#South American Law

[lexiai]

Navega las Leyes Sudamericanas con los Chatbots Legales IA de LexiAI

[hussyknee]

[la-la-dusty]

I tier listed fictional animated boy bands

[workersolidarity]

🇻🇪🇬🇾 VENEZUELA HOLDS REFERENDUM TO REASSERT ITS CLAIM TO GUYANA ESSEQUIBO

The Venezuelan Government held a national referendum Sunday to reassert its claim to the lands of Guyana Essequibo, reigniting geopolitical tensions in the region decades in the making.

The Guyana Essequibo region is part of the legacy of the British Empire, and is a region the Monroe Doctrinaires placed firmly in the US sphere of influence that today is dominated by the corporate interests of US oil giant Exxon Mobile.

The government of Guyana issues licenses to Exxon Mobile to drill and process petroleum products off Guyana's shores in an arrangement that the native inhabitants are none-too-happy with.

In Guyana, only 25% of oil profits remain in-country, and a poor system of redistribution has left the country's inhabitants with the lowest Human Development Index in South America, while extreme poverty affects 35.1% of the population.

In this way, Exxon Mobile has become the chief player in this century-old territorial dispute between Guyana and Venezuela.

Even internally, Guyana has major complaints with Exxon Mobile as an imperial extension of the US ruling class, with huge court battles coming to head in recent months against the giant domineering US corporation.

According to a recent article about just such a court battle, The Intercept's Amy Westervelt wrote:

"In Guyana, it’s become hard to distinguish where the oil company ends and the government begins. Exxon executives join the Guyanese president in his suite at cricket matches, and the vice president regularly hosts press conferences to defend the oil company."

The territorial dispute goes back to an 1890's International decision on the location of the borders of what was then British Guyana, a cruel colonial outpost of the British Empire.

At the time, the burgeoning US empire backed Venezuela's claims, a country which the US ruling class was trying to turn into a colony of its own, and were saying the lands in question should be a part of Venezuela, while the British wanted it to be part of its Guyana colony.

A Russian arbitrator, whom many Venezuelan historians believe to have been bribed by the British, ruled in favor of the British Empire's claim.

The territory made up 2/3rds of the territory of Guyana, and as long as the British held their colony, the Venezuelans could do little to change the situation.

In 1966, an agreement was reached to begin negotiations between Guyana and Venezuela to revisit the Essequibo territorial claims, however those negotiations never made any progress and the situation is coming to head now, many decades later.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guitierrez, recently referred the matter to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, however the Venezuelan government has no faith in the institution, believing (correctly) that it is merely an extension of Western geopolitical power.

And so, today the Venezuelan government is holding a referendum to reassert its claim to the Guyana Essequibo territory and that they reject any decisions by International institutions to reward Guyana's claims.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

[mask131]

As a non-American, I always have a mocking smile on my face when Americans (aka habitants of the USA or of Canada to be precise) call out a country "evil" or "criminal" and call for its complete destruction and dismantlement... Because A) "They're not a real country, they're settlers that colonized a land that was not theirs" and/or B) "They built their country on a genocide and killed the indigenous people".

This type of discourse pops up a lot with the Israel situation currently, but it had been around before for other countries and... I just laugh at the sweet ignorance of these blissfully unaware Americans who are literaly describing the history of their OWN country, little colonies that became the nation they are today by mass-genocide of the people native to the land.

So if you think one country should not exist because it is a "genocidal colony" and that everybody in it should return from "where they come from", think hard about it because it also means you want to destroy and dismantle the United-States and Canada, and also a lot of countries in Southern America. Basically the entirety of the American continent. If that's your opinion so be it, but if I see anymore hypocrite that goes "Yes X country should not exist because it was built on colonization and genocide but the USA/Canada is the greatest and has all the rights to be there", I'll hold them for what they are, aka morally short-sighted and self-centered morons. If you want to apply this line of logic to other countries, be ready to apply it to your own country too and be aware of the irony of your situation.

[And I think it is very important to remember that because recently the far-right groups in the US have been trying to erase all the "bad side" of the USA history, aka they have been erasing or dowplaying from media and school and other information outlet stuff like the American genocides and the way a huge part of American society was built on slavery... I mock a bit viciously above, but truly sometimes I am sad for Americans who literaly know less about their country than other people - I, just following a regular European school-course, ended up learning more about the USA's history than a lot of Americans I talked to.]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 10, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

“Good Lord, Who Among Us Hasn’t Paid For A Clarence Thomas Vacation?” David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo asked this morning. Kurtz was reacting to a new piece by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski in ProPublica detailing Justice Thomas’s leisure activities and the benefactors who underwrote them. 

Those activities include “[a]t least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.” The authors add that this “is almost certainly an undercount.”

Thomas did not disclose these gifts, as ethics specialists say he should have done. House Democrats Ted Lieu (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and Hank Johnson (D-GA) have said Thomas must resign. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who has led the effort to extricate the Supreme Court from very wealthy interests for years, commented: “I said it would get worse; it will keep getting worse.”

Thomas’s benefactors, Murphy and Mierjeski noted, “share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence.” That ideology made Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who has been in the news for the release of his December 6, 2020, memo outlining how to steal the 2020 presidential election, speculate that Thomas was the Supreme Court justice the plotters could count on to back their coup. “Realistically,” Chesebro wrote to lawyer John Eastman, “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas—do you agree, Prof. Eastman?” 

Last Saturday, Republican leaders in Alabama illustrated that their ideology means they reject democracy. After the Supreme Court agreed that the congressional districting map lawmakers put in place after the 2020 census probably violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a lower court ruling that required a new map went into effect. But Alabama Republican lawmakers simply refused. 

Alexander Willis of the Alabama Daily News reported that at a meeting of the Alabama state Republican Party on Saturday, the party’s legal counsel David Bowsher applauded the lawmakers, saying, “House Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy doesn’t have that big a margin, that costs him one seat right there. I can’t tell you we’re going to win in this fight; we’ve got a Supreme Court that surprised the living daylights out of me when they handed down this decision, but I can guarantee you, if the Legislature hadn’t done that, we lose.”

Paul Reynolds, the national committeeman of the party, went on: “Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”

Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall added: “Let’s make it clear, we elect a Legislature to reflect the values of the people that they represent, and I don’t think anybody in this room wanted this Legislature to adopt two districts that were going to guarantee that two Democrats would be elected…. What we believe fully is that we just live in a red state with conservative people, and that’s who the candidates of Alabama want to be able to elect going forward.”

The determination of Republican officials to hold onto power even though they appear to know they are in a minority is part of what drove even Republican voters in Ohio to reject their proposal to require 60% of voters, rather than a simple majority, to approve changes in the state constitution. 

Meanwhile, today’s July consumer price index report showed that annual inflation has fallen by about two thirds since last summer, a better-than-expected number suggesting that measures to cool the economy are working without hurting the economy. Real wages have outpaced inflation for the last five months, and unemployment is at a low the U.S. hasn’t seen since 1969. 

At the same time, the country is ending one of the last pieces of the social safety net put in place during Covid: the rule that people on Medicaid could remain covered without renewing their coverage each year. That rule ended in April, and states are purging their Medicaid rolls of those who they say no longer qualify. In the last three months, 4 million people have lost their Medicaid coverage, mostly because of paperwork problems. (Texas dropped an eye-popping 52% of beneficiaries due for renewal in May.) 

Biden officials have tried to pressure states quietly to fix the errors—including long waits to get phone calls answered and slow processing of applications, as well as paperwork errors—but yesterday released letters it had sent to individual states to warn them they might be violating federal law. Thirty-six states did not meet federal requirements.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[protoslacker]

Facing History

Outside, baptisms, weddings and funerals I haven't attended church my entire adult life. I haven't lived in the South since I was 16. Nevertheless both the Episcopal Church and the South are part of my identity.

Recently I dove head first down a rabbit hole on the subject of John Henry Hopkins: ironmonger, musician, lawyer, theologian, architect and the eighth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He was an important figure in local Pittsburgh history, which I hadn't known before. There were many connections to make which had me clicking from article to article. And then I landed on an article by Woody Register, In Their Own Words: An introduction John Henry Hopkins--first Bishop of Vermont, artist and architect, and defender of slavery, which put a damper on the hagiography of Hopkins emerging in my brain.

The article was in Meridiana: The Blog of the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at Sewanee. Many of the most influential people in my young life had attended Sewanee:The University of the South. My attention shifted from john Henry Hopkins to The Roberson Project.

"The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race and Reconciliation at the University of the South is a six-year initiative investigating the university's historical entanglements with slavery and slavery's legacy."

I spend way too much time at Youtube and it seems that I can't view a video without viewing a commercial for Hillsdale College. I wonder if that's because Google's algorithm "knows" those commercials particularly aggravate me--high engagement--or whether every American must see those damnable commercials? Anyhow Hillsdale's 1776 Curriculum (paywall at NY Review of Books. This article at Brown Political Review is open.) is in sharp contrast to Sewanne's approach to history. What's especially important about the differences is the view of the present and towards the future.

Emptywheel is a favorite blog. On the weekends Ed Walker writes posts that are a bit like a book discussion forum. Recently he did a series on the reconstruction era. In the last post in that series he noted that in his education as a young person that he had " no memory of any of the history I’ve discussed in this series." There's a concerted effort to ensure that students today be ignorant about our history of legally enforced and violently imposed racial segregation. A rational for much of the current "anti-woke" legislation is to save white children from discomfort. I was struck by the anger Walker felt in uncovering the history. Surely some students today will be enraged discovering what was hidden from them in school.

The Civil Rights Movement forced a paradigm change about race. And the struggle continues. Hiding that knowledge from children is madness.

Blundering around Sewanee's Website I read a profile of the first Black graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences, Nathaniel “Bubba” Owens, class of 1970. In 1966 the year Owens enrolled, the Episcopal school I attended had to confront how to respond to segregation.The school decided to enroll Black student beginning in kindergarten. A decision that seems "weak sauce" but is more significant when taking into account the proliferation of "Christian" schools in the South in response to court-ordered school desegregation. There were close associations between my school and Sewanee. I'm pretty confident the Black football player at Sewanee was known to some of the folks trying to forge a path for my old school.

The Robeson Project is named for Houston Roberson the first African American to earn tenure at the University of the South. Robertson died too young and was clearly well regarded at the University. But the naming the project for him points to a fundamental change in perspective. In 2009 he wrote an essay for the University's sesquicentennial volume.

"Dr. Roberson sought to show that African Americans, race, and racial conflict were “not a ‘Negro’ problem but an American problem.” Likewise, the history of slavery and its legacies at the University of the South is “not a ‘Negro’ problem,” but a Sewanee problem."

White Americans facing this country's history is something to celebrate. Not in a "that's mighty white" sense of goodness and righteousness. But in the more practical sense that the possibility of reconciliation and justice require a foundation of truth.

[meowmeowmessi]

NOT THIS??? https://twitter.com/Teta_2023/status/1644126646415560706

They act like the terms of his contract aren't publicly available and we didn't see it all play out since last season omg they really believe this innocent little blorbo image they've made up for this grown ass man and his European superiority complex so tired of them

[1900scartoons]

Shocks Due In This Locality 

January 31, 1907

The northwest state legislatures erupt with geysers of Railroad Reforms, Anti-Lobby Legislation, Two-Cent Rate, Separation of Corporations from Politics, and Taxation of Trusts; the Lobbyists flee, while the Fat Boy watches alarmed from a distance.

The caption reads "Predictions say that February will be a month of jars and jolts."

Several anti-trust and anti-corruption bills were in the works in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

From Hennepin County Library

Original available at: https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/Bart/id/6070/rec/32

[lexiai]

Navigate South American Laws with LexiAI’s Legal AI Chatbots

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FROM THE "DESIGN OF DISSENT" ARCHIVES – PUTS THE FEAR OF GOD RIGHT INTO YOU.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a poster design titled “American Bible Belt,” c. 1995, artwork by John Yates for Stealworks. Image from "The Design of Dissent.“

Source: www.paris-la.com/archive2008-2020/tag/john-yates.

[sharkspez]

Tumblr Biography: Julian Assange 🌐

As Assange sought refuge in the 🇪🇨 Ecuadorian embassy🏢, he believed he was fighting for ⚖️ justice. But was he actually stepping into a trap 🪤 of his own making?

[lesenbyan]

Casually skim an article by a Canadian about how he cannot imagine why Americans wanna go to Canada bc he thinks it's even more broken when the only things he lists are health insurance issues that are solidly true in the US even if they weren't for him and the fact that American roads are better which isn't a plus to most people I know who want out (we want mass transit, not car dependant travel) and cites gas prices that are actually comparable but says literally nothing about racism or politics which aRE THE REASONS PEOPLE WANT OUT

[ahaura]

many people have said it but bears repeating again:

Palestinian liberation calls for a 1 state solution under which all people are equal under both under the law and in practice.

In order to have peace the genocide, apartheid, and occupation must end. Settler colonialism must end. Second class citizenry must end. All Palestinians imprisoned must be released. Reparations must be made to Palestinians who have been affected by both current events and historical, from the Nakba in 1948 to today. Everyone who participated in the facilitation of the apartheid, and the violence of the apartheid and occupation required to maintain the oppressive regime, must be held accountable. Palestinians must be granted the right to return to their homes.

The idea that Palestinian liberation = carrying out a genocide on Israelis is nothing more than baseless, racist, orientalist fearmongering (and, to an extent, pure projection) that serves to justify the current genocidal regime and the apartheid having been maintained for decades. One people's freedom does not threaten another people. People are fearmongering over a hypothetical scenario (the same fearmongering used in South Africa; both during the reconstruction era following the abolition of slavery & also against abolitionists while slavery was still legal in the United States; in regards to the North American indigenous population; and so on) while an actual genocide is going on.

the only way to real actual peace, safety, and security is through the complete liberation of the Palestinian people, not the continued maintenance of the current regime or the apartheid that led to this current moment in time. apartheid is inherently violent; oppression is inherently violent. colonialism is inherently violent. if YOUR 'safety' is dependent on the oppression, displacement, and murder of OTHER PEOPLE then your conditions are not and will never be safe.

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes today as the jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to an adult film actress who said the two had sex.

However, we must refrain from perpetuating the “historic conviction no one is above the law in the greatest country on earth” narrative.

Let’s remember that he has become the first convicted felon among a lineup of war criminals, mass murderers, rapists, and slavers. Their crimes have included enabling genocide, setting up torture sites, invading other countries, exploiting the global south, ethnically cleansing indigenous people etc. Of course, Trump is also guilty of several of these crimes.

A glaringly obvious recent example is Dick Cheney - and his team - not being prosecuted for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. We were all expected to just move on from that lie.

The fact that the first ever Presidential conviction is over hush money to cover a sex scandal is not at all surprising however, it is revealing.

[bugpill]

If I see any more misinformation about Kamala Harris to dissuade people from voting I will explode.

1. She did a lot of work as a prosecutor to dismantle the system. When she was DA in San Francisco she was labeled as being “soft on crime” which she in turn claimed was “smart on crime”. Harris made a program called Back on Track so that low-level nonviolent drug offenders could enroll in school rather than doing jail time. She has believe and continues to believe that supporting people prevents crime far better than criminalizing people.

Yes, she put people behind bars. I know she called herself the “Top Cop” and I fucking hate that. However, the number of people who served time in jail was significantly reduced due to her program. She’s not a saint, but she tried to reduce harm as much as she could in her position. Since then, she’s called for even more action in terms of legalizing marijuana and I believe recently fully endorsed it publicly.

2. She is not transphobic. Harris backed the state of California when it tried to deny gender-affirmation surgery to a trans prisoner, but as attorney general, she could not deny the state’s Department of Corrections as a client of hers. Essentially, she had no say in the denial of surgery herself, as she had to represent the department’s interests over her own. Once she realized what they were doing, Harris actually worked behind the scenes to get that very policy changed so that any inmate who needs that care could get it. Additionally, she has lead efforts to put an end to gay and transgender “panic” defenses in criminal trials.

3. Kamala Harris is Black. For some reason, people like to say that she isn’t, and that she’s Indian and pretending to be black… for what reason? Depends on who’s telling the lie to begin with. Kamala Harris is Black and South Asian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Speculating about her race with so much evidence towards the contrary is so wrong. If anyone tells you shit about this, just send them her whitehouse.gov biography.

4. Harris (reportedly) has different opinions than Biden on Palestine. Whether or not she makes a clear stance against Israel, I don’t know. That hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll remain hopeful until further notice. She reportedly tried to push Biden towards “a policy on Gaza that was both more humane and in alignment with international law” but wasn’t listened to. The only reason why this is one of my points is that I’ve seen a lot of people stating that she is totally behind every decision and stance Biden made as president, which isn’t necessarily true. I don’t want to give her credit for being pro-Palestine if she isn’t, just to be clear. That is not what I’m trying to do here.

I desperately want her to stand for a free Palestine. I cannot make the promise that this will happen. All I can hope for is that her policy will be less harmful than Trump’s- who wants Israel to “finish the job” and promises to “throw (pro-Palestinian protestors) out of the country”.

Conclusion: the fact of the matter is that people make shit up all of the time. Sometimes it’s propaganda they accidentally absorb, sometimes it’s deliberate misinformation. People often take rumors as facts, and we need to be more vigilant about it. What I know is that some people will do anything for you to not vote tor Kamala Harris, when in reality she’s our only hope here.

Is Harris my favorite person ever? Absolutely not. Does she share my exact views and opinions? Nope. Would I rather vote for someone who more aligns with my personal views? Yes.

Is voting for Harris the only way to stop Donald Trump and Project 2025? Yes.

Disclaimer for the blog: To be 100% transparent, this is only my (Fanya’s) opinions. Although this is a shared blog, I cannot claim that my stance and my voice speaks for everybody involved in this blog. Some members are not American. Some may have different takes. All I know is that all of us are anti-Trump. Don’t go after my friends if you have beef with what I’m saying. I’m trying my best here.