was when the SRI Center for the Study of Social Policy issued their report, Changing Images of Man. The document was spurred by the knowledge among our elite that our economic system was headed for an eventual collapse. Warnings about peak oil had surfaced, we were busily making enemies around the world by funding coups, death squads and torture chambers, and capital’s need to consolidate and increase its wealth was beginning to widen the gap between rich and poor.
The report was grounded on the fallacy that makes the term “social science” one of history’s great oxymorons: that man is a passive lump of soft clay that can be molded into any shape that best serves the elite.
'Veep Apologizes for Accidental Inferno'
Attempting to Destroy CIA Tapes, Cheney Burns Down White House
The White House, one of the most historic structures in the nation’s capital, burnt to the ground today after Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to incinerate a cache of CIA interrogation tapes in his office.
According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.”
But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.
“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,” an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.
The accidental blaze quickly spread from the videotapes to a nearby stack of transcripts of phone conversations involving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and singer Barbra Streisand that Mr. Cheney had obtained via a warantless wiretap.
“Once those transcripts caught on fire, I knew the building was a goner,” Mr. Cheney said. “There were literally thousands and thousands of pages of that stuff.”
Speaking in front of the charred remains of the historic building, administration spokesperson Dana Perino said that the White House might have been saved had it not been for an unfortunate bureaucratic mix-up: “Instead of calling the fire department, President Bush called FEMA.”
Sad anniversaries (2)
The Greek Civil War
" ... In November 1944, six ministers of the EAM, most of whom were KKE members, resigned from their positions in the "National Unity" Government. Fighting broke out in Athens on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration, organised by EAM, involving more than 100,000 people. According to some accounts, the police, covered by British troops opened fire on the crowd.[5][6][7] According to other accounts, it is uncertain if the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators.[8] More than 28 people were killed and 148 injured. The "Dekembriana", "the December events"), as this incident is known, was the beginning of a 37-day full-scale fighting in Athens between ELAS and the Government forces.
The British tried to stay neutral but when the battle escalated they intervened, with artillery and aircraft being freely used. At the beginning the government had only a few policemen and a brigade without heavy weapons. On December 4 Papandreou attempted to resign but the British Ambassador convinced him to stay. By December 12 ELAS was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Infantry Division from Italy as reinforcements. During the battle with the ELAS, local militias fought alongside the British, triggering a massacre by ELAS fighters. It must be noted that although the British were fighting openly against ELAS in Athens there were no fights in the rest of Greece. In certain cases like Volos some RAF units even gave equipment to ELAS fighters.
Conflicts continued throughout December with the British slowly gaining the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the British. It seems that ELAS preferred a legitimate rise to power, but was drawn into the fighting by the indignation and, at the same time, the awe of its fighters after the slaughter on December 3, aiming at establishing its predominance. Only this version of the events can explain the simultaneous struggle against the British, the large-scale ELAS operations against trotskyists and other political dissidents in Athens and many contradictory decisions of EAM leaders. Videlicet, KKE's leadership was supporting a doctrine of 'national unity' while eminent members, e.g. Stringos or Makridis and even Georgios Siantos, were elaborating revolutionary plans.
This outbreak of fighting between Allied forces and an anti-German European resistance movement, while the war in Europe was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government of left and right, and caused much protest in the British press and in the House of Commons. To prove his peace-making intention, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 25 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives also participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and, thus, rejected.
In the meanwhile, the Soviet Union remained surprisingly passive about the developments in Greece. True to their "percentages agreement" with Britain, the Soviet delegation in Greece wasn’t encouraging or discouraging EAM’s ambitions, as Greece belonged to the British sphere of influence. Pravda didn’t mention the clashes at all. If this position of the Soviet leadership had been brought home to KKE’s leadership, the Dekemvriana might have been averted. It seems that Stalin didn’t have the intention to avert the Dekemvriana, as he would profit no matter the outcome. If EAM rose to power, he would gain a country of major strategic value. If not, he could use the British actions in Greece to justify to the Allies any intervention in his own sphere of influence. ... "
Sad anniversaries (1)
