CommonDreams: Corporations Given ‘Human Rights,’ Humans Are Denied Them

[marmar]

Published on Friday, February 8, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Corporations Given ‘Human Rights,’ Humans Are Denied Them
by Jeffrey Kaplan



In evaluating allegations that U.S. military forces deprived four British men of human rights during two years they were held captive in Guantanamo Bay prison, a U.S. appeals court found an innovative way to let the Bush administration off the hook. Two of three judges ruled the men — because they are not U.S. citizens and, technically, were not imprisoned in the U.S. — were not legally “persons” and, therefore, had no rights to violate.

While those judges were defying common sense and decency by denying legal personhood to living human beings, an appeals court in Boston has been reviewing an April 2007 decision by Federal Judge Paul Barbadoro that engaged in a different form of judicial activism — granting human rights to corporations.

Barbadoro struck down a New Hampshire law that prevented pharmaceutical corporations from learning exactly what drugs doctors prescribe and how much they prescribe. The law aims to protect doctors and, indirectly, their patients, from drug companies pressuring doctors to choose their products.

The judge’s grounds? He claims corporations, as legal persons, have “free speech rights” that would be infringed by such a measure.

The real issue in these cases (Maine recently passed a similar law) isn’t free speech at all; it’s manipulation and control. The drug salespeople only will decide what to say after poking into the doctors’ prescription records. Under the guise of protecting speech, Judge Barbadoro denied both legitimate privacy rights of doctors and key protections to ensure patients are prescribed drugs based on their medical situation, not pressure applied to their physician. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/08/6935/

[musette_sf]

1. K&R

note: there is an article in today's SF Chronicle about Chevron's corporate citizenship and how they use it to coerce more welfare checks while they rake in obscene profits, in the form of "tax credits". SF Gate (Chronicle website) allows comments on stories. not a few pro-fascism-as-corporatocracy posters weighed in with their robo-posts on what a grand corporate citizen Chevron is and how grateful the people of Richmond CA should be to have them rape their community. :puke:

[OneBlueSky]

2. the biggest problem with corporations as persons is that they can live on indefinitely . . .

unlike real persons, whose lives are biologically limited to seven or eight decades . . . gives these artificial persons at a great advantage over real persons, no? . . .

[RuleOfNah]

3. Someone on DU recently had a novel idea.

Those in Gitmo should incorporate themselves, thereby gaining personhood (and citizenship (and corporate welfare)).