Send a Christmas card to Minister Clement

December 4, 2009 — xanthippa

Today, this came via email:

As you probably know, Big Internet Service Providers (Bell, Rogers, Shaw, etc.) are trying to take control of how we use the Internet. BUT Industry Minister Tony Clement can put a stop to this. So let’s send him a Christmas card asking him to give Canadians the gift of the Open Internet this holiday season!

Sign the card through Twitter.

Sign the card through Facebook.

Sign it on our site.

Tell Minister Clement to be our Open Internet Santa!

Thousands of people have already told Minister Clement to stop Big Telecom from taking control of our Internet use. Considering we’ve successfully pushed the CRTC to develop open Internet guidelines and convinced the two major political parties to support Net Neutrality, we can win this if we send the minister enough letters. If you haven’t already done so, please take a few seconds to send Tony Clement a letter.

If you’ve already taken action, tell all your friends.

Share on Facebook.

Stay in the loop at SaveOurNet.ca and be sure to check out videos of our Open Internet Town Hall Events.

Thank you.

The SaveOurNet.ca team

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More corporate fascism for squashing freedom of speech

October 19, 2009 — xanthippa

In my short post yesterday, Thunderf00t’s video demonstrated how easy it is for a large corporation – specifically Google, which controls how the vast majority of information on the internet is accessed – could easily collude with politicians for their own benefit…and to the detriment of us, the ‘little people’.  In addition, Thunderf00t demonstrated how, through YouTube, Google had already demonstrated that they do censor (by not allowing their search engines to ‘pick it up’ and thus making it ‘virtually dissappear’) information which is critical of them…

The desire, means and ability:  it’s all there!

Sadly, that is just the tip of the iceberg!!!

From Michael Geist:

… the Electronic Commerce Protection Act comes to a conclusion in committee on Monday as MPs conduct their “clause by clause” review. While I have previously written about the lobbying pressure to water down the legislation [to protect consumer rights] (aided and abetted by the Liberal and Bloc MPs on the committee) and the CMA’s recent effort to create a huge loophole, I have not focused on a key source of the pressure. Incredibly, it has been the copyright lobby – particularly the software and music industries – that has been engaged in a full court press to make significant changes to the bill.

…

The DRM [Digital Rights Managament] concern arises from a requirement in the bill to obtain consent before installing software programs on users’ computers. This anti-spyware provision applies broadly, setting an appropriate standard of protection for computer users. Yet the copyright lobby fears it could inhibit installation of DRM-type software without full knowledge and consent. Sources say that the Liberals have introduced a motion that would take these practices outside of the bill.

…

Even more troubling are proposed changes that would allow copyright owners to secretly access [personal] information on users’ computers.

(my emphasis and notes)

OK – let’s sum up:

Large multinational corporations are lobbying (and succeeding, with Liberal and Quebec PMs) to allow changes to the proposed  Electronic Commerce Protection Act which will permit – in the name of protecting their copyright – manufacturers of products (from video games to music CDs to just about anything else that is ‘electronic media’) to install and run programs on your computer, which would gather personal data about you and your computer use.  And, it would allow them to do it without your permission – and even without your knowledge!!!

If there really are people out there who think this is something that only concerns people who steal music or movies, please, think twice.

Do we permit the police – who, at least, are accountable to the citizenry – to wiretap our phone ‘just to make sure we are not breaking the law’?  NO!  They must prove, to the satisfaction of a judge, that there is a cause for surveillance, get a court order, and only then can they listen in.  If it ever gets to court, the police are obligated to disclose all that they have.  And, so it should be.

This lobbied-for change would, in effect, permit private corporations – who are not accountable to anyone but their own BOD and shareholders – to ‘wiretap’ your computer, monitor every keystroke, access data in every bit of memory.  Without any judicial oversight, without any requirement that they disclose the information they collected – or what it was they were collecting in the first place.

This would permit corporations to install ANY SPYWARE  THEY WANT on ANY computer… and this software could attack any program or data it deemed to be in breech of DRM.

And, you have no say in it.

Remember what happened to all those Kindle users, who woke up one day and found books they legally purchased deleted, because somewhere higher up the chain, people were bickering about digital rights?

Well, this would become the norm:  anyone who had any claim to a copyright could install software on your computer – without you even knowing about it – and if this found anything it considered breeched its DRM, it would delete it.  Even if you bought it legally.  Because if there were any dispute anywhere along the line, their ability to delete ‘the content’ would be supreme.  Really.

Is this reasonable?

Is this the fair balance of rights?

And if you don’t think this is happening already, you are wrong!

Even Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, warns of the impact these changes would have to the privacy rights of Canadian citizens:

Technological advances hold out the promise of greater convenience, but sometimes at a cost to human rights such as privacy and the ability to control our personal information.

Meanwhile, governments and businesses have a seemingly insatiable appetite for personal information.

Governments appear to believe – mistakenly, I would argue – that the key to national security and public safety is collecting mountains of personal data. Privacy often receives short shrift as new anti-terrorism and law enforcement initiatives are rolled out.

Personal information has also become a hot commodity in the private sector. Our names, addresses, purchases, interests, likes and dislikes are recorded, analysed and stored – all so companies can sell us more products and services.

Adding to our concerns is the fact many businesses fail to adequately protect this sensitive information – leaving it vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves.

And if you thought THAT was not enough….

This idea has been ‘rumbling about’ for a few months, but recently received publicity when Eugene Kasparsky openly stated that each internet user should have an internet passport.  This would, presumably, document their every click and keystroke, which could then be monitored through increased internet regulation.  I dare reach this conclusion because Mr. Kasparsky also said that there must be no anonymity on the internet, and any country which refuses to regulate and monitor its citizens should be cut off the net.

Oh, and this should all be enforced by ‘internet police’!

I’d like to change the design of the Internet by introducing regulation—Internet passports, Internet police, and international agreement—about following Internet standards. – Eugene Kaspersky,
CEO of Russia’s Kaspersky Lab

OK – this idea is radical now.  You may shake your head and say this will never be possible.

But, 40 years ago, did anyone think that, once accused, the ‘truth’ could not be used as ‘defense’?

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Police raid on home of WikiLeaks.de owner

March 25, 2009 — xanthippa

I wish I could say this was a surprise!

Here is the press release (in full):

‘March 24, 2009

EDITORIAL (Wikileaks)

Excerpt raid documentation

Excerpt raid documentation

Shortly after 9pm on Tuesday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for “wikileaks.de”, the German name for wikileaks.org. According to police documentation, the reason for the search was “distribution of pornographic material” and “discovery of evidence”. Police claim the raid was initiated due to Mr. Reppe’s position as the Wikileaks.de domain owner.

Police did not want to give any further information to Mr. Reppe and no contact was made with Wikileaks before or after the search. It is therefore not totally clear why the search was made, however Wikileaks, in its role as a defender of press freedoms, has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries. Included on the lists are references to sites containing pornography and no other material has been released by Wikileaks relating to the subject.

Some details of the search raise questions:

  • Wikileaks was not contacted before the search, despite Wikileaks having at least two journalists which are recognized members of the German Press Association (Deutscher Presse Verband).
  • The time of at least 11 police detectives was wasted conducting a futile raid on the private home of volunteer assistant to a media organization.
  • Police asked for the passwords to the “wikileaks.de” domain and for the entire domain to be disabled.
  • Mr Reppe was not informed of his rights; police documentation clearly shows that box to be left unchecked.
  • Contrary to what is stated in the police protocol, Mr. Reppe did not agree to “not having a witness” present.

Ultimately, Mr Reppe refused to sign the police documentation due to its inaccuracies.

The raid appears to be related to a recent German social hysteria around child pornography and the controversial battle for a national censorship system by the German family minister Ursula von der Leyen. It comes just a few weeks after a member of parliament, SPD minister Joerg Tauss had his office and private house searched by police. German bloggers discussing the subject were similarly raided.

Mr. Reppe sponsors the Wikileaks German domain registration and mirrors a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports but is not otherwise operationally involved. Mr Reppe is also maintainer of one of the most popular German Tor-proxy servers (morphium.info) but only the connection to Wikileaks was mentioned during the raid.

Wikileaks.de and other Wikileaks domains were unaffected by the raid.

Wikileaks is a non-profit project, sponsored by transparency groups and investigative journalists world wide. To support our defense of this and other cases, see http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks‘

Is this what it has come to?  Are reputable journalistic organizations no longer allowed to report on the facts of censorship, without the fear of having their peoples’ homes searched?  Are police going to be allowed to take ‘shortcuts’ from proper procedures?

It is no co-incidence that the police raid was not carried out against any of the journalists, or that the WikiLeaks office was not notified:  no, picking on the techie volunteer and raiding his home is a deliberate attempt to intimidate!  It is meant to send a clear and unequivocal message:  if you stand up for your rights, we will get you!

Please, make no mistake:  the goal of the state here is NOT to ‘protect children from abuse’ or ‘protect children from pornography’ (as if THAT second one were the state’s role, when it is clearly 100% the parents’ role)!  No, this is a pretext.  The goal is transparently simple:  assert power, normalize the concept that the government has the power to monitor and censor all your communication, until nothing you say, type, read, see or hear will not go unrecorded, un-stored and, if you dare oppose the government, un-used to destroy you completely and totally!

How do I know this?

It is simple reasoning:

How can you make child pornography?  By recording the act of sexually abusing a child, right?

So, if you prevent children from being sexually abused, you will prevent child pornography, on the internet, or anywhere else.  Still correct?

Therefore, if a government is serious about stopping child pornography on the internet, one would expect such a government to strengthen its laws against pedophilia, would one not?

But, the German government, so eager to protect children from child pornography has already stated that it plans to legalize pedophilia!

Hard to believe, but true!  That a government so eager to throw its weight about, pushing around techie volunteers for reputable journalistic organizations – all in the name of protecting children from child abuse – is actually going to enshrine into law that ‘pedophilia’ is a ‘protected grounds’ against which one may not be discriminated against!

Only the constitutional challenge by a lone German MP has prevented Germany from ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, and the German President had, in October 2008, stated his intention to sign the Lisbon Treaty into law by May 2009…

What is the significance of the Lisbon Treaty?  It is the new set of laws which all EU states must submit to, one which clearly and unequivocally includes ‘pedophilia’ as a ‘protected grounds’ on which one is not allowed to be discriminated against!  If you think I am exaggerating, please, listen to someone who is better at expressing this than I am:

So, the next time an EU politician excuses abuse of power in the name of ‘protecting children from sexual abuse’ – you know they are lying!  If they were truly concerned about the kids, they would stop the practice, NOT LEGALIZE IT!!!

Don’t let their pretense at righteousness fool you:  they are after raw power and are doing nothing less than normalizing these abhorrent practices into accepted means of exerting control over their populace!

Hat tip:  Somebody Think of the Children !

P.S.  My own link to the ‘Danish banned list’ stopped working within 24 hours of when I posted it.
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Is Britain a ‘failing state’?

March 24, 2009 — xanthippa

What is a ‘failed state’?

A ‘failed state’ is a state which has completely failed to function.  The exact definition is debated by the experts, but, a ‘failed state’ is often described as having the following characteristics:

  1. inability to maintain its territorial integrity
  2. loss of monopoly on policing and judiciary
  3. failed social structures
  4. corruption of its governance structures (failure of its government to function as it was meant to)

Now, a ‘failing state’ has not quite become a ‘failed state’ – yet – but is certainly heading in that direction.  Some suggest that a failing state may attempt to assert totalitarian-type control over its populace in its last attempts at remaining in control…

Yes, I know, my definitions are not perfect – I don’t have the technical lingo down pat.  Yet, from the little bit of reading I have done, this seems to be the ‘rough’ idea behind the concept.

Britain is not a failed state – yet!  My question is, just how far on the road to becoming one is it?

Let us look at the major characteristics of a ‘failed state’, as per my definition, and see if they are applicable to Britain:

1. Inability to maintain territorial integrity

This is a tough one:  Britain has bartered away the control over immigration to Britain in a series of treaties with the EU:

‘It is therefore actually both impossible and illegal for British immigration officers to obtain hard facts on why people are entering Britain, because an EU passport gives someone from Poland or France as much right to enter this country as I do – no questions asked.’

All right – it is not a ‘failure’ in the ‘classical sense’, but rather the surrendering of responsibility for its territorial integrity to a supranational legal structure.  Yet, it also means that the British government has, in a very real sense, lost the control over maintaining its territorial integrity…

2.  Loss of monopoly on policing and judiciary

Last year, it was revealed that a parallel legal system, based on Sharia law and in no way answerable to the state, had been operating and deeply entrenched in Britain.  In September 2008, acknowledging that they cannot control or abolish this parallel legal system, the British government formally recognized its legitimacy.

Even though this parallel legal system is not based on British laws or traditions, and is completely outside the control of the British government, it is fully functioning and its authority is officially recognized by the British government.

In other words, the British government has failed to maintain a monopoly on its judiciary.

Of course, many people would argue that Britain has also lost its ability to police its society… or even the ability to understand their basic role to charge those who disrupt peace, not those who protest the disruption.  That is not functional policing…

3.  Failed social structures

When a state begins to issue civil court orders known as ASBO (anti-social behaviour order)  against toddlers, it is a rather unequivocal sign that its social structures are failing.

How is an ASBO issued against a person?

Well, according to Wikipedia, the accuser brigns their complaint against the defendant in front of a magistrate (my emphasis):

‘Applications for ASBOs are heard by Magistrates sitting in their civil capacity. Although the proceedings are civil, the court must apply a heightened civil standard of proof. This standard is virtually indistinguishable from the criminal standard. The applicant must prove that the defendant has acted in such a manner beyond all reasonable doubt.’

OK, you might say, so what is the problem?  I know lots of toddlers who display ‘anti-social behaviour’!  Beyond all reasonable doubt, most toddlers DO engage in ‘anti-social behaviour’…  After all, they ARE toddlers.

Yeah, right… But  ASBO is usually issued against ‘football hooligans’ and unruly youths and so on, forbidding specific behaviours.  If the order is broken, and the individual engages in the behaviour prohibited by the order, that individual is subject to arrest.  In other words, it’s sort of a ‘probation’ thingy for specific behaviours.

So, could an ASBO ever be issued to a two-year-old boy?  In England, apparently, it could… and against his sisters, aged 4 and 5 (one of whom is autistic).  From Dvorak Uncensored:

‘A boy aged two has become the youngest Briton ever to be threatened with an Asbo.

Lennon Poyser received the warning along with his sisters Olivia, five, and four-year-old Megan, after neighbours complained about their behaviour.’

And, yes, the kids had been told they could be arrested if they continued in their anti-social behaviour.  While the whole thing had eventually been cleared up as a ‘mistake’, the fact is that such a complaint did go before a judge, been proven to be true ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ to a standard which ‘is virtually indistinguishable from the criminal standard’ and the order was issued and delivered – ALL IN ERROR?!?!?

Sounds to me like things are seriously breaking down in England…

While all this is going on, what are the local councils worried about?  Are they addressing the breakdown of their society? Are they working hard to plug the holes in their governance structures, so 2-year olds won’t get tossed into jail for kicking a football?

Well, not so much…there is no time for that, because they are busy banning apostrophe’s from public signs and Latin phrases from daily speech!

Of course, these are not the only examples – there are too many to fit into an itty-bitty blog post… One would need a few volumes to even scratch the surface!  And, if THIS is how the local councils are attempting to fix their failing social structures, then, in my never-humble-opinion, England is doomed.

4.  Corruption of its governance structures

Britain is the cradle of our modern-day democracy:  the home of the Magna Carta (or is calling it by its Latin name no longer legal in England?)  Its parliamentary system is designed with checks and balances.  It ought to work!

But, when one unelected parliamentarian can assert his will by threats of terrorism – and do so openly, with impunity, and which no consequences – it is unequivocal that the British government has failed in its function.  It has become corrupted and dysfunctional.

And, if this letter can be interpreted as anything other than a threat of increased domestic terrorism should the British government not submit its foreign policy to the will of the Islamist lobby, then I don’t know what it could possibly be.

So far, I think it has been demonstrated that Britain is slowly but surely advancing on the road towards becoming a ‘failed state’.  Are there any signs that it is behaving according to the patterns of such states?  Is it beginning to attempt to impose some totalitarian, oppressive policies it its desperate attempt to stay in control?

Well, perhaps admitting that the state is unable to keep peace after dark is the reason for the imposition of a curfew which bans all teens from being out at night.  And the populace’s response?  They are squabbling about the ‘how’, not the ‘what’ of the order…

Or, how about this?  The British government not allowed – by EU treaties – to control its immigration, so they are going all out to ‘big brother’ every Briton’s travel plans?

That does not even scratch the surface of the British censoring, choking and monitoring of all internet traffic…some of the blarmiest laws about the internet ever!

If THAT were not enough, now the British government is actively encouraging its citizens to go through each other’s garbage in order to report ‘anything suspicious‘…. and attempting to villify anyone who does not approve of being monitored by cameras 100% of the time!

Having considered the above – how far along the road to ‘failed state’ do you think Britain is?

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Existing laws may already allow ‘Thought Police’

March 23, 2009 — xanthippa

Over the last little while, I have been ranting about the ever-increasing legislation to censor our communication.

Let’s not kid ourselves:  governments today are opposed to information being freely available to their citizens.  ‘Regulating’ things gives governments power over its citizens and collecting fees for ‘regulating’ is an important source of revenue for them.  From UN on, the aim of governments is to ‘regulate’:  it gives them both power and money.

It is only when we, the ‘unwashed masses’, show up – wielding pitchforks – and threaten to our legislators with defenestration* that they will unwillingly and grudgingly step back and allow us to keep some of our inherent rights and freedoms!

Still, when we do, we can make a difference:  the New Zealand government is backing off implementing its controversial ‘Section 92A’ of their copyright law, which would force all ISPs to cut off internet access to anyone even accused of copyright violation!  It looks like the internet petition, protests from all sides (except the movie and music industry) and the loud, loud outcry which echoed worldwide did have some effect:  the government will send that section ‘back to committee’ for re-drafting!  But, the fact that they are re-considering it does not mean they will come to a different conclusion… and passing it quietly, once the fuss had died down.

The fact of the matter is that governments will censor and restrict (sorry, they prefer the term ‘regulate’) as much as we, the citizens, will allow them to!  Once something becomes ‘accepted practice’,  there is grounds for it to become part of our laws, whether we like it or not.

What I’m about to write next is a little bit of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ argument, and I freely admit that.  Yet, it does illustrate what I think is an important principle which we ought not loose sight of…

All around the world, we have accepted that governments have the right to regulate ‘the airwaves’.  Of course, the word ‘airwaves’ is a misnomer:  what is mean by this is the transmission of information using electromagnetic radiation (waves) which travel through the air.  Whether it is the US FCC, Canada’s CRTC, Ofcom in Britain,  ARCEP in France or any other nation’s body – the common thread here is that EVERY governments has established that IT has the RIGHT to regulate the transmission of information vie EM waves through the air.

It is on this basis that it licenses – and censors – radio and television stations. It regulates who is allowed to access which wavelengths, and when, and how.

Most of us have come to accept this as their ‘right’ – if not their outright role, and therefore DUTY.

We seem to have simply ‘accepted’ the premise that governments HAVE the right to regulate the transmission of information using EM radiation.  And, undoing such an assumption will be difficult!

Now, I would like to remind everyone of my first law of human-dynamics:  if a law can be abused, it will be!

How often have our legislators (or the bureaucrats who actually control the implementation of any government policy) passed a law, only to later expand its application in ways the populace never dreamed of – and would not have approved, had they understood just how twisted this law can be?  (If you can’t remember, here is an example from Australia…)

Back to my main point:  how does fMRI work?

Well, in layman’s terms, it is a medical imaging device which measures the EM transmissions of our brain as we think.

As in,when we think, our brain actually converts our thoughts (or, perhaps, makes our thoughts) as a form of EM radiation, which it then transmits these waves outside our brain… where this nifty machine can detect them.

But, did we not just accept that our governments have the right to regulate these???


Please, think about it!

Note:  *defenestration – when talking about ‘open-source code’, the word ‘defenestration’ (meaning, ‘out of windows’) becomes a bit of a pun…
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Posted in debate, freedoms, human nature, language, opression, philosophy, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Big Brother in India

January 5, 2009 — xanthippa

While most of our information is saturated with the news of the latest wave of fighting in the Middle East, with the latest terrorist attacks around the world, it is understandable that we become more and more afraid about our physical well being.   Add to this the whole ‘world financial crisis’ and the fear that we might soon loose our ability to pay our bills…

This has lead to two things:  increased sense of danger (justifiably, perhaps) with the accompanying desire to give our ‘authorities’ all the means necessary to protect us (physically and fiscally) on the one hand and a sense of apathy (or, perhaps, information overload) when it comes to ‘non-urgent’ or ‘non-critical’ news. 

It is understandable – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and all that. 

These dangers are very real.  Yet, let’s face it:  for most of us, they are not as immediately dangerous as the atmosphere created by the mainstream media would make us feel.  (Yes, I do use the word feel rather than think – most of this coverage beamed constantly at us is not designed to make us think, but rather to evoke an emotional response from us:  feelings and emotions sell better than making people think does.)

While we are busy paying attention to these perceived dangers, we are not paying attention to some very real, very immediate dangers around us.  Perhaps they may not deprive us of our livelihood, or our life – but they are certainly depriving us of our liberty!

We are all aware that in many ‘not-so-free’ states, internet censorship is high.  Very high.  Malaysia, for example, has now been monitoring Malaysian bloggers to make sure they did not post anything that could be insulting to Islam.  (Actually, this does seem in keeping with the UN again passing the ‘blasphemy is not allowed under free speech’ resolution…)   And we all remember the fuss the MSM reporters kicked up when they got to the Beijing Olympics and found their internet access limited:  they did not particularly care if the Chinese citizens were oppressed or not (after all, they went to Beijing to ‘celebrate’ the current Chinese oppressors), they were just upset that their own ‘special privilages’ may have been limited….  But, I am going off on a tangent again…

The next country whose internet Big Brother has turned his attention to?  India.

Many people consider India to be a part of ‘The West’ – and, despite the fact that it is geographically located rather east, I concur that, philosophically, economically and politically, India is indeed more of a ‘Western’ country than not.  It is a democracy – and quite a big one – where the standard of living has risen, education has become the standard, and people do enjoy a lot of freedoms (including the freedom of religion).  In my never-humble-opinion, India has been succeeding in integrating the best things from ‘The West’ into its distinctly ‘Eastern’ culture – and has not lost her identity in the process.  No country is perfect, of course, but – as countries go – I think India is moving in the right direction.

That is why I was so chilled when I learned that the extent of interntet survailance which India’s new laws would permit (nay, require!).  Via Slashdot and Zero Paid , here is an article (very well written) on Countercurrents.org by Binu Karunakaran:  ‘India Sleepwalks to Total Surveillance’.

“The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 passed by the Indian Parliament recently allows the government to intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence.

Any email you send, any message you text are now open to the prying eyes of the government. So are the contents of your computer you surfed in the privacy of your home. “

…

“The amended Act also grants the state absolute power to block access to any website in the national interest. In short a total gag and surveillance act that doesn’t set any limits for law enforcers, or have inbuilt safeguards against misuse. “

‘Policing’ and ‘pornography’ (in one form or another):  these are the two things always evoked as states usurp freedoms – this is the predictable pattern!  ‘National security’ and ‘morality’ – how come we are still buying into this debunked pretence???  (Yes, I have written on this before, so I don’t want to belabour the point…but, are humans really this gullible?)

What is quite frightening in the current laws passed by India is not just the extent to which these laws abolish privacy, but also the means through which the laws are to be implemented:

“…A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not. It’s the personal morality of the official that will decide whether the picture/content you were looking at was lascivious or appeals to prurient interest.”

I wonder if Jennifer Lynch, the chief opressor of Human Rights in Canada, is planning any expensive trips to India to ‘study’ these laws – and to try to figure out how to implement them here!

In his article, Binu Karunakaran goes on to explain that people in India are now going to have to follow 3 new commandments:

  1. Thou shalt not author a joke.  Not even forward one.
  2. Thou shalt not surf Bollywood news (even things not explicitly pornographic, but ones which could ‘evoke lascivious thoughts’, are banned).
  3. Thou shalt not watch porn.

He explains each commandment.  Read the whole article here – if you dare!

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Limiting our freedoms – making sense of the ‘big picture’

November 12, 2008 — xanthippa

Have you ever found a bunch of strings so knotted up, it was difficult to tell which thread went where, how they connected – and how to untangle them?  Pulling on some strings just seems to make it more knotted up and incomprihensible… you had to pull a little bit on each one, switching back and forth, to figure it out and realize which ones wrapped around which other ones – and how, before you could make much progress in untangling it.

That is how I feel when trying to describe the ‘big picture’ of the current threats to our freedom of speech – which is the key that unlocks all our other freedoms.

Because the current situation we are facing – the various threats to our freedoms – consists of exactly the type of ‘tangled knot’ made up of several quite discrete (and a few of them frayed into several ‘strands’) ‘threads’!  If I ‘pull’ on one ‘thread’ alone, it will not clear up anything…  Therefore, I beg you, the reader, to keep this in mind and indulge my ‘haphazard’ and disorganized presentation – hopping from one bit to another, pulling a little bit on each ‘thread’ in its turn… 

Another problem I ran into while trying to write this up was just how long the post was getting… It became necessary to break it up into many shorter ones.  My fear in doing this?  I have tried doing this before, but never got all the ‘bits’ out because something ‘big’ happened that I wanted to comment on – or I never connected them up properly – or I went off on some tangent.

This one, however, is too important not to give it a try.

So, over the next little while, I will be posting a various, seemingly unrelated, stories – each a part of one thread or another which makes up this ‘knot’.  And, I plan to connect them up!  Perhaps in the last post of the series, perhaps as a separate page (like I am doing with the Aspergers posts).

Any additional information you come accross that you think should be included in this, or when I make mistakes which you could correct – please, let me know!  I welcome this because even though I think I see a pattern here, one person can never get the ‘whole’ of the ‘big picture’ without the help of historical perspective…which only comes centuries after the events.  

And our freedoms – they are in more danger of being eroded, one tiny bit at a time, than most of us are willing to admit.

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Fighting opression through education: ‘hole in the wall’

November 4, 2008 — xanthippa

The best way to make this world a better place for everyone, in my never-humble-opinion, is to make good education so accessible, everyone gets some.

The more, the better.  Why?

It may be naive on my part, but I have always thought that many injustices throughout the world are not opposed because it simply does not occur to people that they could be opposed.  One good thing that results from education is the broadening of one’s perspectives, learning about different places where things are done differently, and the realization that it is possible to ‘question stuff’…

Education also teaches us how to reason.  It does not matter what we are learning, we cannot escape acquiring some formal reasoning when we ‘learn stuff’.  That is also good.

But, perhaps one of the best reasons for making education available to everyone is that it will open horizons for kids and open up possibilities for them that they never dreamt of before.

That is why I think that efforts like ‘One Laptop per Child’ are so important – and why every child, male or female, should become educated.

But many people question how children would benefit from simply having an internet-connected laptop.  What would they do with one?  How would they learn?  Many of them do not even speak English – or any of the other languages dominating the internet!  What use would such a computer be to them?

A little while ago, one of my sons came across an interesting article about a brilliant study done by a physicist named Sugata Mitra in New Delhi, India.  It was called ‘Hole in the Wall’:

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.

The results were brilliant!  The computer, connected to high-speed internet, had a touch-screen interface.  It ‘mysteriously’ appeared, cemented into a wall, in a New Delhi slum… no instructions, no manual, no rules, no help.  What happened next was, well, enlightening!

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

If you have the time to read the whole interview with Dr. Mitra, I would greatly suggest it.  If not, here are some of the highlights:

  • Children aged 6-12 were the most avid users of the computer
  • without any instruction, they taught themselves to use a paint program and to access sites with games
  • Dr. Mitra played an mp3 file for them – a capability of the computer that had not occurred to them.  In several days, Dr. Mitra says, they knew enough about mp3 files and music online ‘he could have learned a thing or two from them’.
  • If children think something is worth learning, it is not necessary to use formal instruction (expensive in the developing countries) to teach kids – instead, it ought to build on knowledge kids can self-teach

But there was more to Dr. Mitra’s curiosity…he wondered how effective self-directed learning would be in more formal subjects…like, say, physics…

Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, “What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?” He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, “Look here guys. I have a little problem for you.” They read the questions and said they didn’t understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, “Here’s a terminal. I’ll give you two hours to find the answers.”

Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.

They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn’t mean much. But I said to him, “Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject.” So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, “They don’t know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn’t know.”

That’s not a wow for the children, it’s a wow for the Internet. It shows you what it’s capable of. The slum children don’t have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what’s important. What is important is infrastructure and access … The teacher’s job is very simple. It’s to help the children ask the right questions.

This makes so much sense!

And, please, consider that many universities and colleges have started putting their undergraduate courses online – accessible for free!!!

Here are some examples:  MIT Open Courseware, Carnegie Mellon open learning initiative, John Hopkins open courseware, and many, many more!!!  So, with a laptop, an internet connection and a healthy dose of curiosity and desire, a kid in Africa or Sri Lanka or anywhere else in the world can access world-class education.  There is still the question of accreditation, but that is only necessary to getting a job – not to actually using the education on their own! 

Just think how empowering it would be for young people, all over the world, to gain access to this kind of education!  If Dr. Mitra is correct, then self-directed learning is the most effective way to educate our children.  So, let us put the tools into their hands – and let’s watch them grow!

Of course, education is not the answer to ending oppression – but it is an important step.  It is much more difficult to oppress a society of people who are well educated and internet literate than it is to control people who don’t know how to call out for help!

Posted in education, freedoms, human nature, opression, politics, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

‘This has nothing to do with censorship!’

July 11, 2008 — xanthippa

All right, this is not breaking news… not by a long shot.  The article is from 2003.

 The article is about a University of Toronto project which looked at what websites were being blocked and inaccessible from within various countries.  Check out the wording in this quote:

Using ICE, Diebert and his team have discovered that pornography and government criticism are the subjects most frequently blocked by non-democratic countries. China’s blocking techniques keep out everything from Playboy.com to Friends of Falun Gong to the Dalai Lama’s website.

Chinese officials insist such techniques do not amount to censorship.

“We don’t have censorship of the Internet,” said Larry Wu, second secretary for Science and Technology at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington. “Generally, the Chinese government is for the full exchange of information. We have full freedom of speech, freedom of the press. However, we have our own understanding of what is a limitation of the freedom of speech. So we do use techniques to block certain websites, as well as we try to block spam.”

(All emphasis is mine.)  What a swell thing to do – nobody likes spam, right?

Also noteworthy quote from a different government’s official:

Nail Al-Jubier, a spokesperson for the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, admits that his government regulates Internet access.

“The overwhelming number of blocked sites are pornography,” Al-Jubier said. “Some websites that are deemed un-Islamic — those that promote violence — are blocked because of the standards of the community. Some parents don’t want their children going online if these are the things they can see.”

Why is this so interesting now?

It is the old and tired ‘we are not opressing anyone, we are only protecting children – every good parent wants that’ justification for censorship!

Yesterday, at the dentist’s office, I picked up Macleans magazine and read the following story:  ‘Guess who’s watching porn’.  As a matter of fact, the whole issue was geared that way, including the cover.  The editorial was headlined ‘Plug the porn pipeline’ and demanded government action to regulate the internet to prevent this evil.

To be clear, this is not an issue of censorship. The goal should be to prevent children from viewing what may be legally viewed by others. And parents must take responsibility for monitoring their own child’s computer usage. But there is likely a legitimate role for government and industry in tackling this problem, and with luck it won’t require the brigades of bureaucrats that are somehow necessary to managing movies and TV.

Ah, yes.  A ‘legitimate role for government and industry’ indeed!  This is the same Macleans which has been fighting for the freedom of speech in front of multiple Canadian Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals…. 

The gist of this legal battle, which has dominated the Canadian news for months?  That a ‘potential harm’ is not a justification for censoring the press!!!  And now, that same Macleans is arguing that ‘potential harm’ is a justification for censoring the internet???

Ah, but it is for the good of the children!  How could any reasonable person oppose something that will protect our children? 

So, how could such ‘regulation’ be accomplished?  Without censorship, of course, because – what was that phrase?

“We have full freedom of speech, freedom of the press. However, we have our own understanding of what is a limitation of the freedom of speech.”

Yet, many ‘Western’ audiences would not submit to censorship and site blocking this easily.  How to go about it?  Or, as Marvin from the Buggs Bunny cartoon might say: 

“But we have got to make it look legal!”

Here’s an idea!

The ISPs could offer consumers access to the internet in a new, unique way – the customer could pre-select the sites they want to allow into their homes!  These could be bundled – much like today’s cable TV is bundled – and they could pick which bundle they’d like!  Wouldn’t this be swell, to increase the customer choices like this???

Of course, being a large, well-established Canadian magazine, Macleans would make it into the ISPs bundles.  Its competition – not as likely.

Oh joy! 

As long as we have that freedom of speech and freedom of the press – and increased customer choices in one swell move, how could we possibly complain?  No, I really mean – HOW???  We would no longer have means of being heard!

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