Growing Up With Racist Double-Standards

Growing up I had trouble understanding all of these social nuances. Often I found myself very frustrated at the double-standards of our society that let the black kids in my school call any white kid a cracker, but heaven forbid a white kid use the N-word in any context because that would make him/her a racist and a bigot. The truth of the matter is the social nuances were the problem and using such words in frustration to these rules did not make one a racist, but merely misunderstanding of how society dictates that the game should be played.

Now over the years I grown tremendously as a person. I have relaxed, I have become more confident, and I have come to learn more about these unspoken rules and how they will affect my life. I have also come to detest not only the N-word, but also any racially charged derogatory words such as cracker (I would say the c-word but that could mean a lot of things in the English language). I find that anyone treating others or even themselves differently based on race or ethnicity to be detestable. Everyone has there differences, many of which they cannot control.

Dr. Laura And The Huffington Post

I was recently reading an article in the Huffington Post about Dr. Laura’s recent spewing of the N-word on her talk show in which she repeatedly used the N-word when speaking to a black caller. In this article the writer, Keli Goff, a black man, goes into great detail on this problem that our society is facing. He talks with great wisdom and eloquence about how many in mainstream media and entertainment keep reinforcing the idea that the color of your skin dictates what you are allowed to say and do. Mr. Goff points out the many rappers that drop the N-word left and right in their songs, but then complain opening about racism in America.

Ending Racism In America Starts With You

I agree with Mr. Goff that this only contributes to and perpetuates racism in America. Its creating more of a problem, more frustration and anger, and is not at all helpful to the situation. These double-standards only serve to create tension when they come up. Either none of us can use these words or all of us can. This is one subject that we simply won’t be able to find a happy middle ground on. I vote that no one can use these words.

Until everyone understand this and treats others truly equally we will not be able to stop racism. We will only create more.

More and more over the next couple weeks you will hear about the brief, but powerful story of a young woman named Neda. According to reports coming from Iran she was attending a peaceful demonstration when a member of the Basij forces shot her as she stood next to her father. In the video you can see the young woman falling over and been caught by two men then slowly lowered to the ground. The older of the two men, presumably her father, starts saying her name “Neda” over and over again. As she lies on the ground you can see her eyes jumping about, confusion, suprise, and terror etched across her face. Then the worst starts to happen, blood starts running out of her mouth and nose, she loses conciousness. Within seconds her father realizes that there is nothing that can be done for her. Panic fills his voice as he starts crying and screaming her name.

This horrifying scene is difficult to take in, but it symbolizes the struggle and danger now facing any Iranians that are openly offended by the way the election was conducted and the results found. As the violence continues to escalate, the President Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are losing more and more control of the citizens of Iran. Protesters are chanting “death to the dictator”. Many forms of comunication are being blocked in Iran including most social networking websites, cell phones, and text messaging. Foreign reporters are barred from reporting on any news of the protests in Iran. But messages are still getting out. The world is listening.

I don’t know how much longer this can continue before the world reacts. We must put more pressure on the Iranian government to conduct themselves peacefully and actually listen to the concerns of its people. If they want another election and a real chance at a fair election then give it to them. Unfortunately events like this cannot be handled by outside forces using military action. This must be solved by the people of Iran, for now. We can only directly intercede at the behest of the Iranian citizens. This could quickly unfold into a new revolution or coup or possibly even a full-blown civil war.

The video has appeared on YouTube and several other websites, but it has been taken down from there. But it can still be viewed. To see it please follow the link below. I warn you it is VERY graphic and I would not recommend small children seeing it.

http://www.javno.com/en-world/video–young-iran-woman-shot-in-the-heart_266818

The first story that leads me to believe this is one that has been around for a few months now. Apparently some teenagers in Italy filmed themselves attacking and abusing a mentally handicapped person. Then those kids posted the video on YouTube. Authorities in Italy found the video and used it to find and prosecute the teenagers. This would have been a great example of how the internet could be used to stop criminal behavior. However, the story doesn’t end there. Within a few hours of being made aware of the offensive content of the video, Google (owns YouTube) promptly took it down. But instead of praising Google for their swift action and cooperation with authorities, Italy has now charged several Google executives with criminal offenses for allowing this content to be posted on the internet on a Google-owned site.

This is insane. Not only did the team at Google comply quickly and professionally, but the video itself helped catch the perps. There is no reason for them to arrest the execs.

That was just the beginning. The authorities have been trying to implement a three-strikes law like France recently passed recently. This law basicaly says that if you are accused of even attempting to pirate media more than 3 times will automatically be banned from the internet. Then they added to that law by requiring all blogs to register with the government. Thus, making it easier for the government to monitor citizens. This is of course scary not only because it attacks anonymity on the internet, but it also sounds like the first steps to stamping out free speech online and arresting dissidents. Italy is considered a parliamentary republic, which is a type of democracy that doesn’t have a clear separation of the executive and legislative branches.

Then the owners of an online music site in Italy were thrown in jail because the Italian music industry body, SIAE, has accused them of copyright infringement. This is in spite of the fact that they did obtain a license to sell the music. Though apparently, according to SIAE and the IFPI site, not the correct licenses. Note plural, meaning they have to have multiple licenses in Italy to sell music. In fact one man even claimed that you need as many as 33 different licenses to sell music in Europe. Though some have disputed that number. Why is it that this is not simplified, seeing as how the countries of Europe have been slowly building one unified governing body known as the European Union. Doesn’t sound very united on this front. Another question, why is it that criminal charges are being filed for copyright infringement. This is not larceny, burglary, murder, or any number of other heinous crimes. It is simply a business dispute. It is barely even that because the owners thought that they had obtained all the correct licenses. If you keep changing the rules, how can you expect anyone to follow them?

It gets even better. The Italian government has decided that they want to be able to listen in on the calls made with the popular service, Skype. They want a back door installed so that they can listen into whichever calls they like. It seems the wiretapping issue has reached a whole new level. In Europe, Skype is a very popular tool. While it can be used for evil, such as coordinating terrorist attacks, it is generally used for private conversation to save money (over the cost of local phone services, which are generally high). There are a number of issues with this. The first that comes to mind is that the internet has no borders. What if they use this to listen in on conversations people in other countries are having with people in countries that are not Italy? The privacy warning radar is going nuts on this one.

Then finally, last but not least, the Italian government is also looking to entirely ban anonymity online. Opening up the prosecution flood gates. Everyone from annoyed citizens complaining about products, services, and politicians to everyday social network chatters and forum posters will become targets. This would become a lawsuit free-for-all. Plus, being that government does not give you the right to control the thoughts of your countrymen. This will definitely create problems for dissidents.

After reading all these stories I am starting to believe that the ghost of Mussolini has risen and started to regain control of the Italian government. These are certainly scary markers. Especially because the politicians are taking most of their queues from corporations that are trying to serve their own interests and to hell with everyone else. Europe is becoming colder and darker. Science and reason are sounding more and more scarce. Along with morality.

Look for unexplained disappearances and mysterious arrests in the future. Sounds an awful lot like the kind of things the Nazi’s did. I would recommend that anyone tread lightly in Italy.

This article is based off the one found at: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090504/0148494730.shtml

Ashton has been accused of making multiple bomb threats from internet-based phone calls (using Voice-Over-IP). The FBI then did an IP address trace that led to Ashton’s personal computer. With this information they gathered a search and arrest warrant for him and barged into his house in the middle of the night, guns out, to arrest him. There is a huge problem with their evidence that lead to the arrest, but more on that later. This boy’s basic rights as granted by the Bill Of Rights has been violated. The most obvious right being violated here is sixth amendment which states:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

He has been denied a speedy and public trial for sure, especially the public part. His family has not been given much access to him, a gag order has been put on the case, there is no information for public record, and details about the charges are being hidden behind the Patriot Act. Without such details it is difficult to build a case to defend him. It would also seem that his 4th amendment rights may also have been violated, though without more details it is hard to discern if this was an unreasonable seizure of property.

Unfortunately the details on this case are sketchy, so that even if the FBI was fully justified in their actions they have also made sure that it is difficult to trust anything they say. Making people even more concerned that we are heading towards becoming a police state. However, even if the threats made did justify their actions, the evidence (from what I have read so far) seems to be pretty disputable. The evidence as far as I can tell that they have is an IP address.

IP addresses help identify a computer or other internet device or server on the internet and act almost like a mailing address. The problem with IP address tracking is that not only do most internet providers use dynamic IPs, which are regularly updated and replaced with a new one users log in/out or as their computers just automatically refresh its IP address. So these floating addresses make it difficult to pin down who had which IP address at what time. To make matters worse these addresses can be spoofed or faked to make a computer look like a different computer on the internet. Which means just about anyone could have highjacked his IP address and used it for nefarious purposes (though I doubt they knew who it would be associated with).

It is frightening to think that our government can get away with whisking away citizens, especially children, to undisclosed locations for no particular reason at all and hold them indefinitely. To read more on this case please view the links at the bottom of this post.

References:

• The Original YouTube Video
• Teen homeschooler jailed under Patriot Act
• US Patriot Act

The second one is called “S. 425: Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act” which attempts to establish an extensive online database designed to track food from the moment it starts growing all the way up until it enters your digestive tract. It not only does that but also sets up the authority to force the recall of food which is currently done only on an advisory approach but is ultimately up to the manufacturer and/or distributor.

Now in principle these ideas don’t seem so bad, that is until you stop to think what this actually does on the larger scale. In order to implement such changes the farmers themselves will have to buy new computer equipment and learn to use it. The farmer will have to follow much stricter guidelines that even tell him what fertilizer to use, the minimum amount to use (say goodbye to organic farmers), harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water. All this is actually taken from the wording of the legislation itself. This means essentially the farmer has no real control of his farm. He just does what he is told. It seems to just stop short of telling them what they can grow.

Essentially all this means an end to organic produce and farming as well as farmers markets because the small time farmers simply can’t afford to comply with the regulations. What is the point of these things anyway? We don’t have problems with people dying left and right from poor quality food. When a product does have problems it doesn’t last long once consumers catch wind of it, so market forces essentially kill poor products.  The only thing that has actually hit news as of recent related to food problems is salmonella, a bacteria that grows absolutely everywhere, coming up in testing here and there. When that happens the production of the product is halted and the bacteria is eliminated. Plus anyone that actually cooks their food and washes their hands properly won’t have any problems.

There is no real need for any of this. It is simply over-regulation. So I decided to look a little closer and the involved politicians are heavily connected to companies that would profit greatly from the passing of this bill. To make matters worse, by killing off the small time farmers it means less competition for the bigger fish and an easier time raising food prices and increasing profit margins. This matter isn’t about public safety, it is about greedy politicians and companies trying to line their pockets.

To top all of this off I found another article, “Commodities down but food prices lag” By Lisa Baertlein and Ted Kerr at Reuters, talking about how the cost of producing processed food has gone down since their component prices have significantly dropped, yet the consumers are not seeing any price drops at all. It seems like everyone in the industry is trying to take more and more away from consumers and these companies wonder why the economy is suffering.

-Pjerky

The 4th amentment reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”

More recently, the most effective tool used to slowly take away our right to privacy is to refer back to our security and attack the naysayers with questions about what they have to hide from everyone and why they need so much privacy. Some may argue that our right to privacy is an inherent right to protect ones dignity. Others may argue that the very argument of privacy is about security. Thus creating a circular conundrum because we want to protect both. All arguments of definition aside, the most basic look at the question reveals not only our insecurities but also our humanity and our desire to be comfortable in day to day life. Some would relate the feeling of being watched, whether by the government or some creepy stalker, to be hunted and treated as a piece of meat. In our society, the social implecations of an open system of survellance that admits to watching everyone would create such a backlash that the political class would be unable to keep a grip on their power. But with a system that does so in subtle ways and denies everything keeps everyone guessing and unsure of themselves.

Since the popularity boom of the internet, the focus of privacy advocates and indeed those that wish to invade our privacy has been the internet. The legalities of wiretapping, web use monitoring and digital information rights has all been put to the question with no clear and definitive answers. Many have studied the subject. One such study or article, ”The End of Privacy” by Jed Rubenfeld, covers the topic in depth. Another article, that which discusses the issue and article even more thoroughly than I have tried here, has been released on Ars Technica. That article can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/from-the-academy-the-end-of-privacy.ars

In the article from Ars they discuss what it means to be secure and how privacy, both in person and on the web is viewed in courts and politics in this day and age. Debates on what is considered a private belonging and what is open for public review is mentioned. One interesting point that I would like to note is the difference between a physical safe with a combination and encrypted data on a hard drive. In a recent article that I wrote on this blog, “Suspect in illegal pornography ownership case forced to decrypt hard drive“, I talk about how the courts viewed the encrypted data as something that the police had a right get access to, though the evidence in it may be condemning  and violate 5th amendment rights. Yet in prior court cases a physical safe combination was protected under the 5th amendment. In either case I would argue both situations as questions of not only a man’s right to prevent self-incrimination (the 5th amendment), but also their reasonable right to security and privacy (4th amendment). Both a safe combination and a decryption code are a form of security and to give up the information is tantamount to self-incrimination.

Now while I can go on and on and on about government violations of rights I think it is best for me to stop here and recommend that you read the articles that I mentioned above. Good luck and Peace!

Sincerely,

Pjerky

Yes, that is right, a company used legal threats to shut down a FREE and Open Source software project that helped city emergency systems work more efficiently and help save lives. What is more appaling is the specific part of the system in question was a written document that listed questions that have links to related questions based on the selected response. It was a text document with hyperlinks. You know, those things that are the basis for the entire internet. The company that issued these threats is called “Priority Dispatch Corporation” and in their threat they simply said that it may violate one or more of their ten patents. They didn’t say which one, but when a group of programmers, working for free with no corporate backing at all, get threatened legally they don’t have a lot of options. So they closed up shop and deleted everything they had on it.

Now you might be thinking that this was probably a little dinky project that had no real impact on the community. Well you would be wrong. This software was put into use and people that found ways to improve upon it were able to easily do so and then contribute the improvements back to the community. This horrible abuse of the patent system has got to stop. I recommend everyone write to their senators and members of congress to voice your opinions on this matter. I would ask that this company be banned from supplying to any local, state, or federal agencies. I would also ask that they have any licenses pulled and to be investigated for anti-competitive practices and trying to run a monopoly. Then I would ask for government backing and funding of this open source project.

I am tired of seeing companies abuse patents and harm others just for their greed. It is time we take back the power from these greedy companies and stamp out those that would use the law to harm innocents.

Here are some related links…

• The open source project: http://openises.sourceforge.net/emd01.html
• The story I read about this on: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090308/0932074028.shtml
• An older article talking about the community benefits of this software: http://www.osnews.com/story/14492

Please write to your representatives and spread the word about these terrible abuses!

Sincerely,

Pjerky

Updated: Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Thanks to the extensive legwork of commenter Andy, we now have a link to the Cards 911 files that Priority Dispatch Corporation tried to get destroyed. I want everyone to download a copy of these files and distribute them far and wide. Let us make sure that the information doesn’t die. Let us make sure that Priority Dispatch fails to suppress open source EMS.

The files: http://mirror.optus.net/sourceforge/c/ca/cards911/

Good Luck!