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	Security or Liberty? It’s a False Choice by Jules Boykoff The Oregonian USA   February 2008   In an outburst of common sense, a Multnomah County jury recently acquitted an activist group calling themselves the Seriously P.O.’d Grannies (grandmothers) on misdemeanor criminal mischief charges.   In his closing arguments, the prosecutor likened the Grannies to terrorists, even though they had simply protested the Iraq war by pressing red-finger-paint handprints on the window of a local military recruiting center. The deputy district attorney beseeched the jury to “think of some evils that could happen and why it is important for the line to be drawn here. On Sept. 11, some people drove planes into a building to prove a point. The defendants say their conduct is necessary to avoid imminent danger because people are dying in Iraq. That is the same thing suicide bombers say.”   As preposterous as this comparison is, we can expect an onslaught of similar logic should the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act become law.   If you’re asking yourself what in tarnation this polysyllabic mouthful is, don’t feel bad. The bill has been virtually ignored by the media, despite a frenzy of trepidation in the blogosphere.   The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act — which zinged through the House last October on a vote of 404-6 — would create a national commission with the power to recommend counter-terrorism legislation. The act would also jump-start a university-based “Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism” to investigate “the social, criminal, political, psychological and economic roots” of domestic radicalization and violence.   So who, aside from domestic Osama bin Wannabes, would be targeted by this legislation? Well, as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might say, we need to “connect the dots.”   Counterterrorism experts from the Rand Corp. have testified multiple times in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security in favor of the bill. In 2005, Rand penned a “Trends in Terrorism” study that made this assertion: “In addition to the terrorist threats posed by al-Qaida . . . a growing groundswell of domestically inspired radicalism has emerged that appears to be based on the spreading phenomenon of anti-globalization.”   In reality, this “anti-globalization movement” has no ties whatsoever to jihadist-variety terrorism. But that hasn’t stopped the authorities from making that claim. Responding to a 2003 nonviolent anti-war protest, a California Anti-Terrorism Information Center spokesperson asserted, “You can almost argue that a protest against a war ostensibly against international terrorism is a terrorist act. . . . Terrorism isn’t just bombs going off and killing people.”   The Seriously P.O.’d Grannies help us slice through the fog of ideology.   But what if you’re just raging and you’re not a Granny? Would a protesting tree-sitter receive similar leeway? What about a Muslim imam who questions U.S. foreign policy? An anarchist marching against neoliberal capitalism?   The Portland jury took 30 minutes to acquit the Grannies. Now it’s time for the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — which will soon take up the bill — to make a similar gesture of level-headed defiance.   * Jules Boykoff is an assistant professor of political science at Pacific University in Forest Grove and author of “Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States.”
	Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights by University of Pennsylvania Press   Freedom from Poverty - NGOs and Human Rights, by Daniel P.L. Chong.   Human rights advocacy in the West is changing. Before the turn of the century, access to goods such as food, housing, and health care—while essential to human survival—were deemed outside of the human rights sphere. Traditional human rights institutions focused on rights in the political arena that could be defended through legal systems.   In Freedom from Poverty, Daniel P. L. Chong examines how today''s nongovernmental organizations are modifying human rights practices and reshaping the political landscape by taking up the cause of subsistence rights. This book outlines how three types of NGOs—human rights, social justice, and humanitarian organizations—are breaking down barriers by incorporating access to economic and social goods into national laws and advancing subsistence rights through nonjuridical means.   These NGOs are using rights not only as legal instruments but as moral and rhetorical implements to build social movements, shape political culture, and guide development work. Rights language is now invoked in churches, political campaigns, rock concerts, and organizational mission statements. Chong presents a social theory of human rights to provide a framework for understanding these changes and defending the legitimacy of these rights.   Freedom from Poverty analyzes new trends in the evolution of human rights by combining constructivist and postpositivist legal approaches. This book provides valuable concepts to human rights practitioners, political scientists, antipoverty advocates, and leaders who are serious about ending widespread privation and disease.   * Below is a link to University of Pennsylvania Press human rights series, offerring brief overviews of their titles. Visit the related web page
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