#South American Law

[lexiai]

Navega las Leyes Sudamericanas con los Chatbots Legales IA de LexiAI

[davidaugust]

South Korea is in crisis. Their president declared martial law, their parliament called that off, what happens next remains to be seen.

Violence is never a good answer. And while it is _an_ answer, I hope for peaceful solutions to prevail, both there and in every country, including ours.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Korean community in U.S. stands up against martial law

By Struggle-La Lucha Los Angeles bureau

In nearly back-to-back rallies, the Los Angeles Korean community turned out to protest the decree of martial law by White House-backed South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol. Nodutdol, the youth activist organization based in the Korean diaspora in the U.S., held an emergency rally on Dec. 4 at the South Korean Consulate. Rallies were also held in the Bay Area and in New York City.

[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

[lexiai]

Navigate South American Laws with LexiAI’s Legal AI Chatbots

[davidaugust]

The South Korean Parliament has just voted, unanimously (all members in attendance), to end the martial law declared suddenly by the South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The US Congress will need to in the coming months similarly counter 45's moves to declare martial law or do other destructive things.

[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

[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