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ACLU* national legal director David Cole warns that this new piece of legislation is a serious problem to free speech. He says that just discussing the boycott of Israel could land you in prison for 20 years and fined $1 million.
The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, legislation introduced in the Senate by Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and in the House by Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.), would make it a crime to support or even furnish information about a boycott directed at Israel or its businesses called by the United Nations, the European Union or any other "international governmental organization." Violations would be punishable by civil and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, where we both work, takes no position for or against campaigns to boycott Israel or any other foreign country. But since our organization's founding in 1920, the ACLU has defended the right to collective action. This bill threatens that right.
As a European myself I find it very strange that such a law can ever be officially proposed. And in the US of all countries where the freedom of speech in codified in the constitution.
What do you make of it?
*American Civil Liberties Union
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:59PM (5 children)
Those 2 groups aren't exclusive.
There is considerable overlap.
A Reactionary wants things to be like they were in 1858 [google.com] e.g. The Compromise of 1850; Dred Scot (1857); women couldn't vote; etc.
N.B. A Reactionary who isn't rich is simply stupid; back in the day, he wouldn't e.g. have been able to vote, because he didn't own any land.
Non-rich people's reason for being Reactionary is bigotry/racism (whether they admit it or not).
.
A Libertarian wants as little government as possible.
These are the Invisible Hand/Free Market nitwits who don't understand that they are advocating The Law of the Jungle--or do understand and are simply jerks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:44AM (3 children)
So? Your premise is so defective it is hard to pick a spot to start on ya.
1. Enlightened self interest can, in theory, decree that in a choice between future a) I vote but the country becomes a Hellhole because most of the -other- people getting the franchise with me are losers and b) I don't vote but the country prospers, me along with it, that personally being able to vote isn't the most important thing.
2. Your general premise that universal franchise democracy is a desirable goal; yeah, the ghosts of the Founding Fathers would like a word with you on that one. Their writings make plain what their views on the subject were. Which is why I'm a proud member of Students Against A Democratic Society [wordpress.com].
You say that like it is a bad thing. Bigotry may or may not be bad, depends who is being hated on and why. I hate Progressives for the simple reason I'm attached to the ideas of Western Civilization, America and that jazz and a Progressive is a mortal threat to all of it. Totally rational position. Even if you accept HBD, which you are simply a fool is you have read and understood the facts and still reject it. it is at most foolish to hate -simply- because of race, color, etc. But it ain't evil or the "worst thing ever" like you morons want people to think. But if you say you would walk through a typical American urban "no go zone" at night without "noticing" certain forbidden things you are a moron.
Your defective premise here is tied to your worship of the State. You believe that only the state does compassion, that barring a all powerful government redistributing all wealth, healing all sickness, caring for all, etc. that we would have a Hellscape from Mad Max. Open a book to before Woodrow Wilson and observe that we had a multitude of private organizations doing all those things. Both secular and religious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:14AM (2 children)
your worship of the State
You don't understand me in the slightest.
(You also keep ignorantly insisting that something that isn't Socialism is Socialism.)
In order for our slow, clawless, small-toothed species to survive, we had to work together.
If it wasn't for the -collective- thing, homo sapiens would have gone extinct long ago.
(We see this pulling-together in e.g. modern day insurance pools or work crews.)
It is speculated that the brains of Neanderthals were wired differently and that they had trouble cooperating.
It's thought that that's why they aren't around any more.
I further speculate that those who think that they can go it alone have a significant quantity of Neanderthal genes.
.
There's another twisted individual who commented in a previous thread and speculated[1] that people on public transit are often predatory and mean-spirited.
I've found the opposite to be true.
People naturally help each each other.
...in contrast to the cynical view of humankind held by the 2 of you.
Among our ancestors, you would think that jerks who wouldn't cooperate would be ostricized/banished/beaten to a pulp by the group.
[1] One wonders if he rode public transit ONCE and had a bad experience and extrapolated to every ride on every piece of rolling stock.
How humankind ended up with so many mine-mine-mine greed-is-good types baffles me.
I've heard it said that 150 is the largest number of humans that can manage to get along (a village).
I think that that undervalues the abilities of our big brains to adapt.
.
You say that like it is a bad thing. Bigotry may or may not be bad, depends who is being hated on and why
No. Bigotry is always bad.
Bigotry is hating someone because you have an abnormal need to hate.
Bigotry is trying to make yourself look big by making someone else look small.
It's not based on logic.
That would be something else entirely.
In the USA, successive ethnicities have been the societal punching bag (Micks, Chinks, WOPs).
The constant in that was that the darkest-skinned people -always- remained on the bottom rung.
...and the second-lowest group, even if they were uneducated and/or didn't have a job could always say "At least I'm not Black".
That's bigotry.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:21AM
You really are an almost perfect demonstration of thick headed aren't you. The concept of actual voluntary cooperation has no chance of making it into your thick skull. All you can imagine is the regimented top down "cooperation" of the Leader giving orders which will be obeyed at gunpoint; because that is what The State is.
Nah, they were the newest unassimilated immigrants and essentially got hazed. And yea they were at the bottom of the social order because they were at the bottom! They mostly came here with nothing, most had little here, they were trying to build a new life, accumulate some wealth, etc. The thing about America at the time was that just because you were at the bottom you weren't required to stay there and your children wouldn't be stuck there too. As they mostly assimilated and diversified throughout society it ended. Go ahead and face it, most of you guys are still stinging from the hazing you got as Freshmen, amiright?
I'd also assert that had the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s not been subverted by Communists / Progressives, Blacks would even be mostly assimilated by now since they were already getting fairly close at the time. Incomes were rising, opportunity increasing, etc. All they needed was to make Southern Democrats actually obey the law, had they stayed focused on that goal they could have achieved it. But they sold out to LBJ and off to the plantation they went, where they remain to this day.
And no, nobody in the U.S. with a brain willingly uses public transit. I haven't been out of the U.S. but every report says many other countries manage to have mass transit that isn't horrid (especially Asia). The closest I have seen to a good one is the historic trolley system in New Orleans that is as much a tourist attraction as it is a working public transportation system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:06PM
FTFY
Unfortunately, everything points to this conclusion. Everybody needs somebody to hate, and evil always again springs out from the good (usually in the form of "better").
Look into your heart and you will find it true, even though you will certainly attach a "but, ... " rationalization to it, to quench a cognitive dissonance.
There is certainly a group of people you can define that you hate (it is presumed that you don't personally know at least significant part of that group), and you probably keep a good reason for that hate.
And if you would humor me by making a thought experiment, imagining that that particular group of people didn't exist, try to imagine what is the next definable group of people that would be least sympathetic to you. You see, "it is turtles all the way down"! There is always somebody getting on our nerves, the last one probably being "all these impersonators of me around me, mocking me all the time".
Hate is a missing need on Maslow's hierarchy. It is bothering us, it is drowning our dreams of a better world, but it turns out we need to take it into account and deal with it, try to keep it under control the best we can.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:08AM
Why do you assume he *wants* to vote?
"Non-rich people's reason for being Reactionary is bigotry/racism (whether they admit it or not)."
That's simply poisoning the well.
"These are the Invisible Hand/Free Market nitwits who don't understand that they are advocating The Law of the Jungle"
I suppose that would make you one of those authoritarian/state worshipping nitwits that don't understand that the Law of the Jungle is exactly what you advocate and cheer for.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?