Obama Administration Defending Law that Makes Speech Advocating Human Rights a Terrorist Crime

November 17, 2009, New York – Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the first brief in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act before the Supreme Court. The case, originally brought in 1998 on behalf of a human rights group, a retired federal administrative judge, a doctor, and several nonprofit groups, challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to groups the administration has designated as “terrorist.”  In particular, the plaintiffs charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime.  The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law – including one added by the Patriot Act – unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.

The case challenges those aspects of the “material support” statute that criminalize pure speech – specifically the prohibitions on providing “training,” “personnel,” “expert advice or assistance,” and “service.”  Under the law, any speech that falls within these terms – no matter how peaceable and nonviolent – is a crime if communicated to, for, or with the collaboration of any organization placed on a list of “foreign terrorist organizations” maintained by the Department of State. Convictions can result in sentences of fifteen years to life.  According to the government, the statute requires no showing that the donor intended to further any act of terrorism or violence.

Said CCR Cooperating Attorney David D. Cole, “This statute is so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes. In our view, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted.”

The lower courts held unconstitutionally vague the law’s prohibition on the provision of “services,” “expert advice or assistance,” and “training,” reasoning that these terms could easily encompass a wide range of lawful speech, such as providing training in international law.  The Obama administration sought Supreme Court review of that decision.

Plaintiffs in the case include the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), a human rights organization in Los Angeles that seeks to provide human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, and a former federal administrative law judge, Ralph D. Fertig, who is the president of the HLP. Once the State Department designated the PKK a terrorist organization, it became a crime for HLP to continue to train the group in human rights advocacy, even though that assistance is designed to reduce violence by encouraging peaceful ways of resolving conflict.

“To deny me the right to speak of peace to a group because it  is branded ‘terrorist’ is to defer the possibility that it could ever be anything else,” said plaintiff Ralph D. Fertig, JD, ACSW, retired U.S. Administrative Judge and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Southern California School of Social Work. “And to punish those who seek peaceful resolutions of conflict is to yield to violence. Surely the First Amendment must protect against such government action.”

The Patriot Act added a prohibition on the provision of “expert advice or assistance” to the statute.  After earlier court decisions declared that and other parts of the statute unconstitutional, Congress amended it in 2004 to try to correct the infirmities.  However, the district court and court of appeals concluded that the prohibitions on “services,” “expert advice and assistance,” and “training” remained unconstitutionally vague. The court of appeals decision the administration is seeking review of is the sixth ruling from the lower courts since 1998 finding significant parts of the material support statute to be unconstitutionally vague.

For more information on the case, including briefs and a detailed explanation of material support, visit http://ccrjustice.org/holder-v-humanitarian-law-project.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

Tiburon, California, is a twee little place. If you aren’t familiar with the old-country colloquialism “twee,” it means, well, something like “precious.” Like one of those dogs Paris Hilton used to carry in her purse.

When one wanders through its little streets, just north of San Francisco, one gets the sense that a few of the residents, on seeing someone who appears not to be from around those parts, reach for their handkerchief and hand sanitizer.

How can one, therefore, be surprised that a meeting of the Tiburon Town Council voted on Wednesday by 4 to 0 to install cameras to photograph every single car that enters or leaves this little Disneyland?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that this may be the first community in the country to have defended itself with cameras in such a way. The idea is to photograph the license plates of every car that treads Tiburon’s hallowed roads and compare the information with the police’s list of the stolen and nefarious.

The Tiburon police chief, Michael Cronin, told the Chronicle: “I think it makes the community safer.”

There are certainly even more definitions of the word “safety” than of the word “twee.” However, it is heartwarming that the Tiburon police–inspired, perhaps, by Google–promise that the information will be kept for only 30 days.

The strange thing is that Tiburon, a northern suburb of San Francisco, isn’t exactly Oakland. It doesn’t enjoy high crime figures. Indeed, some might say that the most criminal elements in the place are to be seen on the racks of its clothes stores.

The town is fortunate, however, in that it is on a peninsula, from which there are only two roads. So the total cost of putting up six cameras is estimated to be no more than $200,000, which works out at something near $20 per resident. (Tiburon residents enjoy, by the way, a median income somewhere above $125,000.)

I know there will be some who believe you can never have enough security cameras in this heinous and half-witted world. But perhaps some will worry that the police might make rather instinctive judgments about the provenance of certain cars and their intentions.

Others will wonder whether this decision might affect businesses in Tiburon. Still others will ponder whether the police might be willing to offer a Web site showing the movements of all its officers.

I merely wonder how many people, knowing they might have to go to Tiburon for a meal of organic Kobe beef, rosemary ice cream, and plenty of Stags Leap cabernet, will choose to remove their front license plates. You know, just to be on the safe side.

Catch me if you can, but you don’t want to, do you?

Voranai Vanijaka

Bangkok Post: November 23, 2009

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/27906/catch-me-if-you-can-but-you-don-t-want-to-do-you

Does anyone actually think that the Thai authorities want Thaksin Shinawatra arrested? If they wanted Thaksin arrested, wouldn’t he already have been arrested?

Could it be that the reason he hasn’t been arrested is simply because they don’t want him in custody?

Why launch a coup when he was in New York? Did that mean he was not supposed to be arrested in the first place? Why did he pack more suitcases than Imelda Marcos on his trip to the UN meeting in New York in September 2006? Was it because he knew there was to be a coup? That it has been arranged and he was informed by the coup makers ahead of time? Why was he allowed to attend the Beijing Olympics when the court had already convicted him and he was in Thailand, in the grasp of the Thai authorities?

The term political decorum is key to understanding Thai politics. Certain things are just a matter of time honoured tradition. When a coup is launched against you, good political decorum dictates that it’s time for you to go away quietly. Retire to your billion baht home, your mansion in the Swiss Alps and live out the rest of your days in luxury. After all, you’ve worked tirelessly for years in stealing from the country. Don’t make a fuss. Just fade away. It’s good political decorum.

You’ve been in charge because you’re allowed to be in charge. There’s a prior arrangement. You’re removed because you’ve broken a prior arrangement. You’ve been naughty. So you have to go. Someone else has to replace you to continue stealing from the country.

A military coup in Thailand is simply a tool of up-keeping political decorum. The only time when a coup turns bloody, is when there’s a third party involved _ someone else who could not abide by the act.

For example, in the May 1992 coup by army commander Suchinda Krapayoon, the Chartchai Choonhavan government was set to fade away quietly. Why? It’s simply because the late former Prime Minster Chartchai had good political manners. Violence broke out in the streets and gave rise to Bloody May only because someone else wasn’t willing to play ball _ Chamlong Srimuang.

But Thaksin Shinawatra? He’s a bad boy. He has no manners. Not only did he break a prior arrangement while he was prime minister, after the coup, he just won’t go away quietly.

Dear readers, Thaksin had already returned to Thailand during the administration of his nominee Samak Sundaravej. The Constitutional Court found Thaksin guilty of wrong-doing. He asked if he could go to the Beijing Olympics and said he would return to face his punishment. They said, yeah, okay, see you soon.

Now, isn’t that ridiculous? Could it very well be that the verdict was just for show? That they really didn’t want him arrested? That they, once again, gave him a chance to fade away quietly?

One may say that the Samak Government saw to it that he was able to leave the country. I don’t think so. We well know the Samak Government was as potent as a 70-year-old who couldn’t find his Viagra. They couldn’t order the police to give a traffic ticket, but army generals could _ and that’s the point.

So why did the authorities keep lett-ing him go?

Readers know well that I am no fan of this former prime minister and that I think he is a dangerous megalomaniac, but one thing we have to give to him. Thaksin Shinawatra is a fighter. One doesn’t become this rich and powerful if one isn’t a fighter. One couldn’t have turned the landscape of Thai politics upside down and swept an entire election if one isn’t a fighter. Thaksin Shinawatra is a fighter. Certain people did not count on that.

Because Thaksin is a fighter with a lot of cash in his hands, naturally there are those willing to fight with him. Mob for hire has been a time-honoured occupation in human civilisation since the days of the Romans. Which brings us back to why the authorities do not want Thaksin arrested.

Dear readers, imagine Thaksin in handcuffs on Thai soil. Just imagine it. What would happen? The red shirts would make the Songkran incident look like a picnic in the park. There would be blood in the streets. Thailand, politically and economically, cannot afford that. The Thai authorities don’t want to arrest him. The Thai authorities don’t have the stomach for it.

Likewise Thaksin. Although he’s a fighter, he’s not a warrior. A fighter fights for rewards. A warrior fights for beliefs. If he were a warrior, he would gladly extend his wrists to the handcuffs. Then let’s have it out in the streets and may the man with the most cash win. Or else, the tanks can come charging in.

So if the fear is civil war in the streets, the game is not to defeat Thaksin Shinawatra.

The game is to defeat the red-shirt movement because without them, Thaksin will have no support base.

The best way to defeat the red shirts is, of course, by the Democrats winning the next general election. Because democracy is the only legitimate argument the red shirts have in support of Thaksin and against the Abhisit Vejjajiva government. If the Abhisit government wins, then the democracy argument will be moot.

Which is why Thaksin and the Puea Thai Party are doing their best to agitate and undermine the Abhisit government, pressuring him to dissolve the parliament and call for an election. Because they believe that the earlier the election, the better chance of a Puea Thai victory. It’s a matter of baht and satang.

Which is why the Abhisit government is doing its best to delay the general election. They need to take time and gather as much popular support as possible by handing out populace incentives. It’s also a matter of baht and satang.

When the time comes, if the Democrats do not win, then we all may have to answer to the people who are really in charge of this country: The military.

[FACT comments: Duh! And Thai govt expected another result??? That’s what’s called a, umm, free press…]

Times refuses to hand over Thaksin tape

• Bangkok Post: November 23, 2009
• http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/160747/times-refuses-to-hand-over-thaksin-tape

The London newspaper that printed an interview with Thaksin Shinawatra focussing on the monarchy has “unofficially” refused to turn over the original tape to the Thai government, PM’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said on Sunday.

The government “requested” a copy of the original tape of the interview between The Times newspaper and the fugitive ex-premier, the miinster said.

The interview took place earlier this month, and according to Mr Satit it is “thought to contain material considered offensive to the monarchy.”

Mr Sathit told repoerters the daily did not provide a reason why it would not provide the taped interview, but merely said it had the right not to comply with the request.

Mr Sathit said he had again ordered officials to send a request again and ask the daily to “reply officially”. He claimed the article hurt the feelings of the Thai people.

The interview was conducted in Dubai where Thaksin is staying in self-imposed exile. The newspaper said the interviewer was Richard Lloyd Parry, a British foreign correspondent who is Tokyo-based Asia editor of The Times.

The ex-premier has claimed the online edition of The Times “distorted” his remarks.

Thaksin was sentenced in absentia in October last year by a Bangkok court to two years’ imprisonment for abuse of power by helping his then-wife acquire a parcel of prime Bangkok commercial property at a price far below its market value.

Sangha split opens door for women

Sanitsuda Ekachai

Bangkok Post: November 23, 2009

http://www.bangkokpost.com/blogs/index.php/2009/11/20/sangha-split-opens-door-for-women?blog=64

When the monastic elders in Thailand were busy with the Wat Sothorn monks’ protest two week ago over who would get to be the abbot of their rich temple, their Western counterparts were simultaneously facing a serious split over the ordination of bhikkhuni (female monks).

Here in Thailand, we just shook our heads wearily at the sight of angry monks trying to retain their grip on temple wealth.
Temple corruption, you see, is old news. So is the failure of the council of elders to ensure transparency regarding temple finances.

But no matter how unhappy we are, we tell ourselves we should follow the saying, Chua chang chee, dee chang song which advises us to stay away from problems involving monks and nuns.

While the local reaction is resignation, that of the Western laity’s bhikkhuni ordination is a quest for change.

One is about hopelessness. The other is about hope.

Isn’t it telling?

At issue in the Western clergy is the expulsion of Ajahn Brahmavamso from the Wat Pah Pong Forest Sangha under the lineage of Luang Por Chah, for engineering the full ordination of women at his temple in Australia, in violation of the Thai elders’ anti-bhikkhuni mandate.

Disillusionment runs high because the Western laity hold the Wat Pah Pong Forest Sangha in high esteem and they think their Ajahns (teachers) could do better than just meekly submit to the patriarchal, feudal Thai clergy whose views on women are shaped by sexist Thai cultural norms.

They might understand that their Ajahns, having had to practice in a totally foreign culture, see submission as a way to let go of old conditionings and the sense of self.

They might realise that, along the way, their Ajahns need to incorporate some Thai cultural values which focus on relationships and group harmony.

But they expect their teachers to choose compassion for women monastics and the principle of gender equality over traditional submission to authority.

Their hurt deepened when Amaravati and Cittaviveka forest monasteries in Great Britain imposed a draconian contract (http://bit.ly/LiMdt) on their Siladhara nuns, forcing them to formally accept the inferior status and the bitter reality that they could never become bhikkhunis there.

Thanks to the internet, an international community of Buddhist laity promptly emerged to protest against the Western Forest Sangha’s decision against bhikkhuni ordination and the draconian contract for the Siladhara nuns.

Apart from encouraging more openness to full female ordination, their e-petition at http://bit.ly/2wndUC subtly reminds the Western clergy that they are now operating in societies with strong awareness of democracy, transparency and gender equality.

So they cannot simply dismiss the voices of the laity if they want the monastic Thai forest tradition to thrive in the West.

Given the ever louder calls, we are witnessing the making of the Western forest tradition, one that is more open, more democratic and more respectful of gender equity.

Exciting, isn’t it?

The Western Sangha should not feel annoyed. They should be glad.

The petition calling for dialogue shows the laity still have hope in their Ajahns. It shows they still care.

Sadly, that cannot be said about the situation in Thailand.

Despite resistance from traditionalists, there is no stopping bhikkhuni ordination now.

In Thailand, women bypass the Thai clergy to be ordained in Sri Lanka. Overseas, women now have a place to be ordained in the Thai forest tradition if they so wish.

Meanwhile, the Siladhara nuns are reportedly leaving Amaravati to set up their own sanctuaries.

We must admit, with gratefulness, that the Western Sangha have prepared them well. The nuns are now ready to fly, to create a more open and caring atmosphere for women to practice in the West without being held back by Thai traditions, the way their Ajahns must endure with.

The challenge ahead is huge. But with Dharma and spiritual perseverance, they will become a source of inspiration and confidence for many more women who want to follow the same path.

Again, we must thank the recent storm in the Western clergy for making it happen.

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Honestly, we do expect to see Thaksin back in Thailand. Likely with his billions intact and not in a gaol cell. If a military coup can rescind a working Constitution, we just don’t have any respect for rule of law. And maybe we just don’t deserve one. Hmm, and what about the lèse majesté charge and extradition from the PM’s favorite countries???]

So Richard, Why can’t British public schoolboys rule Thailand?

Andrew Drummond

The Times: November 10, 2009

http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2009/11/10/so-richardwhy-cant-british-public-schoolboys-rule-thailand/

I have been watching with interest the web reaction to ‘The Times’ interview with Thaksin on some of the local forums, and am amazed that few people actually get it……. and that, perhaps,  includes the author.
The interview by Richard Lloyd Parry was indeed a scoop. It was the first time Thaksin laid his cards on the table to such an extent to the foreign press, and even though nobody else from the foreign press seemed to want to chase this particular scoop, Parry got full access and then a tape recorded interview – the transcripts which were apparently provided by Thaksin’s staff themselves.

So Thaksin went into this interview eyes wide open and obviously expecting some political capital out of it.
Now take a look at the news story and look at the actual transcript of the interview.
Well actually you can’t check the news story now if you are in Thailand, unless its posted somewhere else, because that has been blocked, well, so says the man you cannot gag in ‘The Times’.
Actually the interview has not been blocked which is quite surprising, or it it?  No not really, because it is the news story more than the interview, which has caused the offence.

Enter the conquering hero
Actually the author has missed the bottom line on this story and that it is quite simply: Thailand is going to the dogs but Thaksin says will come back to power in Thailand by hook or by crook with Puea Thai after the next election, his sins will be wiped, he will be found not guilty, and he then can put the country together again and save us all.
If he wants to march in, he will march in from the north, but he wants to avoid bloodshed, he says, thankfully for once.
Richard Lloyd Parry, in the interview labours a lot on, and questions, the role of the Monarchy and or institution thereof.  That is all perfectly valid. But Thaksin Shinawatra is very careful in his answers, whether we believe him or not. He has said nothing against the monarchy, but criticised advisors to the monarchy and even suggested they tried to ‘assassinate him’.  In fact the Times claims that Thaksin wants the monarchy reformed, but that comes from a question by RLP  and Thaksin is answering ‘Yes, Yes’  to reforms of institution around the monarchy.

So actually the interview does not stand up the story but perhaps could have done had he asked the appropriate questions and we have to assume the ‘Times’ has not censored the interview.

Actually anyone reading the interview might gather that the interviewee thinks he is one step short of canonisation. So blood has already been drawn there intentionally or otherwise.

But in fact what ‘The Times’ has done is to use the interview to convey a certain set of circumstances, and relationships, which have been widely talked about in journalistic and diplomatic circles in Bangkok, and London, and get them into a news story.
It would be inappropriate for me to spell out what that conspiracy, real or imagined, is.

That ‘Times’ agenda seems to be confirmed by a follow-up story by Richard Lloyd Parry headed: ‘The interview that dared to break Thai Royal taboo’.

I have always seen, rightly or wrongly, Richard Lloyd Parry, as a closet supporter of Thaksin, even though he once described him as unsavoury he has painted, the current Prime Minister, as much more of an ogre.  I took ‘The Times’ to task about it about earlier in this year. See this for example ‘The charmer making a mess of his country’.

Richard,  who lives in Tokyo, as a journalist has never had to live under Thaksin and things like the ’War on Drugs’ and media suppression and men with baseball bats at the FCCT.

The possibility that Thaksin could actually be guilty of the crimes brought against him have been given half hearted acceptance in ‘The Times’ if any at all.

The fact that he was democratically elected it seems is enough. This is about a threat to democracy. Of course democratically elected leaders can have their own agenda as Adolf did.

The newspaper was silent about his critics when Thaksin took over Manchester City. If you wanted to see criticism of Thaksin you had to look to the sports pages of the Daily Mail and Guardian.

Anyway I voluntarily  parted company with ‘The Times’ earlier this year to return to my old friends at the ‘Evening Standard’ (or rather  ’Eenie Stannit’ according to comedian Eric Morecombe).

By that time  I was concerned about ‘The Times’ and went public about why, and after 10 years, they were suddenly equally concerned about my byline appearing in ‘numerous other newspapers’.

Though I have since written for them, I do not want to represent them. They would be foolish to disagree.
Anyway, who am I to say Thaksin is not a democrat and a man of the people which he described himself in the interview, agreeing he had some similarities to Aung San Suu Kyi?  Well they were both democratically elected and removed from power for example.

Needless to say Thaksin is a lot friendlier with Burma’s ruthless military junta, with whom he does business, so you wont see him chanting in support of democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi.

(And ‘man of the people’? Well he was not exactly brought up in the fields of Isan. He comes from a long line of Thai Chinese Royal tax collectors (ironically) and muleteers doing something along the Thai Burma border and dealing with whatever used to cross there.)

On November 9th Richard also wrote this. ”Mr Thaksin is a paradox. While in office, he was feared and loathed by many Thais, especially the educated middle-class, as an opportunist and authoritarian who trampled on human rights, the media and independent institutions in the pursuit of power. For the rest of the population he was — and remains — Thailand’s most adored leader, re-elected repeatedly and forced out by a naked military coup.

“After the generals returned power to elected politicians Thais voted for Mr Thaksin’s supporters and proxies who were subsequently forced out of power not at the ballot box, but through a series of questionable court decisions.”

That’s one way of looking it (though I am not sure what a naked coup is) and clearly Richard thinks the courts were rigged in all the Thaksin cases.  So lets not talk about what his new buddy Hun Sen in Cambodia  is doing to his people and their land and homes, which he is  bulldozing selling to foreigners, Thaksin included.  Thaksin will not be talking about it, as he is now economic advisor to the Cambodian government.

What it means though is that, if and when Thaksin comes back into town on his white charger, and Thai courts become honest again and find him innocent, I’ll be following British public schoolboy Abhisit and paddling my own canoe out of town and heading for retirement like that other ex-British public schoolboy and former excellent but unelected Thai PM, Anand Panyarachun.

So why can’t former British public schoolboys rule Thailand?

I guess we are out of touch with the common man.

Monitoring and repressing for the monarchy

Political Prisoners in Thailand: November 20, 2009

http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/monitoring-enemies-of-country-and-monarchy/

In a government that is increasingly authoritarian, Prime Minister’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey seems most enthusiastic about  increased repression and censorship. The Nation (19 November 2009: “Govt to monitor Jakrapob’s phone-in: Satit”) reports that Sathit has reminded “media outlets to abide by the law when reporting the phone-in of fugitive red-shirt leader Jakrapob Penkair…”.

Sathit stated that the authorities would “closely monitored by authorities” because he believed that Jakrapob  wanted to “smuggle weapons via the Northeast borders for an uprising during the rally from November 29 to December 3.”

He added: “The government is definitely keeping a close tap on Jakrapob who is acting hostile to the country and its revered institution…”.

Sathit repeatedly demonstrates the monarchy’s significant political role and the Democrat Party’s determination to repress dissent and opposition to protect the current order.

Update: Sathit is also cited in the Bangkok Post (21 September 2009: “Abhisit gets radio death threats”). This report claims that red shirt community radio stations in Chiang Mai had threatened Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The Post states this somewhat circumspectly this way: “Some community radio stations are said to have threatened to kill Mr Abhisit in a bomb attack during his visit.” It adds that Democrat Party MP for Bangkok “Boonyod Sukthinthai lodged a complaint with … police against the host of a programme broadcast on FM 92.5 community radio in Chiang Mai. The complaint demanded an investigation into Phetchawat Wattanapongsirikul, host of the Sapha Kafae (Coffee Council) programme, and his co-host, who was not identified.Both were accused of encouraging their audience to come out to protest violently against Mr Abhisit. Mr Boonyod also handed over audio clips of the programme broadcasts to the CSD for further investigation.”

If it is true that a station called for Abhisit to be killed, then this is a serious issue. As serious as PAD speakers calling for the beheading of Hun Sen, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, and Thaksin Shinawatra, alluding to an old Thai saying of shedding blood to wash royal feet.”

As is now usual, the Democrat Party-led government is awash with double standards. So PAD can call for murder and not a peep from them, but an allegation of a similar call from Chiang Mai reds and Minister Sathit is wound up into repress mode yet again.

He has ordered the community radio stations in Chiang Mai be closely monitored and he claims “have repeatedly incited red shirt supporters to protest against Mr Abhisit’s visit to the province on Nov 2.”

That might be true, but if Sathit knows it, why does he also state that there is no clear evidence?  Indeed, he says: “When there is clear evidence that they have violated criminal law and community radio regulations, the stations will be shut down and face legal action…”. Is Sathit simply trying to intimidate opposition and red shirt community radio stations?

The government is planning “[e]xtra-tight security is being planned. Twenty companies of police and another 20 companies of troops from the 3rd Army will be deployed during the prime minister’s visit.”

Abhisit “warned Thaksin Shinawatra’s supporters in Chiang Mai to stop their hostile action, saying they should work with the government to bring about peace and reconciliation in the province.”

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Now we might be onto something! I’ve got as much hope as anybody but O’Bama (born in Ireland) has no hope of fixing the US. There are simply too many fat cats for one man (and, believe me, he is alone) to stop the military-industrial-prison-pharmaceutical-agribusiness gravy train.  (Kind of pessimistic, eh?) Sweden gave the 2009 Nobel PEACE Prize to a US president supporting military regimes everywhere in the world, spending billions a day on war and prisons. The Internet is the only real hope for true, global participatory democracy. Let’s claim the prize—I can’t think of anyone or anything else worthy.]

Internet For Peace Nobel 2010 Candidate Initiative

http://www.internetforpeace.org/

We have finally realized that the Internet is much more than a network of computers. It is an endless web of people. Men and women from every corner of the globe are connecting to one another, thanks to the biggest social interface ever known to humanity. Digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society.

And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication. Because democracy has always flourished where there is openness, acceptance, discussion and participation. And contact with others has always been the most effective antidote against hatred and conflict.

That’s why the Internet is a tool for peace.

That’s why anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of non-violence.

And that’s why the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net.

A Nobel for each and every one of us.

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: This is the absolute scariest article I’ve read in a long time. First of all, the target is a pretty fair public newspaper in a pretty good country (in general, not a police state). For cartoons! Let’s kill some people over cartoons. That is simply not rational thinking. First of all, human beings are more important than any religion—get over it! What disturbs me more is these folks want to return society to the 14th century. Frankly, I’m speechless. To advocate such a warped, I may even say insane, concept means whatever they were smoking can’t be good.]

A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West

Ginger Thompson

The New York Times: November 21, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/us/22terror.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

The trip from a strict Pakistani boarding school to a bohemian bar in Philadelphia has defined David Headley’s life, according to those who know the middle-age man at the center of a global terrorism investigation.

Raised by his father in Pakistan as a devout Muslim, Mr. Headley arrived back here at 17 to live with his American mother, a former socialite who ran a bar called the Khyber Pass.

Today, Mr. Headley is an Islamic fundamentalist who once liked to get high. He has a traditional Pakistani wife, who lives with their children in Chicago, but also an American girlfriend — a makeup artist in New York — according to a relative and friends. Depending on the setting, he alternates between the name he adopted in the United States, David Headley, and the Urdu one he was given at birth, Daood Gilani. Even his eyes — one brown, the other green — hint at roots in two places.

Mr. Headley, an American citizen, is accused of being the lead operative in a loose-knit group of militants plotting revenge against a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The indictment against him portrays a man who moved easily between different worlds. The profile that has emerged of him since his arrest, however, suggests that Mr. Headley felt pulled between two cultures and ultimately gravitated toward an extremist Islamic one.

“Some of us are saying that ‘Terrorism’ is the weapon of the cowardly,” Mr. Headley wrote in an e-mail message to his high school classmates last February. “I will say that you may call it barbaric or immoral or cruel, but never cowardly.”

He added, “Courage is, by and large, exclusive to the Muslim nation.”

Mr. Headley’s e-mail messages, including many that defended beheadings and suicide bombings as heroic, are among the evidence in the government’s case against him and his accused co-conspirator, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who was born in Pakistan, is a citizen of Canada and runs businesses in Chicago.

The men, who became close friends in a military academy outside Islamabad, were arrested last month in Chicago. They are charged with plotting an attack they labeled the Mickey Mouse Project against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper whose cartoons provoked outrage across the Muslim world.

Since then, the investigation has widened beyond Chicago and Copenhagen. The authorities have learned more, with cooperation from Mr. Headley, about the two men’s network of contacts with known terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group, as well as officials in the Pakistani government and military. United States and Indian investigators are also looking into whether the two Chicago men, who traveled to Mumbai before the deadly assault there last November, may have been involved in the plot.

Mr. Headley, 49, and Mr. Rana, 48, stand out from the young, poor extremists from fundamentalist Islamic schools who strike targets in or close to their homelands. Instead, their privileged backgrounds, extensive travel and bouts of culture shock make them more like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, who attended college in the United States, and Mohammed Atta, one of the lead hijackers.

Mr. Rana’s father is a former principal of a high school outside Lahore. One of his brothers is a Pakistani military psychiatrist who has written several books, and another is a journalist at a Canadian political newspaper, The Hill Times.

Trained as a physician, Mr. Rana immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen a few years later. Then he moved his wife and three children to Chicago, where he opened a travel agency that also provided immigration services on Devon Avenue, which cuts through the heart of the city’s Pakistani community. In 2002, he started a Halal slaughterhouse that butchers goats, sheep and cows according to Islamic religious laws.

He and his family live in a small brick house on the North Side with a huge satellite dish on the roof. Neighbors described Mr. Rana as a recluse who rarely spoke to anyone and whose children never played with others on the street.

“He seemed very committed to his Islamic religion,” said William Rodosky, who once managed Mr. Rana’s slaughterhouse, in Kinsman, Ill., about 65 miles southwest of Chicago. “He said he wanted the business so he could provide meat to his people and make a little money.”

Mr. Rodosky echoed the views of several others who knew and did business with Mr. Rana when he said he was “shocked about the terrorism charges.”

“As far as I knew, he was very nice man and a very good businessman,” Mr. Rodosky said.

But Mr. Headley did not draw the same expressions of shock. Those who knew him paint a more troubled image.

“Most people have contradictions in their lives, but they learn to reconcile them,” said William Headley, an uncle who owns a day care center in Nottingham, Pa. “But Daood could never do that. The left side does not speak to the right side. And that’s the problem.”

Daood Sayed Gilani was born in Washington, where his parents worked at the Pakistani Embassy. Friends of the family said his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, a dashing diplomat and an avid musicologist and poet, charmed his way into the heart of Serrill Headley, who had left Philadelphia’s Main Line to work as a secretary at the embassy.

In 1960, the couple and their infant son, Daood, left the United States bound for England aboard the ship America, and from there went on to Lahore. But the marriage quickly soured, friends said, as Mr. Gilani immersed himself in the traditions of his homeland and his bride refused to submit to them.

After Ms. Headley left Mr. Gilani and her son and a daughter, Syedah, in Pakistan, friends say, the details of her life become lost in a jumble of fact and fiction. Ms. Headley, a red-haired, green-eyed woman, told friends she married an “Afghan prince” but then had to flee Kabul after he was murdered.

She arrived back in Philadelphia, friends said, in the early 1970s, taking different office jobs and dating wealthy suitors until one of them lent her money to buy an old bar. She turned it into the Khyber Pass, decorated with billowing Afghan wedding tents and stocked with exotic beers.

In 1977, Pakistan’s government was overthrown in a military coup, and Ms. Headley, friends said, feared for her children. She traveled to Pakistan, withdrew her son from the Hasan Abdal Cadet College and brought him to live with her, a move recorded by The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Her daughter, Syedah, stayed behind with her father for several years.)

“He has never been alone with, much less had a date with, a girl, except the servant girls of his household,” the article said, referring to the teenage Daood Gilani. “But he has just this day found a cricket team to join. And he has just this day, after watching American TV, said to his mother in his soft Urdu-English that she is to him like the Bionic Woman.”

According to family friends, the teenager soon rebelled against his mother’s heavy drinking and multiple sexual relationships by engaging in the same behavior.

“Those were the days when girls, weed, and whatever, were readily available,” Jay Wilson, who worked at the Khyber Pass, wrote in an e-mail message from England. “Daood was not immune to the pleasures of American adolescence.”

Later, said Lorenzo Lacovara, another former worker at the bar, Daood Gilani began expressing anger at all non-Muslims.

“He would clearly state he had contempt for infidels,” Mr. Lacovara said in a telephone interview from New Mexico. “He kept talking about the return of the 14th century, saying Islam was going to take over the world.”

Ms. Headley tried to help her son straighten out his life. In 1985, she put him in charge of the Khyber Pass, but he proved to be such a poor manager that they lost the bar a couple of years later, friends of the family said.

Ms. Headley embarked on her third marriage, and her son set off for New York, where he opened two video rental stores in Manhattan. It is unclear where he got the money to start the ventures. But court files suggest that the source may not have been entirely legal.

In 1998, Mr. Gilani, then 38, was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into the country from Pakistan. Court records show that after his arrest, he provided so much information about his own involvement with drug trafficking, which stretched back more than a decade, and about his Pakistani suppliers, that he was sentenced to less than two years in jail and later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operationsfor the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 2006, he changed his name to David Headley, apparently to make border crossings between the United States and other countries easier, court documents say. About that time, his uncle said, he moved his family to Chicago because it had a large Muslim community and he wanted to send his four children to religious schools.

There, the family lived in a small second-floor apartment. Mr. Headley claimed to work for Mr. Rana’s immigration agency. The two men attended the Jame Masjid mosque on Fridays, then stopped at the nearby Zam Zamrestaurant to eat and talk politics. Cricket, neighbors said, was their passion.

But Mr. Headley never seemed to fully fit in. Masood Qadir, who sometimes watched cricket with him, said he was “different” and kept mostly to himself.

E-mail messages show, however, that Mr. Headley stayed in regular contact with classmates from the military high school he attended in Pakistan, often engaging in impassioned debates about politics and Islam.

Earlier this year, Mr. Headley complained about “NATO criminal vermin dropping 22,000 lbs bombs on unsuspecting, unarmed Afghan villagers” or “napalming southeast Asian farmers.” Writing about Pakistan’s chief enemy, he said, “We will retaliate against India.”

And in an e-mail message defending the beheading of a Polish engineer by the Taliban in Pakistan, he wrote, “The best way for a man to die is with the sword.”

Reporting was contributed by Puk Damsgard in Islamabad, Pakistan; Emma Graves Fitzsimmons in Chicago; Nate Schweber and John Eligon in New York; and Ian Austen in Ottawa. Research was contributed by Barclay Walsh in Washington.

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Ah, the dream of political correctness … And the kid is charged!]

Arkansas cop tasers 10-year-old girl

Mother backs electric justice for unruly child

Lester Haines

The Register: November 19, 2009

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/19/ozark_tasering/

An Arkansas cop has been suspended after tasering a ten-year-old girl who repeatedly “screamed, kicked and resisted” when her mother attempted to get her to have a shower before bed.

Officer Dustin Bradshaw was called to a “domestic disturbance” in Ozark on 11 November, where he found the girl “curled up on the floor, screaming”, according to his report.

Bradshaw wrote that the girl was “violently kicking and verbally combative”, and noted: “Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to.”

When Bradshaw attempted to arrest the child, she kicked him in the groin, so he gave her “a very brief drive stun to her back” of “less than a second”, as police chief Jim Noggle put it. Bradshaw was then able to handcuff the subdued perp and she was taken into custody.

Noggle clarified: “We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child – just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else.”

The girl’s mother, Kelly King, backed Bradshaw’s action, telling local 4029tv.com: “I want to make this clear, I’m not calling them [the police] over here to handle my problem. I’m having them come over here to protect my daughter from hurting herself or hurting someone else.”

The unnamed victim’s father, Anthony Medlock, who’s separated from King, admitted his daughter had “emotional problems”, but insisted she “does not deserve to be tased and be treated like an animal”.

Ozark mayor Vernon McDaniel earlier this week demanded an official investigation into the matter. He told AP: “People here feel like that he made a mistake in using a Taser, and maybe he did, but we will not know until we get an impartial investigation.”

Arkansas state police declined to probe the tasering, saying it “only gets involved with criminal investigations”, rather than “matters of policy”.

While chief Noggle initially said Bradshaw would not face disciplinary action, the officer was subsequently suspended for seven days on full pay for failing to turn on a camera attached to the Taser, in line with department policy.

McDaniel continues to push for an Arkansas state police criminal investigation into Bradshaw’s use of the Taser. Medlock is also demanding satisfaction. He said: “I don’t know if justice will come out of it or not, but I’m going to do my damndest to get justice out of it. Somebody needs to pay. Seven days suspended with pay that isn’t anything. That’s not even a slap on the wrist.”

Whether Bradshaw will be held to account remains to be seen, but Medlock’s daughter – who’s reportedly unharmed and in the care of the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil – faces a charge of “disorderly conduct”, AP notes.

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Okay, so when is the public going to wake up and really see where this whole surveillance society thing is going? Not how we stop it—how do we turn back the clock?]

UK.gov hoovers up data on five-year-olds

What I did on my holidays, and all the other days

John Ozimek

The Register: November 17, 2009

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/17/childrens_data/

The government obsession with collecting data has now extended to five-year-olds, as local Community Health Services get ready to arm-twist parents into revealing the most intimate details of their own and their child’s personal, behavioural and eating habits.

The questionnaire – or “School Entry Wellbeing Review” – is a four-page tick-box opus, at present being piloted in Lincolnshire, requiring parents to supply over 100 different data points about their own and their offspring’s health. Previously, parents received a “Health Record” on the birth of a child, which contained around eight questions which needed to be answered when that child started school.

The Review asks parents to indicate whether their child “often lies or cheats”: whether they steal or bully; and how often they eat red meat, takeaway meals or fizzy drinks.

However, the interrogation is not limited to intimate details of a child’s health. Parents responding to the survey are asked to provide details about their health and their partner’s health, whether they or their partner are in paid employment, and even to own up to whether or not their child is upset when they (the parent) returns to a room.

Completing the review is, according to a spokeswoman for Lincolnshire Community Health Services (CHS) “entirely the choice of the parent”. However, the letter accompanying the review states: “Please complete the enclosed questionaire …and return it to school in the envelope provided within the next 7 days.”

There is no indication on the letter of a parent’s right to opt out, and parents we have spoken with have expressed fears that failure to fill out this questionnaire might mean their child’s access to health services would be diminshed.

One went so far as to say that she found the entire exercise terrifying: given the way in which social services were nowadays so quick to intervene in children’s lives, she felt that merely objecting to this questionnaire might lead to her and her child being placed on some sort of risk register.

Ginny Blackoe, Head of Family and Healthy Lifestyle Services, confirmed that children would not be excluded from the School Nursing service on the basis of non-completion of the health needs assessment. She went on: “On reflection I agree that this should have been clearer in the letter accompanying the questionnaire and I will ensure that this is actioned by the Lead for School Nursing.”

She also explained that as part of Lincolnshire’s softly-softly consensual approach to data gathering, this initial communication will be followed up with a reminder and then a third letter and a potential home visit from the School Nursing team.

El Reg put a number of specific questions both to Lincolnshire Community Health Services and to the Department of Health. We asked whether this process was lawful. We also asked whether not mentioning a parental right to opt out was a very convenient omission – and whether the process as a whole might be considered intimidatory.

Lincolnshire CHS were adamant that the process did not breach any laws on Data Protection. A spokeswoman said: “The questionnaire does not contravene the Data Protection Act.” They further added that the data would only be provided in anonymised form to third parties.

However, they were not prepared to engage in discussion of how this review fitted with DPA requirements that data be “obtained fairly” and that collection be “adequate for purpose” and “not excessive”. Nor have they responded on the specific issue around their right to collect data on third parties – partners of parents filling in the form.

When asked to cite specific statutory justification for collecting data in potential breach of the DPA, Ms Backoe cited Department of Health “guidance”. She referred to the Children Act 2004 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/ukpga_20040031_en_1) which she claimed “sets out standards and expectations about how services for children and young people should be developed strategically and organisationally”.

Sections 12 and 29 of this Act include provisions whereby the Secretary of State may order the setting up of databases – and have already been used fairly extensively in respect of the Contactpoint project. In theory, they allow for government to demand whatever information it sees fit to demand in respect of children, and to pass it on to any third party. Nonetheless, the regulations do not appear to include any powers to demand information on parents.

She also alluded to DoH “guidance” that local areas should “aim for 100 per cent coverage of children in the locality using whatever information systems are available”.

Whether the intention of this exercise was to be intimidatory or not, the net effect appears to have been just that.

The approach is not dissimilar to that already employed by the DoH in respect of patient records being uploaded to “the spine” (pdf) (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/Papers/drugsandalcohol.pdf). To achieve 100 per cent coverage of any data source is an objective that those working in IT will know is impossible without statutory backing: but to date, the DoH have attempted to circumvent this by the simple trick of not telling patients they have a right to opt out.

Government response to concerns by the BMA and patient groups (http://www.neilb.demon.co.uk/) was set out by the Chief Medical Officer (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1535856/Patients-will-be-ignored-over-privacy-of-records.html), who demanded that GPs provide the names and addresses of those wishing to opt out to central government, on the grounds that their dissent was not “correct”.

We also asked the DoH for comment. However, apart from an initial reaction that this project was nothing to do with them and probably belonged to the Department for Children Schools and Families (it doesn’t!), they have so far not come back to us.

If successful, this approach will be rolled out to the rest of England and Wales.

Europe: Fired British Drug Advisor Calls for Royal Commission on Marijuana Decriminalization

Drug War Chronicle: November 20, 2009

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/609/david_nutt_ACMD_decriminalize_marijuana

Professor David Nutt, the former head of Britain’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), who was fired late last month by Home Secretary Alan Johnson for criticizing the government’s drug policies as driven by politics instead of science, is now calling for a Royal Commission to study whether to decriminalize marijuana.

As head of the ACMD, Nutt had recommended that marijuana not be up-scheduled by the Labor government, but the government ignored that advice and moved marijuana back to a Class B drug, where it had been before the government down-scheduled it to Class C in 2004. Nutt and the ACMD had also recommended down-scheduling Ecstasy, another position the government rejected.

Nutt’s firing three weeks ago has led to considerable criticism of the government from the scientific community. It has also led to the resignations of five members of the ACMD.

Now, Nutt has told BBC’s Radio 4 that a Royal Commission examining decriminalization was a “sensible” idea that could bring “big health benefits.” Nutt added: “We’ve seen some countries like Portugal make real progress in terms of drug-related crime and drug-related harms by decriminalizing drugs of personal use. You could make a moral position that why should people be imprisoned for possessing something that effectively will only harm themselves?”

The Dutch model was one worthy possibility, Nutt said. “I certainly am interested in the idea that we might de-penalize possession and even allow the Dutch model for cannabis — the coffee shops — which could potentially have many benefits. I think it’s perfectly sensible to think about the Dutch model for cannabis and explore whether that might be a tenable way of allowing young people to get an intoxicant which is safer than alcohol, and which they could then use in a controlled, safe environment.

Religious discrimination law may open door for decent deviants

Pagans, vampires and libertines protected?

John Ozimek

The Register: November 16, 2009

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/religious_discrimination/

How far can your personal beliefs shield you against a growing culture of enforced respectability? Does paganism count as a “protected” philosophy? Will the law on religious discrimination herald the possibility of a new tolerance in sexual matters?

Sacked police trainer Alan Power certainly hopes that is the case. At a forthcoming tribunal (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6549313/Police-worker-fired-for-backing-psychic-investigations-claims-religious-discrimination.html) in London he will argue that his belief in the power of mediums combined with his 30-year membership of the Spiritualist Church is every bit as valid as more mainstream religious and philosophical views – and equally worthy of legal protection.

In fact, the door is already halfway open, as in an earlier judgment Judge Peter Russell has already stated that said that Mr Power’s Spiritualist beliefs had “sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance” to be covered by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.

This follows a key ruling last month (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/04/green_philosophy_ok/), in which it was held that an individual had the right to sue for wrongful dismissal on the grounds that his environmental views were a philosophical belief – and not a political view.

Both these cases are still subject to a final ruling by the relevant tribunal. However, if upheld, this interpretation of the law may put a major spoke in the wheels of organisations that have been busy setting up “Codes of Conduct” for their employees which appear to be based on little more than a desire to fit in with mainstream respectability.

There has been considerable objection (http://www.gtce.org.uk/media_parliament/news_comment/code_provacy030909/) to the introduction by the General Teaching Council of a Code of Conduct which includes a requirement that individuals should “maintain reasonable standards in their own behaviour that enable them to maintain an effective learning environment and also to uphold public trust and confidence in the profession”.

Similar codes apply for individuals working – or intending to work – in social work, for the local council, or even as a magistrate. Over the past year, a belief in paganism (http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6008749), an interest in the erotic side of vampirism (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-435523/Protest-teachers-erotic-vampire-website.html) and a previous appearance in a porn film (http://www.southlondon-today.co.uk/tn/news.cfm?id=18707) have all been considered by employers as sufficient grounds for dismissal.

A young woman planning to take up a career in social work was dissuaded from so doing after being informed that her sexual lifestyle was incompatible with their code of conduct. An applicant for a position as a magistrate was instantly rejected after he revealed his personal interest in BDSM.

It is unlikely that all such instances would be covered by the concept of “philosophical belief”, but lawyers active who are expert in employment law have pointed out that the initial ruling (http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/uk/cases/UKEAT/2009/0219_09_0311.html&query=Grainger+and+plc+and+v+and+Nicholson&method=boolean) in the environmental case, combined with article 8 of the Human Rights Act – the right to a personal and private family life – provide some hope of turning back the tide of employer-enfored conformity.

One of the key principles enunciated by the courts in telling whether something is a philosophical belief is that it should be a “settled and consistent” belief. A further principle requires that this belief not be political.

This raises the possibility of some very intersting future cases, as individuals lay claim to the principle enunciated by the Consenting Adult Action Network (CAAN (http://www.caan.org.uk/)) that what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own bedroom is no business of government – and the courts must eventually decide whether a belief in sexual freedom is both settled and philosophical

UK’s Terrifying Anti-Piracy Plans Leak

Ernesto

TorrentFreak: November 19, 2009

http://torrentfreak.com/uks-terrifying-anti-piracy-plans-leak-091119/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

Tomorrow morning Lord Mandelson will present the Digital Economy Bill to the public, which among other things is aimed at reducing illicit file-sharing. According to parts of the bill that leaked today, the legislation could lead to jail terms for file-sharers and unprecedented power for the entertainment industries.

Over the past months the UK government has tried to tackle the issue of online piracy. This has resulted in a proposal from Lord Mandelson, who plans to disconnect alleged file sharers without any judicial process.

Tomorrow the exact text of the bill is expected to be made public, but according to early reports, the legislation will open all doors for a digital police state where alleged pirates will be crucified by private companies.

Judging from some of the plans that leaked earlier today, the endless lobbying efforts of the entertainment industry by anti-piracy outfits including IFPI and the BPI have definitely paid off.

Cory Doctorow has the scoop on BoingBoing and he told TorrentFreak that the information comes from someone “very close to the Labour government” who he trusts implicitly.

If accurate, the new legislation will be a disaster for the privacy of all Internet users while giving unprecedented powers to the entertainment industry. Under the new bill the Secretary of State would be able to pass secondary legislation without Parliamentary oversight in order to protect rights holders.

Three reasons are given:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements. (for example, he could authorize jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their Internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

The leaked information mainly shows that the Secretary of State will have the power to introduce all kinds of draconian measures without Parliamentary oversight. More details on concrete policy dealing with alleged file-sharers and the proposed three-strikes system have yet to be announced.

The Fall of Pirate Cat Radio

Local activists join the national fight for vibrant, local radio.

David Downs

East Bay Express: November 18, 2009

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/the-fall-of-pirate-cat-radio/Content?oid=1428748

The Bay Area’s biggest pirate radio station is off the air, fined $10,000 for illegal broadcast, and its owner threatened with arrest if he returns. But Pirate Cat Radio isn’t going quietly into the night.

Not only is the thirteen-year-old San Francisco station still quasi-legally streaming to half a million listeners online per month, but the 1,200-watt station formerly broadcasting at 87.9 FM is fighting the Federal Communications Commission in federal court. While the station is raising funds to pay its fine with local events this month, it has joined a historic battle under way in Washington, DC over local control of the airwaves. Station owner Monkey (aka Daniel Roberts) says terrestrial radio has failed to serve the public interest, and Pirate Cat is fighting for consumer rights alongside pirates and politicians across America.

The current plan of attack includes challenging the FCC’s case in court, where Berkeley communications lawyer Michael Couzens — a former FCC official — says he will dispute evidence that Monkey was involved in broadcasting the signal. The FCC has evidence of Monkey working the sound boards at the station’s studio/cafe in San Francisco. But Couzens says the FCC has no evidence of him operating a transmitter since 2001. He maintains that “fans” of the site have re-broadcasted Pirate Cat’s web-based stream from all around the Bay Area. Point in fact: Since the fine, Pirate Cat has been picked up by broadcasters as far and wide as Vancouver and Honduras. The unprecedented case could take months or even years to wend its way through the regulatory agency.

Meanwhile, the station has started raising funds through events at bars, music shows, and merchandise sales. The station is run by authors, musicians, artists, and photographers that rank among the most plugged-in members of the Bay Area digerati. On November 20, Triple Crown will host a benefit dance party, and on December 3, Sub-Mission Art Space will host a Pirate Cat Radio benefit and auction. The station is selling calendars, T-shirts, and beer cozies online.

The station’s problems could not have come at a better time for national exposure. The movie Pirate Radio, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, just hit theaters. Pirate Cat Radio DJ Meg Escuede interviewed director Richard Curtis for her Sunday show, where Curtis performed station promos and said local advertising for the movie would mention Pirate Cat’s plight.

Even bigger, a “Low Power FM” bill is wending its way through Washington that would allow hundreds of noncommercial, 100-watt stations with a three- to five-mile footprint to flourish in major metropolitan areas. Low Power FM was passed by Congress yet banned in major metro areas in 2002 because the National Association of Broadcasters, representing chains like Clear Channel, successfully lobbied that it would interfere with their signals. However, a subsequent study disproved this, and a bill to repeal the ban has sailed through committee hearings in the House, and awaits a floor vote.

“This is one of those ‘call your congressman’ moments,” said Candace Clement, spokesperson for first amendment rights group Free Press in Washington, DC. The last twenty years will go down in history as a dark time for diversity on the airwaves, she said. Thanks to the deregulation of radio in 1994, corporate chains went on a buying spree, firing local DJs and homogenizing content.

A Free Press study in 2007 shows that commercial radio in America operates under de facto racial and gender apartheid, and dissolving media ownership rules made the situation worse. Of the roughly 15,000 commercial radio stations in America, less than 6 percent are owned by women and just 7.7 percent are owned by ethnic minorities. Some communities like Bakersfield have majority minority populations without a single broadcaster of color.

“I don’t think that that’s necessarily what American wants,” said Clement. “The media influences and informs so much of our lives, our world view, and democratic processes, and when you have almost all media controlled by five or six companies, you’re completely lacking the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints.”

The Free Press notes that studies show smaller, locally controlled stations play more news and have more diverse content. The FCC’s attacks against individuals building their own antennas and risking fines and imprisonment to broadcast indicates a desire for something different, says Clement.

“I do think the fact that there are so many pirate operations out there speaks to a need that’s not being met in the community, and there are a lot of them,” she added. “It’s striking how much people want this.”

California Association of Broadcasters president Stan Statham counters that “there’s plenty of room for everybody” if they want to pay for a license and a station, which can run into the millions of dollars. For example, San Francisco’s gay dance music station Energy 92.7 was just sold for $6.5 million to a firm now piping in “alternative” from Palm Springs.

“Pirate radio folks are of the mind that the airwaves belong to the public,” said Statham. “Well, that is not correct. You can’t just let everybody use the same door. It just turns into an ugly mob and people abuse it.”

The Free Press says the airwaves are public property, and stations must include programming that benefits the public in exchange for use of them. “They’re making untold millions of dollars off the airwaves and giving the public nothing.”

The FCC’s local Enforcement Bureau in Pleasanton and FCC spokesperson Janice Wise in Washington declined to comment on the Pirate Cat case. “It’s considered an ongoing issue,” said Wise. Indeed.

[FACT comments: This is one of the most important articles FACT has ever published. For only $30 million a year, the US can delete Internet censorship by any govt anywhere. Firstly, we can question the fact that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, of which FACT is a member, has a hidden agenda, namely Falun Dafa, and therefore an axe to grind with Chinese authorities. Secondly, we can question the US agenda as an international police state. But the truth remains that $30 million can end Internet censorship (We may add, about effing time!) How much does the US spend on war, police, prisons, Homeland Security—say, $30 million a minute, an hour, a day??? Frankly, we don’t care who funds it—delete ‘net censorship, in Thailand and everywhere else, NOW!]

Twitter this

The means exist to rupture Internet censorship in China and Iran — if the State Department will cooperate.

Washington Post: November 21, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004152.html

THE MOST interesting question President Obama fielded in China came over the Internet, via the U.S. Embassy, from a Chinese citizen who asked, “Do you know of the firewall? Should we be able to use Twitter freely?” In response, Mr. Obama, speaking at a town hall in Shanghai, did not directly address China’s massive Internet censorship operation — “the firewall” — and he confessed that he does not use Twitter. But he said, “I’m a big supporter of not restricting Internet use, Internet access, other information technologies like Twitter.”

No doubt that’s correct. And, just as likely, Mr. Obama is not aware that his State Department not only is doing next to nothing to support Internet freedom in countries such as China, but that it also has been slow-walking congressional initiatives to do so.

For two years Congress has appropriated funds to support groups that are developing ways to circumvent the Chinese firewall and those erected in Iran, Burma, Cuba and other repressive countries. The most prominent of the groups, the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, says it has the capacity to host 1.5 million users daily. Its technology works: Shiyu Zhou, the deputy director of the consortium, testified to the U.S. Helsinki Commission last month that at the height of opposition protests on June 20, more than 1 million Iranians used the system. He said that with $30 million of additional funding, capacity could be increased to 50 million users a day, making it “prohibitively expensive for any repressive government to counter our efforts.”

A bipartisan coalition that includes Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has been trying to channel the necessary funding. A total of $20 million has been included in the past two State Department budgets, and $30 million more is pending in the Senate’s version of the 2010 budget. But State hasn’t passed the money on to the firewall-busters. Instead it gave the lion’s share of its 2008 appropriation to a group that specializes in conducting media studies and training journalists, and it has failed to distribute the 2009 funds, even though the fiscal year ended nearly three weeks ago. The department says it is increasing the staff dedicated to working on Internet freedom issues and that it is funding some “implementing partners” that it won’t identify.

Still, no money is going to the one organization with a proven record of overcoming firewalls. The group’s advocates suspect that that’s because the Global Internet Freedom Consortium is identified with China’s banned Falun Gong movement — and State is fearful of Beijing’s reaction to any U.S. support for it. The Obama administration has already done plenty to appease the Chinese regime. The least it can do is act on the president’s own words about the value of free information — and help give Chinese their chance to Twitter.

Chinese censors block Obama’s call to free the Internet

Associated Press: November 17, 2009

http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/chinese-censors-block-obamas-call-to-free-the-internet

U.S. President Barack Obama prodded China about Internet censorship and free speech, but the message was not widely heard in China where his words were blocked online and shown on only one regional television channel.

China has more than 250 million Internet users and employs some of the world’s tightest controls over what they see. The country is often criticized for its so-called “Great Firewall of China” — technology designed to prevent unwanted traffic from entering or leaving a network.

During his town hall meeting in Shanghai on Monday, Obama responded at length to a question about the firewall — remarks that were later played down in the Chinese media and scrubbed from some Chinese web sites.

“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said. “I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access — is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.”

Obama may have been hoping to set a personal example for China’s leaders when he said he believes that free discussion, including criticism that may be annoying to him, makes him “a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

One prolific blogger who goes by the name of Hecaitou said that a transcript of the exchange posted on the portal Netease was taken down by censors after just 27 minutes. A full Chinese-language transcript of the event was later posted on the official Xinhua News Agency web site but required four clicks to locate the relevant section.

Only local Shanghai TV carried the event live. It was streamed on two popular Internet portals and on the White House’s web site, which is not censored, though both the video and audio feeds were choppy and delayed inside China.

The People’s Daily online briefly summarized Obama as telling the crowd that the Internet has “enormous power in assisting information dissemination,” but made no mention of his comments on censorship.

China has the world’s most extensive system of web monitoring and censorship and has issued numerous regulations in response to the rise of blogging and other trends. But the Web remains far more open than the country’s tightly controlled print and television media, which is the only source of news for the vast majority of Chinese.

Yang Hengjun, 45, a blogger and novelist based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said he was impressed by Obama’s frank admission that some free speech irks him, and by U.S. laws that are intended to keep the government from censoring criticism.

“You see, freedom of speech in America is not given to the people by the president but is something that the people use to supervise their government and president, to protect themselves,” Yang wrote in an essay titled “Why do I Blog? Obama has answered that question.” Posted online late Monday, links to the essay were spread via Twitter.

Because Twitter is blocked in China, Yang and others use proxy servers to get around the controls.

China defends Internet censorship after Obama lauds openness

Owen Fletcher

IDG News Service: November 17, 2009

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141001/China_defends_Internet_censorship_after_Obama_lauds_openness

China today defended its control of information on the Internet that it deems sensitive or harmful, one day after U.S. President Barack Obama told students in Shanghai that information should be free.

The remarks highlighted ongoing tensions between China and the U.S. over human rights, another ideal Obama extolled in China.

“For the Chinese government, we hope online communications can move smoothly, but at the same time we need to ensure that online communications do not affect our national security,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters at a question-and-answer session in Beijing. China also aims to prevent “adverse content” online from harming children in the country, he said.

China blocks Web sites including YouTube as part of its efforts to prevent sensitive political content from appearing online. It added Twitter and Facebook to its blocked list earlier this year after deadly ethnic riots in its western Muslim region, which also led China to cut off virtually all Internet access in Xinjiang province.

Obama, making his first visit to China as president, told local students at a question-and-answer session this week that freedom of information online can help people hold their government accountable and encourages them to think for themselves. Obama did not mention China’s Internet policies, but his statements went beyond the views usually expressed by Chinese government officials or local media. Chinese Web site owners are expected by authorities to censor certain information about sensitive issues like corruption on their domains, including when it is posted by users, and can risk punishment for failing to do so.

“All men and women possess certain fundamental human rights,” Obama said in a speech in Beijing on Tuesday that was broadcast on live national television. Chinese President Hu Jintao stood expressionless on the stage beside Obama as he spoke. “We do not believe these principles are unique to America, but rather they are universal rights, and they should be available to all peoples, and to all ethnic and religious minorities.”

[FACT comments: Big or small, insecure govts rely on “national security” to suppress free speech…or try to.]

Husband of Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez attacked

Reuters: November 21, 2009

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2023224020091121?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&sp=true

Yoani Sanchez: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoani_Sánchez

The husband of Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said he was attacked by government supporters as he waited on Friday to confront state security agents accused of detaining and beating his wife two weeks ago.

Sanchez, whose writing about the hardships of Cuban life were praised this week by President Barack Obama, said men believed to be government agents forced her into a car and hit her repeatedly in a brief detention on November 6.

Reinaldo Escobar, also a blogger, said he had gone to a Havana intersection hoping that state security agents would respond to a challenge he issued earlier to meet there for a “verbal duel” about his wife’s incident.

He said he was speaking to reporters when, in what appeared to be an orchestrated event, several hundred people gathered and began shouting “Viva Fidel” and “Viva la Revolucion.”

About 20 of his supporters began shouting back and the situation turned violent, he said.

“They pulled my hair, hit me with a shoe, tore my shirt, pulled away my bag of books. I lost my glasses,” Escobar, aged 62, told Reuters.

His wife, who was not with him at the attack, wrote on Twitter: “Until when will the language of force, of intolerance and disrespect for the opinion of others be the one that prevails in my country?”

The Cuban government responded quickly to Escobar’s accusations, emailing to foreign journalists a story published in the website laRepublica.es with the headline “The Cuban people are tired of Yoani Sanchez.”

The website, which describes itself as “The free newspaper, for an informed citizenry,” said state security agents saved Escobar from injury when he was surrounded by young people shouting “This street is revolutionary” and “Down with traitors” to the beat of a conga drum.

The agents took him from the scene “so he would not suffer the ire of a people that has tired of so many provocations,” the website said.

Escobar said a group of men grabbed him as he was being attacked by the government supporters, put him in a car, drove him to a neighborhood on Havana’s outskirts and dropped him off without saying a word. He said they did not strike him.

“SUPPOSED AGGRESSION”

Cuba’s government, which views its opponents as mercenaries working for the United States and other countries, has said nothing about the attack on Sanchez.

But laRepublica.es said the “supposed aggression” against her had been “totally refuted” by comments it published earlier in the day by doctors who attended her and said they found no injuries.

Sanchez, 34, has said she considered the incident a warning from the government to quiet her criticism.

On Thursday, she published in her Generation Y blog (www.desdecuba.com/generationy) responses by Obama to seven questions she had sent him by email.

“Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely,” Obama wrote.

“The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals,” Obama said.

Sanchez, 34, has won several international awards and was named by Time Magazine last year as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Obama’s response added to her international stature as Cuba’s leading dissident voice, but she is little known on the island where Internet access is limited.

The Cuban government has made no secret of its distaste for her, but she is among a growing group of young Cubans who have taken to the Internet to express their desire for change on the island.

(Reporting by Jeff Franks and Esteban Israel; editing by Anthony Boadle)

I’ll be hosting a 2010 Privacy Prep Webinar on Tuesday, January 12th from 12:00 – 12:30 PM (CST).

This complimentary 30 minute webinar will provide a plain language overview of the most significant privacy issues/events of 2009 and, more importantly, prepare you and your business for 2010.  Among other things, I’ll highlight notable court cases and privacy commissioner findings from 2009 as well as point out anticipated privacy issues likely to affect Canadian businesses in the coming year.

Space is limited so please RSVP early by emailing me at bowman@pitblado.com.

Haleh Esfandiari: Prisoner of Tehran

Laura Secor

The New York Times: November 20, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/Secor-t.html?ref=todayspaper

Stephanie Luykendal / Getty Images

In 2007, Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, told Iranian intelligence everything she knew. She was interrogated for almost eight months, nearly four of them inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. During that time, she explained the institutional structure of the Wilson Center, identified its board members and described her work organizing conferences. She translated reams of material from the center’s Web site into Farsi. But it was a dialogue of the deaf.

MY PRISON, MY HOME

One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran

By Haleh Esfandiari

Illustrated. 230 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $25.99

She knew the smirking, ubiquitous bureaucrat assigned to her case as Ja’fari, and his sinister, smooth-talking superior only by a Persian honorific, Hajj Agha. As she recounts in her new memoir, “My Prison, My Home,” these men were certain that Esfandiari, the refined 67-year-old daughter of a high-born Iranian ­botanist and an Austrian mother, was a central figure in an American plot to topple the Iranian government. Her answers to their questions, they believed, were evasions. What they wanted to understand was the deep structure of the conspiracy. They asked her to tell them about meetings that had never taken place and people she’d never met; they asked her the same questions, in jumbled order, with numbing frequency, hoping to catch her in a lie. She was not cooperating, they told her, and so the interrogations would go on. She could put an end to the intimidation by inventing a story to please them — but only at the cost of incriminating herself and ­others.

Esfandiari had come to Tehran to spend Christmas with her elderly mother. It took a staged armed robbery, the seizure of her Iranian and American passports, a raid on her mother’s home and several weeks of interrogations at an ersatz “Passport Office” before she fully understood that she was ensnared in two ugly and intractable struggles. One was the Islamic Republic’s nearly 30-year cold war with the United States; the other was its battle with its internal opposition. These two enemies, the Iranian intelligence ministry had come to believe, were linked. The domestic opposition spoke a language of democracy and civil society that resonated suspiciously with the agendas of foundations like the Open Society Institute. The regime’s hardliners associated such foundations with the opposition movements that overthrew autocratic regimes in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

At a time when the Bush administration had made no secret of its desire to forge ties with the Iranian opposition, it was hardly irrational for the unpopular regime to fear that it would come to a similar end. The revolving door between American government and Washington research institutions made it relatively easy for Iranian investigators to draw maps that connected internal opponents to prominent expatriates to the United States government. The president of the Wilson Center was Lee Hamilton, a former congressman: this, to their minds, was evidence that Esfandiari was recruiting fifth columnists at the bidding of the United States government.

Esfandiari and her husband mobilized an army of devoted friends and loyal colleagues as the trap closed around her. They knew people who had served in various ministries during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, or who had contacts inside the intelligence apparatus, or clout, they hoped, with the hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a sign of just how serious Esfandiari’s case was, her friends in Iran, presumably under threat, stopped inquiring about her case, dropped contact with her and in one instance even hung up the phone when she called. During her imprisonment, she did not know that she had become an international cause célèbre; her interrogators told her that she had been forgotten in America. (Reading about Esfandiari’s tribulations, the reader may spare a thought for Iran’s young and unknown political prisoners — the journalists, feminists and student activists who do not have powerful friends, American passports or international media attention, and who are often terrorized into confessing to crimes they did not commit.)

Esfandiari recounts in measured, at times chilling, detail her journey into the bowels of the Iranian intelligence apparatus. Neither the fear nor the fury that she undoubtedly felt compromise the clarity of her observations. Ja’fari, though malevolent, is not a cartoon villain but a creature of a certain sweaty banality, constantly interrupting interrogations to take cellphone calls about the teaching job he holds after hours. The prison guards discuss their skin problems and do their laundry at the prison; Esfandiari recalls at least one of them, a pious older woman, with warmth. At Evin, Esfandiari exer­cises constantly, refuses medicine and food other than what she can get from outside, loses a frightening amount of weight and avoids allowing her belongings to touch the dirty floor. What might look compulsive under ordinary circumstances becomes, in solitary confinement, the means to survival, a stubborn insistence on personal agency even if its sphere is as small as a prison cell, or, smaller still, the body.

With its fractured chapters and frequent subheadings, “My Prison, My Home” sometimes lacks narrative cohesion. Its most revealing passages are those detailing experiences no doubt painful and even boring at the time: the hours wasted testing the obduracy of Ja’fari’s pinched mind, and later, keeping pace with the more sophisticated Hajj Agha, whose face Esfandiari is never allowed to see. Esfandiari writes without literary affectation, to the point of flatness; but in her refusal to aggrandize or feel sorry for herself, there is an unmistakable and persistent dignity.

Laura Secor is writing a book about Iran.

Poco più di un anno fa nascevano in tutta Italia le prime contestazioni per l’approvazione dei decreti legge 112/2008 e 137/2008 adottati durante l’estate e convertiti in legge rispettivamente 133 approvata il 6 agosto 2008 e la 169 approvata il 29 ottobre 2008. L’Onda Anomala, movimento di studenti universitari e medi nato negli atenei e nelle scuole superiori nell’autunno del 2008, è stato ed è tutt’oggi l’espressione di un dissenso civile ma profondamente attivo che ha per un po’ destabilizzato il potere politico. Nessuno si aspettava un tale livello di organizzazione ma soprattutto di informazione degli studenti. I professori hanno avuto un ruolo centrale nello spiegare ai ragazzi la riforma e le relative ripercussioni e nel mettersi a disposizione per manifestazioni o metodi alternativi di insegnamento che si potessero conciliare con la protesta. Poi però il passaparola è rimbalzato nei blog e nei social networks così che nessuno avesse più il diritto di disinteressarsi:

-       TAGLIO DELLE RISORSE ECONOMICHE DESTINATE ALL’UNIVERSITA’: per un totale di 1441.5 milioni di euro almeno fino al 2013.

-       TRASFORMAZIONE DELLE UNIVERSITA’ PUBBLICHE IN “FONDAZIONI DI DIRITTO PRIVATO” : lo Stato consente alle Università di trasformarsi in fondazioni private per sopperire all’improvviso ammanco dei finanziamenti pubblici. Le fondazioni universitarie avrebbero così la possibilità di decidere l’entità delle tasse degli studenti, tasse che oggi hanno un tetto massimo che non può superare il 20% dell’importo del finanziamento ordinario dello Stato (FFO). Questo mette in crisi il fondamentale diritto allo studio universitario visto che una formazione di qualità potrà essere garantita solo a chi avrà una certa disponibilità economica, oltre a ledere il principio di eguaglianza e pari dignità tra i cittadini.

-       TAGLIO DI PERSONALE DOCENTE, DI RICERCA E TECNICO-AMMINISTRATIVO: impossibile di fatto rispettare l’articolo 9 della Costituzione “La Repubblica promuove lo sviluppo della cultura e la ricerca scientifica e tecnica”. Le Università dovranno trovarsi degli “sponsor” che le finanzino e questo controllo economico avrà effetti devastanti sulla ricerca in tutti i settori, condotta secondo le direttive impartite dalle società finanziatrici, in base alla redditività e al livello economico.

-       TURN OVER: le Università si troveranno costrette improvvisamente a mandare obbligatoriamente in pensione chi ha maturato i requisiti necessari, o altrimenti licenziare parte del proprio organico, imponendo un turn over bloccato al 20%, ovvero un nuovo assunto ogni cinque pensionamenti o licenziamenti. Unica soluzione sopprimere corsi d’insegnamento, fino a giungere addirittura alla cancellazione dei corsi di laurea meno frequentati o considerati di minor interesse.

Questi sono solo alcuni dei provvedimenti riguardanti le sole Università. I giovani visti sempre con i soliti pregiudizi dai “vecchi” media, si prendono i loro spazi, difendono il loro futuro e raccontano la loro verità a chi vorrà ascoltarli. Il loro punto di vista però non può più essere ignorato. Non c’è più solo il telegiornale che manipola le interviste per far sembrare superficiale e improvvisata la contestazione o il giornale che strumentalizza manifestazioni e manifestanti a fini politici. C’è un terzo spazio che è quello di Internet in cui si informa e ci si informa, ci si organizza e ci si confronta.

La scuola è l’istituzione che ha in assoluto subito meno cambiamenti dal momento della sua nascita ad oggi. Disposizione e arredamento delle aule, libri di testo come principali strumenti di apprendimento e trasmissione delle conoscenze, rapporti autoritari e gerarchici tra insegnanti e alunni rendono la scuola di oggi impreparata ad affrontare le importanti innovazioni apportate dalle nuove tecnologie e questo rischia di creare un contrasto insanabile tra scuola e società. Ed è proprio per la constatazione in prima persona di questo contrasto e di un mutato clima all’interno dell’aula scolastica che il professor Michael Wesch, antropologo culturale della Kansas State University si chiede che cosa è andato storto e come poter risvegliare l’interesse degli studenti nelle classi. Con un’espressione che ricorda l’ultimo film di Woody Allen “Whatever works”, Welch nota come gli studenti siano ormai degli esperti nell’arte del “tirare avanti”, raggiungere i loro obbiettivi, il superamento di un esame senza prestare attenzione durante i corsi, senza partecipare alle lezioni. Appunti, studio e libri di testo sono tutto ciò che in fin dei conti risulta indispensabile per riuscire, quindi perchè dare qualcosa in più. Dai cellulari all’ipod, passando per i computer, soprattutto con i programmi di messaggeria istantanea e social networks, le nuove tecnologie oltre a scandire le fasi della vita dei giovani d’oggi entrano di prepotenza anche nelle scuole. E questo dato di fatto non può più essere ignorato come anche le conseguenze che ne derivano.

Il problema è complesso perchè non se ne possono trovare soluzioni né mostrando una eccessiva indulgenza verso comportamenti talvolta poco rispettosi del lavoro altrui, né continuando perpetuare regole e  tradizioni che in certi casi risultano lontani dalla vita sociale. Concordo con Neil Postman quando nel suo libro “Ecologia dei media” dice che i mezzi di comunicazione di massa sono ormai il paradigma educativo preponderante nella nostra società e che proprio per questo la scuola deve fare da contraltare a questa influenza per raggiungere un equilibrio che consenta una formazione più completa e non deviata, ma è anche necessario che la scuola fornisca gli strumenti necessari affichè i giovani usino in modo proficuo e consapevole le nuove tecnologie. Sebbene la maggior parte dei giovani si sabbia orientare con notevole facilità tra i nuovi media a volte l’uso che ne viene fatto non è utile ad un accrescimento personale quando non addirittura dannoso. Il concetto di privacy, ad esempio, non viene quasi mai concepito come un diritto da dover proteggere e rivendicare, ma in molti casi è visto come un ostacolo alle relazioni interpersonali. Come ogni cosa anche le nuove tecnologie hanno luci ed ombre ed anche le tecnologie richiedono un comportamento idoneo che non può prescindere da certi principi.

E’ necessaria come prima cosa un’educazione ai media ma che vada di pari passo con un’educazione tradizionale. Si devono creare spazi in cui poter mettere in discussione quella relazione unidirezionale e autoritaria tra insegnanti e alunni, favorendo il dialogo e l’ascolto e qui le nuove tecnologie possono avere un ruolo decisivo soprattutto per lo sviluppo di progetti collaborativi che mettano a confronto realtà e punti di vista diversi. In questo modo la scuola può (e deve) favorire lo sviluppo della riflessione personale e del pensiero critico, cosa che per molto tempo è stata sottovalutata. Quanti ricordi, nei miei anni di liceo, di professori che di anno in anno non cambiavano una virgola delle loro spiegazioni e la cui unica richiesta era che fosse ripetuto parola per parola il loro punto di vista durante i compiti in classe. Quante volte una domanda o una richiesta di spiegazione veniva vista con sospetto e trasformata in un’interrogazione a sorpresa. Non bisogna confondere l’autorità con il rispetto e qui la scuola ha ancora molto da imparare. Gli insegnanti possono essere dei buoni mediatori nelle discussioni (mediate o meno), possono guidare gli studenti perchè sviluppino punti di vista coerenti e consapevoli, cercando magari di arginare l’illusione spesso data dalle nuove tecnologie che si possa parlare di tutto senza conoscere in maniera approfondita gli argomenti.

L’occasione della protesta dello scorso anno, ancora non del tutto sopita, è stata un buon momento per mettere a confronto società e scuola, nuove tecnologie e insegnamento. Anche se in alcuni casi si è lasciata la protesta fuori dalle aule per continuare le lezioni come se nulla fosse, c’è stato un incontro tra studenti e professori e forse da entrambe le parti stiamo cominciando a capire che i professori non sono figure da temere ma persone con cui collaborare per una crescita reciproca.

Giada

Pete Cashmore caught my attention on Mashable today with this article. The article describes the situation of “A Canadian woman [who] claims she lost her health benefits after her insurance company used her Facebook pictures as evidence that she was no longer depressed.”

I guess the key takeaways here are: 1. Facebook holds up in court, 2. Chippendales can pull a person out of depression.