Law

"Although there is a long empirical record exploring links between violent videogame play and aggression, little is known about how these games potentially affect players’ political attitudes. Specifically, with firearms frequently featured in videogames, including games where players are required to use firearms to succeed during gameplay, it is worth examining whether players’ experience with firearms relates to their attitudes toward guns and gun policy. Utilizing the General Learning Model, this survey explores whether public policy outcomes regarding gun control and public safety are related to exposure to violent video games, first-person shooter games, and realistic gun controllers. Results show that increased exposure to first-person shooter games was related to more negative attitudes concerning gun control. In addition, more experience using realistic gun controllers was associated with negative attitudes toward gun control and greater support for the idea that greater gun availability can help guarantee public safety. Thus, video game exposure may shape the gun attitudes of young people in small but important ways."

"Canadian: If more guns made people safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It isn't. It's the opposite. Woman:Every time I turn on the TV in the States, it's always about a murder here, a gunfight, hostile position... I just think the States, their view of things is fighting. That's how they resolve everything. If there's... there's something going on in another country, they send people over to fight it and... They are the most powerful country in the world, though. Canada's more just, like, "Let's negotiate, let's work something out." Where the States is, "We'll kill you and that'll be the end of that." If guns were... If more guns made people safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It isn't. It's the opposite."

"Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can’t even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8. Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like. (pointing to a tweet from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden: Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons.)"

"Logistic regression results indicate that regular viewers of crime shows are more likely to oppose gun control and believe that firearms prevent crime. Respondents who receive their primary crime news from the print media are more likely to disagree with making it easier to conceal firearms."

"Frontier towns with and without gun legislation were violent places, more violent than family-friendly farming communities and Eastern cities of the time, but those without restrictions tended to have worse violence. “I've never seen any rhetoric from that time period saying that the only thing that's going to reduce violence is more people with guns,” says Winkler. “It seems to be much more of a 20th-century attitude than one associated with the Wild West.”"

"“People were allowed to own guns, and everyone did own guns [in the West], for the most part,” says Winkler. “Having a firearm to protect yourself in the lawless wilderness from wild animals, hostile native tribes, and outlaws was a wise idea. But when you came into town, you had to either check your guns if you were a visitor or keep your guns at home if you were a resident.”"

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

"For mass media, insurance companies, Big Pharma, advocacy groups, lawyers, politicians and so many more, your fear is worth billions. And fortunately for them, your fear is also very easy to manipulate. We’re wired to respond to it above everything else. If we miss an opportunity for abundance, life goes on; if we miss an important fear cue, it doesn’t... Add to this media landscape channels like Investigation Discovery, with its 24/7 stream of true-crime shows, and the spate of CSI and Law & Order-type police procedural dramas, and it’s easy to understand why, after voting, the next most prevalent ways Americans respond to fear, according to the Chapman study, are getting a home alarm and buying a gun."

"The buffalo hunters and range men have protested against the iron rule of Dodge's peace officers, and nearly every protest has cost human life. … Most cowboys think it's an infringement on their rights to give up shooting in town, and if it is, it stands, for your six-shooters are no match for Winchesters and buckshot; and Dodge's officers are as game a set of men as ever faced danger."

"Teenage activists against gun violence... quickly grasped three crucial things. The first was that such violence can’t be dealt with by focusing on gun control alone. You also have to confront the other endemic problems exacerbating the gun violence epidemic, including inadequate mental health resources, systemic racism and police brutality, and the depth of economic inequality.... The second was that, no matter how much you shouted, you had to be aware of the privilege of being heard. In other words, when you shouted, you had to do so not just for yourself but for all those voices so regularly drowned out in this country. After all, black Americans represent the majority of gun homicide victims. Black children are 10 times as likely to die by gun and yet their activism on the subject has been largely demonized or overlooked... The third was that apathy is the enemy of progress, which means that to make change you have to give people a sense of engagement and empowerment. As one of the Parkland students, Emma Gonzalez, put it: “What matters is that the majority of American people have become complacent in a senseless injustice that occurs all around them.”"

"It should be understood that the government manages a huge, expensive, burdensome system to keep matters classified. All pertinent documents have to be classified, individuals have to have clearances, facilities have to be kept properly for the handling of classified information. One can argue about whether too much information is overclassified. But, this information was not mindlessly classified..."

"The FBI's top lawyer in 2016 thought Hillary Clinton and her team should have immediately realized they were mishandling "highly classified" information based on the obviously sensitive nature of the emails' contents sent through her private server."

"As I continue to see the reference of leaks repeatedly in the media and the White House Communications Director... pledge to fire the leakers, I began to wonder if a leak was the same thing as a whistle-blower. According to an article written by Wayne Lee of VOA a leak is defined as a voluntary disclosure of classified information. The information is usually provided by an unidentified source whose objective is to make the information public. A whistle-blower, on the other hand, has the right to disclose information to anyone as long as this information is not classified... To make this leak vs. whistle-blower question even more confusing, when you research top whistle-blowers you get a list of whistle-blowers many of whom fall under the leaker classification than the whistle-blower classification because the individuals leaked classified information. So, I am back to my original question; are leakers and whistle-blowers the same? Legally no, but socially maybe they are."

"In 2010, WikiLeaks posted a graphic [which was at the time, a classified U.S. military] video depicting the killing of perhaps a dozen [unarmed] Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, at the hands of the U.S. military. The video brought the organization acclaim from civil libertarians and transparency advocates, and infamy within the U.S. military and elsewhere. Soon after its release, WikiLeaks posted its largest-ever cache of leaked material: a set of diplomatic cables and Army documents, many of which concerned the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... The leaks of diplomatic cables and Army documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan followed later that year, cementing WikiLeaks’ place in U.S. history as the conduit for what was then the country’s largest-ever leak of classified information."

"The tension between national security and the public’s right to know was a familiar one dating back well before the famous Pentagon Papers case of the 1970s, when a leaker made public a cache of documents about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War."

"From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick: come home, America."

"From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America."

"Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward."

"Of course, the intelligence community conceals illegal and embarrassing information all the time. DNI’s position, though, is that this happens only by coincidence... The intelligence community’s claim that it is lawful and proper to censor evidence of torture should alarm us. So should the fact that the intelligence community’s inspector general—the official charged with uncovering evidence of waste, fraud and abuse—cannot find a single example of wrongful classification."

"From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America."

"That possibility was the basic need for this rigmarole, and why only the first letters of the code words “Talent” (for U-2 photography) and “Keyhole” (for the reconnaissance satellite program and photos) were to be mentioned in a public place, where they might be overheard. Elaborate as it sounds, this two-phone-call routine was something I practiced many times in later years before talking with someone whose access was not known to me. Procedures like this—and the sanction of being summarily cut off from access, involvement, and advancement by violating them—kept a vast amount of information relevant to government decision-making (“higher than Top Secret,” SCI) secret from the public, Congress, and most of the government, along with foreigners and enemies, for long periods of time; they were proof against leaks for decades and generations, even when information was known to hundreds or thousands of individuals cleared for it. The cliché that “everything leaks; it all comes out in the New York Times eventually” is emphatically not true, above all for sensitive compartmented information. It’s a cover story, designed both to hide and sustain the effectiveness of the overall secrecy system. (Edward Snowden was the first ever to expose a large amount of SCI, including massively unconstitutional and criminal dragnet surveillance of American citizens and others in the world without probable cause for suspicion. Many thousands of NSA employees had known for a decade of that mass surveillance and its criminality. Not one other had disclosed it. Snowden is currently in exile, probably for life.)"

"Damage--loss due to injury; injury or harm to person, property, or reputation; hurt; harm."

"Grave--involving or resulting in serious consequences; likely to produce real harm or damage; very serious."

"The [U.S.] Inspector General for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has released its annual report on over-classification. Like most reports by government agencies on this subject, it acknowledges certain, minor bureaucratic problems with the way the classification system runs. But the Inspector General found “no instances” of violations of Section 1.7 of the Executive Order governing classification, which states:"

"In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:"

"Many of the benefits from keeping Terrorism [or War] fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers, and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability."

"There is no term more potent in our political discourse and legal landscape than "Terrorism." It shuts down every rational thought process and political debate the minute it is uttered. It justifies torture (we have to get information from the Terrorists); due-process-free-assassinations even of our own citizens (Obama has to kill the Terrorists); and rampant secrecy (the Government can't disclose what it's doing or have courts rule on its legality because the Terrorists will learn of it)..."

"Reasonable--being in agreement with right thinking or right judgment; not conflicting with reason; not absurd; not ridiculous; being or remaining within the bounds of reason; not extreme; not excessive; moderate; not expensive; having the faculty of reason; possessing good sound judgment; well balanced; sensible."

"The key terms and their definitions are as follows:"

"Could--past tense of can. Can--to be able to do, make, or accomplish."

"Expect--suppose, think, believe; to consider probable or certain; to consider reasonable, just, proper, due, or necessary."

"The U.S. classification of information system has three classification levels -- Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential -- which are defined in EO 12356.2 Those levels are used both for NSI and atomic energy information (RD and FRD). Section 1.1(a) of EO 12356 states that: (a) National Security Information (hereinafter "classified information") shall be classified at one of the following three levels: (1) "Top Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. (2) "Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security. (3) "Confidential" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security."

"Cause--a person, thing, fact, or condition that brings about an effect or that produces or calls forth a resultant action or state; something that occasions or effects a result; the necessary antecedent of an effect."

"Transparency and accountability together are meant to expose wrongdoing and help ensure that there is no impunity of any party involved, whether governments, companies or individuals. But transparency ensured through institutional or legal mechanisms does not always succeed in exposing wrongdoing... That is especially the case when information is... security classified information... The Catch-22, as noted before, is that identifying abuses of secrecy requires access to the very material being kept secret. This access in turn is systematically problematic for parliamentary committees or other independent review bodies."

"Exceptional--forming an exception; being out of the ordinary; uncommon, rare."

"Indeed, the ability of organisational insiders to speak up and disclose information in the public interest is at the core democratic values. It seems paradoxical then to punish and prosecute those who actively practice them. The time is ripe to establish a legal framework with clear requirements for protected disclosure that affords a wide protection to individuals who expose wrongdoing in the public interest."

"Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it."

"He knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean."

"Despite the promises made after World War II to eliminate the commission of atrocities, crimes against humanity persist with horrifying ubiquity. Yet the absence of a consistent definition and uniform interpretation of crimes against humanity has made it difficult to establish the theory underlying such crimes and to prosecute them in particular cases. In the 1990s, several ad hoc international criminal tribunals were established to respond to the commission of atrocity crimes, including crimes against humanity, in specific regions of the world in conflict. Building on this legacy, in 1998 a new institution—the International Criminal Court (ICC) — was established to take up the task..."

"What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery and wars of aggression? They are all “jus cogens.” That’s Latin for “higher law” or “compelling law.” This means that under international law, no country can ever pass a law that allows torture. There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a “jus cogens” prohibition. The United States has always prohibited torture — in our Constitution, laws, executive orders, judicial decisions and treaties. When we ratify a treaty, it becomes part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” [the United Nations] Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the US ratified, states unequivocally: Torture is considered a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, also ratified by the United States. Geneva classifies grave breaches as war crimes. The US War Crimes Act and 18 USC, sections 818 and 3231, punish torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment. And the Torture Statute criminalizes the commission, attempt, or conspiracy to commit torture outside the United States."

"UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect works to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity....Crimes against humanity have not yet been codified in a dedicated treaty of international law, unlike genocide and war crimes, although there are efforts to do so. Despite this, the prohibition of crimes against humanity, similar to the prohibition of genocide, has been considered a peremptory norm of international law, from which no derogation is permitted and which is applicable to all States."

"After the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found a reasonable basis to believe that U.S. military and CIA leaders committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Team Trump threatened to ban ICC judges and prosecutors from the U.S. and warned it would impose economic sanctions on the Court if it launched an investigation..."

"[Fatou]Bensouda (the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor since June 2012) found the alleged crimes by the CIA and U.S. military “were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals,” but were “part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract ‘actionable intelligence’ from detainees.” ... The Pretrial Chamber agreed with Bensouda that there were reasonable grounds to believe that, pursuant to a U.S. policy, members of the CIA had committed war crimes. They included torture and cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity, as well as rape and other forms of sexual violence against those held in detention facilities in the territory of States Parties to the Rome Statute, including Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania."

"Recently, hundreds of PBS stations around the United States were scheduled to broadcast a powerful new Frontline documentary: One Day in Gaza. But viewers tuning in found that it had been replaced... The documentary was to be aired on the one-year anniversary of events that took place on May 14, 2018 [in the Gaza Strip near the Gaza-Israel border] when tens of thousands of men, women, and children in Gaza gathered with the intention of deploying the tactics Gandhi had used in freeing India from British control... Palestinians months earlier had announced their plan for a mass, peaceful demonstration in which Gazans would march for an end to Israel’s crippling 12-year blockade and, especially, for their right to return to homes stolen by Israel... Palestinians’ right to return to their homes and ancestral land is well established in international law. Israel had responded by immediately deploying a hundred snipers. In the first seven weekly marches, Israeli forces killed about 50 of the marchers and injured over 7,000. During the 8th march on May 14, the day depicted in the film, Israeli forces killed 60 more and shot 1,000 – an average of one person every 30 seconds."

"The truly distinguishing element of crimes against humanity is the fact that they are part of a State plan or policy rather than that they are widespread or systematic... crimes against humanity were originally designed to capture crimes of State that went unpunished precisely because the State was complicit in them. It was a way of addressing State crimes, and not perverse individuals."

"In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors....a legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed... Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site... Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day described finding piles of dead women and children."

"The story starts March 18, 2019, in a big Air Force combat operations center in Al Udeid in Qatar. And there we have, it almost looks like mission command for NASA. You have banks of computers, big screens, all of them watching the air war against the Islamic State... on this day, a lot of people in the command center are watching a drone that was flying up overhead. Now, what they saw was a field that was just littered with a tangle of cars and makeshift tents of debris of the leftovers from weeks of combat. But also within there was a lot of people. And the drone hovered over and focused in on a group of women and children who had found refuge down by the river against a steep sand bank. The drone, it lingered for several minutes, slowly circling with its cameras focused on these folks, either sleeping or just laying down low to take cover from whatever combat might be coming. And the people in the operation center were calmly watching this when, suddenly... an American F-15 attack jet came right through and dropped a large bomb dead center into this group of women and children... killing nearly all of them."

"WikiLeaks and Julian, as we know, have been persecuted for revealing to the world, especially to liberals, Democrats, Tories, social democrats — revealing to them the crimes against humanity perpetrated by our own elected leaders, in our name, behind our backs..."

"What becomes of the rule of law when the decisions of a Supreme Court are ignored by the Legislature? These legal processes are being ignored by... the right-wing governments of the region that shamelessly carry out orders from Washington and vilify Venezuela... Venezuela should be lauded for defending the rule of law, not tarred with malicious fake news. But its government is sitting on top of the Hemisphere’s largest oil reserves and it repudiates the policies of the cannibalistic neo-liberal capitalism."

"Sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela, says UN human rights expert Idriss Jazairy. “I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela... Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law... His call echoed comments by the Spokesman for the UN Secretary General, underscoring “the urgent need for all relevant actors to engage in an inclusive and credible political dialogue to address the long crisis facing the country, with full respect for the rule of law and human rights”. The expert drew attention to the UN Declaration on the Principles of International Law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, which urges States to resolve their differences through dialogue and peaceful relations, and to avoid the use of economic, political or other measures to coerce another State in regard to the exercise of its sovereign rights."