M&K news & views

Image from Library of Congress's website.

Lately, I have been inundated with a few hundred daily spam emails that do not list my email as the recipient. Such emails get filtered to a box that I have no choice but to empty daily without reviewing the messages. That is too many emails to wade through.

Previously, I would ask people not to send me mass emailings unless I am listed as a bcc party, lest I become the victim of reply-all messages. Now, I still do not want my e-address listed on the first, but I will not be reading the latter, either.

In short, I continue being a victim of the same spam for which I support robust First Amendment protection. Spammers: why alienate one of the people who supports your rights to robust spamming? Jon Katz.

For food-producing animals. life is no picnic, and usually is incredibly short. (Image from USDA's website.)

The global food price crisis is real and worsening. Many factors certainly contribute to the crisis, including rising energy costs (if only the globe's runaway appetite for fossil fuels could be tamed dramatically).

What would happen to global food prices if everyone stopped eating land animals and their milk and egg products? Insodoing, the inefficient livestock-producing system will be cut out of the nutrition-providing process. Instead, humans will get their nutrition in an incredibly more efficient and inexpensive process, straight from plants, and not just from roots and berries but from an endless list of delicious exotic and ordinary fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, beans, tubers, and their countless simple recipes. An acre of land used to grow grain for livestock provides dramatically less human nutrition than using the acre to grow food plants for humans.

What will happen to the environment if everyone stops eating land animals and their milk and egg products? Gone will be the tons of fecal pollution and choking methane produced by the legions of factory-farmed animals, the vast majority of whom are bred to deliver lunch and dinner to people's plates. Gone will be the enormous waste of water to irrigate land used to feed non-human animals, rather than using the water to irrigate fields for plants to be eaten directly by humans. Gone will be the wasted fossil fuels used to raise farm animals.

What does all of this have to do with my law practice? A critical focus of my law practice is on social justice. Slaughtering animals for people's unnecessary flesh cravings is not justice for animals. The constant slaughtering and eating of animals numbs too many people about violence, and makes too many people more able and willing to perpetrate violence against other humans; it becomes a matter of cross-species violence. Eating meat contributes to world hunger by increasing the demand for land for livestock, rather than keeping food prices lower -- through supply and demand -- by eliminating the huge money and pollution expense of raising cattle, pigs and poultry.

How hard is it to become a vegetarian? For me it took three years of concerted effort eating lower and lower on the food chain, until one day at an Italian restaurant, as a pesco-vegetarian (a misnomer), I resolved that I could not, after all, order pasta with marinara and shrimp, after having spent time with so many amazing and feeling fish at the aquarium a mile away. I became a vegan thirteen years later, to do my share in reducing the number of mistreated and captive animals who often find themselves slaughtered for human food, pet food, and leather after they stop producing enough milk and eggs, let alone the male chickens who are not spared their lives to produce eggs, because nobody yet has found a way for males to produce eggs. I no longer wear leather.

Even if most people are unable or unwilling to become vegetarian, world hunger and food prices still will dramatically fall if people will drastically reduce their consumption of meat, fowl, milk. milk products and eggs. There has never been an easier, more healthful, or more delicious time to live vegetarian; even supermarket aisles have infinitely more vegetarian choices than even five years ago. Restaurants have more vegetarian options than ever before. See how you feel about your health, your annual physical exam, the environment, and world hunger after making such a change in your eating choices. You may never turn back. Jon Katz.

Underdog readers, please lend me a hand by spreading the news that our law firm has an immediate opening for an experienced litigation legal assistant/paralegal to work with me for criminal and First Amendment defense. Do you know the right candidate to work just a mile from our nation's capital while fighting for truth, justice, and the Constitutional way? Who better to help us find the right applicant than our Underdog readers?

Our office sits across the greenest and most beautiful part of downtown Silver Spring, overlooking Woodside Park and its multi-foot fountain. Blocks away not only is the subway, but also the revitalized downtown (although I prefer the old downtown, with its shaver store/museum, the oldies vinyl music store, and the gun shop) with the Silver Theater as its centerpiece. Even Zippy the Pinhead and creator Bill Griffith -- who has a yen for diners -- visited Silver Spring seven years ago to witness the Tastee Diner's movement from Georgia Avenue to Cameron Street just three blocks from us, to make way for the Discovery Channel building.

For the drier part of this blog entry, following is our job announcement for this position. I will shower my eternal gratefulness on the person who directs the right candidate our way:

EXPERIENCED LEGAL ASSISTANT/PARALEGAL

Silver Spring, MD. Highly-rated criminal defense and Constitutional law partner seeks experienced Legal Assistant/Paralegal to be his right-hand person in fighting for victory for challenging misdemeanors and felonies in numerous courthouses, as well as stimulating civil cases defending the Constitution. This is a rare and fitting opportunity for a take-charge, caring team player who will keep things running smoothly when the criminal defense partner is in court and who is open to learning and advising on providing quality service to clients. 

The right candidate will have a college degree or the equivalent, a minimum of one-year proven success as a private law firm litigation assistant, smarts and common sense. The recipe for success starts with the acronym COLPP: communication, organization, loyalty, promptness and productivity. We look for results and encourage ordinarily not needing substantial overtime, but also require follow-through to assure that deadlines are met or extended. 

Excellent performance gets handsomely rewarded through highly attractive compensation, a great workplace with a caring staff, full integration into client projects (including courtroom visits) and a comprehensive benefits package (paid parking/Metro; full vacation/sick leave/holiday pay; and health insurance contributions). We highly value our employees and provide a harmonious and hardworking place to thrive. 

No foreign language skills are needed. Excellent interpersonal skills and intelligence required. 

PLEASE APPLY NOW:  Please apply in strict confidence by sending, only via e-mail, fax or snail mail (1) a one-page text version of your resume, (2) a one-page persuasive cover letter (designating "Litigation Assistant/Paralegal") that addresses how you meet the foregoing hiring criteria, (3) concise salary history, and (4) relevant references, to fax (301) 495-8815 or jon@markskatz.com. Please refrain from e-mail attachments, phone calls, and e-mail inquiries. For more information, visit www.markskatz.com. Jon Katz.

 Image from Library of Congress's website.

Robust protection must be provided to free speech worldwide. That is a message I have been emphasizing and re-emphasizing for decades.

Bloggers represent one of the biggest perceived dissident threats to repressive governments -- and all government repress people's rights to one degree or another -- by changing the pre-Internet, pre-computer government censorship model that went beyond jailing dissidents to depriving disfavored publishers of newsprint, printing presses, photocopiers, and publishing licenses; jamming radio broadcasts; and monitoring and jamming dissidents' telephone calls. Even seizing a blogger's computer does not prevent the blogger from blogging at an Internet cafe or a friend's computer, because blogging software ordinarily resides on the Internet and not on one's computer.  

Thanks to the Committee to Protect Bloggers for keeping readers updated on government harassment, arrests and jailings of bloggers. Following are some recent instances of bloggers being repressed by government authorities; thanks to the Committee to Protect Bloggers for informing me about the following Tibet and Egypt stories:

- In the United States, criminal libel laws continue to be alive in several states. On May 1, 2006, I blogged about Thomas Mink who operates The Howling Pig. The Greeley, Colorado, police seized the computer he used to publish The Howling Pig newsletter, during a criminal libel investigation following a University of North Colorado professor's complaint to the police about his portrayal on the Howling Pig website. 

To this day, a violation of Colorado's criminal libel law is a felony punishable from twelve to eighteen months. Colorado Revised Statutes §§ 18-1.3-401 and 18-13-105. Colorado's criminal libel statute states: "(1) A person who shall knowingly publish or disseminate, either by written instrument, sign, pictures, or the like, any statement or object tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defects of one who is alive, and thereby to expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule, commits criminal libel. (2) It shall be an affirmative defense that the publication was true, except libels tending to blacken the memory of the dead and libels tending to expose the natural defects of the living. (3) Criminal libel is a class 6 felony." C.R.S. §18-13-105.

Mr. Mink filed a successful lawsuit to retrieve his computer, and the prosecutors opted not to pursue a prosecution. However, the federal Tenth Circuit prevented him from challenging Colorado's criminal libel statute itself, based on a conclusion that he lacked standing to seek prospective relief against the statute and that the matter was moot. Mink v. Suthers, 482 F.3d 1244 (10th Cir. 2007), cert. denied sub nom Knox v . Mink, 128 S. Ct. 1122 (2008).

The Colorado ACLU's webpage discusses the Howling Pig case up through the May 2007 filing of a petition for a rehearing by Mr. Mink. Although a Lexis and Shepard's search leads to the conclusion that the petition for a rehearing was denied, the Tenth Circuit's PACER online docketing system was down when I checked it yesterday.  

- Good news came from Saudi Arabia when leading Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan was released recently from being detained since last December 10 without formal criminal charges. I am not aware of any explanation from the Saudi government for releasing him. Early this year, Underdog blogged on Mr. al-Farhan's plight.

Congratulations to Mr. al-Farhan on his release. Hopefully the Saudi government will loosen its censorious grip on dissent, and hopefully Mr. al-Farhan will continue his blog without watering it down from fear of further government repression. More on this story is here.

- In Tibet, in a cynical April Fools Day 2008 move, authorities arrested blogger, television broadcaster, singer and intellectual Jamyang Kyi. Based in part on the absence of any Google news updates beyond April 18, it appears that she remains detained. Further links to this story are here and here. Thanks to the Committee to Protect Bloggers for reporting on this story.

- In Egypt, in early 2007,  Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman became the first Internet-based journalist to be imprisoned (having received a four-year sentence) for inciting hatred of Islam and insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Thanks to the Committee to Protect Bloggers for its ongoing reporting on this story.

- Here are a few examples of repression of bloggers in Singapore, whose government has focused for decades on refining repression and whose repressive activities -- including overall censorship and clampdowns on political opposition -- are highlighted all the more by the government's welcoming Singapore's status as a major Asian hub for economic activity and air travel transfers:

-- Reporters Without Borders reported on November 24, 2006: "An activist with the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), Yap Keng Ho, was sent to prison for ten days by a court on 23 November 2006 after he refused to pay a fine of 2,000 dollars for speaking publicly and posting film on his blog (http://uncleyap-news.blogspot.com/) of an illegal rally of his party. He was taken immediately to jail after refusing to pay the fine and said he would go on hunger strike to protest at his imprisonment and to expose the regime’s corruption."

-- In 2005, seventeen-year-old blogger Gan Huai Shi pled guilty to sedition in a Singapore court for posting anti-Muslim comments on his blog. An anonymous writer on the Singapore Angle blog wrote last year that Gan Huai Shi "was given [ ] probation of 24 months largely because his racist sentiments was perceived to have stemmed from unfortunate childhood experiences (his baby brother's death)."

-- In 2006, Singapore authorities dropped a prosecution against a blogger who posted a cartoon of Jesus as a zombie. He faced up to three years in prison had he been convicted. In any event, the authorities apparently forced the blogger to remove the image from his blog.

-- In 2005, a Singapore judge sentenced two bloggers to jail (one for a month and the other for a day) for posting racist comments about ethnic Malays. The Singapore government-controlled Straits Times's article on the case is here. Jon Katz.

ADDENDUM: A close friend once described public complacency as one of the greatest threats to civil liberties. Or course, less complacency should be expected even in the United States as American soldiers and countless others get slaughtered in Iraq, the price even of such essential food staples as rice increases dramatically, oil prices continue jumping, key financial markets teeter (including the American mortgage market), unemployment worsens, and the economy continues on a negative path.

With so many of the foregoing problems and more facing so many people, there might be an inclination to avoid knowing about problems that seem more removed. However, we all live on this world together, and must be concerned about each other. On the censorship front, in addition to the foregoing links, I recommend reading Index on Censorship. For general worldwide human rights updates, Amnesty International apparently continues to do some of the most rigorous reporting (see the U.S. Amnesty link here).

On February 10, I wrote about the passing of Michael Maggio, who was one of the people who inspired me to a legal career focusing on social justice.

Above is a YouTube picture montage of Michael, created by his nephew. It provides some more of Michael's essence. Jon Katz

Too often, too many American police run roughshod over people's Constitutional rights. Why, then, did the San Francisco government permit a group of strongarm, China-trained, China-selected men (did sexism permeate the selection process?) to encircle and enforce the non-human Olympic flame's protection during the San Francisco leg of the Olympics torch relay? That just pours acid into the wounds already inflicted on civil liberties by the United States federal, state and local governments.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the blue sports-suited "torch guards" to be "elite members of the paramilitary units that crushed dissent in Tibet, a Shanghai newspaper has disclosed." Australia's The Age newspaper asserts that "the Shanghai-based Labour Daily newspaper, quoting Zhao Si, head of the elite unit, said [the torch guards ] were picked in 2007 from the People's Armed Police, China's 660,000-strong paramilitary force that mostly deals with internal security. Thousands of PAP forces are still deployed throughout Tibet and Tibetan regions of western China since monk-led protests on March 10 degenerated into a violent riot in Lhasa on March 14. Pictures of the guards at a swearing-in ceremony, after undergoing special physical, etiquette and language training at the PAP training academy in Beijing, show their official name as 'The Protection Team for the Holy Flame of the 29th Olympic Games.'" Is that true? A holy flame from an atheistic government?

Torch bearer Konnie Huq said the "torch guards" in Paris "shouted orders at her and pushed her arm to make her lift the torch higher." In the above-displayed BBC segment on YouTube, Ms. Huq says the "torch guards" also told her when to stop running. Ms. Huq further said that the torch guards "were very robotic, very full on, and actually I noticed them having skirmishes with our own police and the Olympic authorities before our leg of the relay." You can see the torch guards' hands-on control in Paris in the above-displayed BBC report and in this French television channel 2 report.

As the Washington Post reports, these "torch guards" from China even pushed around Sebastian Coe, who chairs the Olympic organizing committee for 2012. If the torch guards did that to an Olympics insider, imagine what they have done and will try to do with dissenters.

What a public relations blunder by the San Francisco authorities to permit the torch guard's participation in the relay there. San Francisco's government and police leaders only needed to check Google news to see that these torch guards from China -- where human rights have little importance to the government -- had their own decidedly non-civil-liberties-oriented, China-directed agenda; most of the foregoing newslinks already were easily found online before the April 11 San Franciso torch relay. If such a local government as San Francisco's -- which presumably is enlightened in many ways about civil liberties -- can make such a blunder, imagine the extensive snub to civil liberties that occurs daily in smaller localities that have limited interest and limited resources and funds to protect civil liberties.

Fortunately, Japan and Australia will limit the "torch guards," where San Francisco did not. Japan's Security Minister opposes letting the torch guards be involved. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a more watered-down pronouncement -- but stronger than San Francisco's actions -- that the torch guards generally will stay on a bus, but will be permitted to assist with such tasks as passing the torch (how, and what will be their other permitted tasks?)

Kudos to Majora Carter for her simple yet powerful act of pulling and waving a Tibetan flag from her sleeve while carrying the torch during the San Francisco relay. Watch this YouTube video, where Ms. Carter seems to be describing China's torch guards as interfering with her flag waving. Watch further as a cop pushes her into the observing crowd. Did the San Francisco cops push her out by the decision of China's torch guards? (See Ms. Carter's pre-relay statement about the motivation for her Tibetan flag-waving action.)

Many opponents of the Olympics torch protests and proposed boycott of all or part of the Olympics, urge that the Olympics should be a non-political event. Tell that to Adolph Hitler, who not only extremely politicized the 1936 Berlin summer Olympics --including ceremonies highlighting blonde, blue-eyed Germans (part of Hitler's ideal "master race") -- but who directly or through his government also apparently propped up the torch relay and the Olympics five-ring symbol where they previously had little or no significance to the modern Olympics. Fortunately, China's human rights situation is not as bad as Nazi Germany's. Unfortunately, China continually tries to have good enough relations with other nations in order, for instance, to keep up its extremely profitable international trade, without, in return, showing much in progress with its human rights situation.

Certainly, the Chinese government has made the Olympics most political. China would love nothing more than to whitewash its brutal current human rights record and past human rights violations. As I said on March 17, about the Olympics in China, those strongly opposed to China's miserable human rights situation need not contribute to China's attempted public relations coup through its Olympics; all that is needed is to turn off the Olympics television coverage and to not attend the stadium events. Jon Katz

 This week at the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco.

Today, the Olympics torch relay approaches in San Francisco, This city is the sole United States location for the relay. Demonstrators for human rights in China will be out in force; hopefully all peaceful in the footsteps of Gandhi

The sign unfurled in the above video from the Golden Gate Bridge reminds me of the sign held in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. by Gallaudet University Professor Fat C. Lam soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He was standing alone, and I joined him. His sign read "Don't let tyrants sleep." His message is as critical today as it was in 1989 as to human rights violations worldwide, starting with the White House and its constant trampling on civil liberties in the name of counter-terrorism, branching out to Congress when it passes oppressive laws, going to states and municipalities when their police and institutions of control run roughshod over the Constitution, and going to the rest of the world, where no government avoids violating human rights in one way or another. As Nancy Pelosi importantly said, moral authority to stand up for human rights necessitates standing up for said rights in China, and Tibet. Of course, I also expect her to fight for human rights domestically, as well.  Jon Katz.

Our website -- and other websites using our sitehost -- was down on April 5 from around 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and on April 6 from around 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., as was our email during the latter April 6 timeframe. I await word from our sitehost how this happened. I assume it relates to the upgrades being made at the sitehost; however, I wish such lengthy outages would be minimized and shortened, and kept out of such popular surfing times of day.

Coming shortly is an April 7 blog entry about learning to become a better trial lawyer. Jon Katz

 Image from Library of Congress's website.

As I have said previously, journalists are fallible humans, so lawyers should resist the temptation to treat them as confidants.

One reason to beware of talking with journalists about a client's case is the risk of being misquoted, whether by direct misquote (e.g., the reporter writing that the lawyer said his "client is guilty" when actually the lawyer said his "client is not guilty," or by being quoted out of context (e.g., where the reporter quotes the lawyer as saying "All the suspects are guilty," where the lawyer actually says "All the suspects are guilty except for my client."

Sometimes a reporter misquotes a lawyer based on what the lawyer says in court, rather than on the basis of an interview, which means that merely declining an on-the-record interview does not automatically protect against misquotes. As a for instance, yesterday I was in court for the Westboro Baptist Church case, seeking a stay of the enforcement of the $5 million judgment pending the outcome of my clients' pending appeal. The judge ended up granting the motion as to my clients the Westboro Baptist Church and its pastor Fred Phelps, Sr., after I agreed for a lien to be placed on their respective real property, whereby my clients will retain the right to contest the enforcement of the lien on legal grounds should the defendants lose on appeal. How, then, did a Daily Record reporter (who spoke with me after the hearing, which conversation I kept off the record) get this result so wrong by erroneously reporting that I consented to freeze the church's assets? Perhaps he was listening to the J. Geils band earlier in the morning, and got confused.

I found the article with this misquote on google news, and left a voice mail with the reporter asking him to correct the error. I confirmed that, the First Amendment zealot that I am, it will remain but a request.

If this is the worst misquote that I ever experience, I will be fortunate. My favorite conceptual artist, Joseph Kosuth, had a riveting exhibit in the early 1990's entitled "A Play: The Herald Tribune, Kafka and a Quote." The foregoing quote does seem Kafkaesque. Jon Katz.

ADDENDUM: Later in the day on April 4, the Daily Record met my request to fix this misquote, by changing it online to saying that the judge "eventually obtained consent from Katz, of Marks & Katz LLC in Silver Spring, for the liens, pending appeal." I don't know whether the print version of the newspaper will carry a correction notice.