The Largest Minority

July 2nd, 2008 by John Geraghty

The South Central farm is a great model to look back on when we talk about self sufficiency in an urban climate, the creation of community democracy, and the race to save the environment. However, there are always forces to overcome when we dare to take steps towards true independence.

Being an Irishman, the creation of a community farm in the heart of South Central L.A. was not a scheme that I was previously aware of, but something that I can definitely digg. The farmland was unfortunately demolished to make way for a Wal-Mart warehouse. Yes, as if we needed more of those in the world…

June 28th, 2008 by D.C.

Warning: This post may contain a Canadian point of view.

Grouping of copyright and Supporting PaperworkCopyright Symbol and Supporting Paperwork Printed copyright symbols over registered copyright forms, document frames

GH Wise ©2007

Did you ever wonder why Canada introduced a new Copyright Bill recently even though in the past the public disapproval of a similar bill caused it to be squashed? Well there is a very good article on Canada.com that purports the United States has a hand in getting the maple leaf nation to quickly pass a controversial copyright law.

Michael Geist (the very same Michael Geist that started a Facebook group petitioning against the original changes to the Copyright legislation) argues:

The public campaign was obvious. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins
was outspoken on the copyright issue, characterizing Canadian copyright law as
the weakest in the G7 (despite the World Economic Forum ranking it ahead of the
U.S.).

The U.S. Trade Representatives Office (USTR) made Canada a fixture on
its Special 301 Watch list, an annual compilation of countries that the U.S.
believes have sub-standard intellectual property laws. The full list contains
nearly 50 countries accounting for 4.4 billion people, or approximately 70 per
cent of the world’s population.

Most prominently, last year U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John
Cornyn, along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, escalated the
rhetoric on Canadian movie piracy, leading to legislative reform that took just
three weeks to complete.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 27th, 2008 by evmonk

Global Voices, a unique blogging project started by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is holding their yearly conference in Budapest for the next two days. Today the conference panels are focused on the censorship and freedom of expression online. Tomorrow there will be a number of panels on citizen media and the use of web2.0 to improve the political process, build community, and bridge the language barrier. The entire even is being streamed and liveblogged, and archived video of every panel is available here. If you’re interested in this stuff, there are some great speakers and discussions. But remember that these are bloggers and technophiles, so their presentations aren’t always the most entertaining.

If you haven’t heard of Global Voices, check them out. They aggregate and review blogs from around the world and then organize the best posts by region and topic, in addition to having a general feed.

May 18th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

I’m a day late, but it’s important to celebrate the third anniversary of MP George Galloway giving US lawmakers a much-needed ass kicking. Galloway is a real anti-war hero and proponent for human rights. He not only spoke up when it was politically inconvenient, but went head first into the belly of the beast to do so directly to the US Senate. Fearless public figures like him are responsible for real change (not meaningless Obama-esque “change” that looks nice on a bumper sticker). For the first 6:30 minutes Galloway’s blood is brought to a slow boil. Enjoy the magic once they finally allow him to speak.

April 15th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Unlike two cowardly former American presidential candidates, leftist Mexican candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to accept the results of a stolen presidential election in his country in 2006. There have been two separate governments in Mexico ever since.

Last week, the legitimate leftist government of Mexico stormed both chambers of Congress to protest a bill pushed through by illegitimate President Felipe Calderon, which would open Mexico’s national oil company to privatization. Mexico’s oil industry was nationalized in 1938, but now Calderon wants to allow US corporations in. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador drew a line in the sand, saying Mexico was not for sale and that the opposition government would not allow the privatization.

Since last week, leftist deputies and senators have been camped out on the floors of both upper and lower houses of Congress. Calling off a brief hunger strike, the protesters rejected a proposal by members of President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party to debate the privatization for 50 days followed by a vote in an extraordinary session. They instead demanded that a wide open national debate take place. Why, that crazy idea almost sounds like democracy.

Mexico is the fifth largest producer of oil, a resource which constitutes 40% of the nation’s federal budget. The US-backed bill to privatize Mexico’s oil industry will threaten the country’s sovereignty even further, but that is hardly of concern to Mexico’s corrupt politicians who are amongst the highest paid in the world and immune from criminal prosecution.

Rather than give a brief mention to the two conflicting governments in Mexico and the building potential for a revolution, American corporate media channels like CNN have instead decided to play reruns of Obama’s pastor. Oh, that guy sure is scary America. Know what’s even scarier? All of Mexico is plotting ways to leave their country and steal your job, and that’s all you need to know about the country.

February 25th, 2008 by J. Milton

Nine months ago, I traveled to Beijing with my wife for a genetics conference. It was my first time outside of North America, and although I studied Chinese culture extensively during my undergraduate years, I still found it difficult not to take some of the Western propaganda baggage along with me. Over my two-week stay, and limited travel to anything other than tourist traps, I found the experience to be a mixed-bag. Beijing is a lot like Washington, D.C. With dozens of historical monuments paying homage to past leaders, the city draws Chinese tourists from all over the country every day. It’s polluted, visible poverty is rampant, and it can be treacherous to navigate as a foreigner. Again, not unlike our own D.C. But there’s one key difference. When I visited D.C. about 20 years ago (I was a little squirt), I remember looking through our tour bus window at some protest near the capitol steps. There were chants, singing, shouting and picket signs a-plenty. And it was all considered business-as-usual to the on-lookers. In fact, this right to protest is considered part and parcel of our American democratic process. Not so in China. The last mass protest in Beijing was on June 4th, 1989 at Tiananmen Square where the government responded with military action leaving over 1000 civilians dead. Suffice to say, I saw no protests as I toured downtown Beijing.

Back in my hotel room, the mass media was much the same. Picture 100 cable channels with Chinese versions of everything we have in the States. Chinese MTV, Chinese Discovery Channel, Chinese Ren & Stimpy, and so on. Except for news. Every single news channel was essentially a Chinese version of Fox News. It was crazy! And don’t get me started on the internet. Every web search was filtered and any content that was not government-approved was blocked. When I got back home to the States, I remember making The Largest Minority the first website I visited. It was my way of celebrating my return, knowing that my visit to the site would be unfiltered and unrestricted. You see, in my mind, criticism of your government is not just a right, but it’s a necessary form of participation. Democracy simply does not work without protest.

Over the last decade, in the aftermath of 9/11, Americans seem to be forgetting this. Protest and criticism of the government is increasingly being considered un-patriotic. As a result, we’ve watched many of our basic freedoms slowly eroded. Privacy and due process have been hacked and slashed through the Patriot Act, but only recently has freedom of speech been so directly assaulted.

From the Global Integrity Commons article:

“Tuesday, February 19, 2008
U.S. Court Order Shuts Down Wikileaks.org

Incredibly, Wikileaks.org, an organization devoted to exposing corruption, has been muzzled by a U.S. court order (pdf download). Rather than attack a specific finding or document, the court has ordered their DNS registrar to essentially erase the organization’s website from the Web. While wikileaks.org is down, their site can be found via IP addess: http://88.80.13.160, which is hosted in Sweden.

The order comes at the request of a Swiss bank, Bank Julius Baer, and its Cayman Islands subsidiary who had been implicated in allegedly laundering money by documents posted on wikileaks.org. A recap of Wikileaks coverage of Bank Julius Baer is mirrored here.

I have had several conversations via email with people at Wikileaks as they worked to get their organization started up. I have been deeply impressed with the quality of their early work, and am genuinely shocked at this shutdown order. The U.S. joins China and Thailand in censoring the wikileaks.org website.

From the beginning, the Wikileaks folks have been expecting this kind of reaction all along, and have put serious thought into how to evade this kind of treatment. I thought they were being conspiratorial. I was wrong. I am confident that this will not slow them or their mission. ”

When I read stuff like this, I wonder how far from the brink we really are as a country. How many more Rupert Murdoch-owned news outlets do we need? How many more websites need to be erased?

February 20th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

This excerpt was taken from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an independent research and information organization. Click here or on the link below to read the full article, which is informative and non-partisan.

With yesterday’s news that President Castro is immediately stepping down from his office and will not be a candidate to succeed himself, the Bush administration has not eased up on its contentions that the Cuban elections are rigged by the Cuban Communist Party and that Cubans do not elect their own representatives in an entirely open manner. Despite these claims, party officials and many ordinary Cubans remind their critics that the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in 1992 declares that “all citizens, with the legal capacity to do so, have the right to take part in the leadership of the state. This can be either manifested directly or through their elected representatives” in the chambers of the “People’s Power, and to participate as prescribed by law in the periodic elections and people’s referendums through free, equal and secret vote.”

As the U.S. and Cuba have exhibited dramatically conflicting beliefs about the authenticity of the island’s democratic electoral system, who is the American public to believe? Do Cubans actually only cast votes on pro-communist ballots? Are the Cuban elections legitimate? Why is the Cuban Communist Party the only legal party on the island?

As Americans see themselves as citizens of a free, democratic country, which tolerates diverse and distinct political views, they must understand the relatively exotic nature of Cuba’s electoral system, the skewed perspective of many of its citizens, and the fundamentally unique nature of its history before any evaluation regarding the legitimacy of Cuban elections can begin. We must first start by analyzing the electoral system that Fidel Castro has left for Cuba.

read more…

February 20th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

The border fence isn’t just an insanely stupid idea to solve a perceived “problem” to our national security and economy. It also comes with the added bonus of destroying the environment and violating the land rights of indigenous tribes and other peoples too. Xenophobia comes with a heavy price tag.

However, what’s just as interesting as the people who are getting screwed over by this waste of time and money are the ones which aren’t.