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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: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:03AM
True, but misleading.
"When you find yourself in a deep hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging."
Now sure, that's "not a viable plan" for getting out of the hole. It's just the first step. It may not be possible to start off with a 'viable plan' fully laid out - such plans never survive contact with reality anyway. But if you start the the start, with that fundamental first step, then you can get moving in the right direction.
And if you start, as the establishment politicians in this country inevitably must, with the opposite for your first step, then we can guarantee you'll only make things worse.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?