organization:district court

Maintaining a Jewish majority: Jerusalem Municipality to demolish entire Palestinian neighborhood, leaving 550 people without a roof over their heads | B’Tselem
►http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem/20190613_wadi_yasul

Ever since 1967, planning policy in Jerusalem has been geared toward establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic majority in the city. Under this policy, it is nearly impossible to obtain a building permit in Palestinian neighborhoods. The outline plans the city has prepared for these neighborhoods are largely aimed at restricting and limiting building opportunities in Palestinian neighborhoods. One way the plans do so is by designating vast areas as open green spaces, thereby barring Palestinians from building there. The resulting housing shortage forces Palestinian residents to build without permits. At the turn of the millennium, the city estimated that about 20,000 housing units had been built without a permit in East Jerusalem. This estimate was made before the Separation Barrier cut off Kafr Aqab and Shu’fat Refugee Camp from the city. Since that time, many high-rises have been built in those areas.

The justices who heard the appeals that residents filed against the demolition orders issued for their homes chose to follow in the footsteps of all previous Israeli courts. They chose to ignore this policy which has been applied openly for more than fifty years. Instead, they focused solely on the question of whether or not the residents had building permits. District Court Judge Chana Miriam Lomp held that, “the residents have no one to blame but themselves,” as they had chosen to build without a permit and did not wait for planning conditions to change. Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron refused to consider the residents’ arguments regarding planning discrimination and the fact that the Jerusalem Municipality deliberately avoids promoting a plan that would regulate construction in the area, saying they were not pertinent “to a criminal proceeding hearing.”

Chelsea Manning’s May 10 Video Statement
▻https://www.aaronswartzday.org/chelsea-may10

Chelsea Manning speaks from the heart in a YouTube video on May 10, 2019.
Chelsea was incarcerated for 63 days for refusing to testify to a Grand Jury.
28 of those days were under solitary confinement conditions.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDZGRRk4MnM&feature=youtu.be

Good evening.

Two months ago, the federal government summoned me before a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

As a general principle, I object to grand juries.

Prosecutors run grand juries behind closed doors and in secret, without a judge present.

Therefore, I declined to cooperate or answer any questions.

Based on my refusal to answer questions, District Court Judge Hilton ordered me held in contempt until the grand jury ended.

Yesterday, the grand jury expired, and I left the Alexandria Detention Center.

Throughout this ordeal, an incredible spring of solidarity and love boiled over. I received thousands of letters, including dozens to hundreds of them a day.

This means the world to me, and keeps me going.

Jail and prisons exist as a dark stain on our society, with more people confined in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.

During my time, I spent 28 days in solitary confinement–a traumatic experience I already endured for a year in prison before.

Only a few months before reincarceration, I recieved gender confirmation surgery.

This left my body vulnerable to injury and infection, leading to possible complications that I am now seeking treatment for.

My absence severely hampers both my public and private life.

The law requires that civil contempt only be used to coerce witnesses to testify.

As I cannot be coerced, it instead exists as an additional punishment on top of the seven years I served.

Last week, I handwrote a statement outlining the fact I will never agree to testify before this or any other grand jury.

Several of my closest family, friends and colleagues supported this fact.

Our statements were filed in court.

The government knows I can’t be coerced.

When I arrive at the courthouse this coming Thursday, what happened last time will occur again.

I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury.

Throughout the last decade, I accepted full responsibity for my actions.

Facing jail again, this week, does not change this fact.

The prosecutors deliberately place me in an impossible situation: I either go to jail, or turn my back on my prisons.

The truth is, the government can construct no prison worse than to betray my conscience or my principles.

Thank you, and good night.

Israel’s attorney general backs officer’s libel suit against ‘Jenin, Jenin’ director

Avichai Mendelblit cites ‘public interest’ to explain his decision to support a second civil lawsuit against Mohammed Bakri for his 2002 documentary

read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.830284

In an unusual move, the attorney general is to support a defamation of character lawsuit by a reserve officer against the director of the controversial 2002 documentary “Jenin, Jenin.”
Avichai Mendelblit’s office said in a statement Wednesday that he decided to support the suit against Mohammed Bakri because of the public interest in the case.
While Israeli law allows the attorney general to take sides in a civil suit if the case involves the public interest, in practice the privilege is rarely exercised.
In November 2016 Nissim Meghnagi sued Bakri for 2.6 million shekels (around $745,000).
Meghnagi took part in Operation Defensive Shield, the military operation in the West Bank refugee camp in Jenin that was the subject of Bakri’s film.
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In his suit, Meghnagi claims that he appears in and was named in the movie, and that the film libeled Israeli soldiers by presenting them as war criminals.
Bakri argues that the purpose of the suit is persecution and political silencing, and says the case is without merit.
The movie makes no accusation against Meghnagi, says Bakri: The camera panned the plaintiff for mere seconds, and he cannot be identified as the person behind the deeds described in the movie.
On Thursday the District Court of the Central District is scheduled to hear Bakri’s request to reject the lawsuit.
Mendelblit’s announcement throwing his weight behind the suit followed requests from Meghnagi himsef and from Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot.
Five years ago, a district court, ruling on a lawsuit by five soldiers who participated in Operation Defensive Shield, found that Bakri had slandered soldiers but the plaintiffs were not slandered personally. The Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Then-Attorney General Menachem Mazuz sided with the soldiers.
The court said that plaintiffs who did not appear in the documentary had no grounds for personal damages, but it also ruled that the movie constituted “libel, at the base of which is bad faith and a deliberate tendency to distort things.” Three times the plaintiffs appealed for another hearing, with Mazuz’s support, to no avail.
Mendelblit said in his announcement that in contrast to the previous proceedings, this plaintiff actually appears in the movie while the narrator accuses the Israeli soldiers of looting. Hence his support for Meghnagi, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves, in the context of public interest. Mendelblit noted that the movie is still bring distributed and shown.
“Jenin, Jenin” was first screened in April 2002 at the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem cinematheques. In November 2002, the Israel Film Council banned its distribution to Israeli theaters. The High Court of Justice voided that decision on the grounds of freedom of expression, bucking the council and also the attorney general. “Israeli society can cope with expressions of this sort,” the court ruled.

In 2014, then-Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein rejected pleas by representatives of soldiers and their families to open a criminal investigation into Bakri, pursuant to libel law. With that, he was in agreement with his two predecessors.

Stop the music
By Charles Duan
▻http://boingboing.net/2015/07/28/music.html

In the District Court for the Central District of California
Eugene L. Whitman v. Alfred Vail Enterprises, Inc.
COMPLAINT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
February 18, 2044

comes now plaintiff, Eugene L. Whitman, by and through his attorneys, and bringing a complaint against Alfred Vail Enterprises, Inc., states:

1. Plaintiff Whitman is a songwriter and composer of the popular song ’Taking It Back.’

2. On January 14, 2044, Defendant Vail Enterprises first distributed the now-hit song ’Straight Focus.’

3. ’Straight Focus’ includes an eight-note sample from ’Taking It Back.’ Vail Enterprises accordingly infringed Whitman’s copyright by making an unauthorized derivative work.

Wherefore, Whitman prays for judgment against Vail Enterprises as follows:

A. A permanent injunction prohibiting Vail Enterprises from continuing to infringe Whitman’s copyright;

B. Destruction of all copies of ’Straight Focus’ in Vail Enterprises’ possession; and

C. An order requiring Vail Enterprises to erase the song ’Straight Focus’ from the memories of all persons residing in the United States.

#copyright #drm

State of Michigan Incredibly Claims It Has The Right To ’Regulate Sexual Relationships’ -
▻http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/18/michigan-claims-right-regulate-sexual-relationships

State of Michigan Incredibly Claims It Has The Right To ‘Regulate Sexual Relationships’
Author: Randa Morris September 18, 2013 9:33 am
What does the right to ’regulate sexual relationships’ even mean? Will the State of Michigan will start requiring permits for authorized activities?

What does the right to ‘regulate sexual relationships’ even mean? Will the State of Michigan will start requiring permits for authorized activities?

On September 9, 2013 Attorneys for the state of Michigan filed paperwork in District Court asserting the state’s right to “regulate sexual relationships.” The court filing is in response to a civil action filed earlier this by Plaintiff Deboer. Deboer filed a suit against the state’s unconstitutional same sex marriage ban, which denies same sex couples the right to marry or to adopt children. In the state’s response, filed on behalf of Governor Rick Snyder, the Michigan attorney general claims:

“One of the paramount purposes of marriage in Michigan — and at least 37 other states that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman — is, and has always been, to regulate sexual relationships between men and women so that the unique procreative capacity of such relationships benefits rather than harms society.”

Far from being a casual statement made off the cuff, this is a statement that has been carefully crafted by the state’s attorneys, and undoubtedly reflects the position held by Snyder administration.

The state not only claims the authority to regulate sexual relationships, but states that regulating sexual relationships is the paramount purpose of marriage in Michigan.

Attorneys also make the claim that the state has the right to regulate procreation, and argument which has been tried and debunked at least a thousand times already. If procreation were the primary reason to allow or not allow marriage there would be a lot of people denied marriage certificates, not just gay and lesbian couples. Infertile couples, for instance, and couples who have passed the age of “procreation.”

If the court were somehow to rule in favor of the state in this case, it is logical to assume that marriages between senior citizens or between couples that cannot conceive, could (hypothetically) be denied using the same ruling. Could the state also move ban sex for any reason other than procreation? A good many GOP and Tea Party reps across the country would certainly support such laws.

This claim goes even further beyond the procreation argument though. The Snyder administrations asserts that the state has the right to regulate sex. How many citizens in the state of Michigan realized that the “paramount purpose of marriage in the state of Michigan” was for the state to regulate their sexual relationships?

A ruling that upholds the state’s right to “regulate sexual relationships” could also (hypothetically) open the doors for any number of laws banning sexual activity, both inside and outside of marriage. Other states have attempted to outlaw anal sex and oral sex. What about sex outside of marriage? What about Adultery?

Maybe they’ll outlaw everything except the missionary position.

Or regulate the number of times a couple can have sex in a week or a month.

Maybe they’ll start requiring temporary sex permits — for legal and state approved sexual activities only, of course.

This is what a Tea Party controlled government looks like. A government that is preoccupied with regulating sexual relationships, while ignoring poverty, joblessness, crumbling schools, failing infrastructure. A government so big it can afford to watch your every activity in the bedroom but far too small to pass a single law to help it’s struggling people get out of bankruptcy.

Following court ruling, hundreds of Israelis to declare themselves ’without religion’ - Haaretz
►http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/following-court-ruling-hundreds-of-israelis-to-declare-themselves-without-r

Hundreds of people are expected to gather tonight on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to declare themselves “without religion.” The move follows the recent District Court ruling granting author Yoram Kaniuk recognition as “without religion” by the Interior Ministry.

The meeting, to be held in the abandoned building on Rothschild Boulevard which has become an ad-hoc community center for protesters, is being organized on Facebook by Tel Aviv poet Oded Carmeli. So far, about 600 people have confirmed they will be attending.