Sophianotloren

The sprawling Navajo Nation that covers northeast Arizona and parts of southeast Utah and northwest New Mexico is a huge chunk of land that is beautiful, unique, and fragile. This largely high desert area can certainly sustain life but it’s dryness means that climate change makes it highly prone to long-term changes that severely limit that ability to sustain life. There was a major report on the impact of climate change on Navajo lands prepared last year that certainly covers these issues in detail.

Yet we have to be careful about how we lump all environmental change in with climate change. This article talking about how sand dunes have made one-third of the Navajo Nation uninhabitable and blaming climate change is a case in point. There’s no question that climate change is making this problem worse. But at the end of the piece, someone mentions overgrazing. And in this case, that’s the real issue. Ever since the return of the Navajo from the Bosque Redondo to a piece of their native lands in 1868, enormous herds of sheep have roamed this fragile landscape, causing widespread erosion and most of the problems mentioned in this article. Part of this return meant the Navajo had to give up their raiding ways and although their reservation was large and became larger, was not nearly the extent of land where they had previously lived. This all meant more emphasis on the sheep economy. As early as the 1930s, the erosion was clearly visible on the land. This is when John Collier, as part of his Indian New Deal, intervened and forced the Navajo to cull their herds. This was a total disaster. While Collier was a welcome change from the usually corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs for most tribes and the Indian New Deal a step in the right direction, with the Navajo, Collier had no idea what he was doing. As Marsha Weisiger details in her excellent book Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country, Collier’s methods in dealing with the erosion problem undermined women’s status in Navajo society, increased class divisions by favoring wealthy herders, and probably most significantly, created long-term suspicion of conservation methods as anti-Dine in Navajo society. So sheep herding grew again and continued almost unabated.

That’s what is primarily creating this desertification on the Navajo Nation. I don’t doubt that climate change is a factor. But this is largely a socioeconomic/colonialist creation.

This opinion piece by Catherine Fisk and Edwin Chemerinsky is quite interesting. Did the Supreme Court accidentally set a precedent to eliminate bans on labor picketing?

Reed v. Town of Gilbert’s reasoning makes it clear that restrictions on labor picketing can no longer survive First Amendment scrutiny. Sections 8(b)(4) and 8(b)(7) of the National Labor Relations Act prohibit speech, including peaceful picketing, if a “labor organization” or its agents is the speaker and based on the message. Section 8(b)(7) prohibits picketing urging workers to join a union or employers to recognize one if the picketing lasts longer than “a reasonable time” not to exceed 30 days. Thus, the National Labor Relations Board’s enforcement arm sought to enjoin workers affiliated with Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) from picketing with signs saying “Stand Up, Live Better,” “Walmart, respeta a los trabajadores” (Walmart, respect workers), and “Let Walmart Associates Speak Out.” And under 8(b)(7) fast food workers can picket outside restaurants with signs asking to be paid $15 an hour or that the city adopt a $15 minimum wage ordinance, but they cannot picket for more than a reasonable time urging workers to demand $15 and a union. Section 8(b)(4) prohibits picketing urging secondary boycotts, and thus prohibits members of a labor union from picketing at a retail store urging a boycott of the store because its low prices are the result of low wages paid by a subcontractor that produces goods sold in the store or that operates the warehouse whence the store’s goods are shipped. But a store employee would be allowed to picket to urge customers to shop at the store because of its low prices.

The 8(b)(4) and 8(b)(7) restrictions on picketing clearly violate the First Amendment as the Court interpreted it in Reed v. Town of Gilbert. They prohibit speech based on its content because they, as the Court explained, “single[] out specific subject matter for differential treatment.”

Therefore, the picketing restrictions in section 8(b)(4) and 8(b)(7) can be upheld only if they are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. In Reed v. Town of Gilbert, the Court assumed for the sake of argument that the government has a compelling interest in regulating aesthetics and traffic, but rejected the Town’s contention that the regulations were narrowly tailored to protect the Town’s aesthetic appeal or traffic flow because the law was under-inclusive – it allowed signs with some messages but not others. The government might argue that 8(b)(4) and 8(b)(7) serve the compelling interest of preventing unjustified work stoppages and consumer boycotts. Eliminating work stoppages and consumer boycotts is, in our view, not a compelling governmental interest. But even if it were, prohibiting picketing is both overbroad and under-inclusive. Any group other than a labor organization is free to urge a consumer boycott or that workers strike to demand higher wages, and even labor organizations are allowed to use leaflets (rather than picket signs) to urge boycotts or strikes. The picketing prohibitions are under-inclusive if the goal is to eliminate encouragement of boycotts and strikes. And 8(b)(4) and 8(b)(7) are over-inclusive to the extent that they prohibit peaceful advocacy rather than actually striking or boycotting.

I guess my views on this are like my usual belief about the Supreme Court–that the justices will create ways to enforce their own personal political preferences. This is quite the development and may create a path forward but it’s hard for me to believe that Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia care one whit for precedence when it might help a labor union.

Crackpot myths about gluten edition.

Paul Butler of Georgetown Law:

I have no respect for your ancestors. As far as your ancestors are concerned, I shouldn’t be a law professor at Georgetown. I should be a slave. That’s why they fought that war. I don’t understand what it means to be proud of a legacy of terrorism and violence. Last week at this time, I was in Israel. The idea that a German would say, you know, that thing we did called the Holocaust, that was wrong, but I respect the courage of my Nazi ancestors. That wouldn’t happen. The reason people can say what you said in the United States, is because, again, black life just doesn’t matter to a lot of people.

[HT]

classic spider faux pas — boy was there egg on my face

also i was on a man’s face, and i was crushed by his hand immediately after

breaktotheotherside:

just-shower-thoughts:

If I wear a shirt inside out, the entire universe would be wearing it except me.

Congratulations, you just explained Gödel’s theorem in a single sentence.

Hovertext: Also, that's not EXACTLY a circle.

New comic!
Today's News:

Come onnnn hatemail. Come onnnnn hatemail. 

mllescarlet:

but

Do you recognize these reasons that our queer families can take on unhealthy dynamics? Find out why you deserve to change it – and how.

This author's actually glad to have this conversation about the mistakes you're making as an ally – because learning is what it's all about. Here's to more growth!

After reading the script, we definitely felt that Blade Runner was of that film noir genre, and we looked back to the films of the 1940s for inspiration. Deckard was as much a gumshoe as Sam Spade. For Rachael’s character, our chief inspirations were the tailored suits that Adrian [the creative brain behind Dorothy’s sparkling ruby slippers, and Joan Crawford’s signature shoulder pads] designed in the late 1930s and early 40s. I liked the idea of combining different shades of suiting fabrics to create patterns. In this case I used amazing vintage suiting woollens in shades of grey and beige, with metallic threads that I was lucky enough to find, which created a subtle luminous quality. I wanted to create a futuristic heroine who was believable in the future, but with her feet firmly planted in film noir past. [x]

Blade Runner (1982) dir. Ridley Scott
costume design by Michael Kaplan and Charles Knode
production design by Lawrence G. Paull

We heard from so many of you after this author's last list exposed examples you'd never noticed before. That was only the beginning.

If you see a Buddha in the road, ask which gender pronouns they prefer and then kill them.

One day Atticus lay down in the snow, and called out, “Help me up! Help me up!” His mother came and gave him some cold-pressed juice. Atticus got up and went away because that’s how unschooling works.

What is your original personal brand before you were born?

If a minimalist curates a ten-item fall capsule wardrobe but doesn’t blog the experience and doesn’t count her Acne Pistol Boots as one of the ten items, has she really edited her closet?

A conceptual sculptor asked Tobias when he was weighing some flax at Whole Foods, “What is Buddha?” Tobias said: “Flax helped me lose three pounds. It’s also my daughter’s name.”

If a performance artist self-flagellates at MoMa while it’s closed and there are no guards or cameras there, does it still leave a laceration in the shape of a pentagram?

As the roof was leaking, a yoga instructor told two students to bring something to catch the water. One brought the landlord, the other a bucket with ice. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly retweeted.

What is the sound of a pop star rapping?

A MFA student asked her professor, “How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?” The professor reminded her that he was only an adjunct but alerted her to the fact that Starbucks does offer health insurance to part-time employees.

Have you noticed the feminist movement's race problem? You're not being “divisive” or “too sensitive” if you have – here's why.

so tired
of the
nearly-ceaseless assault
on my senses

the low-frequency pain
churning|rattling|pummeling
my viscera

diesel engines of road construction equipment all through the night on the nearby highway, smashing concrete and asphalt
garbage trucks, their compactors,  their motorized arms to lift and dump, their grinding engines and screeching warning tones
low-flying aircraft rumbling jet engine hell right through me
passenger cars speeding through the neighborhood with stereo blasting but especially the bass, can’t forget the bass, if it doesn’t set off other car’s alarms it isn’t shaking enough
commuter trains, freight trains yanking on the electric whistle like a toddler with a brand new toy for twenty minutes at a time

all of these are physical sensation to me, physical pain
like a
slow-motion
non-stop
gut-punch
symphony
and I am so tired of the same old song

I need silence, stillness, solitude, safety.

I need…
HOME.

Filed under: General

Oh Joy Sex Toy is a weekly comics series that graphically explores sex  and sexuality. This week, Erika Moen reviews the revamped Magic Wand vibrator. 

read more

The largest public collection of modern Southeast Asian art is opening this October, and the institution that will house it just announced a collaborative exhibition with the Centre Pompidou in 2016. National Gallery Singapore (NGS) joins two historic buildings — the city-state’s former Supreme Court and City Hall — with an adaptive reuse design by studioMilou Architecture. A gold roof of 15,000 aluminum panels sweeps between the neoclassical structures, with a light-strewn courtyard constructed in the center.

As the museum announced last week, next April one of its inaugural exhibitions will feature more than 100 pieces from the Pompidou in Paris alongside NGS collection works from 1900 to 1960. NGS Director Eugene Tan will co-curate the show with Pompidou Deputy Director Catherine David and Curator Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov. Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper reported that this follows recently appointed Pompidou Director Serges Lasvignes’s talks with Chinese officials last month about the possibility of pop-up Pompidou installations in the country.

While this exhibition will bring significant Western art to Singapore, including works by Kandinsky and Chagall, it also could focus international attention on a place that’s not often on the art world radar. Cultural engagement within Singapore is also something that NGS hopes to foster. Chong Siak Ching, CEO of the museum, told CNN: “The understanding and appreciation of art in Southeast Asia is not deep. Art education and appreciation can start and must start with the very young, so we have a dedicated center for art education.”

A few public tours of the “naked museum” were offered this April, prior to any installation of the planned 10,000-object collection in the 64,000-square-meter space (set to be the largest visual art venue in Singapore). At a cost of $530 million, the 10-year construction has been elaborate, with rooftop ponds installed to act as skylights and the City Hall building at one point totally suspended to strengthen its foundation. (Previously, City Hall was better known as the site of Japanese surrender in World War II.) With the Pompidou initiative launching a series of collaborations with major institutions, as well as its significant collection of Southeast Asian art dating back to the 19th century, NGS could help bring Singapore into the cultural spotlight.

National Gallery Singapore (1 St Andrew’s Road, Singapore) will open in October.

4gifs:

That was the last straw, sis! [video]

"Donald Trump's use of 'Rockin' in the Free World' was not authorized. Mr. Young is a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders."—Elliot Roberts, manager of Neil Young, whose song "Rockin' in the Free World" was used by Donald Trump during his presidential announcement yesterday.

Republicans, WHO TOTES LOVE THE FREE MARKET YO, have a rich history of stealing liberals' songs for their garbage campaigns. And a rich history of misunderstanding those songs. "Rockin' in the Free World," for example, is a song critical of George H.W. Bush's administration and its contempt for the poor.

Whoooooooooooops!

[H/T to Aphra_Behn.]

[Content Note: Fire; injuries.]


Ten-year-old Isaiah Francis and eleven-year-old Jeremiah Grimes were playing video games when they started to smell smoke. They looked out the window and saw that the house next door was on fire, so they called 911 and then ran over to see if anyone needed help.

"So we ran over there as fast as we could, and the dad was outside trying to find water," said 10-year-old Isaiah. "We asked them if there were any kids in there, and he said, 'Yes!' We said, 'Where?' He said, 'In the kitchen!'"

So the boys raced inside the home.

"I grabbed the infant, and Isaiah grabbed the one-and-a-half year old," explained 11-year-old Jeremiah.

Isaiah said he saw flames inside the home.

"Yes, it was really close to the babies, because it started by the couch," he said.

..."Mostly, it was just dark. You could see black and orange flames everywhere, and I was kind of scared of doing that," Jeremiah said.

Isaiah added, "I was scared, but got through my fear and went into the fire."

After the boys carried the children out of the burning home, they headed five houses down, to Isaiah's house, where they placed them on the couch and gave them some water.

"We made sure they were ok, nothing wrong with them," Jeremiah said.

When the firefighters arrived, because Jeremiah had called them, they rescued two other older children, ages 2 and 5, who were still inside. They are both in critical but stable condition.

The cause of the fire is being investigated, and the parents of the children are super grateful to the two boys: "They said, 'Thank you so much! We're so proud of you for saving our children!'"

Amazing. Well done, boys! ♥ ♥ ♥

In 2009, almost immediately after taking office, President Obama issued an executive order which restricts all government employees from using on anyone detained during any armed conflict "any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual," thus effectively ending the torture program used by the CIA and US military.

This radical (!) order prompted outrage from conservatives, including Bush's former chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who moaned: "It's not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office."

Dramatic!

Except: Because it was an executive order, it could be overturned by the next president. And almost surely would be, if the next occupant of the White House is a Republican.

So Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstin and Republican Senator John McCain joined forces to co-author an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to reaffirm and codify President Obama's executive order banning the use of torture.

Should the McCain-Feinstein amendment be made law...it will be harder for future administrations to repeat the actions of the Bush administration, which used controversial legal opinions to justify torturing detainees. The amendment would also turn into law a second component of the Obama order, which requires the Red Cross to have access to detainees in US custody, bringing America into line with the Geneva convention.

Despite opposition from many of McCain's Republican colleagues, whom he urged to avoid the "dark path of sacrificing our values for our short-term security needs," sounding like a reasonable human being for once in his life, the amendment passed in the Senate, 78-21.

And any further Republican opposition to the amendment is unlikely to hold up the legislation to which it's attached, because the National Defense Authorization Act is the defense appropriations bill neither party likes to delay even for the most objectionable amendments, because they don't want to be accused of failing to support the troops or being soft on defense or whatever.

So, the long and the short of it is: We are very close to outlawing torture once again.

Until the next Republican War President, anyway.

* * *

[Video autoplays at link] Relatedly, if you can access video, John Oliver did a segment Sunday night on US torture policy that is definitely worth a watch, with warnings for description and images of torture, as well as a rape joke. In addition to the usual providing of solid information, he also employs a video clip that is near and dear to many of our hearts. I won't spoil it for you, though. *jumps into Christmas tree*

Even though liberal arts degrees are actually good for business, Matt Burriesci (author of Dead White Guys: A Father, His Daughter, and the Great Books of the Western World) believes that supporters of the humanities should lay that argument to rest:

A liberal arts education … may not teach you how to change your oil or program a website, but it prepares you to learn any skill, and most importantly, to question how any task is performed, challenge conventional wisdom, and introduce new processes.

This skill set will be invaluable in the technical revolution that is already underway, just as it was invaluable to the great thinkers of the Enlightenment who sparked the Industrial Revolution, he says.

Related Posts:

• The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Reading Don Quijote with My Mother
• Professors Are the Canary in the Coal Mine
• The Literary Underground
• Undergrads Beware
• The Right Balance

OSLO, Norway — What might for some artists constitute a proud moment, appears to be something of a jape for the Chapman brothers. The setting is a wooded hillside outside Oslo. The controversial artists are just about to join Rodin, Renoir, and Dalí in the Ekeberg Sculpture Park. But, despite the persistent rain, Jake Chapman is keeping his introductory speech light in tone. Older brother Dinos isn’t here.

When the tarpaulin is pulled off the sculpture “Sturm und Drang” (2014), the effect is like a dead rabbit from a hat. The work conjures horror rather than satisfaction; a clutch of child skeletons, dressed with goblin masks and writhing maggots, hang from a blasted tree. For further satire, this macabre scene is cast in bronze, an elevated material already much in favor here in the sculpture park. The cursed stump may evoke the cruelty of war and the black vision of Francisco de Goya, but don’t expect any quarter given to pathos.

“It’s an ongoing irony to us that our work keeps getting bought and put in museums,” Jake tells me back on a sofa in the lobby of the park’s modernist restaurant. “I quite like the idea that, actually, instead of trying to increase the number of things which have some sort of artistic merit, we’re actually producing things which don’t really deserve the place they end up in.”

“Sturm und Drang” is on a hillock of freshly laid turf overlooking an ornamental pond. The sculpture is one of two springtime acquisitions by businessman and collector Christian Ringnes. The other is a marble angel with exposed innards, by Damien Hirst. It’s arguable that work by neither of these shock-mongers deserves a place amidst the natural beauty of this park, with its view over the local fjord. But perhaps, given the temptations to romanticize this rugged setting, that’s why these sculptures need to be here.

And yet Jake rejects the notion of site-specific art: “I tend not to think about stuff like that; I tend to avoid thinking about it. I don’t want to think what I do has anything to do with such vast, monumental scales. It would be dangerous and off-putting for me to have to think about stuff like that.” “Sturm und Drang“ might draw its title from a proto-Romantic movement, but it is hard to imagine the Chapmans hiking around the misty peaks of old Europe. (Jake has come to this opening off the back of a family holiday in Disneyland Paris, an irony which the troublemaker appears to relish.)

Oslo is a small city, with three local sculpture parks, and a skyline filled with cranes. In 2019, both the National Gallery and the Munch Museum are due to move to new premises on the waterfront. Developments like this, in the infrastructure of art, inspire the younger Chapman to launch into a spot of verbose criticism: “I find it difficult to stomach an association between what I do and the scale of the liberal polity expanding to the point of universality. I think it’s a worrying thing.”

Civic museums would seem to have an unacceptable level of humanist aspiration for Jake and his brother. These are, after all, the pairs who grafted penises and anuses onto mannequins of kids and brought both grinning Nazis and visibly aroused members of the KKK into galleries. Both sets of fascists mingled with visitors and implicated the art world in mankind’s worst atrocities.

“We try to find things which are at the low level of human activity,” says Jake, quite plainly. The sculpture, in this case, may have a classical bronze finish, but its cast components have all been sourced in those poky joke shops which remind fully grown Brits of their schooldays. The artist describes the use of such humble materials as “sadistic materialism,” and the casting of joke materials in bronze, a “sadistic gesture.” He says, “the work is still pictorially within the realm of childishness.”

But the Chapmans are always ready to put aside childish things and talk theory. They value fun as a form of transgression. “The idea of humor, the idea of pleasure, the idea of laughter,” Jake begins, “It summons up an inhuman gap, between an affect and a response and an appropriate response.” This begs the question: how does one frame an ‘appropriate’ response to a war crime? The brothers may dwell on the ghoulish side of life but, when it comes to their sense of humor, things look rosy to them.

“I suppose,” ventures Jake, “in some optimistic way, if you can produce a response of laughter in a viewer, then you’re opening up a little area, a little gap for some sort of parasitical intervention.”

This may sound unpleasant, but, says the younger Chapman, “I guess if you’re asking the viewer to laugh at something, then you’re suspending their … normative sort of ways in which they can rationalize their response.” Looking back, this is a form philosophical culture jamming which might characterize the work of all the Young British Artists (YBAs).

You’ll find it here in the undermining of both material (bronze) and source material (Goya). But of course the Chapmans have previous experience with subverting one of Spain’s last great old masters. In 2003 their Turner Prize nomination was supported by a suite of prints from the Disasters of War series, which were defaced with exquisite cartoon faces. More than a decade after seeing these, I’m now able to tell one of the Chapmans how irritated their exhibition made me. It just seemed too taboo.

“We recognize that,” Jake says, without batting an eyelid, “And we wanted to demonstrate in some extreme didactic way that actually these things are the equivalent of Xerox pictures.” The artist tells me the obvious: that the series was made for distribution. “So the idea of drawing on them didn’t really feel to us like we were obliterating something which was of such scarce value.”

Transgression, that word again, was always an important gesture or, as Jake puts it now, “having something to say about the world in a way which is not just a seamless agreement with it.”

Might Goya himself have got the joke? “I think there’s an acerbic wit … and there’s a very fatalistic, misanthropic sense to the work, definitely,” says the artist. He and Dinos are stuck by a shortcoming in the typically humanist reading of Goya’s anti-war prints; there are, he maintains, “excess activities … going on in there.” Which brings us full circle to the artists’ addition to Ekeberg Park, this grim Disaster of War rendered in three dimensions.

“Drawing a picture of people hanging on a tree and, in some ways, making that reverberate with images of Christ on the cross — that takes a certain amount of pessimism and cynicism,” says Jake, concluding that, yes, Goya had a sense of humor. But if his original etching was a sight gag, the Chapmans’ bronze is an involved, bathos-filled pastiche. It must take more these days to really be amusing.

“Sturm und Drang” can be seen at Ekeberg Sculpture Park (0193, Kongsveien 23, Oslo, Norway). The author of this piece was on a press trip organized by the park.

Now we’re cooking with gas:

But at a press conference on Tuesday, in the midst of a national debate over the propriety of Confederate images, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell identified one place where Davis shouldn’t be: the Capitol building in his home state of Kentucky. A statue of Davis stands alongside former President Abraham Lincoln—his Civil War adversary—and other Kentucky-born leaders.

After last week’s deadly shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, images emerged of the suspected gunman’s affinity for the Confederate flag, spurring debate over whether the Confederate symbol should be represented on state property. According to reporters at the news conference, McConnell said that a “more appropriate” location for the Davis statue would be a state museum. This week, McConnell expressed support for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia.

This isn’t the first time that Davis’s place of honor in the Kentucky Capitol has been questioned. Earlier Tuesday, a Kentucky gubernatorial candidate called for its removal, and last year, a former state treasurer started an online petition to replace Davis’s statue with a memorial to boxer Muhammed Ali, who was born in Louisville.

That Ali was originally the namesake of Cassius Marcellus Clay makes him an even more appropriate replacement for Davis. Ali apparently doesn’t want a statue, but there’s probably room for both a two-dimensional representation of the Greatest, an a statue of the abolitionist leader Clay…

This claim that the ISDS courts in the Trans Pacific Partnership are unconstitutional is certainly an interesting one. I’m not a lawyer so I’ll leave the analysis to the experts. But I’m intrigued:

Under the TPP, the arbitrators will act like judges, deciding legal questions just as federal judges decide constitutional claims. However, unlike judges appointed under Article III of the Constitution, TPP arbitrators are not appointed by the president or confirmed by the Senate, nor do they have the independence that comes from life tenure. And that presents a significant constitutional issue: Can the president and Congress, consistent with Article III, assign to three private arbitrators the judicial function of deciding the merits of a TPP investor challenge?

The Supreme Court has not ruled on this precise question. But the collective reasoning in four of its recent rulings bearing on the issue leans heavily toward a finding of unconstitutionality. The Court has placed significant limits on the ability of Congress to assign the power to decide cases traditionally handled by the courts to people other than Article III judges, even when the judicial substitutes are full-time federal officials, such as bankruptcy judges or the heads of federal agencies. Moreover, in each case in which the Court approved of a dispute being taken away from federal judges, there was judicial review at the end of the process, which is not the case with TPP. Moreover, although the Justice Department issued a lengthy opinion in 1995 on when arbitration can be used to replace court adjudication, it did not then, and has not since then, defended the constitutionality of arbitration provisions like those in the proposed TPP.

As it presses for the passage of TPP, the administration needs to explain how the Constitution allows the United States to agree to submit the validity of its federal, state, and local laws to three private arbitrators, with no possibility of review by any U.S. court. Otherwise, it risks securing a trade agreement that won’t survive judicial scrutiny, or, even worse, which will undermine the structural protections that an independent federal judiciary was created to ensure.

Thoughts? My sense is basically that current U.S. courts will defer to most issues if they help corporations and hurt working people, which will almost certainly be the result of the ISDS courts.