The governor’s signature has made Vermont the fourth US state to legalize assisted suicide, which Shumlin hailed as a victory for the few terminally ill Americans whose suffering surpasses their will to live.“This bill does not compel anyone to do anything that they don’t choose in sound mind to do,” he said before signing the End of Life Choices law on Monday. “All it does is give those who are facing terminal illness, are facing excruciating pain, a choice in a very carefully regulated way.”The state legislature last week approved the legislation, which allows anyone over the age of 18 with an “incurable and irreversible disease” and a maximum of six months to live to acquire a prescription for lethal drugs.The measure requires at least two doctors to make the medical determination whether or not a patient qualifies for physician-assisted suicide. A patient wishing to end their life must make an initial oral request at least 15 days before receiving lethal drugs, and a written and oral request to die 48 hours before receiving them. Two “disinterested” individuals that are neither related to the patient nor the healthcare providers must witness these requests. The law takes effect immediately, and state officials are now scrambling to pull up guidelines for doctors who plan to administer lethal drugs.Bob Ullrich, a board member of the advocacy group Patient Choices Vermont, has been pushing for the legalization of assisted suicide for more than 10 years. He stood beside Gov. Shumlinon Monday, witnessing the governor sign the bill into law.“It means peace of mind and comfort to a lot of people, including me, that I hope no one ever has to use the law, but to know every day of your life that it’s there should such an occurrence happen,” he told The Burlington Free Press after the signing.Vermont is the first state that has passed this measure through the legislative assembly. In Oregon and Washington, assisted suicide was approved through general elections, and in Montana, the Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that physicians may aid terminally ill patients who are on their death beds already.Across the US, eight other states have introduced bills allowing physician-assisted suicide, while two states introduced bills banning the procedure, according to information from the Death with Dignity National Center.But while Vermont’s governor celebrated the signing of the bill – which coincidentally fell on his father’s 88thbirthday – the signing ceremony also drew out numerous opponents.The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, a group that opposes the new law, said it will now focus its efforts on helping health care providers find alternative ways to health the terminally ill.“We now have state-sanctioned suicide in Vermont,” Edward Mahoney, president of the group, told Reuters. “If the state won’t protect Vermonters, we will try.”Carrie Handy, a Vermont resident and member of True Dignity, said her group will now try to help patients who feel pressured into requesting their own deaths.“We would have liked to defeat the legislation,” Handy told The Burlington Free Press. “Now that it’s been enacted we feel our role needs to be for the time being serving as a watchdog organization. We do feel this legislation puts vulnerable people at risk.”But even though doctor-assisted suicide is now legal in Vermont, experts estimate that very few people will turn to this option. Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Harry Chen told AP that he only expects doctors to write out 10 to 20 lethal prescriptions each year, with an even smaller number of patients actually choosing to self-administer the drugs.Chen’s estimate comes from figures in Oregon, where 673 patients died from ingesting lethal barbiturates prescribed between 1997 to 2012. The most ever prescribed in a year was 77, which occurred in 2012.“It’s used by a very small number, but it brings comfort to a much greater number knowing it’s there,” Chen said.But supporters in Connecticut and New Jersey – states that have recently considered similar bills – hope that Vermont’s decision will influence other US legislatures in passing similar measures.”Vermont’s law reflects another normalization of the practice of aid in dying in the practice of medicine,” Kathryn Tucker, director of legal affairs at Compassion and Choices, told Reuters. “Support for patients to be empowered and choose aid and dying is growing. So I think this is an important step in moving that forward.” … Read More
Vermont approves assisted suicide bill
State lawmakers on Monday approved the bill, which is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Peter Shumlin, who has already pledged he would sign it. Legalizing assisted suicide “gives Vermonters who are suffering from a terminal illness and anticipating excruciating pain peace of mind in knowing that this is an option,” Shumlin told the Wall Street Journal.Physician-assisted suicide is already legal in Oregon and Washington, where it was approved through general elections and enacted in 1997 and 2009, respectively. A similar bill failed to garner enough voter support to pass in Massachusetts last November, and was defeated 51 percent to 49 percent. Vermont is the first US state to pass such a measure through the legislative assembly.Vermont’s legislation will let anyone over the age of 18 with an “incurable and irreversible disease” and a maximum of six months to live to get a prescription for lethal drugs. The measure requires two doctors to make the medical determination whether or not a patient qualifies for assisted suicide. The patient must also be capable of self-administering drugs, which would be difficult in the rare instances in which someone is fully paralyzed.In order to obtain the lethal drugs, a terminally ill patient must make written and oral requests to the prescribing physician and wait at least 48 hours before receiving the drugs. The requests would need to be witnessed by two “disinterested” individuals, which the bill defines as anyone that is not related to the patient, doctors or employees of the healthcare facility. Doctors will not be obliged to help the patient with his or her suicide.The state of Vermont has held internal debates on doctor-assisted suicide for about a decade, and while the decision might influence other states, Shumlin indicated that not every legislature has worked on it as long as his.“We’ve had a very respectful, dignified conversation about a difficult issue where there are strongly held beliefs on both sides,” he told Politico.Vermont’s House passed the bill 75-65, after the Senate’s passage last week, but some critics and religious institutions have starkly criticized it. “This, in our opinion, is a terrible thing to have happen to our state… because it sort of sanctions suicide as a way of dealing with many end-of-life health care issues,” Gerald McMurray, a board member at True Dignity Vermont, told Politico. The organization describes itself as a citizen-led, grassroots initiative in opposition to assisted suicide in Vermont.The Roman Catholic Dioceses of Burlington has also called on Vermont residents to urge the bill’s defeat before lawmakers voted on it Monday.“Physician-assisted suicide will forever transform the role of physician from the one who preserves life to one who takes life,” the dioceses told the WSJ.But for the governor, the legislature’s passage of the bill is a victory that both he and his 80-year-old mother are celebrating.“For me, it’s watching my own parents grow older and them begging me… to ensure that they grow older in a state where they have some peace of mind that if they have a terminal illness that is extraordinarily painful, they have this option,” Shumlin told Politico.Bills legalizing physician-assisted suicide have also been introduced in Connecticut, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Kansas. … Read More
Minnesota on the verge of becoming 12th state to embrace marriage equality
The Minnesota House on Thursday afternoon approved legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, moving the state one step closer to embracing marriage equality. The state House voted 75-59 to extend the freedom to marry to same-sex couples with just two weeks left in the 2012 legislative session. The…
Indefinite detentions at Guantanamo must stop – ex-US ambassador to Mexico
Guantanamo, America’s infamous prison camp at the US naval base in Cuba, has been under new media scrutiny since February as the hunger strike within the detention facility has been spreading. While the officials have admitted that one hundred of the 166 detainees have joined the action, their lawyers talk of at least 130 of those being involved. What started as a protest against heavy-handed searches, has grown into an action against indefinite detentions. Over half of detainees have been cleared for release but cannot leave due to various administrative obstacles and fear to die in the prison. The weakened state of the inmates has already led to the authorities force-feeding them through nasal tubes – a practice which was condemned by the UN’s human rights office as a form of torture. The co-chair of the Task Force constitution project, former member of the Congress and ambassador to Mexico, James Jones, sat with RT to discuss the Guantanamo issue. He believes indefinite detentions should be stopped and that in the prison the US acts against own declared principles of justice. James R. Jones Born in 1939, grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma Received his B.A. degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1961 Graduated with a law degree (LLB) in 1964 Served briefly in the Army Counterintelligence Corps in 1964-1965 Began his practice of law in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1964 Served as the legislative assistant for Congressman Ed Edmondson in 1961-1964 Member of Congress (D-OK) in 1973-1987 Ambassador to Mexico in 1993-1997 Chairman of the World Affairs Councils of America in 2003 Started the Constitution Project’s Guantanamo Task Force in December 2010 RT: President Obama at the very beginning of his presidency signed an executive order to stop torture. But human rights organizations say indefinite detention itself is torture. Is it fair to say that the Obama administration is engaged in torture now?James Jones: I don’t think so. I think he made a lot of good moves when he came in the office. Our conclusion is doing things by executive order can be changed by the next president very easily. And so the kinds of protections, human rights protections that we are talking about should be done by the congress and should be part of the statutory – part of the laws of the United States – not just the executive order. Yes, it’s much better than it was. We still have some concerns about policy on the drones, for example, but the kinds of abuses that we found over the years since 9/11 do not seem to be practiced these days.RT: What about indefinite detentions?JJ: That’s the one our Task Force was unanimous. We do not believe that if fits into the laws and ethics and the values of America to have indefinite detention and to not allow a court of law and the adjudication of charges against a person to go through orderly passes. More than half of those detainees at Guantanamo currently have already been cleared by the US government. That means all the intelligence, the military, the law enforcement, and all the agencies involved have said there is no reason to hold these people. And they are still being indefinitely detained at Guantanamo. We feel very strongly, that they are to be released and that should be done immediately. We are calling the president to tell his secretary of defense to issue that order to release them.RT: Defense lawyers argue that even with the transfer restrictions in place the law even now allows for the administration to use wavers to release some of these men and yet those wavers are not being used. Why?JJ: Probably politics comes into that. Everything that the loyal opposition wants to criticize the administration for being soft on terrorism and things like that, so, I think all those things go into the decision, I don’t know personally…RT: What about being soft on the rule of law?JJ: No, I agree with that. That’s our position that we should meticulously follow the rule of law, that’s what we preach all over the world, we preach our values, and we actually prosecuted similar cases against other countries, which have not followed what we say we are to do. We are not following and practicing what we are preaching. And I think that should be stopped. What I am saying is – this is a highly political thing. And the only reason I can figure out why the administration is not releasing those, for which they have no case whatsoever, is politics.RT: Politics in what sense? Can you explain it?JJ: Sometimes politics doesn’t make any sense. It’s the fear, that if you release some of these prisoners that have been accused of being terrorists in the past, and they do something else, or you find them going into terrorist organizations, you’ll pay a heavy political price for that. I think it has to be the only reason why they are not released.RT: So, many of these men have fallen victim not just to their wrongful capture, but now to US politician assumptions of what they may or may not do. Do you think the US is acting on fears and assumptions rather than what’s lawful or not?JJ: I don’t want to comment on what I believe the administration is recently doing, for what reason. But what we are trying to do in our task force, is to find those things we could either via interviews or public information ascertain is accurate. And what we found and what we concluded is that indefinite detention for these people – more than for half of those at Guantanamo should not continue.RT: Do you think it’s a form of torture – indefinite detention itself?JJ: I don’t know if there is a legal definition of that, but I think it’s been expressed by many ethicists, that to have indefinite detention with no prospects for being released is a form of torture and does lead to things like hunger strikes and things like that.RT: Currently to defense lawyers it seems like a dead end. What will change the status quo in your opinion?JJ: I think there are a couple of things. Number one – there are still legal processes that they can go through, and I think some of the legal defenses are being prepared at present time. The other – is just politics itself. The appeal to the better instincts of the United States, the appeal to our sense of values, to our sense of ethics.RT: Who has to appeal?JJ: I think you have to develop constituency for this. One of the reasons we put out this report and have disseminated it quite widely is for those organizations or people or leaders or politicians or public officials, who believe as we do, that we have a value system that has to be appalled, that they will get active in this and they will start creating a sense of “we have to do what’s right”. And that leads to political decisions that are going the right direction. Up until this point it’s been sort of covered up. We haven’t talked about it. All we talked about is the terrorism itself. Those, who’ve been detained, we assume – and this is again against our principles and against our legal history. We are presuming that they are guilty of something, even though we can’t prove it. And that’s just the absurd of what our rule of law says, that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.RT: This hunger strike do you think it will make a difference? JJ: It might. I obviously wished they didn’t have a hunger strike. It’s not only bad and has permanent damage to those who are participating in it. It damages the United States around the world and our reputation, but I don’t know if it’s going to make a difference or not.RT: What if someone dies there?JJ: I think it’s terrible, particularly for someone who has been pre-cleared by all of our government agencies and should have been released. I think that’s terrible black eye for the United States. The Constitution Project is a non-profit think tank in the US that builds bipartisan consensus on significant constitutional and legal questions. The Constitution Project’s work is divided between two programs: the Rule of Law Program and the Criminal Justice Program. Each program houses bipartisan committees focused on specific constitutional issues. The Constitution Project has a Guantanamo Task Force committee that was started at the end of 2010. James R. Jones is one of its eleven co-chairs. The Task Force project examines the federal government’s policies and actions related to the capture, detention and prosecution of suspected terrorists in US custody. It also seeks to provide the American people with information about indefinite detentions at Guantanamo of suspects captured by the U.S. government, as well as their past and current treatment there. RT: The New York Times has recently published the plea of a Yemeni national, who’s been imprisoned at Guantanamo without chargers of any kind for more than eleven years. And here’s what he writes: “No one seriously thinks I am a threat, but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a guard for Osama Bin Laden, but that was nonsense, like something out of American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore, but they don’t seem to care how long I sit here either. The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees to Yemen. This makes no sense, I am a human being, not a passport. And I deserve to be treated like one.” The New York Times, of course, deserves credit for publishing this letter of despair of this man. But it seems unless it’s on TV, unless it’s part of the national discussion, national conversation, few will actually know and care about that. Why is it not a part of the national conversation?JJ: Nobody is taking it on. That happened in the civil rights legislation. I was in the Johnson Whitehouse and it took many years before we were able to get a constituency says we have done wrong by African-American follow Americans. And we need to change that.RT: But they were here. They were in the face. But those Guantanamo detainees are there and nobody seems to care about them.JJ: I understand that. But you take undocumented immigrants. They were here, but nobody seemed to care about them until just recently – we are going to get an immigration bill. I think this going to be fair to the immigrants, who are here – both legally and illegally.RT: They need to win votes. And those Guantanamo detainees are foreign nationals, who will not deliver political victories or any political scores. Nobody seems to be interested in that.JJ: Well, what I am saying is until you highlight and publicize but spotlight the kinds of treatment they are getting, you are not going to have anything done. That happened in every movement in the US history. There have been injustices, then you first of all have to acknowledge the injustice, you then have to start developing a dialogue of the people of the US, who then demand political action to be taken to correct those injustices. I think that’s what’s going to happen here. But first of all you have to unveil it, you have to show what we have done was wrong.RT: As far as renditions, a number of countries like Canada, apologized, offered compensations to former detainees, faced lawsuits, had to settle for millions of dollars for their secret services involvement in the renditions of those detainees. The UK is the example, why wouldn’t the US do that?JJ: As I understand, we suspended some of the international treaties that President Reagan had actually proposed 25 years ago, the UN convention against torture and inhuman treatment, etc. In those particular legal documents you do have means of redressing the wrongs that were made. If we restore our adherence to those particular laws and treaties, there will be an ability to have injustices redressed.RT: Something that I found very interesting. After all these rendition cases the UK Court of Appeals ruled that the government could not sort state secrets or use state secret evidence in its defense stating that “allegations of wrongdoing had to be heard in public”. But that’s the UK. And I want to ask you about the US. What kind of a message does it send when you pull out the state secrets card to shut down or all torture/abuse related lawsuits, but you sent to jail the person, who blew the whistle on torture?JJ: We addressed that in a report to a certain degree, because, for example, Lithuania and Poland both were initiating investigations as to the black sites that were in those two countries. And whether there was torture and mistreatment of prisoners there, detainees there, and the US has not cooperated with that under the so-called state secrets umbrella. And we’ve suggested that we should cooperate with the countries there. And that’s one of the recommendations in our report.RT: Not to use the state secrets card?JJ: Yes and there are ways to cooperate and to give information harming either personnel under the state secrets doctrine, or our particular treaty relationships with other countries. But we are not cooperating at all, as I understand it. … Read More
Pirate Site Blocking Legislation Approved By Norwegian Parliament
Issues surrounding online file-sharing have existed in Norway for many years but events leading up to the relatively recent push for legislative change can be traced back to frustrations linked to the persistence of The Pirate Bay.
In March 2009, the IFPI and several local movie studios began putting pressure on Telenor, Norway’s largest Internet Service Provider. They asked the ISP to block its subscribers from accessing TPB, but Telenor refused.
The ISP insisted there was no legal basis for the action, and they were right. After being taken to court, a subsequent ruling clarified that the ISP had no obligation to block The Pirate Bay. In February 2010 a rightsholder appeal was rejected and it soon became evident that blocking would only be possible following a change in the law.
Just over a year later in May 2011 the Ministry of Culture announced that it had put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act. In January of this year the amendments were presented and on Monday they were put to the vote in parliament. The Labor Progress Party, Socialist Left Party, Christian Democrats and Conservatives all voted in favor of the bill, while only the opposition voted against.
The proposed amendments, which observers say will almost certainly be signed into law, are designed to make it easier to chase down both enablers and end-users of unauthorized material.
In the case of the former, rightsholders may apply to the courts to have ISPs “prevent or impede access” to sites that have “extensively made available material that clearly violates copyrights.”
Website owners will be named as opposing parties in such procedures but if the owner of the site is unknown or has an unknown address “..the case can be decided without the person concerned being given an opportunity to comment.”
In the real world this means that should website owners wish to remain anonymous, they can, but blocking their site will become somewhat of a formality. Expect this to be the case in most instances.
In dealing with end-users of unauthorized material (i.e the general public) the amendments are designed to make it easier for rightsholders to pursue individuals without falling foul of Norway’s data protection laws. Once passed, the new legislation will exempt personal data from the Personal Data Act when processing of such data is necessary for the pursuit of a legal claim.
“If it is likely that copyright or other rights under this law have been violated, the court may, notwithstanding the confidentiality provided by the Electronic Communications Act, at the request of the licensee, require a provider of electronic communications to disclose information that identifies the owner of the subscription used for the violation,” the amendments read.
There are some safeguards to protect subscribers, but whether they will come into effect for straightforward infringement cases remains to be seen.
“In order that the petition should be granted, the court must find that the arguments in favor of disclosure outweighs the interest of confidentiality. In assessing the court shall weigh the interests of the subscriber against the licensee’s interest in gaining access to the information taking into account severity, scope and effects of the violation,” the amendment adds.
Jens Christian Koller of the Parliamentary Information Service told Teknofil.no that while the amendments still have to progress through a second parliamentary hearing before formal adoption, it is very rare for the outcome to differ from that of the first.
“In practice therefore these amendments to the Copyright Act have been adopted, but it is still not correct to say that it has already been formally adopted by the Parliament. What you can say is that it is now very difficult to stop this law,” he concludes.
Source: Pirate Site Blocking Legislation Approved By Norwegian Parliament
Grad missiles, anti-aircraft guns: Armed men surround Libya Justice Ministry
Upwards of 20 pickup trucks mounted with machine guns, grad missiles and anti-aircraft guns have positioned themselves at the ministry’s gates, blocking access to the building, AFP reports. Despite the heavy artillery, the men were not overtly hostile and no shots have reportedly been fired.”Several armed men in vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft guns surrounded the Ministry of Justice,” Walid Ben Rabha, head of the ministry’s information department, said on Tuesday.”They asked the minister and staff present to leave their offices and close the ministry.”Armed protests have gripped several government offices throughout Libya in recent days. Dozens of gunmen in Tripoli besieged the Foreign Ministry on Sunday, calling on authorities to enact a law which will ban former aides to Gaddafi from serving in the government. On Monday, disgruntled police officers firing their guns into the air stormed the Interior Ministry demanding higher wages. The country’s national television station was also targeted in a separate attack. The growing unrest prompted the General National Congress (GNC) – the legislative authority of Libya – to push up its next scheduled sitting from Tuesday to Sunday. A spokesman said the postponement would give deputies time to study the legislation the protesters are demanding. If passed, the law would result in the ouster of several long-serving ministers, including the Congress’s leader itself; depending on the final draft. Perceived legislative foot-dragging has incensed many Libyans eager to see the so-called Political Isolation Law come into effect.”If they don’t pass the political isolation law, we will protest here and topple the government,” a demonstrator who identified himself as Faisal Alaqsa told Reuters. However, Deputy Head of the GNC Salah Makhzoum countered claims the bill wouldn’t go through, saying delays in the laws implementation were part of the normal political process. He further said the law had already been passed in principle, but that political factions within the GNC had been given 13 days to hammer out the details. In March, protesters barricaded members of the GNC inside parliament for hours, urging lawmakers to adopt measures barring Gaddafi-era officials from political life. Once the siege was lifted, gunmen targeted GNC chief Mohammed Megaryef’s motorcade, although no one was injured in the assault.Tension between authorities and armed militias have intensified following a government campaign to rid Tripoli of armed militias entrenched throughout the capital. Since Gaddafi’s death, Tripoli and other Libyan cities have been plagued by violence, lawlessness and factional infighting. The government has been fighting an uphill battle to assert its authority throughout the country, much of which is still controlled by rebel groups who failed to disband following the 2011 uprising. Fears of a security breakdown in the capital were heightened following a car bomb which targeted the French embassy in Tripoli last week, injuring two French guards and a girl living nearby. The intensification of armed protests over the last several days has further highlighted security concerns, prompting the German embassy to halt some activities. On Sunday, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan denounced the rash of paramilitary actions targeting government offices, calling on Libyans to throw their support behind the government in resisting armed groups “who want to destabilize the country and terrorize foreigners and embassies.” However, he ruled out the possibility that authorities would meet the armed protest with force. … Read More
‘Vote against euro’: Icelandic center-right opposition wins in parliamentary poll
The Independence Party won 19 seats, and will now unite to form a coalition with the agrarian-centrist Progressive Party, which won 24.4 percent of the vote and 19 legislative seats.In the 2008 elections, the Independence and Progressive parties lost to the Social Democrats, their main rivals this year, following a massive economic collapse.The new coalition is “against joining the euro, and that’s what the Icelanders are voting for now,” Harlan Green, editor of Popular Economics.com told RT. “There are some sticking points, but I think the Icelanders just said they don’t want to join the euro, they’re doing quite well with their krona.” The crisis in Iceland, which led to skyrocketing unemployment, bankruptcies and widespread popular protests, is far from over even after five years, Green said, though the situation has improved slightly.“It takes a long time to recover during such a serious recession, some call it a depression for Iceland. The fact is that their three largest banks now have seven quarters of GDP growth, 2.5 percent, something like that. Tourism is back: In fact, they have quite appreciable inflation now because the consumers’ incomes are rising, and they allow it to happen. Because of all these issues, they’re on the path to recovery, but certainly, they aren’t there yet.”Iceland’s path should have been mimicked by other struggling European powers, Green explained: “If Greece had known better, they’d probably would have dropped out of the euro, they should have gone back to their drachma… [Icelanders] are very adventuresome, and they’re willing to take a chance to keep their own independence.” … Read More
