Thursday, March 26, 2009
Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe's home over 'censorship lists'
Theodor Reppe owns the German domain registration for "wikileaks.de", one of the many URLs used by the whistleblowing website.
This morning, Wikileaks published a Twitter update:
"Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists - stay tuned."
Wikileaks, which offers an anonymous service, has previously published alleged web censorship lists from Thailand, Denmark, and Australia.
A statement on Wikileaks's website claims police were investigating the "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence".
Wikileaks claims Mr Reppe is not involved in the website other than "sponsoring the German domain name and mirroring a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports".
Mr Reppe also reportedly maintains one of the most popular anonymous proxy servers in Germany.
Wikileaks told news.com.au it's not clear whether the raid was initiated after complaints from Australia.
"The raid is over the censorship lists, but which particular list, we can not be certain, although the Australian lists are the most recent and the most prominent due to their non-voluntary status."
In the past week, Wikileaks published three lists all purporting to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA's) blacklist of websites.
While ACMA and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last week denied the list belonged to ACMA, they both warned that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate its distribution.
The lists contained apparent links to child pornography websites, gambling sites, as well as relatively innocuous sites including those of a dentist and canteen manager.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25240192-5014239,00.html
Beware Conficker worm come April 1
Malware creators love to target April Fool's Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we've seen in years.
Conficker first bubbled up in late 2008 and began making headlines in January as known infections topped 9 million computers. Now in its third variant, Conficker C, the worm has grown incredibly complicated, powerful, and virulent... though no one is quite sure exactly what it will do when D-Day arrives.
Thanks in part to a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm, offered by Microsoft, security researchers are aggressively digging into the worm's code as they attempt to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline. What's known so far is that on April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web, at which point anything's possible. Will the zombie machines become denial of service attack pawns, steal personal information, wipe hard drives, or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software? No one knows.
Conficker is clever in the way it hides its tracks because it uses an enormous number of URLs to communicate with HQ. The first version of Conficker used just 250 addresses each day -- which security researchers and ICANN simply bought and/or disabled -- but Conficker C will up the ante to 50,000 addresses a day when it goes active, a number which simply can't be tracked and disabled by hand.
At this point, you should be extra vigilant about protecting your PC: Patch Windows completely through Windows Update and update your anti-malware software as well. Make sure your antivirus software is actually running too, as Conficker may have disabled it.
Microsoft also offers a free online safety scan here, which should be able to detect all Conficker versions.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/128643/beware-conficker-worm-come-april-1/
Living on Eggshells: Lessons From The Depression
My grandmother made the best lemon meringue pie you ever had. And when she cracked her eggs, she'd always dip her finger in the shells to get out every last drop of white. She was a child of The Depression, her mother died giving birth to her ninth child and my grandmother -- the eldest of the nine -- had to take her mother's place at sixteen. Whatever food my great-grandfather could buy on his country mailman's wages had to be stretched to feed a house full of hungry, squalling mouths. We're all picking up our own versions of the eggshell ritual these days. Maybe you circle past the valet until you find a spot on the street, maybe you just don't go out to eat much anymore, or maybe you go to a matinee instead of Macy's on Sunday afternoons. Even if you're doing fine, you've probably started making your coffee at home, and you've finally found the courage to say, "tap" when the waiter asks, "sparkling or flat?"
True, we will always be the creators of the Hail Mary pass, and this is still the Republic of Risk and Reward. But when did we begin to cripple ourselves with the idea that "rich" is a stage of life as inevitable as adolescence or old age, and with the attitude that no amount of debt or deception can keep us from getting our due? When were we consumed by our own consumption? We've always heard that rich and happy aren't the same thing, but its been a while since we've been forced to prove it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stinson-carter/living-on-eggshells_b_177812.html
Homesteaders in the Hood
Squatters are multiplying in the recession—what should cities do?
Squatting, or unlawfully occupying and making use of land that belongs to someone else, tends to emerge when poverty and homelessness intersect with absentee ownership. It was widespread on the frontier of the 19th-century West, where settlers who couldn't afford to purchase land at market prices often simply occupied land owned by Eastern speculators (as well as land owned by the federal government and by Native American tribes).
From the point of view of local officials, this was a win-win, of a sort. Far-away owners were more interested in free-riding on rising property values, and flipping their land, than in developing it productively. So they resisted paying property taxes or investing in infrastructure. As a result, governments in the West were happy to lend squatters a hand in their efforts to get property out of the speculators' hands. Local governments frequently made it easier for squatters to obtain title through the legal doctrine of adverse possession (sometimes colloquially called "squatters rights")—for example, by shortening the time period required for squatting to mature into ownership. Ultimately, even the federal government joined in. After years of using the Army to chase squatters off its lands, Congress decided to create a legal avenue for settlers without money to become landowners: the 1862 Homestead Act.
A century later, in the 1970s, squatting went urban. In city after city, the market for urban housing collapsed amid a toxic (and self-reinforcing) brew of riots, redlining, and the flight of the white middle class to the suburbs. City governments acquired thousands of vacant units from owners who had fallen behind on their property taxes. Rather than turning these properties over to remaining low-income residents searching for affordable housing, many cities sought to auction them off to speculators, who in turn frequently fell behind on their own tax payments. In the meantime, the vacant buildings became magnets for crime and illegal dumping. In response, groups of squatters—backed by community organizations like ACORN—began to take over city-owned, vacant housing. Many city governments cracked down on the squatters, but others took a more measured approach, coming up with programs whereby urban "homesteaders" could acquire vacant housing through "sweat equity."
March On The Pentagon
By Thomas Good
A protester outside the Lincoln Memorial
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
WASHINGTON — It was at the Pentagon that three thousand plus anti-war demonstrators met up with their pro-war counterparts — all thirty of them.
Lynne Stewart spoke at the rally before the march
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
On Saturday, March 21, thousands of anti-war protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear speeches and greet one another — before marching against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Members of Iraq Veterans Against The War on the
Arlington Memorial Bridge
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
By midday, on the second day of Spring, the protesters were marching across the Arlington Memorial Bridge -- en route to the Pentagon.
A small number of counter-demonstrators showed up
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
As the long column of protesters turned to enter the Pentagon parking area they passed a group of about thirty middleaged counter-demonstrators holding signs that said "love it or leave it" and "you never marched against terrorists". Some of the protesters stopped to take pictures of the counter-demonstrators and then continued on to Crystal City where they chanted outside the offices of several war profiteers while police looked on.
Police in riot gear lined the streets of Crystal City, Va.
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
Heard along the march route: protesters chanting "Hey Obama, yes we can - troops out of Afghanistan…"
View Photos/Videos From The Action…
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
www.nextleftnotes.net
video.nextleftnotes.net Sphere: Related Content
The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler, 50 Years Dead
Writer who gave L.A. a lasting identity took the language of the street and made it sing
By Judith Freeman
He died alone, with no friends at his side, which was pretty much the way he'd lived his life. His beloved wife, Cissy, had passed away five years earlier and ever since, he'd been trying to do himself in, first by taking a loaded gun into the shower and firing off a couple of rounds — what he later called the most inept suicide attempt in history — then later simply turning to gin and Scotch as his weapons of choice. Seventeen people showed up for his funeral, presided over by a pastor he'd only met once and didn't much care for.
He's buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego, in an undistinguished grave — just a simple, flat headstone set flush with the ground and surrounded by nearly identical markers arranged in long, boring rows. Nobody thought to plant him next to his wife, whose ashes were stored in a crypt not far away. By then nobody really cared what Chandler might have wanted. If you want to pay a visit to his grave, you have to hunt for it. And there it is: Raymond Thornton Chandler, Author, 1888-1959, In Loving Memory. The "author" part nails it in that sublimely minimal way. Still, it's a pretty lousy little headstone for such a great writer.
We remember Chandler for a lot of things. As the guy who put L.A. on the literary map, along with John Fante and Nathanael West, who published their first novels the same year The Big Sleep came out, in 1939 — a boffo year for L.A. letters. We remember him as the writer who gave the city a lasting identity. As the person who elevated the lowly mystery to the realm of literature. As a damn funny writer who mastered the art of repartee and the bon mot. The guy who took the language of the street, American slang, and made it sing. The King of the Simile. The Bard of Bad Blondes. And perhaps most of all, we remember him as one of the great American literary stylists, capable of tossing off lines like these:
"Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack."
"A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock."
"The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips."
"His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish."
"He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel."
And, a personal favorite: "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."
He said he was the first to write about Los Angeles in a realistic way. To write about a place, he said, you have to love it, or hate it, or both, alternately, the way you do a woman. Vacuity and boredom were futile. L.A. never bored him. He found it banal, maybe, but never vacuous. He both loved it (when he first arrived in 1912) and hated it (by the time he left in 1946), until finally, he said, it became a tired old whore to him. Never mind that he, more than any other writer, helped to turn Our Lady of the Queen of Angels into a woman of the night. He got this city better than anybody else, its rhythms and rudeness, its gas stations filled with wasted light, the houses in canyons hanging in the blackness, the smell of the air, the feel of the winds, the very pulse of the place, which is why his novels never seem dated: He captured the essence of the city, not just its temporal surface.
http://www.laweekly.com/2009-03-26/art-books/thebig-sleep?src=newsletter
Oxford Literary Festival: George Orwell's son speaks for the first time about his father
John Carey talks to George Orwell's son, Richard Blair
What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944, Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair (Eric Blair being Orwell's real name). Now a retired engineer living happily in an immaculate house in a picture-book Warwickshire village, Blair has never publicised the fact that he was related to Orwell, always preferring to remain in the background. But ahead of a talk at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival with Orwell's biographer DJ Taylor (details, below right), Richard agreed to speak to me about his memories of his childhood. Best kept secret in the Navy
In this hotshot piece of recruitment propaganda, you get an inside look at the US Navy's elite river warriors. NSFVATB (not safe for viewing around teenage boys)
Best kept secret in the Navy - watch more videos
Homeless 101
Seattle Pacific students spend 5 days on streets to feel pain of homeless
Eighteen Seattle Pacific University students spent their spring break living as if they were homeless, as part of the private, Christian college's experiential "urban plunge" program.
Google the words "spring break" and up pop images of bikinis, beaches, more bikinis, and margaritas.
That couldn't be further from the experience this week of 18 Seattle Pacific University students. They chose to spend their spring break on the streets of Seattle living as if they were homeless, as part of the school's experiential "urban plunge" program.
For these students, spring break was all about long johns and layers, Dumpster diving and wandering.
Sophomore Sarah Long said she spoke to dozens of homeless people over the five days and was struck that every single one had plans to find housing and jobs.
"It's heartbreaking," she said. "They are not willing to resign themselves to staying on the streets, but they are also not taking the actions they need to get off the streets. ... It's hard to know how to solve it, it's just so complex."
Urban plunge has been running more than 20 years and is one of several ways in which faculty and students at the small, private Christian college attempt to confront issues like materialism and public service.
Other students have formed a club in which they try to live in an ascetic manner — wearing no shoes on certain days, even during December's snowstorms. One student gave up his apartment to live in a van.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2008925900_spuhomeless26m0.html
Jewish groups denounce Oliphant Gaza cartoon
Two Jewish groups have denounced a Pat Oliphant political cartoon on Gaza as anti-Semitic, likening its fanged Star of David to Nazi imagery before the Holocaust.
The syndicated cartoon published Wednesday in newspapers across the country depicts a goose-stepping uniformed figure wheeling the Jewish symbol as it menaces a small female figure labeled "Gaza."
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group with more than 400,000 members in the United States, said the cartoon is meant to denigrate and demonize Israel.
"The imagery in this cartoon mimics the venomous anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazi and Soviet eras," the center said in a statement. "It is cartoons like this that inspired millions of people to hate in the 1930s and help set the stage for the Nazi genocide."
The center called on media outlets to remove the cartoon from their Web sites.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, issued a statement calling the cartoon "hideously anti-Semitic."
"It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition," the statement said. "The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart."
Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Oliphant's cartoons, did not return messages left after hours.
The Gaza cartoon alludes to Israel's invasion of the Palestinian territory in December to halt rocket fire from the area and weaken it militant Hamas rulers. More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed, according to a Palestinian human rights group.
Oliphant, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1967, is one of the most widely syndicated editorial cartoonists in the world.
TAKE ACTION to demand Anti-Immigrant AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio be REMOVED IMMEDIATELY!
Take Action to demand racist, anti-immigrant
Maricopa County AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio be REMOVED IMMEDIATELY!
Fill in the Online Petition at http://www.may1.info/arpaiopetition.shtml to send a message to the Homeland Security Department, President Obama, Arizona Governor Brewer, Congressional leaders, the Arizona Congressional Delegation, the Arizona Legislature and members of the media telling them you want ARPAIO REMOVED IMMEDIATELY and the Homeland Security 287(g) contract with his office cancelled at once!
And on May 1 join thousands and thousands to demonstrate for worker and immigrant rights in cities throughout the country! For more information, go to www.may1.info
Text of the online petition message follows:
To: Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Homeland Security; Esther Olavarria, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy; ICE Director Torres; Arizona Governor Brewercc: President Obama, Attorney General Holder, U.N. Secretary-General Ban, Arizona Congressional Delegation, Congressional leaders, Arizona legislature and members of the media
Dear Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Homeland Security and Esther Olavarria, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Homeland Security, ICE Director Torres, Arizona Governor Brewer, Arizona legislators and Congressional leaders:
Remove Anti-Immigrant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio from office NOW!
Cancel the Homeland Security Department's 287(g) contract with Seriff Arpaio's office IMMEDIATELY!
The entire country is appalled and outraged at the racist, anti-immigrant actions of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona.
Arpaio's racist history and abuse are well documented.
- At his "Tent City" jail, temperatures can reach a deadly 150 degrees in the summer.
- His practice of feeding prisoners just twice a day with spoiled food, his reinstatement of the chain gang and his cruel treatment of inmates--including those awaiting trial who have not been convicted of any crime--have already cost Maricopa County more than $46 million in lawsuit settlements.
- His latest stunt of parading the victims of his racial profiling shackled and dressed in striped prison clothes, through the streets of Phoenix from the County Courthouse to his Tent City jail -- a public humiliation -- is reminiscent of slaves being paraded to the auction block, and is the latest and last outrage that the people of Arizona should have to endure.
The 287(g) Agreement now in place between the Sheriff of Maricopa County and the federal government has been implemented in violation of the constitutional right of Equal Protection and with blatant discriminatory enforcement tactics by Sheriff Arpaio.
I call upon the people of Maricopa County, the local and federal government, and all politicians to stop these perpetrators of hate and fear.
I call for the removal of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio and for the end to the systematic practice of racial profiling and other discriminatory policies that have fostered a racist and hostile environment against immigrant and indigenous people.
Sincerely,
(your signature appended here).
Fill in the Online Petition at http://www.may1.info/arpaiopetition.shtml
UNITY: Apr 3 & 4
Statement from United for Peace and Justice and the Bail Out the People Movement:
Join us for actions on Wall Street in New York City on Friday, April 3 and Saturday, April 4
On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against war at his historic "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in NYC. A year later to the date, April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis where he had traveled to lend support to the struggle of striking sanitation workers.
This year, on April 3 and April 4, we honor the legacy of Dr. King with our urgent call for a new direction by marching on the financial capital of the country, Wall Street. What brings us to Wall St. is clear:
- The human costs of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mount every day, and each month upwards of $12 Billion are drained from our national treasury. Now is the time to end these wars, now is the time to bring all the troops home! The long term solution to our nation's economic crisis must include major cuts in military spending and putting our money to work in the rebuilding of our communities.
- Instead of pouring our money into bailing out wealthy bankers we need government investments in spending that creates new jobs, provides health care and quality education for all, ends the foreclosure epidemic and supports sustainable, clean energy.
Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic and social justice at home is tied to our work for peace abroad. On April 3 and April 4 we are taking the next step on this journey. By bringing people into the streets of the financial center on these two days we will send a strong, clear message: Now is the time to raise our voices in a unified call for the changes we know must be made, the changes millions of people are demanding.
The activities on Friday, April 3 are being led by the Bail Out the People Movement: www.BailOutPeople.org and the April 4 activities are being led by United for Peace and Justice: www.unitedforpeace.org On Friday, April 3 United for Peace and Justice will join Bail Out the People's program on Wall Street. On Saturday, April 4 Bail Out the People Movement will gather on Wall Street and join United for Peace and Justice's March to Battery Park. We encourage you to participate in both days of action, but if that's not possible we hope you will be out with us on at least one of these days.
Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Change You Can Parse: Obama Abandons Bush's Talk, Keeps His Walk
by Ted Rall
You can't blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He's ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn't allow torture. He's even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as "enemy combatant" and "war on terror."
But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama's inaugural address may have promised to "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," but--in all the ways that matter--he's keeping all of Bush's outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about "moving forward." But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama's changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric.
Closing Gitmo, reported The New York Times, was merely "a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies. But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration."
What will happen to the 241 POWs still at Gitmo? They won't be called "enemy combatants" anymore but most won't be going home. "The filing signaled that, as long as Guantánamo remains open, the new Administration will aggressively defend its ability to hold some detainees there," wrote the Times. Where will they go after that?
Welcome to Gitmo II--courtesy of Barack Obama.
Countless victims have been tortured by U.S. military personnel at Bagram, the U.S. airbase in Afghanistan where Bush imprisoned 600 people without charges. Some were murdered in the camp's notorious "salt pit." "Even children have not been spared," says Amnesty International.
Now Bagram is being expanded--nearly doubled in size--in order to accommodate 200-plus detainees from Gitmo, as well as future POWs from Obama's expanded war against Afghanistan. As bad as Guantánamo was, conditions at Bagram are worse.
DEMAND U.S. ATTEND U.N. DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE VS. RACISM
Urgent Appeal for the Obama Administration to fully support and fully participate in the U.N. Durban Review Conference Against Racism
Send a message to President President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Congressional leaders, Durban Review Conference Preparations Committee Chair Ms. Janat Al-Hajjaji, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navanethem Pillay, U.N. General Assembly President d'Escoto-Brockmann, U.N. Secretary General Ban, members of the U.N. Security Council and U.N. member states including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Syria Venezuela, Sudan, Nepal, Pakistan, Oman, Mozambique, Libya, Miyanmar, Lebanon and others, and Major media representatives including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the North Africa Journal, Egypt Today, the Beirut Times, the Jakarta Post, and the Sudan Mail. Let them know that you support this urgent appeal
- for the Obama Administration to fully support and participate in the U.N. Durban Review Conference Against Racism in Geneva in April, and
- for the Preparatory Committee to take all necessary steps for full governmental and Non Governmental Organization (NGO) participation in the conference.
Text of the Appeal:
Urgent Appeal for the Obama Administration to Fully Support and Participate in the U.N. Durban Review Conference Against Racism in April in Geneva
To: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Congressional leaders, Durban Review Conference Preparations Committee Chair Ms. Janat Al-Hajjaji, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navanethem Pillay, U.N. General Assembly President d'Escoto-Brockmann, U.N. Secretary General Ban, members of the U.N. Security Council and U.N. member states including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Syria Venezuela, Sudan, Nepal, Pakistan, Oman, Mozambique, Libya, Miyanmar, Lebanon and others, and Major media representatives including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the North Africa Journal, Egypt Today, the Beirut Times, the Jakarta Post, and the Sudan Mail.
I strongly support the participation of the United States in the Global UN Conference Against Racism scheduled to be held in Geneva, Switzerland from 20 - 24 April of this year.
It is an embarrassment for the Obama Administration to continue the Bush Administration's practice of refusing dialogue with others. Moreover, given the painful history of racism in the U.S. it is shameful for America to refuse to participate in a conference against racism.
All those who oppose racism and other similar forms of discrimination had hoped and expected that the Obama Administration, a source of great hope for change with a new agenda, would embrace the historic significance of this international gathering against racism.
The 2001 UN Conference on Racism held eight years ago in Durban, South Africa had the overwhelming support of people of the world - both through their governments and through thousands of delegates representing many hundreds of NGOs and organs of civil society.
Midway through that historic gathering the U.S. and Israel walked out because the latter was criticized for its apartheid practices against Palestinians. The Bush Administration also opposed concrete action to redress the history of hundreds of years of slavery and racism. How can we ever resolve these issues without participative dialogue?
In preparing for the April Conference against Racism the majority of countries from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, have shown an extraordinary willingness to operate on principles of open-minded compromise and dialogue with the United States. Rejection of this offer by refusing to even come to the table will be seen as an arrogant assault on the processes of diplomacy and will encourage the international community to brand the United States administration as one obstructing the struggle against racism.
I am shocked that the U.S. has also supported the marginalization of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the Durban Review Conference, seeking to ensure that they are not able to participate or that their freedom of speech is strictly limited, for example, by failing to support an NGO Forum.
NGO participation, often through NGO Forums, has been an indispensable part of every major UN human rights conference. It is therefore essential that the Preparatory Committee and the High Commissioner for Human Rights make every effort possible to provide the resources and logistics for a vigorous public mobilization for the UN Durban Review Conference.
I urge the Preparatory Committee to take immediate steps to carry out their responsibility to facilitate NGO participation, especially the participation of NGOs from developing countries who have suffered the most from racism and other similar forms of discrimination.
I urge the Obama Administration to participate in this international gathering without threats or preconditions and in a spirit of mutual respect for all other nations, especially those whose people have suffered so grievously from racism.
Sincerely,
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter in the online form at the link below:)
Initiated and signed by
Ramsey Clark, Winner of United Nations Human Rights Award 2008
Conference of Non-GovernmentalOrganizationss in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations,
CONGO - Kayla Mahoffey
Curtis Doebbler Nord-Sud XXI
Robert Micallef, President International Youth and Student Movement for the United Nations (ISMUN)
Naji Haraj, Union of Arab Jurists
General Federation of Iraqi Women
Vanessa Ramos, Asociación Americana de Juristas/American Association of Jurists
The Becket Fund, Sadani Maoluaiiuro
International Action Center
Fight Imperialism Stand Together
Aloomi Zambia
M. Hamed Cheidh
Mohamed Aledellabe
Sponsored by:
Nord Sud XXI and International Action Center
nordsud21.ch
www.iacenter.org
c/o Solidarity Center
55 West 17th St 5C
New York, NY 10011
For further information call: (212) 633-6646
The AP, OBAMA & Referencing
by Shepard Fairey
I'm sure a lot of people are wondering about my case with the AP over the Obama HOPE poster. I can't talk about every aspect of the case, but there are a few things I want to discuss and points I'd like to make.
Most importantly, I am fighting the AP to protect the rights of all artists, especially those with a desire to make art with social commentary. This is about artistic freedom and basic rights of free expression, which need to be available to all, whether they have money and lawyers or not. I created the Obama image as a grassroots tool solely to help Obama get elected president. The image worked due to many complex variables. If I could do it all over again, I would not change anything about the process, because that could change the outcome. I am glad to endure legal headaches if that is the trade-off for Obama being president.
I did not create the Obama poster for financial gain. The poster was created to promote Obama for president, and the revenue from poster sales was re-invested in more posters, flyers, stickers, etc.., and donated to charity, including the Obama campaign. A free download of the Obama image was available on my website, which should provide further evidence of the desire to disseminate the image, not to benefit financially.
Lastly, I'm very saddened to see many people try to demean my Obama poster as being "stolen" or that because I used a photo I "cheated". As far as the idea of the image being "stolen", I would love to have the clout to command portrait sittings from world leaders, but for me and most artists out there, that is not an option. For lots of artists, even licensing an image is out of the question financially. Should artistic commentary featuring world leaders be stifled because of copyright of the reference images even when the final artistic product has new intent and meaning? Reference is critical to communication, and in my opinion, reference as a part of social commentary should not be stifled.
One writer asked me why I "didn't just draw Obama from my imagination". My response was that I needed to make my image look like Obama, who is not an imaginary character. I know few people who could capture a convincing likeness of close friends or even their own family members from their imagination or memory. I use my own family members as models, taking my own photos of them to illustrate from - VIVI LA REVOLUCION and COMMANDA. Were Obama a member of my family I would have employed this technique.
Another suggestion someone made was "why not splice two or three photos together and illustrate from that?" Well, though a direct match would have been harder to find, with an image as popular as the HOPE poster, internet sleuths would probably have found the references and maybe I'd be facing two or three lawsuits. This leads to the next question: is illustrating from a photograph "cheating"? I studied art, illustration specifically, at one of the most prestigious art schools, The Rhode Island School of Design. At RISD I was taught to draw from life, to draw from photo references, and to appropriate and re-contextualize imagery. All of these techniques had historical precedents which I learned about. Here are some great examples of famous painters working from photo references, and not always their own photos - http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2006/11/famous-painters-copied-photopraphs_06.html
I have respect for, and have frequently collaborated with, photographers, but I do not think permission, or a collaboration is warranted in every case where an artist works from a photo reference. I collaborate with photographers because I WANT to, not because I believe I HAVE to. Usually, when I work directly with a photographer as a collaboration, I do so because I am building upon, rather than transforming their original intent. Of course, as with everything, the definition of transformation and fair use is somewhat subjective. I'm an artist, not a lawyer, so I'd prefer to see more latitude for creativity even though I do respect intellectual property.
This case has raised many issues, including the use of references in art. Some of my earlier works have been attacked by some as "plagiarism". I think reference is an important part of communication and it has been common practice in the art world. When I flipped through the Christie's auction house catalog from November 2008 I found many pieces that are based on reference or appropriation. Most are selling for over $100,000. Some are more clever than others, but these are all works that are at auction being taken very seriously. Take a look.
20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie
by Greg Palast
The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.
"Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR DAMN HAND IN IT!"
She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village's fishing ground. Gail's hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.
It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn't question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon's claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?
So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn't there.
The reporters looked, but didn't see it, because it was three inches under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The network crews wanted to puke.
And now, with their eyes open, they saw the oil, the vile feces-colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces, the poisonous "bathtub ring" that ran for miles and miles at the high tide level. And it's still there. Less for sure. But twenty years later, IT'S STILL THERE, GODDAMMIT. And I want YOU, dear reader, to stick your hand in it. I want YOU, President Obama, to stick your hand in it before you blithely fulfill your Palin-esque campaign promise for a little more offshore drilling.
***
Tuesday marks the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez grounding and the smearing of 1,200 miles of Alaska's coastline with its oil.
Oil still being cleaned up seven years after the spill (James McAlpine) James Macalpine
It also marks the 20th Anniversary of a lie. Lots of lies: catalogued in a four-volume investigation of the disaster; four volumes you'll never see. I wrote that report, with my team of investigators working with the Natives preparing fraud and racketeering charges against Exxon. You'll never see the report because Exxon lawyers threatened the Natives, "Mention the f-word [fraud] and you'll never get a dime" of compensation to clean up the villages. The Natives agreed to drop the fraud charge -- and Exxon stiffed them on the money. You're surprised, right?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/STICK-YOUR-DAMN-HAND-IN-IT-by-Greg-Palast-090323-231.html
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