Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bravery - Burma Monks

There may be 10 to 20,000 of them, instead of one - but they are still standing in front of a tank. 

,

Myanmar police, soldiers deployed to pagodas and monasteries

Agence France-Presse
Last updated 10:34am (Mla time) 09/26/2007

YANGON—Military-ruled Myanmar deployed armed soldiers and riot police to key pagodas and monasteries around Yangon on Wednesday, in a bid to prevent Buddhist monks from staging anti-junta protests, witnesses said.

Also during the night, Myanmar’s most famous comedian Zaganar, who had publicly thrown his support behind the monks, was arrested at his home, a friend told AFP.

“Zaganar was arrested around 1:30 am at his home,” because he brought food and water to the monks to support the protests, a friend told AFP.

Zaganar, along with other prominent movie stars and artists, had vocally urged the public to support the monks leading the most serious protests against the military regime in nearly two decades.

On Monday and Tuesday, he delivered food and water to monks as they prepared for their protests that drew 100,000 people into the streets.

Protesters defy junta (The Hindu)

The barefoot art of war (Salon)

Not my area of expertise, but I would say this is shaping up to be an unstoppable event - my hopes are with it having a good outcome.

[update: 9/26 4;30pm] Police Clash With Monks in Myanmar

collection of links from Kai

Marisacat also has an excellent pulling together of news reports and events. 

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Send a Net, Save a Life

An emergency appeal from Nothing But Nets, a grassroots organization that sends insecticide treated bed nets to affected areas in Africa.

Here is part of an overview of the crisis:

Armed movements, including fighting spreading from the Darfur region of Sudan (neighboring Chad to the East), have forced over 200,000 Chadians from their homes in recent months, and send them flooding into refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border, particularly around Goz Beida, a major refugee host area.

Displaced from their homes, these Chadians face a growing threat…from a tiny mosquito. In June the rainy season arrived – with malaria following right behind. As the climate gets wetter, disease transmission will rise sharply and continue on through November.

The sudden influx of Chadians into refugee camps has left tens of thousands of people highly vulnerable to malaria.

[...]

The challenge is urgent—without outside assistance, officials estimate 25% of these internally displaced people will die from malaria. To save lives, we need to send 40,000 nets in the next six weeks.

Go here to see how you can help.

via UN Dispatch

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Bloggers and the Beast: ABC/Disney, Promoters of Hate Speech, Steps In It

A cautionary tale of a small, obscure blog, a media behemoth and *cough* “containing the story”.

I broke a thermometer once, when I was a kid, and was absolutely fascinated by the resultant mercury “spill”. Unaware of the dangers associated with the substance, I’d put my finger out to touch one of the globs and have it either skitter away or break up into many smaller globs. The more I pushed at them, the more little silver nubs there were spreading all over the table, creating entire colonies. Who knows how far it could have gone had not my mother walked into the room and swiftly wiped out my little world.

Bloggers, while just as likely to multiply when you attempt to stomp on one, are a little tougher to wipe out, though, as ABC/Disney will no doubt soon discover.

Here is the story, so far, as I understand it.

Spoko, a proud Z-list blogger (meaning few had ever heard of him outside of his friends, small circle of readers and other bloggers) toiled away in relative obscurity on his site, Spoko’s Brain, chronicling the venomous eliminationist rhetoric and hate speech coming from the San Francisco(?!) radio station with the call letters KSFO. Here is how Spoko describes it (posted at Online Blogintegrity, which is making sure that Spoko’s voice can still be heard – via Bouphonia):

From I am Spoko

KSFO is a Disney affiliate whose radio hosts broadcast violent rhetoric directed toward journalists, liberals, Democrats, Arabs and Muslims all over the SF Bay Area and to the world via the Internet.

And it’s here, apparently, where he ran afoul of the Mouse:

I commented about the content of these host’s broadcasts on my blog and informed KSFO’s advertisers about what they were supporting by letting them listen to the exact audio quotes from the hosts.

This was the result:

Two days before Christmas I got a Cease and Desist letter from ABC regarding my use of audio clips from KSFO radio hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers on my blog, Spocko’s Brain (see attached PDF).

Why the C&L Letter Now?

In mid-December I got confirmation that a major national advertiser, VISA, pulled their ads from the Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers show, based on listening to audio clips I provided them. I also think that FedEx, AT&T and Kaiser are considering pulling their ads. Visa isn’t the first advertiser who has left KSFO, multiple advertisers have left the station, especially from the Brian Sussman show. In July of this year when KSFO lost MasterCard as an advertiser someone from KSFO “outed” me on a counter-blog (which I won’t link to). This same person has also threatened me with local and federal criminal action for using the audio (which I clearly used under the fair use portion of copyright law). And because they have suggested violence toward me (in addition to talking about suing me “for everything I have”) I have chosen to remain anonymous.

As Thers has said, 95 percent of blog fights don’t mean anything, but I think this one does since KSFO is using the full weight and force of an ABC/Disney lawyer and copyright law against a private citizen blogger. I dared to use the audio content in question for nonprofit educational purposes (I don’t even have ads on my blog!), and thus under the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.§107.

While most of the material used at Human Beams Magazine that is not produced by our own columnists, or submitted by writers, is used under the creative commons license, on some rare occasions we have reposted parts of articles or other material under the Fair Use Doctrine, as is the case with many other web publications, especially blogs.  Spoko has not, from what I gather, recorded and reposted full radio programs on his media criticism blog, but small snippets of the relevant hate speech - fully credited to their sources, that being the point - for advertisers (and others) to reference when making their decisions about listening to or advertising on the programs.  In my totally not a lawyer way, I am having trouble seeing how this violates the Fair Use Doctrine as opposed to possibly just impacting the profit margin.

This is a rather important situation, not only because of the hate speech (which is good to highlight in and of itself) but because what it means for the rest of us, bloggers and other online publishers.

Spoko again:

It’s about Money not Ideology

Talk Radio is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is also a regulated industry because the public gave the broadcast airwaves to radio stations. There are rules. First there are FCC rules with fines of $315,000 for obscene and indecent speech, thanks to the Christian Right. Interestingly, the radio union, (which KSFO hosts hate so much) worked very hard to stop those fines from being directed to individual radio hosts. So the corporation will bear the burden of any fines. Next, there are guidelines at the local station level, the network level and the parent company level. So even if the inciting of violence and hate speech is ignored by the FCC, the continued violent rhetoric has been, and continues to be, approved at the station level (KSFO) the group level (KGO-KSFO) the company level (ABC Radio) and the parent company level (Disney). They are ALL aware of this speech, and because they have not acted in a meaningful way, they all are giving approval for it to continue.

No Management Action

When Keith Olbermann and Media Matters ran Melanie Morgan’s comments about “putting the bull’s-eye on” Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, management did nothing. Morgan did a jokey non-apology where she never even mentioned she used the term bull’s-eye.
I’ m guessing Lee Rogers may have gotten a memo telling him to stop talking about burning people alive, torturing them and blowing their brains out, because on November 30th, he defiantly said to management and advertisers, “Nobody is gonna tell me what to talk about or not talk about or in what fashion on this radio program. It ain’t gonna happen!”

ABC/Disney acted only when they lost revenue. Then they went after ME with a cease and desist letter.

Why me? I’m not the one saying journalists should be hanged, thieves should be tortured and killed, people should be burned alive, stomped to death or have their testicles cut off. I’m not the one saying that millions of Muslims should be killed on the presumption that they are extremists or just because they live in Indonesia . I’m not the one who says that lying is as natural as breathing to Egyptians and Arabs or demanding that a caller “Say Allah is a Whore” to prove he is not an Islamist. I’m simply documenting this speech and providing it to the people who are paying KSFO hosts on commercially supported broadcast radio.

They have Lawyers, Guns and Money. I’ve got a 5th tier blog and no money

Because I and some other listeners hit right-wing talk radio in the pocket book, they are acting like wounded animals and brought out the big guns, Corporate Lawyers. Am I scared? Hell yes. They can easily squish me like a bug and tie me up in legal battles for the rest of my natural life (and Vulcans live a long time), not to mention that unlike KSFO radio hosts, I’m not getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and generating millions of revenue for a multibillion-dollar parent company. If I pursue this further I expect the next step is a “CyberSLAPP” suit.

I don’t want to consider the possibility of Morgan’s good friend Michelle Malkin deciding to publish my address and real name so that her minions can send me death threats or “white powder” in the mail. Chad Castagana, was charged with mailing more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to liberals. He got the idea from someone that journalists, liberals and democrats were the enemy and deserved to die.

Brian Sussman proudly poses with his handgun in KSFO publicity shots and says that he thinks that everyone should have the right to have a machine gun. Maybe I’m over reacting, why would they attack me? I’m not famous, I’m not an elected official, I tried very hard to be accurate about what THEY said BY USING THEIR OWN WORDS.

I tried to help companies protect their brands from being tainted with the violent rhetoric and anti-any-religion-but-right-wing-christianism speech. I wanted to help the VPs of marketing avoid being associated with Lee Roger’s “testicle talk” or Sussman talking about cutting off a finger and a penis of an Iraqi in his imaginary torture sessions.

It’s about Brands: All the Blessings, None of the Taint

I have found out that KSFO is sold to advertisers as “a Disney affiliate” with all the associated family-friendly connotations. So KSFO is getting all the benefit of the Disney name as well as the massive infrastructure of ad sales at the national level. Clearly ABC Radio doesn’t want KSFO hosts’ horrific comments to actually reach advertisers. Advertisers are kept in the dark so KSFO can benefit from the Disney brand glow (ABC Radio News creditability glow?).

Advertisers should be able to decide if they want to keep supporting this show based on complete information. We already know that management at ABC and Disney support these hosts, which means that the ABC/Disney Radio brand now apparently includes support for violent hate speech toward Muslims, democrats and liberals.

But instead of directing the hosts to refrain from violent rhetoric and hate speech, they go after the weakest person with the fewest resources. It’s cheaper and easier.

Bottom line: ABC/Disney is supporting and profiting from this violent speech, they should at least also accept any negative connotations or financial impact it might have to their image.

There is more there, including actions you can take, sample letters to advertisers, and other advice.

If you’d like to listen to some of the hate rhetoric that Spoko has documented - (what? You, like ABC/Disney, thought that stepping on one blog (blob) would stop the spill?) – you can find links to the various snippets here, and here. If I come across more (or get some time to put up some here… I am doing major catching up from holidays and illness, though) I will add to this post.

In the meantime, if you want a laugh and to see how not to contain a story, do a Technorati or Google blogsearch on KFSO and Spoko, or just Spoko, as well as a regular news search. Obscure and unnoticed but by a few no more, is he… nor is the venomous rhetoric that is being spewed over our airways.

Let, some might say, a thousand stories bloom.

Monday, December 11, 2006

50 Bullets-No Memory; Dancing in Santiago; Israel Blocks Tutu?; Questioning Diamonds

Newsy Bits

The New York Times adds details and layers to this story that is in not going to go away. Unarmed men, a wedding day, and a hail of bullets have combined to make this story something that even those whose common reflex is to blame the victim in police shootings have a hard time justifying.

50 Bullets, One Dead, and Many Questions

A police sergeant who arrived seconds later described the scene this way: The Nissan had crashed into a van in the middle of the street. Smoke was coming from its radiator. The man in the driver’s seat was slumped back. His passenger was lying across his lap with his arms hanging outside the driver’s window.

The sergeant, Michael Wheeler, later told investigators that both men appeared seriously injured and likely to die, according to the records. A plainclothes officer stood close by, his pistol still trained on the two men in the car. A third man lay on the street nearby.

Minutes later, the shooting scene on Liverpool Street in Jamaica, Queens, was choked with patrol cars and the scrum of officials that follows a police shooting. A captain ordered another uniformed sergeant, Donald Kipp, to locate and inspect the weapons of the men involved in the shooting. In all, five plainclothes officers had fired a total of 50 bullets.

But one after another, in conversations with Sergeant Kipp or Sergeant Wheeler, the men said they could not say how many shots they had fired. Two said they were unsure whether they had even fired at all, including a detective who investigators later learned had fired 31 shots, emptying his 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol, reloading and emptying it again during the frenzied barrage.

How safe can you feel, even not being a young Black man, with police officers on the streets that can fire 31 one bullets at someone, stopping to reload, and then not remember even doing it?

via P6

   * * * *
From the BBC:

There was dancing in the streets of Santiago - and water cannons

Thousands of Chileans have taken to the streets following the death of the country’s former military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, at the age of 91.

Jubilant opponents danced in the centre of Santiago, Chile’s capital, before clashes broke out. Police used water cannon and tear gas to control crowds.

Supporters mourned Gen Pinochet outside the military hospital where he died.

The general took power in a 1973 coup, and more than 3,000 people were killed or “disappeared” in his 17-year rule.

He was accused of dozens of human rights abuses as well as fraud but poor health meant he never faced trial.

I may not rejoice in the death of any person but, for some, I do not mourn.

Update: via Tapped, Randy Paul of Beautiful Horizons augments the New York Times’ rather thin list of key dates in Pinochet’s career with a few of the “forgotten” items, in Wanted: A Strong Wooden Stake and Several Garlic Bulbs

   * * * *
Also from BBC, this doesn’t look (or sound) too good.

Israel ‘blocks Tutu Gaza mission’

Israel has blocked a UN fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, the UN says.

Mr Tutu’s team would have investigated last month’s killings of 19 civilians in an Israeli artillery barrage in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

But Israel had not granted the former Archbishop of Cape Town the necessary travel clearance, a UN official said.

The Israeli government said it had not formally denied visas to the UN team.

Mr Tutu’s team was supposed to report its findings to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council by Friday.

Spokeswoman Sonia Bakar said Mr Tutu had other engagements and could not wait any longer for Israeli permission to travel.

“It has been cancelled. We were supposed to go yesterday (Sunday),” she said.

An Israeli government spokesman said it had not made a final decision on whether to grant visas for Mr Tutu’s team.

He said the government did “not have a problem not with the personalities, we had a problem with the institution. We saw a situation whereby the human rights mechanism of the UN was being cynically exploited to advance an anti-Israel agenda”.

[...]

It [the Human Rights Council] asked Mr Tutu to assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors and make recommendations on ways to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli attacks.

Maybe it’s considered less of a gamble to keep him out completely, than to have him speak and the world listen.

   * * * *
From Canada.com

Some good news -

Diamond trade on the defensive

Betsy Vereckey, The Associated Press
Published: Monday, December 11, 2006

NEW YORK—This holiday season some diamond retailers say they are seeing heightened consumer concern about conflict diamonds, the gems mined in war zones that are sold to fund armed conflict and civil war.

Sales of so-called conflict diamonds have helped finance wars that killed millions in Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia over the past several decades, and efforts to address the problem have been made within the diamond industry.

But human rights groups are now taking the issue straight to consumers, and with Friday’s release of Warner Bros. Pictures’ new film Blood Diamond, diamond retailers are preparing to face more scrutiny than ever before.

Many large retailers, such as Tiffany & Co. and Zale Corp., say they have enacted policies to help stem the flow of conflict diamonds. And during the all-important holiday season, when at least half of annual jewelry sales are recorded, retailers want their customers to feel they can shop guilt-free.

There is more there, including various sellers of diamonds and jewelry and what measures they are taking to ensure that their diamonds are not drenched in blood.

I’ve never liked diamonds.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Newsy bits - Throw the Bums Out! Lebanon, Mexico… more

That’s our problem here in the US… not enough people out of work.

“We have no work. We have nothing else to do, so we came to overthrow the government.”

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 1 — The official goal was to overthrow the government, but the atmosphere was bizarrely festive today as hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah supporters poured into the center of Beirut, banging drums, chanting slogans, pressing shoulder to shoulder as they surged past army troops seeking to keep order.

Families with little children, old people and young people all heeded the call of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim party and militia, packing buses and cars all over the country. By nighttime, however, only several thousand demonstrators remained, smoking water pipes, playing music and vowing to stay, some in tents, until the Western-backed government falls.

“We are having fun, yes,” said Hussein Hanoum, 27, of Hermel in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, as he lay across a sidewalk in the midst of a huge crowd. “We have no work. We have nothing else to do, so we came to overthrow the government.”

The mood was light-hearted, but the impressive turnout underscored the challenge this politically divided and fragile country faces as it confronts its most dangerous political crisis since the end of a 15-year civil war in 1990. The government was holed up in the Grand Serail, an Ottoman-era building on a hill overlooking the demonstrations. The prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said that the people could stay in the streets as long as they like, but neither he nor the other ministers would resign.

[....]

Not quite a triumphant and auspicious start to governing, I’d say. Or end, as the case may be.

Mexico Swears In New Leader, Quickly

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 1 — It was not pretty, but Felipe Calderón, the new president of Mexico, managed to take the oath of office in Congress today, while leftist lawmakers whistled and catcalled and the losing leftist candidate staged a huge protest march down the central avenue of the capital.

Mr. Calderón quickly took the oath of office, and Mr. Fox handed over the traditional presidential sash and left the chamber. The entire ceremony lasted four minutes.

All the while, opposition politicians blew whistles and held up banners suggesting Mr. Calderón was “a traitor to democracy.”

Earlier in the day, fisticuffs and pushing matches broke out between right-wing and left-wing lawmakers as they jockeyed for position in the chamber, with leftists trying to obstruct the entranceways and the conservatives ringing the dais and podium.

Never before in modern Mexican history has a president been sworn under such chaotic and divisive conditions.

[...]

Speaking to his supporters, Mr. Lopéz Obrador charged once again that the election was fraudulent and that Mr. Calderón’s victory was engineered by a “neofascist oligarchy.” He claimed the “imposition” of Mr. Calderón as president amounted to a “coup d’etat.”

“We are not rebels without a cause,” he said. “Sometimes they forget the heart of the matter, which is that they robbed us of the election.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Houston Judge Terrified of Peaceful Protesters - Assigns Them Combined $39.1 Million Bond

Houston crackdown on right to peaceful protest, freedom of speech…

44 Janitors Arrested in Non-Violent Civil Disobedience in Houston Held on Combined $39.1 Million Bond

For peaceful protestors charged with Class B misdemeanors, bond for each set at unprecedented $888,888 cash; For Harris County man recently charged with murder, bond set at $30,000

HOUSTON – In an unprecedented transparent attempt to severely limit the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech of low-wage Houston janitors and their supporters, a Harris County District Attorney has set an extraordinarily high bond of $888,888 cash for each of the 44 peaceful protestors arrested last night. Houston janitors and their supporters, many of them janitors from other cities, were participating in an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting in the intersection of Travis at Capitol when they were arrested in downtown Houston Thursday night. They were challenging Houston’s real estate industry to settle the janitors’ strike and agree on a contract that provides the 5,300 janitors in Houston with higher wages and affordable health insurance.

The combined $39.1 million bond for the workers and their supporters is far and above the normal amount of bail set for people accused of even violent crimes in Harris County. While each of the non-violent protestors is being held on $888,888 bail…

For a woman charged with beating her granddaughter to death with a sledgehammer, bail was set at $100,000;

For a woman accused of disconnecting her quadriplegic mother's breathing machine, bail was set at $30,000;

For a man charged with murder for stabbing another man to death in a bar brawl, bail was set at $30,000;

For janitors and protesters charged with Class B misdemeanors for past non-violent protests, standard bail has been set at $500 each.

More than 5,300 Houston janitors are paid $20 a day with no health insurance, among the lowest wages and benefits of any workers in America.

Community activists and leaders expressed concern and dismay today at the police’s use of horses to intimidate and corral janitors participating in the non-violent civil disobedience Thursday night in downtown Houston. The police’s choice to use horses to stop the protest resulted in four people being injured, including an 83-year old female janitor from New York.

In a statement released today prior to the bonds being set, U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee said, “A protest is a sign of freedom in the United States and exercises our basic rights to free speech.”

Photos and video shot by people in the crowd during the incident are available on www.houstonjanitors.org

Background:

More than 1,700 SEIU janitors in Houston have been on strike since October 23 over civil rights abuses and a failure to bargain in good faith by their employers, the five national cleaning companies ABM, OneSource, GCA, Sanitors, and Pritchard.

With five of the most influential players in Houston’s commercial real estate industry refusing to intervene in the dispute, the workers’ strike against five national cleaning firms is increasing in scope and intensity. In the highly competitive market of contract cleaning, it the building landlords that hire the cleaning firms that negotiate and set rates for janitors’ wages and benefits. These five major landlords, Hines, Transwestern, Crescent, Brookfield Properties, and the oil giant Chevron, have the power to settle the strike by directing the cleaning contractors they hire to provide higher wages and health insurance all workers need to support their families.

In every city, the janitors work for many of the same national cleaning firms in buildings owned by the same national commercial landlords. But, while janitors in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities make more than $10 an hour, have health insurance and full-time work, Houston workers are paid an average of $20 a day, with no health insurance for part-time work.

Last fall, 5,300 Houston janitors made the historic choice to form a union with SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Their decision capped one of the largest successful organizing drives by private sector workers ever in the Southern half of the United States. Since forming a union with SEIU, Houston janitors have been seeking a raise to $8.50/hour, more hours, and health insurance in a citywide union contract. For more info, visit houstonjanitors.org

More than 225,000 janitors in 29 cities are members of SEIU.