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Net Result of Snowden
by Ryan Carboni 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

Snowden's timing was interesting, it overshadowed Manning's trial. His movie too was interesting. I have written down so notes on the movie. Also, my cell phone works fine in the microwave. Snowden was running around on two broken legs for weeks until it shattered, not from training but from jumping from his top bunk. By minute nine, Snowden is in interviews in large soundproof rooms with multiple sequential interviewers for the CIA. A couple seconds before minute twelve: "Snowden - Ed Snowden" Thirteen minutes, one quarter: "not sitting in a ditch eating MREs... another 9/11 it'll be your fault" Nineteen minutes, one quarter: "bought into liberal media" .... "my side is right" Twenty-one minutes: "Journalists don't report the full picture, we respect the fourth amendment.... FISA. We obtain warrants in secret to prevent suspects from knowing they're being investigated." Twenty-three minutes: Talks about thinthread, but without filters, drowning in data (???). Twenty-six minutes, one quarter: You don't have to agree with your politicians to be a patriot. Twenty-seven minutes: Put cellphones in microwave, but the camcorder cannot spy on you? Thirty-three minutes: portrays NSA as total nerds "council of warlocks" etc ... Fifty-two minutes: need experienced journalists to lead the public through a complex story One hour: empowering background music about how the government is spying on everyone One hour six minutes: A lot of people cruise through life, why can't I? One hour seven minutes, one half: Thomas Drake tried to changes things form the inside, but when things didn't work he went to the press It would be unfortunate if the EFF or some cypherpunk advised on this. There are certainly a lot of people in this country who would like to know about these "public wiretapping warrants" or how Thomas Drake went to the press (skipping Congress even?). This is subliminal messaging, it isn't a single picture in a frame, it is a liar talking to you to your face. Naturally there's no public psychological study on this, so the whole of psychology can be held unreliable in this regard. George Orwell noticed this in the two minutes hate. We still invaded many countries since 1984 became a school book. This is the point in which I tell you that hundreds of individuals are sleeping with your spouse.

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Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by the President
by Anti Fag 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Sayeth the Mod Emperor Grarpamp > ps: Breaking links with spaces or anything else is stupid. > > Mon Feb 13 00:38:16 PST 2017 > grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com

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change.org "declare antifa illegal/terrorist" petition
by Anti Fag 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

> Marina Brown catskillmarina at gmail.com > Sun Feb 12 15:15:00 PST 2017 > > Yep - put the blame on the revolutionary communist party - > it will take the heat off the real activists in the Bay area Who, BAMN, the sudo anarcho-commies who smash up the SF Bay ? Don't know who BAMN is ? Let this ex-member tell you who they are: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Letter from UCB alumn Jevon I am running with Students for a Democratic University (SDU) as Student Advocate and I am an ex-member of BAMN. I think I can give a little bit of an insider's perspective as to why it is not a good idea to have dealings with that organization. The dislike that most people in the activist community on campus have of BAMN stems from the fact that they are very sectarian, undemocratic, and obnoxious. If the problems with BAMN stopped there, I would be for working with them. However, internally, that organization is a lot more corrupt than people realize. The organization is tightly controlled by two members, the President, Shanta , and another founding member named Leland. There is no democracy in the organization. Members are encouraged to follow whatever perspective and course of action that Shanta and Leland put forward. When disagreements arise between base members of the group and the leadership (i.e. Shanta and Leland), that is when things get scary. In order to coerce people into doing what they want them to do, at the leadership's command, this organization engages in a whole host of disgusting behavior like physically dragging people to meetings and political events, denouncing members who disagree as crazy/suicidal and encouraging them to take unprescribed medication, stealing money and i.d. cards to restrict the movement of dissident members, spreading lies about such members to turn others against them, etc. The list goes on and on. The way the organization makes this possible is often by convincing members to abandon their lives and come live in BAMN households. There, such members often become financially dependent on BAMN and many times, have no choice but to comply with orders so that they can eat and not end up homeless. Furthermore, many of theBAMN members are teenagers so this fact makes it even more possible for BAMN to prey on people that become financially dependent on them. This issue has been coming up a lot lately so I am going to write a much more coherent statement on it documenting my horrible experience with this organization but I will start to talk about that here. I was one of those teenagers. I joined BAMN when I was 14 and remained in the organized until I was nearly 18. When I was sixteen, BAMN convinced me that my family was abusive and crazy and that it was better that I move in with BAMN members. I did so against my family's will. When my family started to look for me, BAMN advised me that it was best that I move from my hometown (Detroit, MI) to live with BAMN members in another part of the country. They told me that I could legally solicit emancipation (without my parent's consent) upon turning 17 and since my birthday was soon, this meant that I would not be away from Detroit for longer than one month. However, they lied. They took me to Oakland, CA to live with Yvette Felarca and instructed me to change my name to "Chase Stern" and cut off all contact with family and friends and even other BAMN members in Detroit. I complied, thinking that that would only be for a short time. However, upon turning 17, BAMN's leadership in Detroit just did not answer my phone calls. When they finally answered, they told me I had to just wait a little longer and each time, I would ask when I got to go home, this is the answer they would give me. I ended up being in Oakland for a year. A few weeks before I turned 18, I decided that I wanted to end the ordeal so I contacted my family and reconciled with them. My mother bought me a plane ticket back to Detroit. When I informed BAMN, they tried to talk me out of leaving, but I was adamant on returning home for at least a little while and having a chance to reestablish relations with my family and friends. When they realized they could not talk me out of leaving, they got physical. Yvette Felarca came into my room one night and instructed me to read out loud a statement that Shanta Driver had written and convinced me to sign about how my family was abusive. Tired of debating my decision with them, I refused. That night, Yvette and other BAMN members took turns sleeping by my bed to "make sure he doesn't go anywhere." They confiscated my house keys to restrict my movement. The day before my flight back to Detroit, I was packing my clothes when BAMN members came in and told me that I could not pack my clothes in that luggage because that was luggage that they had provided me with. At this point, I still had illusions in BAMNso I called Shanta Driver, thinking that Yvette was just being unreasonable and overly pushy and that Shanta would work everything out. I told her what was happening and asked her to speak with Yvette and the other BAMN members and request that they let me leave. Much to my astonishment, Shanta refused. At that moment, I realized that I was in a cult and not only was Shanta well aware of what was taking place but that it was her plan all along. I called my mom at that point and in the midst of me talking to her, one of the BAMN members, Adi Hoag, a former Berkeley student, screamed "Grab his phone!" and 3 BAMN members grabbed me and tried to take my phone. Luckily, they were all pretty slightly built women so I managed to push them off of me and make it outside the house. I ran to the neighbors, explained to them what was going on, and she let me inside and closed the door. My mom called the police and when they came, BAMN made up a lie about how I was trying to steal things from them. There were two white police officers and the 3 BAMN members there at the time were three white women so shockingly (or maybe not so shockingly), the police believed them and treated me like shit. All I was trying to do was get my belongings and get away and the cop said to me: "You, yourself, admit to be a runaway so why should we believe anything you say?" and "I should take you to juvenile and make you miss your flight tomorrow." I insisted on being able to get my belongings and at some point, the cops gave in and escorted me inside to get my things. Once inside, I discovered that BAMN had stolen the $70 I had in my room and all my id cards. I got what I could and left. The phone that I was using had been disconnected since it was the name of Mark Airgood, aBAMN member and teacher in Oakland. The neighbor, however, let me use her phone to phone a friend, whose parents let me stay at his house and dropped me off at the airport the next morning. When I tried to inform other BAMN members about what had happened to me, particularly other youth many of whom I had recruited and therefore felt responsible for putting at risk, I learned that BAMN had denounced me to everyone. They told people that I had went crazy and turned against the organization and went to the police and that everyone should call off all contact with me. They were also instructed to report my whereabouts to Shanta because they were looking for me to put me in a mental institution. Some BAMN members complied with this order but many did not, and ended up leaving the org in the fallout. I have heard many lies that BAMN spread about me to cover up what they did, including telling people that I tried to kill myself and that's why they intervened in the way that they did. When I got to Detroit and started to tell people about my experiences, I learned from some ex-BAMN members (who had remained silent) that I was not the only person that had an experience like that with BAMN. There were many others. Some of these stories are even documented on the Internet. Anyway, for the longest, I have been publicly silent about my experience with BAMN because like others, I have believed that since they play such an active role in politics, on and off campus, it's better to not bump heads with them. However, a few days ago, I received a phone call from a BAMN member that I had never met before. He had gotten my phone number from other ex-members of BAMN and he wanted to talk to me to help him through his hellacious experience with BAMN. At that moment, I realized that I could no longer remain silent. This organization is continuing to manipulate young people and it has to stop. This is a really dangerous thing because this organization is luring young activist-minded individuals and unlike me, most of the people who surviveBAMN draw the conclusion that they must abandon struggle. BAMN either converts you into a drone or it kills your fighting spirit. I feel so strongly as to not working with BAMN that I think it's worth sharing that deeply personal story with all of you. I feel like by working with them we are validating their disgusting tactics and empowering them to get away with things like this with more people. That's my piece. Jevon

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Leakedsource
by John Newman 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Interesting article by krebs about his efforts at tracking the admin of leakedsource.com - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/02/who-ran-leakedsource-com/ Sometimes I wonder if some of his "anonymous hacker" sources could be him... -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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A whole 'nother kind of Texas Patriot (Cyber-Resistance to ICE)
by Razer 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

An appropriate use of technology. A heads-up for Immigrants around Austin Texas from a Patriotic American. More of this... RESIST! > Immigration pulling people over in the 78758 and 78753 area. Y'all be > careful. Be safe https://twitter.com/SLR_Jr/status/830075824867012609

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Apple Dicks Hardware Repairs
by grarpamp 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Apple Dicks Hardware Repairs https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/02/14/2349219/apple-will-fight-right… Apple is planning to fight proposed electronics "Right to Repair" legislation being considered by the Nebraska state legislature, according to a source within the legislature who is familiar with the bill's path through the statehouse. The legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops, and would require manufacturers to make diagnostic and service manuals available to the public. Nebraska is one of eight states that are considering right to repair bills; last month, Nebraska, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, and Wyoming introduced legislation. Last week, lawmakers in Illinois and Tennessee officially introduced similar bills. According to the source, an Apple representative, staffer, or lobbyist will testify against the bill at a hearing in Lincoln on March 9. ATT will also argue against the bill, the source said. The source told me that at least one of the companies plans to say that consumers who repair their own phones could cause lithium batteries to catch fire. So far, Nebraska is the only state to schedule a hearing for its legislation. Corp Bosses Angling For Upskirt Efficiency https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-14/new-office-sensors-know-… https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/11/daily-telegraph-to-withdraw-d… About a year ago, in a widely reported story, journalists at British newspaper the Telegraph found little black boxes installed under their desks. The devices, which had "OccupEye" emblazoned on them, detected if employees were at their workstations. Not shockingly, writers and editors were suspicious, worried that bosses were monitoring their moves, even their bathroom breaks. The National Union of Journalists complained to management about Big Brother-style surveillance. The company insisted the boxes were intended to reduce energy costs, ensuring that empty cubicles weren't overheated or over-air-conditioned, but the damage was done, and the devices were removed. Sensors that keep tabs on more than temperature are already all over offices -- they're just less conspicuous and don't have names that suggest Bond villains. "Most people, when they walk into buildings, don't even notice them," says Joe Costello, chief executive officer of Enlighted, whose sensors, he says, are collecting data at more than 350 companies, including 15 percent of the Fortune 500. They're hidden in lights, ID badges, and elsewhere, tracking things such as conference room usage, employee whereabouts, and "latency" -- how long someone goes without speaking to another co-worker. Proponents claim the goal is efficiency: Some sensors generate heat maps that show how people move through an office, to help maximize space; others, such as OccupEye, tap into HVAC systems.

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Man jailed for refusing to reveal passwords.
by jim bell 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/justice-naps-man-jailed-16-mont… Francis Rawls, a former Philadelphia police sergeant, has been in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center for more than 16 months. His crime: the fired police officer has been found in contempt of court for refusing a judge's order to unlock two hard drives the authorities believe contain child pornography. Theoretically, Rawls can remain jailed indefinitely until he complies.Francis Rawls The federal court system appears to be in no hurry to resolve an unresolved legal issue: does the Fifth Amendment protect the public from being forced to decrypt their digital belongings? Until this is answered, Rawls is likely to continue to languish behind bars. A federal appeals court heard oral arguments about Rawls' plight last September. So far, there's been no response from the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia. Rawls was thrown in the slammer on September 30, 2015 "until such time that he fully complies" (PDF) with a court order to unlock his hard drives. A child-porn investigation focused on Rawls when prosecutors were monitoring the online network, Freenet. They executed a search warrant in 2015 at Rawls' home. The authorities say it's a "foregone conclusion" that illicit porn is on those drives. But they cannot know for sure unless Rawls hands them the alleged evidence that is encrypted with Apple's standard FileVault software. His plight is not garnering public sympathy. Men suspected of possessing child pornography never do. But his case highlights a vexing legal vacuum in this digital era, when encryption is becoming part of the national discussion. For years, both Apple and Microsoft have offered desktop users the ability to turn on full disk encryption. And data on Android and Apple mobile phones can easily be encrypted. Rawls' attorney, Federal Public Defender Keith Donoghue, declined comment for this story. But he has argued in court that his client is being "held without charges" (PDF) and that he should be released immediately.FURTHER READINGIndefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, feds say In winning the contempt-of-court order, the authorities cited a 1789 law known as the All Writs Act to compel (PDF) Rawls to decrypt—and he refused. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Department asserted in its legal battle with Apple, in which a magistrate judge ordered Apple to produce code to enable the FBI to decrypt the iPhone used by one of two shooters who killed 14 people at a San Bernardino County government building. The government dropped the case when the authorities paid a reported $1 million for a hack. The reason why Rawls is idling behind bars without charges is twofold: first, the nation's appellate courts have no deadlines on when they must issue an opinion. And second, the Supreme Court has never addressed the compelled decryption issue. The Supreme Court in 2000, however, ruled that demanding too much assistance from a suspect is unconstitutional because it would be akin to "telling an inquisitor the combination of a wall safe." However, the closest federal appellate case on point was decided by the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2012. That court, based in Denver, said a bank-fraud defendant must decrypt her laptop. But that ruling wasn't enforced because prosecutors obtained the password elsewhere. At issue in the decryption battle is the Fifth Amendment. At its core, it says people cannot be compelled to testify against themselves. But that is the real-world view. When it comes to the virtual world, things change—at least insofar as the government is concerned. The government claims that Rawls isn't being ordered to testify against himself and that he isn't even being ordered to produce his passwords.FURTHER READINGChild porn suspect jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives Rawls, the government argues, (PDF) "repeatedly asserts that the All Writs Act order requires him to divulge his passcodes, but he is incorrect: the order requires no testimony from [Rawls], and he may keep his passcodes to himself. Instead, the order requires only that [Rawls] produce his computer and hard drives in an unencrypted state." The Electronic Frontier Foundation told the court in a friend-of-the-court brief (PDF) that "compelled decryption is inherently testimonial because it compels a suspect to use the contents of their mind to translate unintelligible evidence into a form that can be used against them. The Fifth Amendment provides an absolute privilege against such self-incriminating compelled decryption." When the appeals court finally rules on Rawls' plight, it won't be the final word on the topic. That's because the nation's circuit courts of appeal are not obligated to follow the decisions of their sister circuits. This means uncertainty over this issue could linger until the nation's highest court weighs in. All the while, a jailed man named Francis Rawls, who the authorities believe is hiding kid smut, remains the poster child surrounding the debate on forced decryption.

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North Dakota Bans Anonymous Speech To Kill Protests and Enhance Facializing
by grarpamp 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/07/north-dakota-house-passes-bill-prohibitin… http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/pipeline-proteste… http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/21/09/398D050F00000578-0-image-a-5_1… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology Also, throwing food in protest is now a five year felony... http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan-inmates-will-face-5-year-felony… https://media.clickondetroit.com/document_dev/2017/02/13/Assault%20sign_899… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

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But but Moooslems! [TriggerWarning: Fundie xtian child-forker bashing]
by Razer 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Washington Post: Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married? https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/why-does-the-un… Michelle DeMello walked into the clerk’s office in Colorado thinking for sure someone would save her. She was 16 and pregnant. Her Christian community in Green Mountain Falls was pressuring her family to marry her off to her 19-year-old boyfriend. She didn’t think she had the right to say no to the marriage after the mess she felt she’d made. “I could be the example of the shining whore in town, or I could be what everybody wanted me to be at that moment and save my family a lot of honor,” DeMello said. She assumed that the clerk would refuse to approve the marriage. The law wouldn’t allow a minor to marry, right? Wrong, as DeMello, now 42, learned. While most states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, exceptions in every state allow children younger than 18 to marry, typically with parental consent or judicial approval. How much younger? Laws in 27 states do not specify an age below which a child cannot marry. Unchained At Last, a nonprofit I founded to help women resist or escape forced marriage in the United States, spent the past year collecting marriage license data from 2000 to 2010, the most recent year for which most states were able to provide information. We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older. Twelve states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide information on how many children had married there in that decade. Based on the correlation we identified between state population and child marriage, we estimated that the total number of children wed in America between 2000 and 2010 was nearly 248,000. Despite these alarming numbers, and despite the documented consequences of early marriages, including negative effects on health and education and an increased likelihood of domestic violence, some state lawmakers have resisted passing legislation to end child marriage — because they wrongly fear that such measures might unlawfully stifle religious freedom or because they cling to the notion that marriage is the best solution for a teen pregnancy. In this way, U.S. lawmakers are strongly at odds with U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls , released last year by the State Department, lists reducing child, early and forced marriage as a key goal. The strategy includes harsh words about marriage before 18, declaring it a “human rights abuse” that “produces devastating repercussions for a girl’s life, effectively ending her childhood” by forcing her “into adulthood and motherhood before she is physically and mentally mature.” The State Department pointed to the developing world, where 1 in 3 girls is married by age 18, and 1 in 9 is married by 15. While the numbers at home are nowhere near that dire, they are alarming. Many of the children married between 2000 and 2010 were wed to adults significantly older than they were, the data shows. At least 31 percent were married to a spouse age 21 or older. (The actual number is probably higher, as some states did not provide spousal ages.) Some children were married at an age, or with a spousal age difference, that constitutes statutory rape under their state’s laws. In Idaho, for example, someone 18 or older who has sex with a child under 16 can be charged with a felony and imprisoned for up to 25 years. Yet data from Idaho — which had the highest rate of child marriage of the states that provided data — shows that some 55 girls under 16 were married to men 18 or older between 2000 and 2010. Many of the states that provided data included categories such as “14 and younger,” without specifying exactly how much younger some brides and grooms were. Thus, the 12-year-olds we found in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina’s data might not have been the youngest children wed in America between 2000 and 2010. Also, the data we collected did not account for children wed in religious-only ceremonies or taken overseas to be married, situations that we at Unchained often see. Most states did not provide identifying information about the children, but Unchained has seen child marriage in nearly every American culture and religion, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular communities. We have seen it in families who have been in America for generations and immigrant families from all over the world. In my experience, parents who marry off their minor children often are motivated by cultural or religious traditions; a desire to control their child’s behavior or sexuality; money (a bride price or dowry); or immigration-related reasons (for instance, when a child sponsors a foreign spouse). And, of course, many minors marry of their own volition — even though in most realms of life, our laws do not allow children to make such high-stakes adult decisions. Parental control over her sexuality was why Sara Siddiqui, 36, was married at 15. Her father discovered that she had a boyfriend from a different cultural background and told her she’d be “damned forever” if she lost her virginity outside of marriage, even though she was still a virgin. He arranged her Islamic wedding to a stranger, 13 years her senior, in less than one day; her civil marriage in Nevada followed when she was 16 and six months pregnant. “I couldn’t even drive yet when I was handed over to this man,” said Siddiqui, who was trapped in her marriage for 10 years. “I wasn’t ready to take care of myself, and I was thrown into taking care of a husband and being a mother.” Minors such as Siddiqui can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. Adults being pressured in this way have options, including access to domestic-violence shelters. But a child who leaves home is considered a runaway; the police try to return her to her family and could even charge our organization criminally if we were to get involved. Most domestic-violence shelters do not accept minors, and youth shelters typically notify parents that their children are there. Child-protective services are usually not a solution, either: Caseworkers point out that preventing legal marriages is not in their mandate. Those fleeing a forced marriage often have complex legal needs, but for children, obtaining legal representation is extremely difficult. Even if they can afford to pay attorney’s fees, contracts with children, including retainer agreements, generally can be voided by the child, making them undesirable clients to lawyers. Further, children typically are not allowed to file legal actions in their own names. Regardless of whether the union was the child’s or the parents’ idea, marriage before 18 has catastrophic, lifelong effects on a girl, undermining her health, education and economic opportunities while increasing her risk of experiencing violence. Women who marry at 18 or younger face a 23 percent higher risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer and stroke than do women who marry between ages 19 and 25, partly because early marriage can lead to added stress and forfeited education. Women who wed before 18 also are at increased risk of developing various psychiatric disorders, even when controlling for socio-demographic factors. American girls who marry before 19 are 50 percent more likely than their unmarried peers to drop out of high school and four times less likely to graduate from college. A girl who marries young is 31 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older, a striking figure that appears to be unrelated to preexisting differences in such girls. And, according to a global study, women who marry before 18 are three times more likely to be beaten by their spouses than women who wed at 21 or older. Ending child marriage should be simple. Every state can pass the legislation I’ve helped write to eliminate exceptions that allow marriage before age 18 — or set the marriage age higher than 18, in states where the age of majority is higher. New Jersey is the closest state to doing this, with a bill advancing in the legislature that would end all marriage before 18. Massachusetts recently introduced a similar bill. But when Virginia passed a bill last year to end child marriage, legislators added an exception for emancipated minors as young as 16, even though the devastating effects of marriage before 18 do not disappear when a girl is emancipated. Bills introduced last year in New York and Maryland languished and eventually died, though Maryland’s was just reintroduced. Other states have not acted at all. “Some of my colleagues were stuck in an old-school way of thinking: A girl gets pregnant, she needs to get married,” said Maryland Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, who introduced the bill to end child marriage in her state. Only nine states still allow pregnancy exceptions to the marriage age, as such exceptions have been used to cover up rape and to force girls to marry their rapists. Consider Sherry Johnson of Florida, who said she was raped repeatedly as a child and was pregnant by 11, at which time her mother forced her to marry her 20-year-old rapist under Florida’s pregnancy exception in the 1970s. Additionally, teenage mothers who marry and divorce are more likely to experience economic deprivation and instability than those who do not. If the father wants to co-parent, he can establish paternity and provide insurance and other benefits to the baby without getting married. Legislators should remember that pregnant teenage girls are at increased risk of forced marriage. They need more protection, not less. Nor does ending child marriage illegally infringe on religious rights. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that incidentally forbid an act required by religion, if the laws do not specifically target religious practice. Besides, most religions tend to describe marriage as an important union between two willing partners. That sounds nothing like child marriage, which is often forced and which has close to a 70 percent chance of ending in divorce. “There was a concern that we would be offending certain cultures within our society,” said New York Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, who introduced an unsuccessful bill last year to end child marriage in her state. “So instead of seeing this as an abuse of young women, [some legislators] were seeing this as something we needed to protect for certain cultures.” Betsy Layman, 37, shares Paulin’s goal. Layman was 27 when she escaped the marriage that had been arranged for her in her Orthodox Jewish community in New York when she was 17, to a man she had known for 45 minutes. Even after she fled with her three children, the repercussions of her marriage continued to plague her. She was a single mother with a high school equivalency certificate, no work experience and no money for child care. The temporary and part-time jobs she managed to get couldn’t cover the bills. “I was on Section 8, Medicaid and food stamps,” Layman said. “There were times there just was not enough food for dinner.” When the electric company shut off her power for nonpayment, she would light candles around the house and tell her children there was a blackout. Only when her youngest child reached school age was she able to find full-time employment and gain some stability. “Legislators have the power to prevent what happened to me from happening to another 17-year-old girl,” Layman said. “I beg you to end child marriage.”

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"Left Attacks ACLU for Defending Milo Yiannopoulos’ Right to Free Speech"
by jim bell 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

http://observer.com/2017/02/aclu-defends-breitbart-milo-yiannopoulos-free-s… [partial quote follows] "On February 1, Breitbart technology editor and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California-Berkeley. Students at the university protested his speech, and radicals—many of whom may not have been students—turned violent."Yiannopoulos’ speech was canceled for safety concerns, as demonstrators threw rocks and fireworks at the building where the speech was set to take place. What began as a speech to 500 students expanded to thousands as the media (including this writer) wrote countless articles about the riots and Yiannopoulos."If the Left wanted to shut Yiannopoulos down, they failed by behaving in such a manner that raised his profile. Who knows how many people wondered who this person was who caused such a backlash, and how many of those people then found at least some of what Yiannopoulos says to be acceptable?"In a follow-up article on the riots, Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow spoke to a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, Lee Rowland. Rowland told Petrow that she finds much of Yiannopoulos’ speech to be “absolutely hateful an despicable—but those adjectives don’t remove his speech from the Constitution’s protection.”[end of partial quote]Jim Bell's comments follow:The ACLU is being correct, at least here. They were also attacked in the late 1970's, for standing up for the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. That march (which never actually happened) was humorously portrayed in John Belushi's movie, "Blues Brothers". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0 (Head Nazi is played by actor Henry Gibson, perhaps most famous for the TV show, "Laugh-In". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61ZJpMDBzU Jim bellT

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