What Julian Assange does with WikiLeaks is not only right. It is morally right, it is ethically right and it is legally right. By Jennifer Robinson Professor blog proudly presents a new great contribution by Jennifer Robinson, the acclaimed media and human rights lawyer. She also is a legal adviser of WikiLeaks founder – editor and journalist Julian Assange. Jennifer Robinson participated in these days in the forum at the University of Technology in Sydney “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. "What Julian Assange does with WikiLeaks is not only right. By Jennifer Robinson I wanted to start this evening with a Jewish curse that someone told me recently: “May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you know you are right” [laughter]. No one knows the meaning of this curse any better than Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks. US presidential candidates in the current presidential race in the US have called for his assassination. The current US vice-president has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. I was asked at a seminar earlier this week, how is it that you do what you do defending him?
Protesters file for permit to “Occupy Congress” Jan. 17 - The Buzz Posted at 12:15 PM ET, 12/28/2011 Dec 28, 2011 05:15 PM EST TheWashingtonPost Hundreds of demonstrators march on Capitol Hill to occupy the offices of their members of Congress during the "Take Back the Capitol" protest on Dec. 6. (Chip Somodevilla - GETTY IMAGES) This post has been updated. Protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement say they have filed paperwork with the National Park Service seeking permission to demonstrate on the National Mall on Jan. 17 in an event billed by the group as “Occupy Congress.” The application was posted online Tuesday by applicants listed as “Occupy Congress and Occupy DC,” and with McPherson Square listed as as the applicant’s address. <a href=" target="_blank">View the story "Protesters prepare to Occupy Congress " on Storify</a>] About 50 Occupy D.C. protesters joined activists from around the country on Capitol Hill in a “Take Back the Capitol” event Dec. 6.
Edward Murray: Occupy Vancouver Picks Up the Tab The media's latest attempt to undercut the message of Occupy movements all across the globe is by touting the "cost" of these protests. Many sources are reporting that Occupy movements are costing cities hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime because apparently it takes an entire precinct to make sure that 50 people don't sleep through the night. When an internal city memorandum stated that Occupy Vancouver had cost its city nearly a million dollars in taxpayer money, the organizers did something brilliant: they broke down the cost of what they were doing for the city of Vancouver. Referencing a recent press release from the Occupy Vancouver Communications Committee, activist Eric Hamilton-Smith noted "...over 37,000 meals were served, $672,000 of primary medical care was provided, and 30 people were housed for 37 days at a time when beds at primary shelters were not available." This is absolutely brilliant, and I suggest that all other Occupy movements take note of this.
Iraq militia stone youths to death for emo style Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99% | Threat Level Protesters volunteering for the internet and information boards of the Occupy Wall Street protest work and broadcast from their media center in Zuccotti Plaza on Oct. 2, 2011. Photo: Bryan Derballa for Wired.com “I don’t want to say we’re making our own Facebook. They hope the technology they are developing can go well beyond Occupy Wall Street to help establish more distributed social networks, better online business collaboration and perhaps even add to the long-dreamed-of semantic web — an internet made not of messy text, but one unified by underlying meta-data that computers can easily parse. [bug id="occupy"]The impetus is understandable. Now it’s time for activists to move beyond other people’s social networks and build their own, according to Knutson.
Occupy Wall Street's 'occucopter' – who's watching whom? | Noel Sharkey and Sarah Knuckey The police may soon be watching you in your garden picking your vegetables or your bottom. As police plans for increasing unmanned aerial surveillance take shape, there is a new twist. Private citizens can now buy their own surveillance drones to watch the police. This week in New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters have a new toy to help them expose potentially dubious actions of the New York police department. In response to constant police surveillance, police violence and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters and legal observers have been turning their cameras back on the police. But police have sometimes made filming difficult through physical obstruction and "frozen zones". Now the protesters are fighting back with their own surveillance drone. Pool is attempting to police-proof the device: "We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. This is clever stuff and it doesn't stop there.
Sri Lanka: A child is summarily executed - Asia - World The short clip dates from the final hours of the bloody 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist rebels of the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE. A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. The footage – dating from 18 May 2009 and which seems to have been shot as a grotesque "trophy video" by Sri Lankan forces – will be broadcast for the first time on Wednesday night in a Channel 4 film, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished – a sequel to the controversial investigation broadcast last year which accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This, they insisted, would answer the international criticisms.
Protester arrested during side-by-side downtown food drives TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - Two food drives took place in downtown Tucson on Wednesday. One was organized by members of the Occupy Tucson movement, the other by the man who was the reason the group got evicted from Viente de Agosto Park. Shaun McClusky said getting a permit to hold his food drive at that particular park was a "purposeful and calculated move" on his part. "The Occupy people that were here were taking over the park illegally. McClusky also said that he paid a $26 application fee, along with a $100 to buy a required $1 million insurance policy, so he could rent this park for his food drive. Occupy Tucson members sent out a press release stating they planned to hold a "companion food drive" right next to McCluksy's, in order to help him boost donations. Tucson police kept a visible presence at the food drive, to ensure things did not get out of hand. Witnesses said one protester was arrested for openly protesting in the park, and refusing to follow police orders.
Dictators can thank Twitter for its new censorship policy This Reporters Without Borders opinion column was published on the Nouvel Observateur’s website Le Plus on 2 February. “Twitter Revolutions” – the term is widely used and has been applied to the Arab spring, not only on the virtual “walls” of Facebook but also on the real walls of Middle East capitals where messages of support and thanks to the social networking website have appeared. But could it already be becoming obsolete? Could Twitter lose the fund of sympathy it has built up among human rights activists in recent months? Such a turn of events is no longer improbable, as indicated by the outraged reaction of some Internet users and dissidents throughout the world to the site’s announcement that it was introducing country-specific censorship in order to satisfy local laws in countries where it hopes to develop its business. Cooperation with Internet censors The first reaction by Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei was to threaten to stop tweeting if Twitter began censoring content.
Etats-Unis et Europe: tsunami de protestations en 2011 (Presse) Le protestataire anonyme est pratiquement le principal héros de l’année qui s’achève, écrit mercredi 28 décembre le quotidien Kommersant. Une vague d’actions de protestation a submergé non seulement certains pays arabes avec leurs régimes dictatoriaux mais également les pays prospères de l’Occident. Les participants aux manifestations exigeaient le départ des gouvernements nationaux ayant échoué dans leur lutte contre la crise, et ils tentaient, par ailleurs, d'unifier leurs effort à l’aide d’internet afin de formuler le concept d’un monde plus juste. Les pays de la périphérie sud de l’Europe ont été les premiers à entrer en ébullition en 2011: la crise y sévit depuis plusieurs années. Un peu plus tard, la vague révolutionnaire a submergé la Grèce. Les événements outre-Atlantique ont été tout aussi turbulents. L’année 2011 aura également été marquée par les premières tentatives de manifestants de différents pays d’unir leurs efforts à l’aide d’internet et de créer un mouvement mondial.
'The whalers have won absolutely everything': veteran activist | Environment Roger Payne first came to prominence more than 40 years ago, when he and a colleague made the discovery that whales sing eerily beautiful songs as a way of communicating. Their 1970 recording of whale sounds, Songs of the Humpback Whale, helped to galvanize the global anti-whaling movement, which led most countries to scrap their whaling fleets. Payne, the founder of the conservation group, Ocean Alliance, has continued his groundbreaking work on whales, including recent landmark studies showing how whales worldwide have high levels of pollutants — including DDT — in their bodies. He also is continuing a 40-year study of more than 2,000 right whales in Argentina, identifying individual whales by the markings on their heads. In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Christina Russo, Payne talked about current threats to the world's whale populations, including the ongoing killing of whales by Japan and other nations — a practice he describes as inhumane. Roger Payne: Yes.
Après la révolte, il faut s'engager, soutient le «père» du mouvement «Occupons» | Annie Mathieu | Retour sur 2011 Au bout du fil, la voix du nonagénaire, qui pourrait être notre arrière-grand-père, est chaude et rassurante. Le corédacteur de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme pèse ses mots, conscient de leur portée après le succès retentissant qu'a connu son pamphlet d'une trentaine de pages. Celui-ci s'adressait en premier lieu à ses compatriotes «léthargiques» de l'Hexagone. Le document, vendu au prix modeste de trois euros (5,95 $), somme la population - les jeunes en particulier - à voir au-delà de ses tracas quotidiens et à chercher autour d'elle «des thèmes qui justifient l'indignation». Si le livre s'est classé au sommet des palmarès dans les librairies, c'est qu'il arrivait à point nommé dans l'histoire, croit son auteur. En Amérique du Nord, Occupy Wall Street est né d'un appel le 17 septembre à l'occupation pacifique de la place Zuccotti à New York, située au coeur du quartier des affaires de la métropole américaine et symbole du système financier international.
Human Rights and the internet at Livewire Exploring how the human rights and high-tech sectors can better plan for and manage the human rights implications of new technologies. (c) By Widney Brown, Senior Director, International Law and Policy, Amnesty International Technology companies have built their businesses squarely in the sphere of human rights. And their profits reflect the hunger people have for exercising these rights. We are hungry to speak our mind. The video from the streets of Sa’ana, Yemen, shown in real time at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference being held this week, was a powerful reminder of the depth of this hunger. Freedom of expression, the right to information and the right to privacy are at the heart of the business of digital technology companies. The debate remains if and whether to regulate the sector; whether technology companies have any role to play regarding human rights; whether there is a place for anonymity on the internet; and whether to comply with laws that are patently illegitimate.