Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Holy Cow!
Without separation of church and state, "We The People," are likely to be rights restricted in a manner congruent with the religious beliefs of those with political power.... "limiting birth control for example." With separation of church and state we all enjoy RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. It's that simple and is without a doubt what the founders intended!
Vote for freedom and move into the light with the 99%.
Writers have already gone there, Remember RollerBall that cooperation sponsored warfare confined to an area.
Anyone read a "handmaiden dairy" ? it is about a person who lives in America that become a theoricity
I hope by 2016, we can remove the blight known as the Republican Party / Tea Pary. It is interesting the Republicans are called the Grand Old Party when they have changed their name more often than the Democratic Party. What were they before they were republicans - whigs?
If it comes to pass, we might have to form a corperation to raise an army to legally attack such rouge corporations - a good social-science fiction writer could have a field day with this!!
Robert
Dear Village Idiot, he cannot live on commenting on liberal blogs all day. It's just not possible! LOL
Liberty-First is probably on CIA contract.
I hope that the power elite over reach again and declare corporation immune from international law and and therefore our constitution if our nation is a signer of the international law.
As Thom pointed out, the court would be saying corporations are people to get constitutional rights but are also not people to be free from responsibility of international law. I pray the irony is so thick that a real third party candidate emerges to take adanvatage of the public outrage and disgust of our corrupt system.
Please keep in mind that Obama is the corporatocracy's candidate. The idiots on campaign are designed to make us feel good about what we have. We deserve better than Obama!
Just havin' some fun.
Live long and prosper, Liberty-First.
Liberty-First still comes across like an internet addict -- killing time, typing wild. Really not on welfare? I just scrolled over it and laughed.... ludicrous :oD
The United States are a nation of largely Christianity fakers, used to skip the central messages of Jesus. Otherwise many had to hate Jesus. Aren't we already on the cultural level of nations like India and China in states like Florida? Mass misery, hate and violation of human rights is not to find in developed countries.
America will make to have a crucial decision in November. Obama -- or idiocy and decline. There's no third way, we have to decide. It's about our lives: Whether we want to live in a primitive land of misery, or like humans in dignity.
When is the show moving to the 3PM-6PM (ET) time slot again? I heard a date around the week of March 12. So now it seems that some stations that have been playing Thom on tape delay right after Ed Schultz (WCPT Chicago, WWRL New York, etc.) will now get to play both shows live. And I wonder what KPTK Seattle and KPOJ Portland will do since they currently play Ed Schultz on delay after Thom live. Also, is Randi Rhodes going to change time slots, or is she Thom's new competitor?
You’re just parroting incorrect, nonsense. It’s not even worth wasting time considering the absolutely stupid things you just spewed. Did you just blow a brain gasket? Surely you don’t think that way all the time?
Or maybe you’re just a fully functional liberal who like most has only been trained for “one trick pony” responces whenever challenged by the real world. Basically you’re cobbling together a Frankenstein flow chart of disconnected facts. In your case taking another pointless crack at religion, tying it to business bogymen and hope it sticks to the wall along with your hatred of anyone that isn’t “occupying” the liberal bull pucky.
EXPLANATION OF TODAY’S LIBERAL BIAS and MODE OF OPERANDI
Liberal bias is partisan selection or distortion of information to support liberal policies. This bias can be expressed by professors and public school teachers, College Board exams, reporters and other journalists in mainstream media, and any other information source. Typically purveyors of liberal bias falsely present themselves as being objective. Liberal bias includes techniques such as distorted selection of information, placement bias, photo bias and liberal style. There is a difference between being liberal, having a liberal perspective, and having a liberal bias.
The essence of liberal bias is to dismiss or even to censor all opposing views. For liberals, to allow the airing or publishing of an opposing view creates the risk that people might discover errors in the liberal viewpoint. On the other hand, CONSERVATIVES TYPICALLY UPHOLD FREEDOM OF IDEOLOGICAL EXPRESSION, WITH MANY EXPRESSING THAT ALTHOUGH THEY MAY OPPOSE A LIBERAL VIEW WITH EVERY FIBER OF THEIR BEING, THEY WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH THEIR RIGHT TO SAY IT, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THAT IN THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS THE TRUE WILL ALWAYS WIN OVER THE FALSE.
After hearing today's speech of our amazing president, I have lots of hope we get the entire Congress back and the Republicans will watch from the sidelines how we take America back. Romney and Santorum are rhetorical dwarfs compared to the president.
Ayatollah Santorum, please convert and go to Iran! They're used to fanatics like you.
Here's another case in which Conservatives and Libertarians seem to be only interested in the freedoms of powerful ruling elites:
In the recent controversy over birth-control products being covered under insurance programs utilized by the Catholic church, Conservative and Libertarian propagandists characterized the issue as an assault on religious freedom.
Whose freedom?
The vast majority of Catholics support the freedom to use birth-control and Catholics use birth-control at the same rate as the general population in defiance of the doctrine espoused by the the ruling church elites.
It should be pointed out that the Catholic church is NOT a democracy, it is a dictatorship. Catholics do not vote on church doctrine.
Once again, it seems Conservatives and Libertarians are only interested in the freedom of the ruling elites of the Catholic church to impose their will on the vast majority of Catholics.
The Conservative and Libertarian view of freedom is not a democratic view, it is a view that is only concerned with the freedom of ruling elites to impose their will on the ruled.
It is a Dutch Company. Why is the US involved at all?
Do you realize how Stupid you sound defending rick? Or maybe just snobbish
I think Rick wants everyone in the US to be as ignorant as possible except for those people he thinks will agree with him. He doesn't want people who will question him
Village Idiot
RE Most liberties are
I think you missed my point. And I certainly understand the concept of pissing your neighbors off with blaring Death Metal music at 3am in the morning. “That’s an obvious given”
I am already aware people/companies etc. must not pollute the sovereign territories of the USA, or its waters within its national jurisdiction. “That’s an obvious given”
My question was, and still remains: "what is the implication of surrendering America’s sovereign laws and thus governance over to an international law cartel that is represented by foreign country(s)”
In other words; “let the international community make laws that apply to the sovereign people of United State”?
Currently if U.S. persons or companies do wrong on foreign soil they are subject to the laws of that country, not some international law cartel that can order the USA to take specific directed legal action against said defendant people or company. Nor can they extort compensation from the American people for any wrong doing by the defendants acting directly and solely under agreement with said foreign country outside United Stated sovereign jurisdiction.
If that were the case, such an international law cartel of participating nations (many of which hate America) would overrun America with frivolous law suits and bankrupt us with phony trumped up damages.
Mathew 7:12 probably didn't mean you should toss your common sense out with the morning coffee grounds. In other words he didn’t say drop your defenses and allow anyone from anywhere come into your lands and tell you what to do, much less dictate their laws to you.
I don’t care if you’re an atheist. That’s your business. But as such, why quote scripture? Makes you seem a hypocrite.
You haven't challenged any of my facts yet?
Most liberties are conflicting liberties--if commentor, "Liberty-First" was the only person on Earth, he could do whatever he wanted to.
This is sometimes expressed as, "one person's right to swing their fists in the air ends at the tip of another person's nose."
This is also sometimes expressed as ":The Freedom TO . . .'' vs. "The Freedom FROM . . ."
For example, my freedom TO rehearse a garage-band at 3AM conflicts with everyone else's freedom FROM noise when they are trying to sleep. Most communities strongly support by large majorities the police shutting down the garage-band because they hold that the freedom-FROM prevails over the freedom-TO in this case.
The freedom of oil companies TO dump toxic waste in the local water supply conflicts with the local people's freedom FROM toxic waste in their drinking water.
A lot of Conservatives and Libertarians seem to only be interested in the freedoms of corporate bullies and predators TO do whatever they want and they don't consider the freedom FROM the harms caused by these predators and bullies to even be freedoms.
Maybe these Conservatives and Libertarians simply reject the fundamental principle of most religions and ethical systems: "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." --Mathew 7:12
I'm an atheist by the way.
There is a safe form of nuclear energy. One of the callers mentioned it briefly. It's thorium, which is an element close to uranium. There's so little waste, whats left can be used for medical technology research and theraphy. It doesn't explode or melt down. We had a thorium plant in the 60's but it wasn't a source of weapons grade nuclear material.
It's abundant; enough currently available to power the earth for 1,000 years.
It can be used to eliminate current waste from uranium plants.
Research it and try and find a downside.
[quote=RE: I'm not ready to discuss[/quote]
I never suggested you eat rats.
I suggested metaphorically that you are confined, limited in your views and dark in an ideology that is deceptively subversive.
You admit you use propaganda liberally.
Liberal quote “The ends justify the means”
Propaganda is a distortion of truth, thus you lie to justify your ends. “Enough said”
I never said right wing stuff does not make sense thus I alternately listen to liberal dogma instead. Your lying AGAIN.
I said conservative news and blogs are predictable to me because I agree with them on most points. Therefore to challenge my curiosity and to continue to grow objectively, I engage countering points of view. That is how some of us learn.
Unlike you sitting in your basement of one-side propaganda thinking the occupy troops on the front line understand all your flowery rhetoric fired from your twitter squirt gun.
Linguistic aikido, HA! The liberal agenda is collapsing all around you. You’ve got nothing, not even a clue!
“Truth will always prevail over deception”.
I disagreed when GW stopped people from buying Canadian drugs. I like free market principals and personal liberty to choose.
You were doing real good right up till you put the spin on Santorum. Then you lost me. Are you suggesting “Santorum is against people reading and writing”?
Do you know how stupid that sounds?
I disagreed when GW stopped people from buying Canadian drugs. I like free market principals and personal liberty to choose.
You were doing real good right up till you put the spin on Santorum. Then you lost me. Are you suggesting “Santorum is against people reading and writing”?
Do you know how stupid that sounds?
Now, just substitute "Quran" for "Bible" and "Muslim" for "Christian" in Sen. Santorum's prescription for a better USA, and see how far it will get. Sauce for the goose, as grandma used to say.
This Cdn communist has to ask-what is it about religion in the US?If you added up all the seconds I thought that maybe god exists, they would amount to perhaps less than 10 seconds in my 44 yrs of life.
I think you have to be rich to beleive in god.Even a brief period of incarceration, homelessness, illness, injury, unemployment, or poverty could permanently murder your faith in god.
Notice how the headline is so slanted. It suggests “without trial” the supposition that corporations are being granted power to commit genocide.
Then it provides limited information about the complaint.
So I copied the briefs of the case so people could at least see a bit more than selective leftist sound bites.
By the way, does anyway know what this international law being spoken of is about? The Constitution and laws of the Untied States are sovereign, not subject to foreign interference.
Best as I can figure is this is a move to make the United States compliant with some international jurisdiction, AKA global government, global laws. Every fiber in my being tells me that global centralized power will usher in tyranny on scale never seen before on planet earth.
Anyway, I think this Supreme Court argument is less about whether the oil companies did right or wrong, but more about pushing America closer to surrendering its sovereign right to exclusively govern. Some countries would love to see America stripped of its unique freedoms then kick it into a ditch.
=============================================================
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell) is an Alien Tort Statute (ATS) case brought by Nigerians from the Ogoni community who suffered abuses in 1993-1995, when the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and other Ogoni groups demanded an end to destructive oil development in their region and were meant with a violent military crackdown. Kiobel is a companion to Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which settled in 2009 and in which ERI served as counsel, and arises out of some of the same events.
In 2006, the trial court judge in the Kiobel case issued a decision finding that the plaintiffs could not bring claims for summary execution, but that Shell could be sued for aiding and abetting other human rights abuses. The judge authorized an unusual "interlocutory" appeal, in which issues are presented to the Court of Appeals before the case has concluded in the trial court. Both sides appealed; the plaintiffs challenged the summary execution ruling, and Shell challenged the aiding and abetting ruling. (The trial court judge subsequently reversed her views on summary execution in a ruling in the Wiwa case, allowing the Wiwaplaintiffs' claims to proceed.)
In 2007, ERI and its co-counsel in the Wiwa case filed two amicus briefs to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, supporting the plaintiffs' appeal on the summary execution issue, and opposing Shell's cross-appeal on the aiding and abetting issue. Two groups of international law scholars also filed amicus briefs in the cross-appeal, supporting the plaintiffs' claims of crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The case was argued to the Second Circuit in January 2009.
In September 2010, the Second Circuit issued a surprising decision. Instead of ruling on any of the issues that had been briefed and argued, the Court of Appeals decided that the case had to be dismissed because, it found, corporations could not be sued for human rights violations under the ATS.
In October 2010, the plaintiffs submitted a petition for rehearing, and ERI submitted an amicus brief in support of rehearing. ERI's brief was submitted on behalf of major human rights and labor groups, including Human Rights Watch, the largest human rights organization in the U.S., and two of the largest unions in the U.S., the Service Employees International Union and the United Steel Workers, as well as the Center for Constitutional Rights, Global Witness, the International Labor Rights Forum, the World Organization for Human Rights USA, the Human Rights Law Foundation, and Accountability Counsel. The brief argues that the Kiobel decision wrongly relies on the fact that corporations cannot be brought before any international tribunal to conclude that corporations are not subject to international law. Because the ATS is a domestic remedy for violations of international law, and because international law has always primarily been enforced through domestic mechanisms, it makes no sense to limit the enforcement of international law to the few areas in which international tribunals have been created.
Six other amicus briefs have been filed supporting rehearing, including briefs on behalf of international law scholars, scholars of the Holocaust and the Nuremburg trials, legal historians, federal jurisdiction professors, victims of terrorism, and the Public Good Law Center. The judges that decided Kiobel rejected all of the amicus briefs, and ERI and the other amici then filed a motion asking the full court to reconsider whether the amicus briefs should be filed. The parties are now awaiting a decision from the Second Circuit on whether it will accept the amicus briefs, and whether it will ultimately rehear the case.