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2012-02-11T16:13:00.001-08:00

The researcher's companion

2012-02-11T12:21:00.001-08:00

Petra Boynton

This project kind of dissolved a few years ago, but I'm keen to start it back up again as a place to share research tools, conference information, methodological skills and practical advice for researchers and practitioners in the social/health sciences.
Original aims of the group here:
'Do you need help in planning a social or health research project? Are you struggling to find papers, critically evaluate evidence, or complete a study? Is research all new to you or are you in need of advice around managing a research team? Do you want help with applying for grants or writing academic papers? Maybe you want advice on dissertation writing.
...
If so, welcome to The Researcher's Companion.
This is a global group for anyone involved in social or health research. It's a place to ask questions about your research, get advice, start debates, archive resources and network.
Everyone's welcome. Whether you are new to research or a senior researcher. The group is open to those actively involved in research, or who use social or health research in their working practice.
The group is based around my book 'The Research Companion' which aims to make social and health research interesting, accessible, ethical and safe'.
Please join and share if you're interested and we can all start posting useful stuff and tackling your practical research problems - be they big or small.

via facebook.com

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

Breitbart to Occupy Protesters: 'Stop Raping People! You Freaks!' | Crooks and Liars

2012-02-11T11:17:00.001-08:00

February 10, 2012 08:00 PM
Breitbart to Occupy Protesters: 'Stop Raping People! You Freaks!'

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By Diane Sweet

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This just in from Andrew Metcalf. Around 150 or so Occupy members were protesting outside of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this evening when hotel security came outside with shields to keep the group away from the hotel.

Emily Crockett of Campus Progress was standing right next to Andrew (Metcalf) and began filming. (Thanks, Emily!)

The Occupy protesters are repeatedly chanting "Hey, hey! Ho, Ho! CPAC has got to go!" Suddenly, Andrew Breitbart jumps out from behind some shrubs and decides to take it upon himself to take the occupiers to task, and starts shouting "Behave yourself! Behave yourself! Behave yourself!" Before security escorts him away he continues screaming "Behave yourself! You're freaks! You're freaks and animals! Stop raping the people! You freaks! Stop raping the people!"

In response the occupiers start chanting "Racist! Sexist! Anti-gay! Rightwing bigot, go away!" As Breitbart disappears in the distance, you can hear a soft little female voice say "I've never raped anyone in my life!"

That's Andrew Breitbart, always on his best behavior.

Tags: anti-gay, CPAC, Freaks, Occupy DC, Protest, Rightwing Bigots, Security, Sexist

via crooksandliars.com

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

Tony Ball: Community Wrecker of the Year Award Ceremony

2012-02-11T09:19:00.001-08:00

Tony Ball, leader of Basildon Council, has been nominated for the award of Council Leader of the Year by the Local Government Information Unit "in recognition of his role spearheading the eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm". The award ceremony takes place on Monday 27 ...
February at Westminster City Council.
For more info, see:
https://
member.lgiu.org.uk/whatwedo/cllrawards/Pages/default.aspx.
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/9509681.Tony_Ball_is_up_for_council_boss_of_year/
*
Not wanting to Tony Ball to miss out on ALL of the recognition due to him, we will be presenting him with an alternative 'Community Wrecker of the Year Award'.
In particular, the Dale Farm community would like to thank Tony Ball for his spectacular and unique achievements:
- CLARITY OF VISION: particularly his desire to deal with the problem that there are 'too many Travellers in Essex' [Tony Ball]
- OUTSTANDING COMMITMENT TO HIS ROLE: Tony Ball said he would resign if he did not evict Dale Farm - the eviction was about the continuation of his career and not the welfare of the community.
- EFFICIENCY SAVINGS: spending 'only' £7 million of public money on evicting the Dale Farm Travellers from the land that they own.
- HOUSING: making 83 families homeless, and refusing them to offer them alternative sites.
- PUTTING CHILDREN FIRST: protecting the interests of the first literate generation at Dale Farm by forcing them away from the local school.
- PROTECTING THE GREENBELT: Tony Ball transformed a beautiful home into a bombsite filled with sewage and old scrap.
- ACCOUNTABILITY: upholding the planning law by evicting Dale Farm and giving planning permission to a Dogs Home two months later in the same area of 'protected greenbelt'.
- STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH COMMUNITY GROUPS: 'allowing' the displaced Dale Farm residents to stay on the private road leading to their former home in unsanitary and cramped condition, cutting the electricity supply.
*
You are cordially invited to join us outside Westminster City Hall, for the presentation of the award, Tony Ball's acceptance speech and a rowdy reception.
Join us to let Tony Ball know what we think of his 'achievements' at Dale Farm.

via facebook.com

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

The strange case of Davontae Sanford

2012-02-11T08:51:00.003-08:00

The strange case of Davontae Sanford
By Mark | January 16, 2011
We haven’t seen her here on the site for the better part of a year, but, for a quite a while, we were getting regular updates from a woman by the name of Taminko Sanford on the fate of her son, Davontae, a prisoner in the Michigan correctional system. Davontae, who was found guilty of murdering four people on Runyon Street in Detroit at the age of 14, as you might recall, was serving a 37 to 90 year sentence. The last time she wrote, if I remember correctly, it was to let us know that Davontae had lost the use of one of his ears, after having his head caught in his cell door. I’d wanted to write about Davontae’s case for quite a while now, but, given how confusing it is (it touches on everything from drug cartels and hit men to police corruption and prosecutorial misconduct), I never felt up to the task. Fortunately, though, Diane Bukowski at Voice of Detroit has taken a shot at it. Following are several clips from her article, which I think should give you some sense as to how complicated this case has become.
Here’s how it begins…
Davontae Sanford is now 18. He has spent the last four years of his short life in adult prisons, convicted of murdering four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side on Sept. 15, 2007, when he was 14. He is 5’6,’’ slightly-built, blind in one eye, and “developmentally disabled.”
Shortly after Davontae was sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison in 2008, Vincent Smothers, now 28, of Shelby Township, confessed to the Detroit police on videotape that he and a different man committed the murders as part of a series of drug-related hits. Highly placed members of the police department have testified they believe Davontae is innocent, including a former chief of homicide who says Davontae was with him at the time of the murders….
For some reason, though, the Smothers confession hasn’t been enough to free Davontae. This, of course, may have to do with the fact that Smothers now contends that his confessions were coerced. (Smothers, who claimed to have been a hit man for a drug cartel, is presently serving 50 to 100 years on nine counts of second-degree murder and several counts of assault with the intent to commit murder.) As for coerced statements, here’s a little more from Bukowski’s article:
…(Defense attorney Kim) McGinnis said that during (Davontae’s) questioning by police, neither his mother nor an attorney was present. Davontae signed and initialed a typewritten document drawn up by a detective, despite being blind in one eye, and according to McGinnis, reading at a third-grade level. There is no videotaped record of the confession except one in which the detective reads the confession back to him…
McGinnis said, “Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”
In his confession Davontae claimed he committed the killings with a different weapon than the one used in the killings, McGinnis said. Ballistics evidence, delayed due to the shutdown of the Detroit police crime lab two years ago, is still to be introduced in upcoming evidentiary hearings.
“Smothers gave a confession that was very detailed and clear and implicated another man, Edward Davis,” McGinnis said. “The things he says he did are what the police say Davontae did. The woman in the back room who survived said the killer talked to her in a soft voice that was sounded 30-35 years old, but later changed her testimony to say it was an adolescent voice. In his confession, Smothers admitted to going back to speak to her”…
Now, it would seem, prosecutors are trying to place Davontae at the scene of the crime with Smothers. But, according to Detroit’s retired chief of homicide, Commander William Rice, this couldn’t have been the case, as Devontae was with him at the time of the murder. (Rice was then dating Davontae’s great-aunt, Cheryl Sanford.) Of course, cell tower records, we’re told, put Rice thirty miles away, in Mt. Clemens, at the time of the murder. So, I’m not sure where that leaves us.
And, then there’s the matter of the whistleblower case filed against the Kilpatrick administration by Detroit Police Department officer Ira Todd, who claims to have been demoted over his pursuit of the truth in this case. Here, again, is Bukowski:
…Detroit Police Department investigators Gerald Williams and Ira Todd, who helped take Smothers’ confession, have testified that Smothers admitted to the Runyon Street killings and stated that Davontae was not involved. Todd, who was also a member of the Violent Crimes Task Force, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Detroit’s former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
His lawsuit, filed by attorney Michael Stefani, says, “During the continuing investigation, it was determined that Smothers was a killer for hire for a notorious Detroit drug gang that regularly contracted for the murders of members of rival drug gangs as well as dissident members of their own organizations.”
In the lawsuit, Todd claims he was removed from the Task force, demoted and otherwise mistreated because his investigation into the Smothers’ killings led him to Smothers’ alleged accomplice, Ernest Davis, and to Davis’ cousin James Davis of Kentucky. Todd said James Davis claimed to have a “business relationship” with Kilpatrick, and that when he reported that, his investigation was shut down and he was transferred…
And then there’s the fact that Smothers was, not too long ago, found to be in possession of a cell phone, which, as you might imagine, is kind of difficult to do in prison without friends on the inside. Davontae’s mother, among others, think that this proves that Smothers is somehow connected to law enforcement officials. As Taminko points out:
…One of the people Smothers confessed to killing was Rose Cobb, wife of Detroit police sergeant David Cobb. Smothers said Cobb hired her to kill his wife outside a CVS pharmacy on E. Jefferson near their home, as she waited in the car while her husband was in the store.
Although the police department arrested Cobb, (Prosecutor Kym) Worthy never charged him in the murder. Cobb was later found hanging from a tree, an apparent suicide…
Oh, and, then, just a couple of weeks ago, Russell Marcilis Sr., the 67-year-old father of Detroit homicide detective LaTonya Brooks, who worked with Ira Todd on the Smothers case, was murdered at his home in a firebombing attack.
So, what do you make of all that?
In a city where something like 8 out of 10 murders go unsolved, I doubt we’ll ever really know.
[If you like, you can join the Free Davontae movement on Facebook.]

via markmaynard.com

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

FREE DAVONTAE SANFORD! | VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

2012-02-11T08:51:00.001-08:00

FREE DAVONTAE SANFORD!

Posted on 01/15/2011 by Diane Bukowski

Taminko Sanford (center), mother of Davontae, with his family outside court July 29, 2010/Photo Diane Bukowski

Serving 37-90 years since age 14 for four drug-related murders, despite confession by another man, police testimony that he is innocent

By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – Davontae Sanford is now 18. He has spent the last four years of his short life in adult prisons, convicted of murdering four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side on Sept. 15, 2007, when he was 14. He is 5’6,’’ slightly-built, blind in one eye, and “developmentally disabled.”

Vincent Smothers

Shortly after Davontae was sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison in 2008, Vincent Smothers, now 28, of Shelby Township, confessed to the Detroit police on videotape that he and a different man committed the murders as part of a series of drug-related hits. Highly placed members of the police department have testified they believe Davontae is innocent, including a former chief of homicide who says Davontae was with him at the time of the murders.

“Davontae’s a warm, loving person who the kids always said was my favorite,” said his mother Taminko Sanford. “He was born on Thanksgiving Day, and I always felt he was my gift from God.”

Davontae is her first son, the second oldest of five children, and she along with his stepfather and siblings have waged a relentless campaign since his arrest to free him, garnering broad-ranging support.

Davontae at 14

“Davontae was about to start the ninth grade at Osborn High School the day after his arrest,” Ms. Sanford said. “He loves rap and computers. He is so close to his brother and his three sisters. His brother has all Davontae’s letters from prison pasted up all over his bedroom walls, and his little sister has all his childhood photos on hers.”

Davontae has 1249 Facebook supporters from all over the world, including the United Kingdom and Sweden. He has support from media personalities like Bill Proctor of Detroit’s Channel 7, who runs his own Innocence Project. His case has received extensive and generally sympathetic coverage from the Associated Press and Detroit’s daily media.

The Rest of Their Lives (sentencing children to life without parole in the U.S.) Human Rights Watch

Elish Delaporter of the UK is following his case on her MySpace website, part of her campaign against this country’s exclusive practice of sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole. That policy is expressly condemned by the UN Commission on the Rights of the Child.

But in a seemingly never-ending series of evidentiary hearings since July, 2009, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is vigorously fighting Davontae’s motion for a new trial, citing what his defense attorney Kim McGinnis calls a “classic false confession.”

During the most recent hearing Jan. 14, in front of Davontae’s trial judge Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Brian Sullivan, Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Puleo once again ignored another of McGinnis’ requests that the prosecution grant “use” immunity to Smothers. That would allow him to testify in court about his role in the murders without fear of having the prosecution use his testimony to charge him in the cases.

Wayne Co. Prosecutor Kym Worthy

Puleo said he is worried about Smothers’ constitutional rights, because he could face life without parole if he admits to the killings.

Smothers is already serving 50-100 years in maximum security on nine counts of second-degree murder and three counts of assault with intent to commit murder, along with various felony charges, stemming from other cases in which he testified he was a hit man for a drug ring.

McGinnis called the plea deal for such a number of hit killings “virtually unheard of,” and Proctor called it “the deal of the century” in news coverage of the sentencing on July 23 of this year.

Judge Craig Strong at Smothers sentencing

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Craig Strong, who sentenced Smothers, even pleaded with him, “You cannot bring back those who were killed but you can correct wrongs for those who were wrongfully convicted of killing people that you killed.”

Proctor reported that Strong “seemed highly concerned about a pre-sentence report that indicated Smothers had confessed to murders that were not a part of the plea deal. It spelled out in part how Smothers had confessed to the murder of four people on Runyon Street on Detroit’s east side and how 16-year-old Davontae Sanford was in prison for those killings.”

The Associated Press quoted Smothers’ attorney at the time, Gabi Silver, saying, “The police have his statements. It’s not him who doesn’t want to correct things.”

A You Tube videotape of portions of the sentencing, along with others related to the Smothers cases, can be viewed at http://wn.com/%22vincent_smothers%22.

Smothers is now contending that his confessions in the cases for which he was convicted were coerced, and has appealed. Among his contentions is that the police threatened to charge his wife if he did not confess. He is represented by Attorney Mitchell Foster, also of the State Appellate Defenders’ Office.

The prosecutor’s office does not appear so concerned about Davontae’s constitutional rights.

Davontae in court at age 17

McGinnis said that during the child’s questioning by police, neither his mother nor an attorney was present. Davontae signed and initialed a typewritten document drawn up by a detective, despite being blind in one eye, and according to McGinnis, reading at a third-grade level. There is no videotaped record of the confession except one in which the detective reads the confession back to him.

“It was a classic false confession,” McGinnis said. “Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”

Robinson house on Runyon Street where killings occurred

The victims in the killing were “Michael Robinson, 33; D’Angelo McNoriell and Brian Dixon, who were in their early 20s, and Nicole Chapman, 25. Valerie Glover, 30, was critically wounded but survived the attack. A 7-year-old boy was found unharmed.” according to published reports. In his confession Davontae claimed he committed the killings with a different weapon, an M-14, than the ones used in the killings, an AK 47 and a .45 caliber pistol, according to McGinnis.

“Those are the weapons that Vincent Smothers uses, and the whole crime is his exact MO,” McGinnis said in published remarks.

Ballistics evidence, delayed due to the shutdown of the Detroit police crime lab two years ago, is still to be introduced in upcoming evidentiary hearings.

Three accomplices are also identified in Davontae’s confession, but they were never charged, leaving a question as to how one child could kill four people in an alleged drug house.

“Smothers gave a confession that was very detailed and clear and implicated another man, Edward Davis,” McGinnis said. “The things he says he did are what the police say Davontae did. The woman in the back room who survived said the killer talked to her in a soft voice that was sounded 30-35 years old, but later changed her testimony to say it was an adolescent voice. In his confession, Smothers admitted to going back to speak to her.”

She added, “The prosecutor has spent a lot of energy trying to tie Smothers to Davontae, but has never been able produce any such evidence. It is absurd to think that professional contract killers were going to allow a 14-year-old boy to tag along with them.”

Detroit’s retired chief of homicide, Commander William Rice, who spent 25 years on the force, was dating Davontae’s great-aunt Cheryl Sanford at the time of the Runyon Street killings. Rice testified Oct. 28, 2009 that he was with Davontae at her house at the time of the murders, from 8 p.m. to 11:45 p.m., and that he left to take another man home to Mt. Clemens and then take Davontae home.

How much training does a cell tower forensics expert need?

But during the November hearing, Assistant Appeals Prosecutor Patrick Muscat challenged Rice’s testimony.

A Detroit police investigator, Arthur Wimmer, testified. He said he is assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force composed of the DPD, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the MDOC, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, and other agencies at all levels.

Wimmer said he had 120 hours (three weeks) of specialized training in cell tower forensics conducted by the FBI and private corporations, and was allowed to testify as an expert witness. Michigan currently has no licensing process for such experts.

Wimmer claimed Rice’s cell phone records showed he was in Mt. Clemens, a city about 30 miles east of Detroit, at 11:18 p.m. the night of the murders.

McGinnis challenged cell tower testimony as sometimes inaccurate. She said later that the testimony may have shown that Rice was off base in his exact estimates of time, but did not discount Davontae’s presence with his family for most of the time prior to the killings.

“He would not have had time to prepare, or to hook up with Smothers and get to the site to commit the murders,” McGinnis said.

Thumb Correctional Facility houses many younger prisoners, is Security Level 2

A Department of Corrections official also testified about alleged “gang” materials and graffiti found in a search of Davontae’s cell in the Thumb Correctional Facility. The official claimed scars on Davontae’s arms were remnants of gang tattoos.

“Anything that happened after the night of the murders is not relevant,” McGinnis objected. But Judge Sullivan allowed the testimony to go on record.

“The tattoos were about the movie ‘Bloodline’,” Ms. Sanford said. “Both Davontae and his brother had them. They just stand for their connection to each other, nothing else. They were separated from each other for part of their lives.”

In addition to Rice, Detroit Police Department investigators Gerald Williams and Ira Todd, who helped take Smothers’ confession, have testified that Smothers admitted to the Runyon Street killings and stated that Davontae was not involved. Todd, who was also a member of the Violent Crimes Task Force, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Detroit’s former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick

His lawsuit, filed by attorney Michael Stefani, says, “During the continuing investigation, it was determined that Smothers was a killer for hire for a notorious Detroit drug gang that regularly contracted for the murders of members of rival drug gangs as well as dissident members of their own organizations.”

In the lawsuit, Todd claims he was removed from the Task force, demoted and otherwise mistreated because his investigation into the Smothers’ killings led him to Smothers’ alleged accomplice, Ernest Davis, and to Davis’ cousin James Davis of Kentucky. Todd said James Davis claimed to have a “business relationship” with Kilpatrick, and that when he reported that, his investigation was shut down and he was transferred.

Neither AP’s Muscat nor Puleo would comment outside of court on the case.

Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller, who is chief communications officer for Worthy’s office, said, “Because the case remains in progress we will not comment on issues directly related to it outside of court. It was appropriate for the APA handling the case to also not comment outside of court. The case is in open court and our assistant prosecutor is responding in court.””

Just prior to Smothers’ sentencing, the jail was locked down after guards discovered that he had been able to obtain a cell phone while locked up.

Rose Cobb

Taminko Sanford says she believes that may indicate he had connections with law enforcement officials. One of the people Smothers confessed to killing was Rose Cobb, wife of Detroit police sergeant David Cobb. Smothers said Cobb hired her to kill his wife outside a CVS pharmacy on E. Jefferson near their home, as she waited in the car while her husband was in the store.

Although the police department arrested Cobb, Worthy never charged him in the murder. Cobb was later found hanging from a tree, an apparent suicide.

Miller did not respond to a question regarding whether Smothers may have been a hit man for corrupt police officers.

During the hearing Nov. 23, Davontae appeared polite and happy to see his mother and other family members, but there was an air of quiet desperation about him.

Sanford said Jan. 12 that she was very worried about Davontae because she had not heard from him for two weeks. He was recently transferred from Michigan’s Thumb Correctional Facility, which houses a large number of younger prisoners, to the Michigan Reformatory at Ionia, with Level Four prisoners over the age of 17. In Michigan’s prisons, Level Five is the maximum security grade.

Michigan Reformatory at Ionia houses males 17 and older, Levels II and IV

“Davontae used to call me every day, sometimes more than once a day,” Sanford said. “I’ve been praying to God to let me hear from him so that I know he is OK. It’s a new atmosphere for him and I’m so worried because I’m afraid that he is losing hope. He can get very depressed.”

Davontae’s next court hearing is tentatively set for January 28, 2010 at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit.

Davontae’s Facebook Page is Free Davontae Sanford at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=108713425818908.

via voiceofdetroit.net

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

Occupy Central - DUE TO AN UNINTENDED OFFENSE TO ANONYMOUS... WE WILL BE SUSPENDING ACTIVITY... HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY. WE INTEND TO TRY AND MAKE AMENDS... BECAUSE WE HAVE GREAT RESPECT FOR ANONYMOUS. WE DIDN'T MEAN TO PISS THEM OFF. PLEASE STAY TUNED

2012-02-10T20:14:00.001-08:00

Occupy Central updated the description.

DUE TO AN UNINTENDED OFFENSE TO ANONYMOUS...

WE WILL BE SUSPENDING ACTIVITY... HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY.

WE INTEND TO TRY AND MAKE AMENDS... BECAUSE WE HAVE GREAT RESPECT FOR ANONYMOUS.

WE DIDN'T MEAN TO PISS THEM OFF.

PLEASE STAY TUNED...

Like · · Yesterday at 03:09

7 people like this.
50 of 73
- Curtis Bard ‎Elan, the problems with group focus is one reason we started the group where EVERYTHING (well almost everything) is allowed.:
  https://www.facebook.com/ groups/102643126526288/
  Why keep criticizing and arguing when we are all trying to be on the same constructive and cooperative page here?
  Let's stay focused & on task; which means finding ways to help the Occupy movement and Anonymous instead of arguing about our differences. The hardest obstacle we have to overcome is the tendency to be divisive.
  Abuses of power and divisiveness within the movement are more dangerous than the threat from corporate power, police brutality, or money-driven, power-mad government.
  We must learn to be tolerant and forgiving of each other if our movement is to prevail. We need to work together as a team, not pull in different directions.
  People are waking up en-mass all over the world, and now corrupt government's and greedy, money-centered corporation's true colors are becoming painfully obvious...
  WHAT BINDS US TOGETHER IS GREATER THAN WHAT DRIVES US APART!
  We are ONE - United together world-wide with the 99%.
  We are as One Family with collective purpose and common problems...
  - One World, One Family ♥
  
  OCCUPY EVERYTHING!
  
  OCCUPY EVERYTHING! This group is for everything under the sun! (Except for the ...See more
  
  22 hours ago · Like · 2
- Occupy Central As from the beginning.. if you are unhappy here, there are many groups that will provide what you need/want.
  We are what we are. We are also 5k strong... and growing.
  This says we provide a valued service. if you don't value it- then seek value elsewhere... there are no chains here.
  22 hours ago · Like · 2
- Curtis Bard Elan, This is not my group.
  IMHO we all need to direct our anger and outrage outward towards our common enemy and the bastardized form of government they have spawned.
  21 hours ago · Like · 3
- Elan Wilson The chains here seem to bind everyone who chooses to remain to the leadership of the group founder. I suppose, Curtis, that the reasons why I would be argumentative are embodied in the paragraph that you wrote;
  "Abuses of power and divisiveness within the movement are more dangerous than the threat from corporate power, police brutality, or money-driven, power-mad government. "
  There is no 'we' in autonomous leadership over a leaderless movement. This group, "five thousand strong" as you put it, is represented and facilitated by you and you alone, with no question of consensus, and no means by which to oppose your unilateral control over the voice of those five thousand people without being asked to leave. You alone are a greater danger to the solidarity of this movement than any number of people who stand in opposition. You "are 5k strong and growing" because you have usurped and defaced the name of Occupy in lording yourself over those seeking a medium to congregate and discuss matters related to the occupation, while completely betraying every value which has given this movement it's strength.
  Yet you go on about "valued service" and "refunding membership fees", pointing out that you are "providing" something which, in fact, costs you little or nothing at all to provide, to people whom sacrifice as much or more than you have to this movement. You want to refund my membership fee to the movements whose name you're utilizing for your own selfish purposes? Good then, perhaps you can refund unto me the last half year of my life, my miserable eighty dollar a day job, the support and nearness of my friends and family, my girlfriend, my anonimity before the authorities, my image of good standing in my community, the prior balance of my completely tapped out bank account, my truck, my sense of contentment, my peace of mind, my safety and my future. Of course, it can be fairly assumed that nobody sacrifices anything but the condescending "facilitators" amongst us who prefer to spend their days building and censoring facebook groups.
  I block your use of the name 'Occupy' until you agree to embrace consensus in the administration of this group, and stop unilaterally representing occupy as 'Occupy Central' in other groups without the expressed consensus of the five thousand people present. I'm sure that wont stop you from defacing this movement, as you clearly have no interest or understanding whatsoever in the values of this movement, of consensus or democracy, but you can take it for what it is...my protest against your lording dictatorship of anything related to this leaderless movement. I most certainly will "seek value elsewhere", as there is no value in the sabotage of a popular movement, and that is exactly what you bring to the table.
  Please stop using the name of the occupation to round up thousands of people for the support of your ego and your personal socioeconomic agendas without democratic consent or consensus. If you really seek to represent this group as indicative of the will of the five thousand people in it and not just your own, then your unilateral actions today put these five thousand people at odds with Anonymous. You may have the right to do so as the administrator of a facebook group, but you do not have the right to do so, under the banner of the occupation. For however many members (or subjects) you may gain today, you have lost one on account of your transgressions.
  21 hours ago · Like · 2
- Elan Wilson I was trying to answer your question in that one paragraph, Curtis. The rest was directed at whoever represents themself as "Occupy Central". Our common enemy and the bastardized form they have spawned is no worse than what is being represented in this group, in the name of the occupation. The complete autonomous control of one individual over a party of five thousand is in no way the change we should seek in the world, and nothing about drawing five thousand people together under the banner of 'Occupy' constitutes consensus for arbitrary policies imposed by a dictator.
  21 hours ago · Like · 2
- Curtis Bard Your message is very negative and I can assure you that Occupy Central is not the kind of self-centered egotist you are representing her to be. And, she does have the best interest of the movement at heart.
  We all need to be constructive in our relations with each other if we are going to succeed, and the time and effort distractions such as this bring only serve to diffuse our efforts and disrupt what should be more properly directed towards our common problems and our common goals.
  You are obviously a very intelligent person... How about helping by coming up with some ideas to unify our Occupy groups and members?
  21 hours ago · Like · 1
- Elan Wilson I'll take down the other posts for the sake of building solidarity towards the occupation, and not comitting the sort of sabotage myself which I have mentioned, once I'm sure that the message has been received --- but my block stands against using the name of the occupation in representing this movement through any sort of arbitrary leadership over a body of people. What good is to come of unifying groups where the people are stripped of their voice? No man or woman is good or wise enough to govern this movement in any way, without the consensus of the people. So far, I have seen absolutely zero respect presented for the value of consensus. The conflict that arose in interference with another groups' operation is evidence enough of the problem with this movement being represented through unilateral action by a facilitator. Without consensus, this group should not be recognized as being in any way affiliated with the occupation, and solidarity with the name of Occupy by these five thousand people should not be seen as consent or consensus to the policies of the founder. Stating it bluntly, it's consensus or bust.
  21 hours ago · Like · 2
- Elan Wilson ‎...and if my response has been negative, perhaps it is because I was offered a "refund" for the "valued service" of representing my solidarity with the occupation for me, through methods that all of one person has decided are appropriate, without consensus. Begging your pardon, but there's nothing about that proposal which is anything less than condescending and rude.
  21 hours ago · Like · 2
- Susan C. Watson leave the posts plz. they are well thought out and i think many ppl are interested. opposing points of view are helpful in being able to make informed decisions, not just for here, but for other forums they might encounter! i agree with Elan Wilson about censorship or someone appearing to speak for me when i have not been consulted on the matter. I agree with Elan about consensus and i agree with Elan about not liking someone taking sole leadership of a leaderless movement or what appears to be a leaderless group. (if this is a dictatorship-type group, then it should be so stated. I would be backing up most of Elan's blocks if there was a way to do that here. (for clarity: i was not privy to the actions/statements u appear to be referencing in the thread.) just my 2-cents on the matter...
  21 hours ago · Like · 3
- Susan C. Watson at least that is how i feel atm, until i get more or different info that makes me re-evaluate my opinions
  20 hours ago · Like · 2
- Elan Wilson Then I'll leave them up at your request, Susan C. Watson, as it's an issue which effects not only myself, but you as well, and indeed everyone else here. The "goals and focus" of this group should be defined by the consensus of the 5000+ members which comprise it, not by the ambitions of any one person, and no such consensus has ever been asked, unless we're to embrace a golden Spiro T. Agnew moment when we hear about the will of the "silent majority". In every post by the person dubbing the title 'Occupy Central', the term 'we' is used in place of 'I', in representation of these five thousand people, without any consideration of how it impacts or represents them.
  I could write volumes in redressing all of the places where 'we' has been used in the paragraphs above to define the will of all of the people here without their consent, but instead, I'll simply redress the original body of the status update:
  DUE TO AN UNINTENDED OFFENSE TO ANONYMOUS...
  -- The word "we" wasn't used here, but "we" did not "offend Anonymous", a person acting autonomously in representation of the five thousand people in this group did.
  WE WILL BE SUSPENDING ACTIVITY... HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY.
  -- "We" did not "suspend activity", a person acting autonomously in representation of the five thousand people in this group did.
  WE INTEND TO TRY AND MAKE AMENDS... BECAUSE WE HAVE GREAT RESPECT FOR ANONYMOUS.
  -- "We" have no reason to "make amends" for anything other than being amongst five thousand people represented autonomously by one person who acted without our consensus. "We" do not have a compulsory obligation towards "respect for anonymous", and I suspect that the majority of people on this page share the sentiment of the author whom wrote it, but nevertheless, there was still no request for consensus.
  WE DIDN'T MEAN TO PISS THEM OFF.
  -- "We" did NOT "PISS THEM OFF". One person acting autonomously in representation of the five thousand people in this group did.
  PLEASE STAY TUNED...
  -- and "we" did. What "I" got out of staying tuned, when I voiced dissent, was a unilateral personal invitation on behalf of all five thousand of you, to leave if I don't like the "my way or the highway" attitude of the facilitator. Hence a block against the usage of the name of a popular movement whose values are based and whose strength relies upon consensus.
  The occupation is not to be usurped. It's purposes, goals and focuses are not to be stated or defined by any one person without consensus. If this was a focus group, working group or committee of any occupation site, it's actions, goals and focus would still be bound to the discretion of consensus. Being autonomous of an occupation encampment does not make this group any more autonomous of the will of consensus.
  20 hours ago · Like · 3
- Audrey Foust It would be real contradictory don't you think for anonymous violate the amendment that this whole movement is about, dont you think?
  20 hours ago · Like
- Racy Lee Jones I have been out of the loop the last week or so...and have only heard second hand about this. I'm very disappointed that an alleged slight has moved the topic of conversation off of Occupy and onto some internet drama. How easily we are distracted. But...having said that, the movement is bigger than this. It is bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than this group, and yes...bigger than Anonymous. As I have said many times...stay focused, get your feet in the street, and look towards the Spring. Namaste.
  19 hours ago · Like · 1
- Jon Mohr did you see that Obama seized all iriaian assets in american banks today and promised penalties for any nation doing business with iran
  I saw today that India stopped rice shipments because iran could not pay. Malaysia stopped shipping palm oil nessarsary for irans food industry . And the Ukrainian wheat shipment were halfed. All because iran could not pay
  17 hours ago · Like · 2
- Every Man VII the level of faggotry is astounding
  15 hours ago · Like
- Every Man VII pic related
  15 hours ago · Like · 1
- Every Man VII http://www.fugly.com/ media/IMAGES/Random/ the_internet_hate_machine.j pg
  15 hours ago · Like · 2
- Carl Marx love you anon -- don't taze me bro
  10 hours ago · Like · 1
- Delia Labarre It would be better if no one is using "Occupy Central" as his or her avatar. Anonymous was right that it was inappropriate for "Occupy Central" to be making comments elsewhere rather than speaking for him- or herself. I had mentioned early on that the name Occupy Central is a misnomer, since Occupy is about horizontalism, and is not centralized. There seems to be a misunderstanding about this in concept and administration of this group.
  9 hours ago · Like · 5
- Bella Cennato Wade I think that all of us here needed this discussion but more importantly, we all learned something valuable. How to not over react in the face of provocation (real or unreal, intended or unintended). I know that the admins try hard to let all sides be heard... but let's face it, there are many provocateurs who come to this website with one goal ... and that is to disrupt. Perhaps the trigger gets pulled to fast for some, too slow for others. But I do believe the admins here seek to be judicious before eliminating any post or blogger.
  What I find heartening is that many people here kept reaching out, trying to understand what the fight was all about. Most stayed calm and reasonable. That is refreshing to say the least when it's on the internet which is far too often a "one sided" conversation. Kudos to all who continued to pursue resolution.... this was a great learning experience for all who participated...and one that will come to mind as we march inextricably forward in trying to return this nation to equitable and just governance.
  7 hours ago · Like · 1
- Bella Cennato Wade Delia... your observation about the name Occupy being used elsewhere might be valid... it certainly invited trouble here ... it is worth consideration
  7 hours ago · Like · 1
- Carl Marx love anon, thanks, and please.. leave this group in peace.
  6 hours ago · Like · 1
- Elan Wilson I agree with Delia Labarre's points wholeheartedly. Furthermore, it seems that any effort to 'centralize' our organization and discussion amongst a group of thousands of horizontally organized people is at risk of becoming the "valued service" of an autocratic facilitator, whom may "refund" us the balance of our participation should there be any dissent against their personal values, ideals or execution of justifiable action or just governance. In many hours of calm, collected thinking, the nicest thing I can think of to refer to that mentality as, is a load of hipster capitalist horse puckey. The five thousand people in here are not the property, leveraged commodity or plaything of a facilitator. The occupation is not a corporation. The revolution should not be privatized.
  We are not, under any circumstances, ever going to accomplish any sort of positive change by embracing and adopting the same rancid socioeconomic policies and ideologies which have lead us into catastrophe in the first place, and it is impossible to "return this nation to equitable and just governance" if we cannot do so amongst ourselves...when the voice of five thousand people is overshadowed and usurped by the unchecked authority of one person acting to represent them without consent or authorization of consensus, it is not going to be accomplished.
  Whether the admins "try hard to let all sides be heard", and regardless of how many provocateurs may come here only to disrupt, acting or legislating autonomously without the consensus of the people effected and then hiding behind the authority of the other five thousand people involved whose authority over their own freely assembled organization cannot be exercised, save to disband, is utterly repugnant. It is not only a matter worth consideration, it is a matter that demands redress!
  The use of the name, public support and good will of Occupy, The Occupation, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy anything or the Global Occupation movement which has emerged throughout the world in the naming, appearance or operation of any forum, group, organization or assembly not organized around and subject to the consensus of it's members is so far beyond blocked, it couldn't catch a slow boat back to blocked.
  I am not alone in placing and supporting that block.
  Do not try and hijack the operation of this movement for purposes that preclude consensus.
  6 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights I was asked to change my Facebook name to an Occupy one to show solidarity with the movement. However, I recognized that in doing so I have taken on a responsiblity to adhere to OWS principles. That said I will be making a fake profile for my personal use as many have come to identify with the OHR profile and its principles....maybe we all should have thought of that before we took Occupy into our names. Our intentions were good :)
  6 hours ago · Like
- Delia Labarre We also have to guard against the "get-along" device to silence dissention, which is actually a destructive tactic long used by Colintelpro as a method of controlled opposition. It's important to value voices of a minority who are very often articulating what a majority may agree with but are afraid to be accused of being "divisive" or not part of the "get-along" crowd. I suspect Anonymous will continue to watch and will shut down this group for real if it continues to act against the core principles inherent in the Occupy movement.
  6 hours ago · Like · 3
- Occupy Human Rights BTW I will be leaving this group if I and others are not allowed to post freely to it. At present, I can only comment on "allowed" posts. :-)
  6 hours ago · Like · 2
- Delia Labarre ‎Occupy Human Rights, the word occupy has become universally used, and is why it was selected as word of the year 2011. That's not the same as claiming to be the central Occupy group using the OWS logo. Maybe another group should be formed based on the horizontalism of the Occupy movement and that serves as a virtual Occupy Spokescouncil, with delegates from all the Occupy groups.
  6 hours ago · Like · 2
- Elan Wilson That was something close to the idea for the founding of the Global Occupation General Assembly, only with all individuals everywhere in the world able to represent themselves, rather than be represented by delegates. A delegation also bears the unfortunate capability of usurping consensus...in a consensus-based movement, I fear that there is no room for it. After all, if everyone but delegates are barred from speaking in the council, how is anyone to block the actions of their delegate, or bar a removed delegate from the council? Free and open global communication seems to me to be a better answer for achieving broad consensus.
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights ‎Elan Wilson Apparently, Occupy Oakland now only allows certain people to post too
  https://www.facebook.com/ groups/occupyoaktown/
  5 hours ago · Like
- Occupy Human Rights Wow! Occupy Portland doesn't do that and they have over 12,000 members :-)
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights Don't call it a "group" of X amount of members if only certain people are allowed to post WTF!
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights The groups I admin (and formed) have specific descriptions about focus and about behavior (try to be civil, etc PM those you have a problem with and work it out) but those are "working" groups.
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights Working groups on specific issues. Even there we aren't the thought police.
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Elan Wilson Descriptions about focus and behavior are fine, Occupy Human Rights, so long as their formation and actions taken under them are bound to the consensus of the organization of the people working in that group, and other members of the movement abroad. I'm guessing that if someone stated a grievance with those principles, your response wouldn't be immediately to tell them that if they didn't like it, they can shove off. That wouldn't be very horizontal, and does nothing to assure the consensus of the people.
  Where Oakland and similar groups that are going rogue against the organizing principles of consensus through the occupation are concerned, that's enough of this nonsense. We should consider any facet of the Occupation which has turned against the binding principles of consensus to be blocked and organized contrary to solidarity with this movement, until they return to full adherence to the principles of the consensus of all their comrades.
  It's time to step forward and handle this insurrection, to secure the blessings of rightful liberty and consensus for all of our comrades, before this movement is torn apart by the infantile greed, infiltration and usurpation of the self-same power brokers whom we have organized to oppose.
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights Yeah, if there's an issue, we hash things out, take a poll/survey etc for consensus. We want to be inclusive and always defer to the OWS declaration that states we should actively seek participation from those who are marginalized by society in general....THEY need to be heard and valued as they have been living the nightmare longer than most. If you don't adhere to the OWS declaration and OWS principles, you cannot call urself and your group an Occupy/ occupation...simply put.
  5 hours ago · Like · 2
- Elan Wilson I'll cast a broader net than that...OWS declaration and principles or not, if the binding principle of consensus is violated, it is an affront to the occupation, and to the rightful liberties of all the 99%. The majority shall not be marginalized, and the revolution shall not be privatized. This is a line in the sand which I hope I am not alone in standing on. We must demand adherence to consensus, and this insurrection against the rightful liberty of the people must be thwarted.
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights yeah, co-option ain't no option! not by other groups or any individuals
  5 hours ago · Like · 2
- Occupy Human Rights I haave seen so many occupations be hi-jacked by outside groups, one political party/thought and/or individual egos. In some cases the occupies were almost destroyed by this.
  5 hours ago · Like · 3
- Occupy Human Rights BUT ideas are not only bulletproof, they are sabotage proof too :-)
  5 hours ago · Like · 1
- Occupy Human Rights I am leaving now. When the format of this group changes to where I can post again to it like I once did, let me know, Occupy Central.
  5 hours ago · Like · 2
- Racy Lee Jones OHR is correct about egos and outside groups hijacking Occupy issues and time. Every revolutionary idea or anti government group in existence jumped on board the OWS bandwagon once traction was gained...in NY the truthers and Larushies have been part of the crowd and the GA's since day one. Many would say to the detriment of the movement as a whole. *example: The Harlem protest at the Apollo Theater where Obama was fundraising. Mainstream OWS was there to protest the NDAA...then the Larushies unfurled a banner depicting Obama as Hitler. How do you think Harlem reacted to that? Do you think we gained any support that day from the African-American community? No. People were screaming "get out of our neighborhood"* Look what we're doing here is new. Its never been done before. Using social networking to advance the cause is a fantastic idea...as long as those ideas are of Occupy and not of an established network of conspiracy theorists.
  4 hours ago · Like · 1
- Delia Labarre Occupy Nola just doesn't allow personal attacks, such as, "You don't know shit and I and everyone else HATES you." Yeah, we got that. Civil discourse, even in disagreements, don't call someone anti-Semitic or racist without evidence, etc. We have right now long threads still about Chris Hedges' article, which I think is healthy. Does anyone know how authentic the Anonymous video about black bloc tactics is? Funny how all the people who have been advocating black bloc tactics are saying it doesn't really exist, there's no such thing as "black-bloc anarchists," and evading the central criticisms. I would like to invite a few Anonymous folks to Occupy Nola, https://www.facebook.com/ groups/OccupyNOLA/ 152427334874553/ ?notif_t=group_activity, but I don't want to attract them by raising their hactivist hackles!
  3 hours ago · Like · 4
- Lisa Decarolis http://www.facebook.com/ l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.us tream.tv%2Foccupysf&h=HAQF W-iptAQG5KG89tU50Ih35lItSW tRlqK9lN4S-V_cKZw
  
  #3OccupySF
  www.ustream.tv
  
  ‎#3OccupySF @ Ustream.TV: @punkboyinsf here, broadcasting live and direct from #...See more
  
  about an hour ago · Like · 1
- Lisa Decarolis FTP MARCH IN SF
  about an hour ago · Like · 1
- Incognitus Meritus Perplexus Why what happened?
  28 minutes ago · Like
- Occupy Central I apologize for my absence from this discussion...
  14 minutes ago · Like
- Anna Navarre You should unblock Jaya.
  12 minutes ago · Like
- Occupy Central I would like to address the [valid!] concerns noted in this thread. I am very interested in reaching understanding with all...
  10 minutes ago · Like
- Anna Navarre This is a valid concern. You " INTEND TO TRY AND MAKE AMENDS" unblocking her would be a good start, jus' sayin'.
  9 minutes ago · Like
- Occupy Central right now I am focused on saving this group... however controversial.
  6 minutes ago · Like

Posted via email from projectbrainsaver

Ashin Gambira Ashin Gambira is free!

2012-02-10T19:02:00.001-08:00

9pm Friday night it was confirmed that Ashin Gambira was free

Much Metta

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China Sentences Activist to 7 Years Over Poem « VOA Breaking News

2012-02-10T18:41:00.003-08:00

China Sentences Activist to 7 Years Over Poem

Posted Friday, February 10th, 2012 at 7:05 am

Veteran Chinese democracy activist Zhu Yufu has been sentenced to seven years in prison after writing a poem urging his fellow citizens to rise up and demand greater freedoms.

His wife and son said Friday that Zhu was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” by a Chinese court in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

Zhu is the fourth prominent activist to receive a lengthy jail sentence in the past seven weeks, as China cracks down on dissent ahead of a rare leadership transition later in the year.

The ruling comes just before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's trip to the United States next week, when human rights is expected to be a key topic discussed. On Thursday, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is hosting Xi, said more openness and the protection of human rights is the best way to promote prosperity and stability in China.

Chinese police arrested Zhu Yufu nearly a year ago after he wrote a poem titled “It's Time.” The poem was published during the height of the Arab Spring uprisings that swept across North Africa and the Middle East. Zhu was detained as part of a crackdown by Chinese officials on political dissidents who called for similar protests.

Zhu denies inciting subversion. He says he did not organize any protests. He also denied posting the poem to any public online forum, saying he only shared it with friends.

The 58-year-old dissident has been convicted twice before for his activism. He spent seven years in prison after his first conviction in 1999 and served another two years in prison after a conviction in 2007.

Zhu's poem includes these lines: “It's time, Chinese people! / The square belongs to everyone / the feet are yours / it's time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice.”

Tags: China, Dissident
Posted in East Asia Pacific

via blogs.voanews.com

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Social Injustice Fuels Self-Immolation Protests | Asia | English

2012-02-10T18:41:00.001-08:00

February 08, 2012

Social Injustice Fuels Self-Immolation Protests

William Ide | Washington

Photo: Reuters

Tibetan Buddhist nun Palden Choetso sets herself ablaze in Daofu, or Tawu in Tibetan, in this still image taken from video shot November 3, 2011.

A growing number of Tibetans in China have set themselves on fire in recent months to draw attention to what they consider to be Beijing’s cultural and religious repression. This wave follows the self-immolation of dozens in Tunisia and other countries swept up in the Arab Spring. The suicidal act, while making new headlines, has a long history of being used as a political tool around the world.

In 1963, Buddhists in South Vietnam were facing discrimination by the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, a member of the Catholic minority. The treatment became intolerable for many, and one monk, Thich Quong Duc, made a decision that would have a resounding impact on Vietnam and beyond.

“Thich Quong Duc sets himself on fire, and that becomes a major news story all over the world,” recalled Michael Biggs, a sociologist at Oxford University and the author of “Dying Without Killing,” a history of self-immolations.

The iconic image of the monk engulfed in flames was captured in a prize-winning photograph.

“And as a result of that, not only do other people in Vietnam start using that action, but other people in other places completely unconnected with Vietnam start using it as well,” said Biggs.
Some of these images may be disturbing.

Beyond borders

These acts of desperation have been mostly concentrated in Asia, but there have also been incidents in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the United States.

In 1969, Jan Palach set himself on fire in then-Czechoslovakia to protest the occupation of his country by Soviet troops.

In South Korea, pro-democracy and labor rights advocates used self-immolation as a political tool before the country became democratic.

And when India’s government pursued affirmative action policies in 1990, students set themselves on fire to protest the decision to give underprivileged castes more opportunities.

Personal is political

Self-immolation does not always bring about the desired reforms, but the decision to burn oneself to death is a powerful outlet, particularly in countries where there is no democratic means to address injustices.

Rodger Baker of the global intelligence firm Stratfor says there are a number of motivating factors.

“It is an attempt to draw attention to, in a very drastic manner, some form of political change or political injustice. So, when you see it with the Tibetans, it is about the Chinese domination of Tibet, but it also may be seen as an economic protest. What we saw in Tunisia, for example, was political, but it was also economically motivated,” he said.

AP
Tunisian President, Moncef Marzouki places flowers at the tombstone of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old who set himself alight on Dec. 17, 2010

Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010, an act widely seen as the start of the revolution that brought down the government of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and fueled the Arab Spring. Others in North Africa followed in his footsteps, showing that self-immolation has the ability to cross not only national boundaries, but religious barriers as well, said Baker.

“In Islam, as in Christianity, the concept of suicide is very much against what they do, and in some sense in North Africa, it’s sort of like saying, ‘I’d rather die in hell than live on Earth,’” he said.

Silent stoicism

Baker says one of the reasons why self-immolation is so powerful, rallying supporters to a cause and drawing international attention, is because of its visual imagery.

“You don’t see self-immolators who are running around screaming in pain. The whole point is to have that added element in many ways of stoicism. For most people, the concept of even burning yourself on the stove is something that you can already feel just by talking about, and it’s extremely painful. The idea of lighting oneself on fire is beyond the level of pain that most people are willing to endure,” he said.

Self-immolators are sometimes called “terrorists” by the governments they’re protesting. That’s not the case, according to Biggs.

He says suicide bombers rely heavily on organization, access to bomb-making techniques and logistical support. But self-immolation is different.

“It’s something that ordinary people, occasionally, almost spontaneously decide to do as a kind of an act of will of their own individual decision,” he said. “And often we find organizations condemning the act and telling the people, ‘No, no, we don’t want people to do this.’”

State action

Governments also find it difficult to respond to such actions, says Baker.

“Even when we see, for example, a group of people self-immolate, rarely are they coming out of a larger group who says, ‘Why don’t you guys go burn yourselves, and next week we’ll go burn ourselves,’” he said. “And this is one of the challenges China has had because they are trying to portray it as, ‘Okay, the Dalai Lama is telling these people to go out and burn themselves.’ But it’s a very difficult argument for them to make that that is the case.”

Beijing has, in rare cases, seen self-immolation work in its favor. When followers of the Falun Gong movement carried out a series of self-immolations in China more than a decade ago, one woman took along her daughter to Tiananmen Square, where the girl also set herself on fire.

Biggs says that is one of the only cases of self-immolation in recent history where the act hurt the cause and helped the government the activist was rallying against.

VOA News will host a Google Plus Hangout to discuss this issue and other matters relating to China. Please join William Ide for a discussion at 0330 UTC Thursday.

via voanews.com

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Netease Offers Attitudes on Drugs « China Wangre

2012-02-10T18:38:00.001-08:00

Netease Offers Attitudes on Drugs

Inmates peer out of a barred window near the Chinese character "Drug" at the Chengdu Compulsory Drug Rehabilitation Center in Chengdu, southwestern China's Sichuan province. (AP File PHoto)

The Netease microblog (网易微博) calls itself “The microblog with an attitude.” This is very true of its latest topic: Drugs.

The issue is being discussed a lot recently because the son of the famous actor Zhang Guoli (张国立) has been caught up in a marijuana scandal.

The son, Zhang Mo (张默), is an actor himself. On January 31, microblogs exploded because of the news that he had been taken into custody for 13 days after being found smoking pot at home.

Marijuana, along with substances such as heroin, cocaine, are lumped together and called “drugs” or “dupin” (毒品).

Drugs have brought down other famous people in the past. Zhang Yuan (张元), the famous director of East Palace West Palace (东宫西宫), was arrested in 2008 for doing ketamine and ice.

via blogs.voanews.com

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Burma Authorities Release Dissident Monk | Asia | English

2012-02-10T18:30:00.001-08:00

February 10, 2012

Burma Authorities Release Dissident Monk

Daniel Schearf | Bangkok

Photo: Reuters

This January 19, 2012 photo shows U Gambira, leader of the All-Burmese Monks Alliance, after he was released from prison.

Authorities in Burma briefly detained a prominent dissident monk Friday, less than a month after he was released from jail along with dozens of other political prisoners. A rights group monitoring the situation said U Gambira’s detention appeared to be a warning for the former prisoners not to get involved in politics.
Witnesses say several Burmese officials took U Gambira from a monastery in Rangoon before dawn. A sister of the monk told VOA's Burmese service several hours later that her brother had been released unharmed at a Rangoon monastery.
She said she had not seen her brother since his release and did not know why he was arrested.
The religious affairs and special branch police gave little information about the apprehension, saying only that the 31-year-old monk was wanted for questioning.
Bo Kyi is founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPB), a Thailand-based monitoring group. He says authorities have no legal reason to detain U Gambira, whom he referred to using the honorific “Shin,” given to monks.
“That should not be because Shin Gambira did not do anything as far as we know," said Bo Kyi. "So, therefore there is no reason to be taken…taking him to the questions.”
Since his release in January, U Gambira has spoken out against the military-backed civilian government and expressed doubts that it is becoming a real democracy.
Reports say he was also attempting to reopen monasteries that authorities closed after the 2007 democracy protests known as the Saffron Revolution, because of the color of robes worn by monks.
U Gambira and other monks led the protests but the military violently ended the movement and jailed him and hundreds of others.
U Gambira was sentenced to more than 60 years in prison.
Most political prisoners in recent months were released under general amnesties, part of the civilian-led government’s reform efforts.
But their freedom is conditional. If convicted of a crime, their previous sentence can be reinstated, forcing them to serve out the remaining time.
Bo Kyi says U Gambira’s detention is likely meant as a warning to other recently released political dissidents.
“If the Burmese government really wants national reconciliation, and then really wants the people to trust them, they need to recognize the existence of political prisoners and release them as soon as possible unconditionally," said Bo Kyi. "That is the first step they need to do. Otherwise it is really difficult to get like the trust by the people, both domestic and international.”
The release of all political prisoners is a key demand by western nations for lifting economic sanctions against Burma.
Burmese authorities refuse to officially recognize political prisoners and say all prisoners of conscience have been released.
The AAPB estimates there are more than 800 still locked up for opposing military rule while other estimates put the figure at around 300.
A civilian-led government last year replaced decades of military rule and began implementing political and economic reforms.
But observers debate whether the military is still in charge, and if reforms are genuine or designed to get sanctions and Burma's pariah status lifted.

via voanews.com

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China warns Tibet of 'war' over protests | The Australian

2012-02-10T18:24:00.001-08:00

China warns Tibet of 'war' over protests

by: Michael Sainsbury, China correspondent

From: The Australian

February 11, 2012 12:00AM

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CHINESE authorities say they are preparing themselves for "war" in Tibet as a spate of self-immolations and related street protests against Beijing's rule continues.

The latest in a run of 21 self-immolations happened on Thursday in the county town of Aba in the Tibetan part of the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan amid reports of more troops being sent to the area.

via theaustralian.com.au

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Iran Reportedly Blocks HTTPS. But They Filter Major Sites Anyway « @lissnup

2012-02-10T18:23:00.001-08:00

Iran Reportedly Blocks HTTPS. But They Filter Major Sites Anyway
Just days after the “Arab Spring” conference, where the Iranian Regime once again tried to co-opt the popular uprisings across most of the region – forget Syria, the regime doesn’t want to include them – they are busy emulating their Arab neighbours by interfering with the internet again.

Since a few days after they stole the stole 2009 Presidential Election, the regime has been targeting internet users inside Iran and blocking access to most social networking sites. In late September 2011 they blocked P2P and VPN services, and in July they responded to America’s “outreach programme” by announcing they could block ‘Internet in a suitcase’.

RWW reports: The Iranian government isn’t exactly known as a champion of free speech and access to information. Thus, it’s never shocking to hear about Internet censorship in the country, the state of which appears to be getting worse all the time.

Today, news surfaced that the country is blocking access to websites that use HTTPS. That means that a number of popular, secure websites like Google, Gmail, Yahoo and even online banking sites are inaccessible. Anything based outside the country that uses a secure connection via HTTPS is blocked, according to news reports and a thread on Hacker News. Secure sites based within Iran are reportedly still accessible.

[This is kinda nuts because Iran was already (supposedly) blocking all those services using a long-standing national filtering system, with the exception of Yahoo mail, which famously cooperated with the regime in 2009 by supplying details of 200,000 users]

The shutdown is said to be timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and is believed to be temporary. Exactly how long it will be in place is unclear. The revolution culminated with the fall of the Shah on February 11, 1979, but the country did not officially become an Islamic Republic until April 1. So, the restrictions could be lifted this weekend, or perhaps several weeks from now.

Meanwhile, developers and members of the Hacker News community are brainstorming ways to help Iranians get around the limitations. Some have suggested setting up Tor bridges for Web users in Iran, although that presents its own logistical issues.

These measures come just as the Iranian government begins to roll out longer-term plans to effectively strangle the Internet to death and create a new, state-sponsored Web for citizens of that country to use. The government is even requiring Internet cafe owners to videotape all patrons so that Web surfers can be more easily identified by authorities.

via Iran Blocks HTTPS, Cutting Off Gmail, Yahoo and Other Major Sites.

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Iran reportedly blocks Google & all SSL sites on the eve of the revolution anniversary (thenextweb.com)

Blocked in Iran (link checker)

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U.S. Developing 'Internet in a Suitcase' to Outflank Repressive Governments | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

2012-02-10T18:22:00.001-08:00

U.S. Developing 'Internet in a Suitcase' to Outflank Repressive Governments

By Damon Poeter

June 13, 2011 07:36pm EST

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The United States is spearheading an effort to maintain Internet and mobile phone service for citizens in countries where repressive governments use censorship or shut down telecommunications in the face of dissent, according to reports.
The State Department-led project involves the building of independent phone networks in foreign countries and the creation of a $2-million prototype "Internet in a suitcase" by an entrepreneurial outfit operating out of a building on L Street in Washington, D.C., The New York Times reported Monday.
The idea is to fit innocent-looking hardware components into a package that could easily be snuck into a repressive country and quickly assembled to deliver wireless service across a wide area to maintain crucial communications between legitimately protesting citizens, according to The Times, which cited "dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables" it obtained.
"We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was quoted as saying by the paper.
"There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change, change America supports. So we're focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world."
In addition to the "Internet-in-a-suitcase" project, the State Department is funding "stealth wireless networks" in Iran, Syria, and Libya, among other countries.
Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon are also teaming up on a $50-million project to build an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan—where the Taliban has been able to shut down service "seemingly at will" —with cell towers located on military bases in the country, the newspaper reported.
The "Arab Spring" uprisings of the past several months have drawn attention to network shutdowns and censorship conducted by regimes under threat like the Syrian and Egyptian governments as they attempt to stifle protesting citizens' ability to communicate with each other and to inform the outside world of what's going on in the protest zones.
The Times noted that the Obama administration's "shadow" Internet project is ambitious, but could be considered a next step in decades-long U.S. efforts to foster democratic, potentially U.S.-friendly movements in countries with hostile regimes through media like its Voice of America radio broadcasts.
The various projects incorporate both U.S. government-developed technologies and "tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe."

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

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Virginia State Officials Confirm: Gingrich Campaign Being Investigated for ‘Illegal Acts’ | Addicting Info

2012-02-10T18:19:00.001-08:00

Virginia State Officials Confirm: Gingrich Campaign Being Investigated for ‘Illegal Acts’

February 9, 2012
By Mitchell S. Gilbert

Have you ever known Newt Gingrich to identify a flaw or fault with a politician, the President, the Democratic Party (etc), that he didn’t turn into the gravest, most evil transgression that humanity have ever been subjected too? When it comes to making proverbial mountains at of molehill, employing hyperbolic rhetoric to embarrass and humiliate his enemies, the-Newt, is king of the demagogues.

So if this story happened to Mitt Romney, Barack Obama or any other political enemy of the former House Speaker, how do you think he might handle it?

// ]]>

The BRAD BLOG is reporting that Virginia State officials have confirmed that a criminal investigation of the Gingrich for President Campaign is now underway in what investigators are describing as, massive “voter fraud.”

You may recall, that the Gingrich campaign failed to turn in enough signatures on petitions this past December, to qualify the candidate to appear on that state’s upcoming Republican primary ballot. In fact, by Gingrich’s own admission, his campaign turned in 11,100 signatures when only 10,000 were needed. The problem? 1500 of those signatures were quickly identified as fraudulent.

Of course Newt wants us to believe that this was “just a mistake” made by person his campaign had hired to collect signatures. Who was this one person who made the mistake? The campaign won’t say. Why not? Wouldn’t it be easier to scape-goat a lazy, minimum wage signature collector that let the entire campaign get black eye?

The Virginia State Attorney General’s office doesn’t view voter fraud on this scale as being “just a mistake.” In fact, an official in the Virginia State Board of Elections (SBE) described it as, “definitely an illegal act.”

Brian J. Gottestein, Director of Communication for the Office of the Attorney General confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that there is “an investigation underway.” Other than stating that fact, Gottestein refused to comment further and declined to indicate how much cooperation the AG’s office is getting from Gingrich’s Virginia campaign organization.

Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul campaigns turned in enough signatures to be on the ballot. Surprisingly, Rick Santorum’s campaign also failed to collect enough signatures to insure that his name would be on the ballot in the southern, socially conservative state.

In the last presidential election, the grass-roots progressive organization ACORN, was put out of business when it was determined that some of the people they had hired to do voter registration, had turned in fraudulent forms.

At the time, The BRAD BLOG points out, Newt Gingrich wrote in an op-ed column that “ACORN has a long history of engaging in voter fraud.”

Really? Based on that logic, can we assume from the Virginia incident that this was not the first time the Gingrich campaign has engaged in illegal acts and voter fraud?

It will be interesting to see how the conservative media handles this scandal in light of the incessant coverage given to the “mistake” ACORN made.

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NYPD Must Pay $15 Million for Illegally Arresting 22,000 - BlackListedNews.com

2012-02-10T18:17:00.001-08:00

NYPD Must Pay $15 Million for Illegally Arresting 22,000
February 9, 2012
Print Version

Source: Dominion

For almost 30 years — from 1983 to 2012 — the New York Police Department went about arresting people under laws that state and federal courts had long declared unconstitutional, cuffing and booking almost 22,000 people. In 2010, federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin finally held them in contempt of court. Yesterday, she signed an order approving what is effectively their punishment: a $15 million class-action settlement that could generate individual payments of as much as $5,000.
Those arrested were forced to defend themselves in court and even served jail time for completely lawful behavior. The class action settlement also requires the city to help the courts vacate and seal all convictions stemming from the illegal arrests.

“NYPD used these void laws over the past few decades to target people based on poverty, race and sexual orientation,” said J. McGregor Smyth, an attorney from the Bronx Defenders and a lead attorney for the class. “We are happy that the city has finally taken responsibilities for these abuses, agreeing to pay meaningful damages to its victims and to stop its unconstitutional practices once and for all.”

The three unconstitutional laws under which the NYPD made the illegal arrests prohibited people from loitering to panhandle, to search for sex partners or to wait in a bus or train station. Federal and state courts struck down all three of those laws between 1983 and 1993 as violating First Amendment rights, according to The New York Times.

As NYPD officers continued illegally arresting people under the unconstitutional laws, the department made efforts to stop them. It increased communication and training, disciplined some of the officers and conducted an internal investigation, according to The New York Times. However, Judge Scheindlin found the NYPD in contempt of court because, she wrote, they were not proactive about preventing the problem.

“Nearly every measure that the city has undertaken,” she wrote, according to The New York Times, “has been at the direction of the court, the prodding of plaintiffs, and/or under threat of sanctions.”

The attorneys handling the class action lawsuit plan to send a notice to all 22,000 members of the class in about three months.

The New York City case echoes a similar case in Chicago, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s anti-gang loitering law. That law targeted African American and Latino youth who were not engaged in criminal activity and resulted in the arrest of 45,000 innocent people, according to the ACLU, which represented the plaintiffs.

Loitering laws that disproportionately affect blacks remain on the books in the many states and cities. Some have their roots in the anti-vagrancy laws that emerged in the South after the Civil War. Those laws aimed to restore white control over black labor, by ensuring that no blacks were idle. According to A Short History of Reconstruction:

Vagrancy — a crime whose definition included the idle, disorderly and those who “misspend what they earn” — could be punished by fines or involuntary plantation labor; other criminal offenses included insulting gestures of language, “malicious mischief,” and preaching the Gospel without a license.

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BBC News - UK sent nuclear sub near Falklands, says Argentina

2012-02-10T17:07:00.001-08:00

11 February 2012 Last updated at 00:12

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UK sent nuclear sub near Falklands, says Argentina

The UK says HMS Dauntless is being sent to the South Atlantic as part of routine operations

Continue reading the main story

Falklands tensions

Tensions alive in Buenos Aires

Life on the islands

Falklanders confident about future

Argentine media on Falklands row

Argentina's foreign minister has accused the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the South Atlantic, after making an official complaint to the UN over the Falklands dispute.

Hector Timerman demanded that the British confirm the location of nuclear submarines in the region.

But UK officials said the accusations of militarisation were "absurd".

UN chief Ban Ki-moon earlier called on both sides to avoid an "escalation" in tensions over the Falkland Islands.

The two countries went to war in 1982 over the British overseas territory.

Mr Timerman told a news conference at the UN in New York that the UK was "militarising the region", repeating accusations made by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner earlier this week.

"Argentina has information that, within the framework of the recent British deployment in the Falklands, they sent a nuclear submarine with the capacity to transport nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic," Mr Timerman said.

He did not elaborate on the information, but said the vessel was Vanguard-class, a group that carries Trident nuclear missiles.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

Barbara Plett BBC UN correspondent

Argentina's foreign minister came armed with maps and photographs to make his case to the Secretary General, the head of the Security Council, and the press.

Britain, he claimed, is bringing new state-of-the art weapons into the South Atlantic, and has sent a nuclear submarine into a nuclear-free weapons zone. It is a threat to regional security he said.

The British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant called the accusations an escalation. He would not be drawn on the location of Britain's nuclear submarines, but said they stayed in international waters. He also spelled out in detail Britain's stance that the dispute over the Falklands is not one of sovereignty, as Argentina insists, but one of self-determination: the islanders must be allowed to determine their own fate, he said, and they want to be British.

He added that Mr Ban had agreed to talk to the British about Argentina's complaints.

The Latin America and the Caribbean region is designated a nuclear-free zone under a treaty signed in the 1960s.

In response, Britain's UN envoy Mark Lyall Grant said the government does not comment on the "disposition of nuclear weapons, submarines etc".

And he dismissed the accusation that the UK was militarising the situation as "manifestly absurd".

"Before 1982 there was a minimal defence presence in the Falkland Islands," he said.

"It is only because Argentina illegally invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982 that we had to increase our defence posture. Nothing has changed in that defence posture in recent months or recent years."

The UK had earlier said it was carrying out routine operations in the South Atlantic, which includes the deployment of one of its most advanced destroyers, HMS Dauntless.

Prince William, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and second in line to the throne, has also been sent to the islands for a tour of duty in his job as a helicopter rescue pilot.
Sensitive issue
The BBC's Barbara Plett at the UN in New York says the dispute is raised every year at the UN, and usually involves both sides sending letters to the secretary general.

But this year is the first time Argentina has provided such a detailed and public account of its grievances, she says.

It is not clear if Argentina plans to pursue any further action at the UN beyond the current protest.

The UN General Assembly has already passed non-binding resolutions urging the two to solve the dispute through negotiations.

Mark Lyall Grant responds to the accusations

The UK says the islanders have the right to self-determination, and London will enter into negotiations on the status of the Falklands only if the islanders request it.

The status of the islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, is still a highly sensitive issue for Buenos Aires.

In recent months, the Argentine government has stepped up its rhetoric on the issue and has sought support among its South American neighbours.

In December, regional trading bloc Mercosur closed its ports to ships flying the Falkland Islands flag.

More on This Story

Falklands tensions

Tensions alive in Buenos Aires

The BBC's Vladimir Hernandez examines why the Falklands are still a sensitive issue in Argentina.

Life on the islands

Falklanders confident about future

Argentine media on Falklands row

Key facts: The Falklands war

Guide to the Falkland Islands

South Americans ban Falklands vessels Watch

Fergal Keane on the war of words Watch

BBC Mundo

BBC History: The Falklands war

From other news sites

Yahoo! UK and Ireland UK to "robustly" defend Falklands, Argentina seeks UN aid 42 mins ago

Sky News Argentina Takes Falklands Case To UN > 56 mins ago

BusinessWeek Argentina Accuses U.K. of Sending Nuclear Weapons to Falklands 1 hr ago

CTV.ca U.K. accused of sending nuclear sub near Falkland Islands 1 hr ago

Financial Times* Argentina protests to UN over Falklands 6 hrs ago

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BBC News - Metal substitutes are being tested to deter thieves

2012-02-10T17:06:00.001-08:00

11 February 2012 Last updated at 00:18

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Metal substitutes are being tested to deter thieves
By Natasha Grüneberg You and Yours, BBC Radio 4
Strong overseas demand for scrap metal has boosted commodity prices

Continue reading the main story
Related Stories

War against metal thieves hots up

Metal theft causes flood at shop

Get tough on scrap dealers - MPs

The high prices being paid for scrap metal mean that theft is booming - street signs, manhole covers and even works of art.

The Association of Chief Police Officers estimates that it is costing £770m a year.

About 15,000 tonnes of metal are stolen annually - as much as half of this from scrap metal dealers. The stakes are high: 10 people were killed in metal theft incidents in the past year.

So local authorities, building contractors and even religious institutions are looking for alternative materials which do not have a high scrap value.

One of the biggest problems in this field is the theft of metal cables, particularly from railway companies, because copper has a high scrap value.

Even when a solution exists it is not always practical. For instance a traditional cable can be replaced with aluminium coated in copper.

However, this is not used widely at the moment partly because it still looks like copper, so even if it has a lower scrap value it may not prevent the theft.

Barbara Hepworth's Two Forms bronze sculpture was stolen from a London park in December
Roof replacements
One measure finding more success is the replacement of metal street signs with plastic ones. Many local authorities have ordered the move since the substitutes look similar and wear well.

Others too are looking at ways of using different materials. The aim is to prevent metal theft without raising costs, while ensuring there is minimal visual impact on the surroundings.

Churches are closely following developments. Their roofs are a tempting prospect for would-be thieves.

Last year was the worst ever for metal theft from churches, with more than 2,000 claims. With thefts continuing to rise, churches are worried they will have to pay for expensive repairs out of their own pockets.

All Saints church in Paston, Peterborough has been targeted repeatedly. The historic 13th Century church first had the lead stolen from its chancel roof about five years ago.

The main insurer for the Church of England, Ecclesiastical, has a cap of £5,000 as the maximum churches can claim on their insurance for metal theft in any one year.

At All Saints the theft from the chancel roof - about a quarter of the lead from the church roof - cost the church nearly £25,000.

All Saints church in Paston aims to replace the lead on its roof after thefts

Reverend Gillian Jessop has been looking at alternatives to lead, and is currently seeking permission to replace the roof with turncoated stainless steel, which is stainless steel with a coating which makes it look like lead.

"Our problem is that we're a grade one listed building, so special rules apply to what we can do to change the appearance of a building like that," she said.

The comparatively high prices for scrap metal may make the thefts look like any easy way to make large sums of money, but the cost to the victims is often hugely out of proportion to the financial gain for the criminals.

A thief will probably get about £4 pounds for a manhole cover, which will cost the local council about £400 to replace - and then there's the manpower, the road closures and the danger to the public.
Health risks
The Local Government Association is looking into the problem for local authorities. It is carrying out a survey to find out the impact of metal theft on their budgets, what changes they would like to legislation and whether councils are looking into alternative materials.

One local authority that is taking action is Oxfordshire County Council. It is trialing a fibreglass manhole cover to see if it will stand up to the rigours of traffic and provide an alternative to metal.

The non-metal cover looks very similar to the real thing from a distance, but close up you can tell that it is different and so not worth stealing, and it is lighter weight, too.

There may be knock-on benefits from installing manhole covers made from non-metal alternatives. Some composite materials actually last longer than metal, which gets worn smooth, making it dangerous for people riding over metal covers on bikes or motorcycles.

A fibreglass gully cover is also being trial by Cambridge Water, who are taking metal theft very seriously.

In the last 18 months the company has lost more than 30 iron covers from its operational sites as a result of theft, which they say have caused a number of health and safety and cost concerns.

They are trialing "worthless" manhole covers, too, made of metal with a low scrap value.

A statement from the company said: "All over the UK councils, businesses and utilities have been targeted by thieves who are thoughtlessly removing manhole covers to cash in on their scrap metal value.

This can be particularly dangerous for unsuspecting motorists or pedestrians, and there have been several incidents where people have been hospitalised."
Fibreglass profits
While some organisations are looking at alternatives to metal, many companies have been using other materials for year, because of a variety of benefits.

The Grating Company, based in Suffolk, is the largest stockist of fibreglass grating in the UK. They also make handrails, walkways and gully covers among other items.

Fibreglass can be used as a metal substitute

They use the material because it is hard-wearing and versatile but have seen an increased demand since the increase in metal theft, particularly to sewage works, electricity companies and railways - or wherever there are large quantities of steel unprotected for long periods.

One of the advantages of their products is that they come in a wide variety of bright colours, so you can see at a glance that they're not made of metal, meaning that a would-be thief would not even bother to stop his car if he drove by an easily-stolen item.

The company's director, Andrew Heseltine, says they have taken on more staff in the last couple of years. Although the increase in metal thefts is regrettable, he says companies like his are benefiting from it.

More on This Story

Related Stories

War against metal thieves hots up 08 FEBRUARY 2012, ENGLAND

Metal theft causes flood at shop 03 FEBRUARY 2012, HEREFORD & WORCESTER

Get tough on scrap dealers - MPs 26 JANUARY 2012, POLITICS

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Oxfordshire County Council

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BBC News - Twitter fuels Kim Jong-un assassination rumour

2012-02-10T17:01:00.001-08:00

10 February 2012 Last updated at 23:32

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Twitter fuels Kim Jong-un assassination rumour

Kim Jong-un took over as leader when his father died last year

Continue reading the main story

Kim Jong-il dead

Memorial in pictures

Uniting N Korea in grief

Mystical cult of personality

Genuine tears?

A rumour that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was assassinated in Beijing has spread across social media websites all over the world.

The story apparently originated on Chinese microblog site Sina Weibo and was later picked up by Twitter users.

The reports were also carried on at least two fake BBC Twitter accounts, which have since been closed.

Analysts say the story, claiming he was killed by gunmen at the North Korean embassy, is highly implausible.

Kim Jong-un took over leadership of the reclusive state after the death of his father Kim Jong-il late last year.

By Friday night, Sina Weibo had more than 380,000 posts referencing the rumour, which became a trending topic on Twitter.

However, many of the tweets were sceptical of the story.

No officials have commented on the rumour, and no reliable sources have given it any credence.

Rumours of deaths of celebrities and world leaders commonly spread on social-media sites like Twitter.

More on This Stor

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Forthcoming guidelines - Sentencing Council

2012-02-10T08:34:00.001-08:00

Forthcoming guidelines

Drug offences definitive guideline
Following a 12 week consultation the Sentencing Council is publishing its new definitive guideline on drug offences, which has been issued in accordance with section 120 (4) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The guideline covers the following offences; importation, supply, production, permitting premises to be used and possession.
This guideline on drug offences applies to all offenders aged 18 and over regardless of the date of their offence and comes into effect from 27 February 2012.
This replaces the guidelines for the above offences in the Magistrates' Court Sentencing Guidelines, with effect from 27 February 2012.
In order to encourage a consistent approach to sentencing the same guideline will be applicable to both the Crown Court and magistrates’ courts. The guideline has however, been produced in two different versions to fit within existing formats for judges and magistrates.
Drug offences definitive guideline – Crown Court

Drug offences definitive guideline – Magistrates’ Courts

Full version of the Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Guidelines incorporating Update 6

All sentencers will receive hard copies of the guideline as soon as possible.
We are also publishing a response to the consultation which summarises some of the very useful feedback and comments we received. We have greatly benefited from the consultation process and have improved some of the detail of the guideline in response to comments received.
Drug offences guideline – Response to the consultation

A revised resource assessment have also been produced to support the definitive guideline.
Drug offences definitive guideline – Resource assessment

A research bulletin looking at the effects of the draft drug offences guideline on sentencing practice has also been produced. All research and analysis publications can be found here.
A press release is also available.

via sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk

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2012-02-10T08:08:00.001-08:00

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Map it, Change it for RIO+20 – The Ushahidi Blog

2012-02-10T07:49:00.001-08:00

Map it, Change it for RIO+20

“Kids don’t know where their food is coming from.” We are a society often disconnected from ourselves and our world. Yet, we are more and more connected online. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Rio+20 (June 20-22, 2012) plans to renew political commitment to sustainable development and address new and emerging challenges. The Conference will focus on two themes: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development.

Okay, so what does that mean to regular folks? How about: We care about our communities and the world around us. So, we need to protect and improve it. How can we know more and be actively involved in the real changes, even at a incremental level?

Call to Map it, Change it.

The UN has stacks of resources about RIO+20. The Future We Want is an initiative focused on opening up the process to: Share your ideas. The UN’s Sustainable Future site includes a list of organizations and movements who demonstrate the power of: What Can You Do?

We invite you to join the fray: What can you map? There are countless local and global stories related to sustainable development. Take map aim at an issue that you care about to highlight the need for real change.

Mapsters in Action

At the recent United States Rio +20 pre-event, Ushahidi had a chance to feature the work of amazing deployers trying to share, understand and change their world. These examples should get your mind spinning on some of the untold map stories that you could activate. Citizen crowdsourcing can elevate and visualize your subject. And, you may be surprised who you hear from and how you can collaborate.

The Cost of Chicken project works with kids from around the world to collect data on local food conditions. It uses Crowdmap to track and share information ranging from the cost of chicken, water, and, even, candy. Learn more from Olga Werby, mapster advocate:

Can those kids be any more inspiring in their search to understand and connect with each other over food production? Thanks to each one of them for sharing their passion for change.

Take a World Tour:

Deployers around the globe are mapping about sustainability. These are some examples we shared at USRio+20:

Global Energy Shortages This map includes a layer of Ajay Kumar’s project Powercuts.in.

Find Fuel in Nairobi, Kenya

Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock: Nangarhar Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock ( DAIL ) (Afghanistan). More on this project: “A Moment of Discovery and Awe“.

iWitness Pollution (Louisiana, USA)

Spotting Fair Trade in North America (supporting sustainable products) (USA)

Agrotestigo: Mapping Agricultural Social Networks (building collective resources about agricultural technologies) in Argentina

Qiantang River Water Map 钱塘江水地图: A Collaborative Interactive Water Map for Qiantang River (China)

If you have more examples of great maps, please share them in the comments or add them to our Deployments Map.

And, when you create a new map, be sure to tweet to @UN_Rioplus20 and @ushahidi. Use the hashtags #futurewewant. We’d be happy to feature your map story on our blog. Simply drop us a line.

More Resources:

Official United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)

UN Sustainable Future site

United States Rio+20 Conference

The Future We Want

Thank you: USRio20 participants and organizing team

Thank you to Noel Dickover, Richard Boly and Sarah Jessup for inviting Nat Manning and I to participate in USRio20. Special thanks to Carmelle Terborgh, ESRI, for supporting our participation.

We were delighted to meet participants and to brainstorm, learn and Speed Geek [video] about these important topics.

Thanks!

Heather L.

Posted in Community, Ushahidi Users, Video, crowdmap. Tagged with @UN_Rioplus20 #FutureWeWant #sustainability #Rioplus20, USRio20.

By hleson
February 6, 2012

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Stop ACTA & TPP! - Never use trade agreements to mess with the Internet!

2012-02-10T05:11:00.001-08:00

6 Reasons to oppose ACTA

ACTA locks countries into obsolete copyright and patent laws. If a democracy decides on less restrictive laws that reflect the reality of the internet, ACTA will prevent that.

ACTA criminalizes users by making noncommercial, harmless remixes into crimes if "on a commercial scale" (art 2.14.1). Many amateur works achieve a commercial scale on sites like Youtube. ACTA, like SOPA, could mean jail time for the Justin Biebers of the world.

ACTA Criminalizes legitimate websites, making them responsible for user behavior by "aiding and abetting". (art 2.14.4). Like SOPA, the founders of your favorite sites could be sued or (worse) thrown in jail for copyright infringement by their users.

ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn't hard enough!

ACTA Permanently bypasses democracy by giving the "ACTA Committee" the power to "propose amendments to [ACTA]" (art 6.4). In other words, voting for ACTA writes a blank check to an unelected committee. These closed-door proceedings will be a playground for SOPA-supporters like the MPAA.

Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy. It's a secretive process that's tailor-made to serve politically connected companies. And the movie studios behind SOPA? They're experts at it. If we can't make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law, our internet's future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.

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BBC News - The rise and fall of lap dancing

2012-02-09T19:15:00.001-08:00

8 February 2012 Last updated at 01:23

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The rise and fall of lap dancing

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By Jon Kelly BBC News Magazine

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In today's Magazine

Why is Hebden Bridge the lesbian capital?

All for the want of a winter horseshoe

Why do people dress up their pets?

The Monitor

Strip clubs across England and Wales face closure thanks to changes in licensing rules, reversing a previous boom. How did the explosion in lap dancing change the country?

You recognise them by their names - broad, unsubtle allusions to sex and glamour like Secrets or Medusa or Platinum Lace.

At one time, the entertainment they offer would have been confined to back alleys.

Yet at present, for good or ill, lap dancing has colonised the British High Street.

Within recent memory, British venues offering the spectacle of women publicly undressing for male edification typically were either less-than-salubrious pubs or working men's clubs or found amid the red lights of London's Soho.

But the past decade has witnessed the rise of the "gentleman's club", frequented by City bankers and Premiership footballers, their "VIP rooms" replete with expensive champagne.

New planning rules mean their rise could be curtailed, however. To critics, they are, beneath the respectable veneer, no more than seedy outposts of the sex industry which make communities feel unsafe and commercialise the exploitation of women.

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

There was a complete normalisation of part of the sex industry”
End Quote Jennifer Hayashi Danns Author and former lap dancer

Their advocates insist they are safe, clean, professionally run businesses which answer a market demand and offer performers the opportunity to earn big money.

Few would dispute, though, the impression they have left on British society. Between 2004 and 2008 their number doubled to 300.

It was a period that coincided with the popularisation of certain aspects of the aesthetic of stripping. Pole dancing became a common activity at exercise classes and hen parties, while burlesque nights featuring striptease grew as a socially-acceptable form of entertainment.

Perhaps as a consequence, lap dancing clubs began to claim to be attracting a female clientele. One chain, Platinum Lace in London, insisted women made up 25% of its membership.

The profile of dancers changed too. A 2010 University of Leeds study found that a quarter of lap dancers were graduates.

"There was a complete normalisation of part of the sex industry," says Jennifer Hayashi Danns, co-author of Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing. Danns herself performed for two years in such clubs to pay her way through university.

"We believed it was different from what had existed before - that it was an aspirational career choice. The seedy, sleazy side of it was sanitised. It's extraordinary how acceptable it became."

Continue reading the main story
Stripping in the UK

Victorian law prohibits performers moving while naked, so disrobed models have to stand still on stage

The Windmill Theatre in London's Soho begins putting on nude shows in the 1930s

Paul Raymond opens the Raymond Revuebar in 1958 - the first private members' striptease club in the UK. Legal reforms in the 1960s see Soho become the nation's focal point for strip shows

Lap dancing clubs - featuring private table dancers as well as pole dancers on a stage - take off in the 1990s

Licensing Act 2003 makes it easier for lap dancing clubs to open in England and Wales

But from 2010, clubs are classed as sex establishments and residents are able to oppose venues for being "inappropriate" to the area

Of course, the growth of lap dancing took place in the context of a long-term trend of increasingly liberal attitudes about sex and a dramatic rise in the availability of pornography.

But legislation played a crucial role. From 2003, licensing laws put the clubs in England and Wales in the same category as cafes and bars, meaning they could only be stopped from opening if they attracted crime, were a nuisance or endangered the public.

With council licensing committees often powerless to reject applications, the number of clubs surged.

But this trend was arrested in 2009 when the law changed and any venue offering lap dancing, pole dancing or striptease was reclassified as a "sex encounter venue". Additionally, all lap dancing clubs were obliged to apply for permission to continue trading after April 2012.

And now, just as the operators of chains like Spearmint Rhino discovered there were profits to be made promoting lap dancing, local politicians are concluding there are votes to be won by curbing it.

Already, 10 local authorities have voted to adopt "nil" policies, refusing permission for any new venues. Tower Hamlets, which currently has 11, wants to be the first council in London to ban the practice altogether.

Recent months have seen three existing clubs in Leicester having their licences refused, while Oxford's only lap dancing club has had its application turned down by the council.

Leaders in these areas say they are reflecting the wishes of the communities which elected them. The industry, however, views the matter quite differently.

Peter Stringfellow, who owns two "gentleman's clubs" in London, says a handful of "moralists" and "extreme feminists" were responsible for driving the agenda.

"My experience of provincial councillors is that they are closed-minded with regards to anything to do with sex."

Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

These clubs broke down the fear a lot of people have about sex”
End Quote Peter Stringfellow Club owner

Stringfellow expects that most non-metropolitan parts of the country will revert to being largely free of lap dancing, with the capital's status as the focal point for adult entertainment remaining unchanged. However, he believes that the legacy of the brief lap dancing fad will be a favourable one.

"It's been a positive force in terms of our sexual attitudes," he says. "These clubs broke down the fear a lot of people have about sex."

For those who fought for the law to be tightened, of course, lap dancing created rather than ameliorated fears. The group Object, which lobbies against the sexual objectification of women, argues that these venues make women feel unsafe and create "no go" areas.

Kat Banyard, who led the women's rights group Fawcett's campaign for reform of the way lap dancing was licensed, says the lap dancing boom would never have happened if local people had had the power to prevent it.

"What had been seen as these fringe, sleazy outfits became part of the average High Street, and people were unable to do anything about it.

"They normalised this idea that it's acceptable to treat women as sexual objects and to buy sexual services. But what our campaign proved was that people have the power to fight back."

In late 2011, academics at the University of Kent began carrying out a 12-month study into the effects of lap dancing clubs on communities.

Academics are studying the impact of clubs on British communities

But until this research is complete, hard data surrounding the impact of lap dancing clubs remains fairly limited, according to Birkbeck University's Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, author of The Price of Sex: Prostitution, Policy and Society.

As such, she argues, local authorities are making decisions about whether to grant licences without full access to the facts.

"You can argue that it's a better thing for the men who visit them to be interacting with other people than to be viewing pornography at home, alone," she says.

"Stripping always existed - it just used to exist in working men's clubs. I don't think lap dancing has so much normalised it as professionalised it. Women do it for a few years in order to earn substantial sums of money."

But for some women who took up this opportunity, the cash did not compensate for the realities of the job.

Danns, 28, regrets that her time as a lap dancer made her a harder, more cynical person.

She admits she was initially seduced by the notion that modern lap dancing was a safe, secure expression of female empowerment. In fact, she says, her experience was defined by the damage it gradually inflicted to her self-esteem and the regular verbal, and sometimes physical abuse she received from customers.

"There's a generation which is used to a culture in which it's normal that everything has become a commodity," she says.

"Some men come in and they love women. But others use it to vent the bitterness and frustration that they have against women. They aren't being challenged about it and that's damaging for everyone."

Whichever side of the debate is correct, the era of expansion for British lap dancing appears to be over. Its impact on British culture and sexual attitudes may prove to be longer lasting, however.

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BBC News - £1.2m funding for girl gang member rape victims

2012-02-09T19:09:00.001-08:00

10 February 2012 Last updated at 00:41

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£1.2m funding for girl gang member rape victims

Lynne Featherstone said violence against girls in gangs was a hidden issue

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Police hold 213 in raids on gangs

Taking the 'glamour' out of gang crime

Victim's brother in gangs plea

The government has announced £1.2 million of funding to help girls involved with gangs who are raped by male members.

A network of people will support victims of sexual violence or exploitation or those at risk of becoming victims, the Home Office said.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said the violence girls and young women in gangs experienced was shocking.

She said advocates would give specialised, expert and sensitive care.
'Hidden issue'
A network of 13 Young People's Advocates will work in areas most affected by gangs.

Ms Featherstone visited the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Kennington, south-west London, on Thursday, where pupils were learning about gangs and sexual violence.

She said: "It's quite clear that everyone would be entirely shocked by the level of violence girls and young women have to experience if they get involved with gangs and it has been a very hidden issue."

She said the government fund would create a support network which would share information and best practice to make inroads into the "horrific issue".

Det Allen Davis, of the Metropolitan Police, who was leading a session at the school, said girls are at the bottom of the hierarchy in a gang environment.

He said: "Girls need to know they are used and abused within gangs, that they are passed around and are second-class citizens.

"Ultimately girls are disposable, it's the boys that gain status and respect by putting in work and that means committing crime and hurting people.

"Girls get status in this [gang] world by who they have sex with and it makes them very vulnerable. The boys have the power to use and abuse them."

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BBC News - Syria crisis: Shelling 'kills dozens' in restive Homs

2012-02-09T19:08:00.001-08:00

9 February 2012 Last updated at 18:03

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Syria crisis: Shelling 'kills dozens' in restive Homs

Amateur video shows the continued shelling of Homs

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Syria Crisis

Army pressured by uprising and defections

Under fire in Homs

Diplomacy strain

Plan in tatters

The Syrian army has launched fresh mortar and rocket attacks in the city of Homs, as the government continues a push aimed at crushing rebel forces.

Activists say 95 people have been killed so far on Thursday. Hundreds have reportedly died since last week.

Homs, Syria's third-largest city, has been a leading focus of unrest in the 11-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned the "appalling brutality" of the onslaught.

The international community is struggling to find a way to resolve the crisis after Russia and China blocked a UN resolution drafted by Arab and European countries on Saturday.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

Shashank Joshi Associate fellow, Royal United Services Institute

The most important factor [in the resilience of the Syrian army] is the deepening and widening of the uprising over recent months. Those once wedded to peaceful protest now judge that taking up arms is the only viable option.

One important milestone has been the outbreak of violence this month in Syria's second city, Aleppo. The army is increasingly stretched across fronts that it did not have to worry about last year.

It took days to regain control of suburbs around Damascus, and the town of Zabadani - scarcely 20 miles (32km) north-west of Damascus - was entirely seized by rebels last month.

These growing commitments thin out, and increase the strain on, loyal units. The paradox is that more fighting means more defections, but failing to do so risks conceding territory on which the armed parts of the opposition can regroup and consolidate.

Can army withstand growing pressure?

The assault on Homs, which began late on Friday, is focused on districts that are controlled by rebel forces.

The worst shelling has been in the Baba Amr district, where activists say 50 people were killed on Wednesday alone.

The BBC's Jim Muir, in neighbouring Lebanon, says there are armed rebels in the area, but also many civilians.

Ali Hazuri, a doctor in Baba Amr, told AFP news agency that the intense bombardment had resumed early on Thursday after an overnight lull.

"The shells are raining down on us and regime forces are using heavy artillery," he said.

During lulls in the onslaught, Syrians are using loudhailers to appeal for blood donations and medical supplies, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The Human Rights Watch group said the blockade of the city by government forces meant victims of the shelling were being denied adequate medical treatment, saying makeshift hospitals were being overwhelmed with the dead and wounded.

Syria restricts access to foreign media and casualty figures cannot be independently verified.

The army says it is fighting foreign-backed armed groups. Army defectors have joined rebel forces in Homs and other parts of Syria in recent months.

Government troops have stepped up operations at Syria's borders in an effort to stop arms reaching the rebels, reports say.

Continuing army operations against rebels are also being reported in the northern city of Idlib, the southern province of Deraa, and the town of Zabadani, north of Damascus.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, a network of anti-government activists monitoring the violence, say a total of 105 people have been killed around the country on Thursday, including 95 in Homs.

Meanwhile, Germany announced it was expelling four diplomats from the Syrian embassy in Berlin, following the recent arrest of two people suspected of spying on Syrian opposition figures in Germany.

Libya said it was giving Syria's charge d'affaires and staff in Tripoli 72 hours to leave the country, months after it recognised the Syrian opposition as the legitimate authority.

And in a blog post the British ambassador to Syria Simon Collis - who has been recalled to London for consultations - said "time and again" he had witnessed peacefully protesting Syrian civilians being beaten by "regime thugs".
'Missed chance'
Speaking at the UN in New York on Wednesday, Mr Ban said the failure to agree a UN resolution on Syria had encouraged Damascus "to step up its war on its own people".
Continue reading the main story

The BBC's Paul Wood reports from inside Homs

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He added: "I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighbourhoods, is a grim harbinger of worse to come."

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague: Efforts to "tighten the stranglehold" on Syrian regime intensifying

He also said the Arab League was hoping to revive its monitoring mission in Syria - which collapsed last month amid the escalating violence - in possible collaboration with the UN.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said efforts were focused on tightening the "diplomatic and economic stranglehold on this murdering regime", and said there were no plans for Britain to arm Syrian rebels.

The UN resolution vetoed by China and Russia backed an Arab League peace plan that would have seen President Assad hand power to a deputy to oversee a transition.

Russia said the proposal amounted to regime change.

Human rights groups and activists say more than 7,000 people have been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began last March.

The UN stopped estimating the death toll in Syria after it passed 5,400 in January, saying it was too difficult to confirm.

Mr Assad's government says at least 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed.

Are you in Syria? Do you have friends or family there? Send us your comments and experiences using the form below. At no time should you endanger yourself or others or take any unnecessary risks.

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.

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BBC News - Burmese protest leader monk Gambira 'taken away'

2012-02-09T19:06:00.001-08:00

Burmese protest leader monk Gambira 'taken away'

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The Burmese monk U Gambira has been taken away by authorities, sources told the BBC's Burmese service.

Gambira, one of the leaders of the August 2007 anti-government protests, was among several high profile political prisoners released on 13 January by the country's civilian, military-backed government.

He was taken from a monastery in Yangon early Friday morning, his brother said.

It remains unclear where and why he had been taken.

Some 15 officials came in three cars at about 01:15 local time (1845 GMT Thursday), a monk who was with Gambira told the BBC.

These officials are from government religious authority department and Yangon division government, he added.

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BURMA - U Gambira re-arrested in the early morning

2012-02-09T18:07:00.001-08:00

U Gambira arrested again.... Ko Aung Kyaw Kyaw said, Today, two hours in the morning, the polices of Burma were calling U Gambira in Ledi monestry. Now U Gambira was arrested. we don't know why U Gambira was arrested and where the place he is. I think, they were calling to U Gambira in the early dawn , that is the ex- millitary government's habit. Ko aung kyaw kyaw is U Gambira's eldest brother. he also ex- political prisoner...

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Janis Sharp Gary Mckinnon's mum on Scotland Tonight - YouTube

2012-02-09T09:30:00.001-08:00

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Go ahead and fuss, but medical marijuana is the future - Opinion - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington news, weather and sports

2012-02-09T09:18:00.001-08:00

Go ahead and fuss, but medical marijuana is the future

THE OLYMPIAN • Published February 07, 2012 Modified February 06, 2012
The Olympian

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Readers of the Jan. 29 Sunday Olympian woke up to two front-page headlines, five full-color photos and 85 column inches about the legal woes of local medical cannabis providers. The story had all the makings of great political drama: ambiguous laws, ambivalent lawmakers, undercover cops, lawyers of all stripes.

And yet, I’m in the chorus of millions asking: What’s the fuss? Any other business accused of a code violation, whether undercooking food or selling alcohol to a minor, could expect a visit from a clipboard-wielding state worker. But change one detail and it’s armed federal agents, state troopers and the local narcotics task force at the door – usually not knocking politely.

As similar scenes unfold across the nation, more communities bear witness to the waste and dishonor of cannabis prohibition. Not only does it harm already ailing patients, it makes criminals out of people who choose a safer alternative to alcohol, the world’s most destructive drug.

In 2012, the federal government looks pretty lonely insisting cannabis has “no medical use.” Research scientists, the American Medical Association, traditional medicine practitioners and 81 percent of the American public acknowledge its therapeutic benefits.

For thousands of years, herbal cannabis has relieved pain and inflammation, prevented nausea, treated menstrual discomfort and improved sleep. Repeated studies show cannabis helps addiction recovery, epilepsy, PTSD and cancer.

The medical marijuana movement deserves credit for raising awareness about an herb that was legally sold in the United States until 1937. Still, the prescription model is overly restrictive. Imagine if you needed an established history of headaches in order to buy ibuprofen. Or if you needed a doctor’s note to get sleeping pills. Or if you had to join a co-op in order to access cough syrup for your kids.

All of these products, incidentally, result in fatal overdoses every year. (Herbal cannabis has never killed anyone because it has no lethal dose.) And yet we don’t think twice about seeing rows of meds in every grocery store and gas station. Let’s reserve prescriptions for truly dangerous drugs like Oxycontin and morphine, slap on a label stating cannabis “may cause drowsiness,” and stop spending tax dollars eradicating a natural remedy.

Again, in 2012, the question isn’t whether cannabis should be legal, but rather, why not? Herbal cannabis is safer than alcohol, healthier than fast food, and less addictive than your daily cup of coffee.

Next to America’s drug of choice, there’s no comparison: Alcohol poisons the liver. Cannabis is nontoxic. Alcohol damages the brain. Cannabis is neuroprotective. Alcohol increases violent behavior. Cannabis does the opposite. Alcohol makes dangerous drivers. Cannabis has less effect on driver safety than fatigue. (These studies are cited at www.saferchoice.org and www.norml.org.)

The propaganda campaign against cannabis has run its course, thanks to advocacy groups like NORML, and free information on the Internet. As of last fall, a record 50 percent of Americans favor legalization, up from just 12 percent in 1969. The game is up.

The T-shirt from The Healing Center co-op in Olympia reads: “If you don’t like medical marijuana, you won’t like the future.” Whether medical or otherwise, really, what’s so bad about that future? Less violence, less disease, you’ll have the choice to use a safer substance without fearing incarceration.

And hopefully, you can read about something more pressing in the paper.

Renata Rollins, a board member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Thurston County and past director of Washington NORML, can be reached at NORMLThurston@gmail.com.

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The rape of men | Society | The Observer

2012-02-09T08:33:00.001-08:00

The rape of men

Sexual violence is one of the most horrific weapons of war, an instrument of terror used against women. Yet huge numbers of men are also victims. In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda to meet traumatised survivors, and reveals how male rape is endemic in many of the world's conflicts

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Will Storr

The Observer, Sunday 17 July 2011

Article history

Dying of shame: a Congolese rape victim, currently resident in Uganda. This man’s wife has left him, as she was unable to accept what happened. He attempted suicide at the end of last year. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer

Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an ordinary afternoon in the office of a kind and careful counsellor in Kampala, Uganda. For four years Eunice Owiny had been employed by Makerere University's Refugee Law Project (RLP) to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas. This particular case, though, was a puzzle. A female client was having marital difficulties. "My husband can't have sex," she complained. "He feels very bad about this. I'm sure there's something he's keeping from me."
Owiny invited the husband in. For a while they got nowhere. Then Owiny asked the wife to leave. The man then murmured cryptically: "It happened to me." Owiny frowned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old sanitary pad. "Mama Eunice," he said. "I am in pain. I have to use this."
Laying the pus-covered pad on the desk in front of him, he gave up his secret. During his escape from the civil war in neighbouring Congo, he had been separated from his wife and taken by rebels. His captors raped him, three times a day, every day for three years. And he wasn't the only one. He watched as man after man was taken and raped. The wounds of one were so grievous that he died in the cell in front of him.
"That was hard for me to take," Owiny tells me today. "There are certain things you just don't believe can happen to a man, you get me? But I know now that sexual violence against men is a huge problem. Everybody has heard the women's stories. But nobody has heard the men's."
It's not just in East Africa that these stories remain unheard. One of the few academics to have looked into the issue in any detail is Lara Stemple, of the University of California's Health and Human Rights Law Project. Her study Male Rape and Human Rights notes incidents of male sexual violence as a weapon of wartime or political aggression in countries such as Chile, Greece, Croatia, Iran, Kuwait, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.
I've come to Kampala to hear the stories of the few brave men who have agreed to speak to me: a rare opportunity to find out about a controversial and deeply taboo issue. In Uganda, survivors are at risk of arrest by police, as they are likely to assume that they're gay – a crime in this country and in 38 of the 53 African nations. They will probably be ostracised by friends, rejected by family and turned away by the UN and the myriad international NGOs that are equipped, trained and ready to help women. They are wounded, isolated and in danger. In the words of Owiny: "They are despised."
But they are willing to talk, thanks largely to the RLP's British director, Dr Chris Dolan. Dolan first heard of wartime sexual violence against men in the late 1990s while researching his PhD in northern Uganda, and he sensed that the problem might be dramatically underestimated. Keen to gain a fuller grasp of its depth and nature, he put up posters throughout Kampala in June 2009 announcing a "workshop" on the issue in a local school. On the day, 150 men arrived. In a burst of candour, one attendee admitted: "It's happened to all of us here." It soon became known among Uganda's 200,000-strong refugee population that the RLP were helping men who had been raped during conflict. Slowly, more victims began to come forward.
I meet Jean Paul on the hot, dusty roof of the RLP's HQ in Old Kampala. He wears a scarlet high-buttoned shirt and holds himself with his neck lowered, his eyes cast towards the ground, as if in apology for his impressive height. He has a prominent upper lip that shakes continually – a nervous condition that makes him appear as if he's on the verge of tears.
Jean Paul was at university in Congo, studying electronic engineering, when his father – a wealthy businessman – was accused by the army of aiding the enemy and shot dead. Jean Paul fled in January 2009, only to be abducted by rebels. Along with six other men and six women he was marched to a forest in the Virunga National Park.
Later that day, the rebels and their prisoners met up with their cohorts who were camped out in the woods. Small camp fires could be seen here and there between the shadowy ranks of trees. While the women were sent off to prepare food and coffee, 12 armed fighters surrounded the men. From his place on the ground, Jean Paul looked up to see the commander leaning over them. In his 50s, he was bald, fat and in military uniform. He wore a red bandana around his neck and had strings of leaves tied around his elbows.
"You are all spies," the commander said. "I will show you how we punish spies." He pointed to Jean Paul. "Remove your clothes and take a position like a Muslim man."
Jean Paul thought he was joking. He shook his head and said: "I cannot do these things."
The commander called a rebel over. Jean Paul could see that he was only about nine years old. He was told, "Beat this man and remove this clothes." The boy attacked him with his gun butt. Eventually, Jean Paul begged: "Okay, okay. I will take off my clothes." Once naked, two rebels held him in a kneeling position with his head pushed towards the earth.
At this point, Jean Paul breaks off. The shaking in his lip more pronounced than ever, he lowers his head a little further and says: "I am sorry for the things I am going to say now." The commander put his left hand on the back of his skull and used his right to beat him on the backside "like a horse". Singing a witch doctor song, and with everybody watching, the commander then began. The moment he started, Jean Paul vomited.
Eleven rebels waited in a queue and raped Jean Paul in turn. When he was too exhausted to hold himself up, the next attacker would wrap his arm under Jean Paul's hips and lift him by the stomach. He bled freely: "Many, many, many bleeding," he says, "I could feel it like water." Each of the male prisoners was raped 11 times that night and every night that followed.
On the ninth day, they were looking for firewood when Jean Paul spotted a huge tree with roots that formed a small grotto of shadows. Seizing his moment, he crawled in and watched, trembling, as the rebel guards searched for him. After five hours of watching their feet as they hunted for him, he listened as they came up with a plan: they would let off a round of gunfire and tell the commander that Jean Paul had been killed. Eventually he emerged, weak from his ordeal and his diet of only two bananas per day during his captivity. Dressed only in his underpants, he crawled through the undergrowth "slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, like a snake" back into town.
"The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it:" Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer
Today, despite his hospital treatment, Jean Paul still bleeds when he walks. Like many victims, the wounds are such that he's supposed to restrict his diet to soft foods such as bananas, which are expensive, and Jean Paul can only afford maize and millet. His brother keeps asking what's wrong with him. "I don't want to tell him," says Jean Paul. "I fear he will say: 'Now, my brother is not a man.'"
It is for this reason that both perpetrator and victim enter a conspiracy of silence and why male survivors often find, once their story is discovered, that they lose the support and comfort of those around them. In the patriarchal societies found in many developing countries, gender roles are strictly defined.
"In Africa no man is allowed to be vulnerable," says RLP's gender officer Salome Atim. "You have to be masculine, strong. You should never break down or cry. A man must be a leader and provide for the whole family. When he fails to reach that set standard, society perceives that there is something wrong."
Often, she says, wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."
Back at RLP I'm told about the other ways in which their clients have been made to suffer. Men aren't simply raped, they are forced to penetrate holes in banana trees that run with acidic sap, to sit with their genitals over a fire, to drag rocks tied to their penis, to give oral sex to queues of soldiers, to be penetrated with screwdrivers and sticks. Atim has now seen so many male survivors that, frequently, she can spot them the moment they sit down. "They tend to lean forward and will often sit on one buttock," she tells me. "When they cough, they grab their lower regions. At times, they will stand up and there's blood on the chair. And they often have some kind of smell."
Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence. As for Atim, she says: "Our staff are overwhelmed by the cases we've got, but in terms of actual numbers? This is the tip of the iceberg."
Later on I speak with Dr Angella Ntinda, who treats referrals from the RLP. She tells me: "Eight out of 10 patients from RLP will be talking about some sort of sexual abuse."
"Eight out of 10 men?" I clarify.
"No. Men and women," she says.
"What about men?"
"I think all the men."
I am aghast.
"All of them?" I say.
"Yes," she says. "All the men."
The research by Lara Stemple at the University of California doesn't only show that male sexual violence is a component of wars all over the world, it also suggests that international aid organisations are failing male victims. Her study cites a review of 4,076 NGOs that have addressed wartime sexual violence. Only 3% of them mentioned the experience of men in their literature. "Typically," Stemple says, "as a passing reference."
“One man was told: ‘We have a programme for vulnerable women but not men”: a Congolese rape victim. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer
On my last night I arrive at the house of Chris Dolan. We're high on a hill, watching the sun go down over the neighbourhoods of Salama Road and Luwafu, with Lake Victoria in the far distance. As the air turns from blue to mauve to black, a muddled galaxy of white, green and orange bulbs flickers on; a pointillist accident spilled over distant valleys and hills. A magnificent hubbub rises from it all. Babies screaming, children playing, cicadas, chickens, songbirds, cows, televisions and, floating above it all, the call to prayer at a distant mosque.
Stemple's findings on the failure of aid agencies is no surprise to Dolan. "The organisations working on sexual and gender-based violence don't talk about it," he says. "It's systematically silenced. If you're very, very lucky they'll give it a tangential mention at the end of a report. You might get five seconds of: 'Oh and men can also be the victims of sexual violence.' But there's no data, no discussion."
As part of an attempt to correct this, the RLP produced a documentary in 2010 called Gender Against Men. When it was screened, Dolan says that attempts were made to stop him. "Were these attempts by people in well-known, international aid agencies?" I ask.
"Yes," he replies. "There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake." Dolan points to a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa.
"I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female. He also recalls a man whose case was "particularly bad" and was referred to the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR. "They told him: 'We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.'"
It reminds me of a scene described by Eunice Owiny: "There is a married couple," she said. "The man has been raped, the woman has been raped. Disclosure is easy for the woman. She gets the medical treatment, she gets the attention, she's supported by so many organisations. But the man is inside, dying."
"In a nutshell, that's exactly what happens," Dolan agrees. "Part of the activism around women's rights is: 'Let's prove that women are as good as men.' But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable."
Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, insists in a statement that the UNHCR extends its services to refugees of both genders. But she concedes that the "great stigma" men face suggests that the real number of survivors is higher than that reported. Wallström says the focus remains on women because they are "overwhelmingly" the victims. Nevertheless, she adds, "we do know of many cases of men and boys being raped."
But when I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".
"International human rights law leaves out men in nearly all instruments designed to address sexual violence," she continues. "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates 'female' with 'victim', thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability."
Considering Dolan's finding that "female rape is significantly underreported and male rape almost never", I ask Stemple if, following her research, she believes it might be a hitherto unimagined part of all wars. "No one knows, but I do think it's safe to say that it's likely that it's been a part of many wars throughout history and that taboo has played a part in the silence."
As I leave Uganda, there's a detail of a story that I can't forget. Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.
Survivors' names have been changed and identities hidden for their protection. The Refugee Law Project is a partner organisation of Christian Aid (christianaid.org.uk)

via guardian.co.uk

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Why has it taken 65 years to recognise that rape is a weapon of war? | Life and style | The Guardian

2012-02-09T08:32:00.001-08:00

Why has it taken 65 years to recognise that rape is a weapon of war?

Outrage over history's failure to acknowledge the devastating legacy of sexual violence in conflict zones has inspired a brilliant new online project

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Jane Martinson

The Guardian, Thursday 9 February 2012

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Gloria Steinem: her comments have inspired the Women Under Siege Project. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

It took generations for the extent of sexual violence against Jewish women in the Holocaust to be fully documented in a book published just over a year ago – a period of time which horrified activist and journalist Gloria Steinem who said: "Why had it taken 65 years to reveal these facts. Why were they ignored at Nuremberg? If we'd known, might it have helped prevent rape camps in the former Yugoslavia? Or rape as a weapon of genocide in the Congo?"
Her outrage has directly inspired a brilliant new website, womenundersiegeproject.com, which launched this week and aims to document sexual violence as a tool of war. In an interview with the project's new director Lauren Wolfe, Steinem explains the thinking behind the site, which allows victims of sexual violence to bear witness: "For me, inspiration comes from seeing positive results. For instance, a woman survivor of brutal rape in the Congo is rejected by her family, but learns she's not alone or at fault from the story of a Jewish woman who survived rape and the Holocaust only to be shunned as if she had collaborated. Each example illuminates another."
The idea is to stop the silencing of victims in a weapon that is being increasingly used in war. The focus, to start with, is on seven conflicts including those of the Democratic Republic of Congo, still the "rape capital of the world", Egypt and the Holocaust.
The site includes not only the interview with Steinem which first ran in The Atlantic but also a moving first-person piece by Lara Logan, CBS News' chief foreign affairs correspondent, who writes that being able to speak about her own assault in Tahrir Square has brought her strength.
Asked how such a project can help raise awareness, Steinem says: "This project is not trying to create a competition of tears. It's wrong whether men or women are suffering. It's just that the suffering has to be visible and not called inevitable or blamed on the victim before we can stop it."
With both the silencing and shame of rape victims a global phenomenon, I found this project moving and inspirational. Go and have a look.

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Q&A: Gloria Steinem on ending rape in war | Women Under Siege Project

2012-02-09T08:31:00.001-08:00

Q&A: Gloria Steinem on ending rape in war

By Lauren Wolfe — February 8, 2012

It doesn’t matter where you look; sexualized violence is intrinsic to conflict. Gaddafi’s soldiers committed rape in the last days of Libya’s regime. The Egyptian military has been sexually violating female journalists and protesters in that revolution. Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, hundreds of thousands of women are suffering the fallout of the sexualized violence that has torn apart their bodies, their families, and their communities.

Activist, journalist, and Women's Media Center co-founder Gloria Steinem initiated Women Under Siege, which has begun documenting this tool of war and genocide. From the Holocaust through today, the project is illuminating the causes as well as the cures of sexualized violence by uncovering patterns and making links between them.

As the director of Women Under Siege, as well as a journalist myself, I interviewed Steinem about sexualized violence in conflict and what needs to be done to understand and stop it.

Lauren Wolfe: What are some of the reasons rape is so prevalent in war?

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem: First, it’s important to note that rape and war didn’t always go together. For instance, European colonists wrote astonished letters home about how “even these savages”—by which they meant the residents of this continent they were invading—didn’t rape, not even their women prisoners. But those were wars of self-defense. If you’re going to get groups of men to risk their humanity, health, and lives in wars of offense, the traditional way is not to pay them a lot, but to addict them to the “cult of masculinity.” You have to convince them they’re not “real men” unless they kill and conquer. And, at its most basic, “masculine” means not being “feminine.” On a continuum, it means controlling women, conquering women, raping women, even with objects: bottles and broom handles in “peacetime” here, and gun barrels and knives in Bosnia or Congo. There’s a reason why it’s a truism that rape is not sex, it’s violence.

It’s also true that men may rape in groups out of social pressure to prove their “masculinity”—in peacetime, too—but gang mentality is a way of life in war. Military officers sometimes order men to rape as proof of loyalty and shared culpability. Some men express regret and say they wouldn’t have raped without group pressure. Also the group hatred war requires means humiliating enemies by raping “their” women, implanting sperm, taking over their means of reproduction, wiping out the enemy race or ethnicity. Cultures that put all “honor” in the purity of “their” women—and keep women weak—are actually setting them up as targets.

Even in peacetime, the “cult of masculinity” is so powerful that men commit crimes in which they have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose: “senseless” killings like those in schools and post offices, serial murders, domestic violence, stalking, killing their wives and children and then killing themselves. They’re not hate crimes because they don’t hate the people they kill—but those people symbolize their lack of control, and so are killing the “masculinity” on which their whole sense of self depends. In interviews, such men often describe themselves as victims because they believe they should have been allowed to have control. I think we should call such crimes “supremacy crimes.”

LW: What do you say to people who assert that sexualized violence is a “natural” part of conflict?

GS: I try to think of something from the past that was also thought to be “natural,” and wasn’t. For instance, violence was once a “natural” part of childrearing, as in, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” It was also “natural” in marriage, as in, “Wives and bells must be struck regularly.” It was “natural” in religion, as in flagellating and starving the flesh to free the spirit.

Or I quote Olof Palme, the great former prime minister of Sweden, who said that gender roles are the deepest cause of violence on earth, and it’s up to governments to humanize them. Gender roles may give us our first idea that it’s okay for one group to eat and the other to cook, one to talk and the other to listen, one to order and the other to obey, one to be subject and one as object. The most shared characteristic of original societies in which violence was only for self-defense, not armies—and of the most egalitarian societies now—is that gender roles are fluid and not polarized.

So you might say it’s the reverse. Conflict is not the only or even the primary normalizer of the extremes of “masculine” and “feminine.” Those roles at home are the normalizers of conflict.

LW: What inspired you to start Women Under Siege?

GS: Two important books lit a match to what was already a long-standing concern. First, Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel sent me a manuscript of their anthology called Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. I didn’t know them and they were only asking for a quote, but once I read it, I was outraged. Why had it taken 65 years to reveal these facts? Why were they ignored at Nuremberg? If we’d known, might it have helped prevent rape camps in the former Yugoslavia? Or rape as a weapon of genocide in the Congo?

I got in touch with the authors and asked if the Women’s Media Center could help by making these connections. Our first panel linked scholars of the Holocaust with women’s current experience in the Congo. It was a big learning moment for us all.
Then I read At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to Black Power, by Danielle McGuire. It roots much of the civil rights movement in the massive sexual abuse of black women. For instance, Rosa Parks was investigating a gang rape of a black woman by seven white men in Montgomery, so the bus boycott was more a result than a cause. Black women’s resistance to sexual assault helped fuel the movement.

For me, inspiration comes from seeing positive results. For instance, a woman survivor of brutal rape in the Congo is rejected by her family, but learns she’s not alone or at fault from the story of a Jewish woman who survived rape and the Holocaust only to be shunned as if she had collaborated. Each example illuminates another. We have to know what’s wrong to change what’s wrong, but the special problem of sexualized violence is used to silence and shame the victim.

Documenting the problem allows individual victims to know they’re not alone or at fault, and allows the institutions of society to create remedies, from laws to education.

Naming sexualized violence as a weapon of war makes it visible and subject to prosecution. In the past, what happened to men was political, but what happened to women was cultural. The first was public and could be changed, and the second was private, off limits, even sacred. By making clear that sexualized violence is political and public, it breaches that wall. It admits that sexualized violence can be changed.

LW: Why use the term “sexualized” violence?

GS: Because there’s nothing sexual about violence. Sex is about pleasure. Violence is about pain. Nature tells us what’s good for us by making it pleasurable, and what’s bad for us by making it painful. To get those things mixed up usually requires a childhood in which people we loved and depended on inflicted pain, and we came to believe we couldn’t get one without the other.

It also works the other way around. People, especially men addicted to “masculinity,” may think that inflicting pain is the only way they can get sexual pleasure. For instance, I didn't learn there was a mammoth concentration camp only for women—it was called Ravensbrück—until the end of the 1970s when my friend Konnilyn Feig included it in her book called, Hitler's Death Camps. Nazi doctors there performed a higher proportion of so-called medical experiments there -- they simulated battle wounds and amputations, practiced surgeries and forms of sterilization; endless horrors -- and their subjects were mainly young, beautiful women. The other women in the camp called them “rabbits” because they were used as lab animals. They tried to protect them. This was the slow sexualized violence known as sadism.

LW: Sexualized violence is frequently underreported. Why do you think this is?

GS: It seems to be the one remaining form of violence in which the victim is blamed or even said to have invited it. That’s true even where women have the ability to report and bring charges—at least on paper. In other cultures, the victim is not only blamed but punished and shunned. For instance, Equality Now is working on the case of a young Buddhist nun in Nepal who was raped by men on a bus and then told by Buddhist monks that she couldn’t be a nun anymore because she wasn’t a virgin. We can help to expose sexualized violence wherever we live.

LW: Do we need both men and women involved to stop these atrocities?

GS: Yes, we do. There is more responsibility where there’s more power. Though women have a responsibility to speak up for ourselves -- to reverse the Golden Rule and treat ourselves as well as we treat others -- men have more power and so are responsible not only for their own behavior, but for creating an atmosphere in which men are penalized for violence toward women and rewarded for treating women as equals. It's parallel to the fact that I, as a white person, have more responsibility for white racism than do the people of color who suffer from it.

Men also can show each other the rewards of full humanity. It’s been said that the woman a man most fears is the woman within himself. Men are punished by being cut off from human qualities denied to them as “feminine.” I think one element in men’s punishing and killing of women is an effort to do away with what they fear within themselves.

LW: Does your work in the women’s movement give you encouragement that we can make headway on sexualized violence in conflict?

GS: Yes, absolutely. In my lifetime, we’ve shown that rape is not sex but violence, and changed the laws that required a virginal victim and a bystander willing to testify. In my high school, boys used to say there was no such thing as rape, that “you can’t thread a needle unless the needle holds still.” They’re not saying that anymore. Actually, I get letters from men in prison who really understand rape because, in the absence of women, they’ve been used as women. Sexualized violence, in and out of conflict, has been named and punishments codified. Now we have to get this off paper and into life.

LW: Do you think it’s ever possible to bring these atrocities to an end or at least significantly curb them?

GS: Yes, I do. To say otherwise would be to excuse them as human nature. We know there have been societies in which such crimes were rare or absent; they are not human nature. And even if they were, the most significant characteristic of humans—the one that allows our species to survive—is that we’re adaptable. Violence in the home normalizes violence in the street and in foreign policy. Because we genderize the study of childrearing as “feminine” and the study of conflict and foreign policy as “masculine,” we rarely see that the first causes the second. Of course, the goal is to stop war altogether. If we raised even one generation of children without violence and shaming, we have no idea what might be possible. But at least we can limit war to those who want to fight it.

LW: What do you say to people who believe that this happens far from home, in societies beyond repair? In other words, that there’s nothing we can do.

GS: I say, Open your eyes, watch the news, talk to the women in your families and neighborhoods, listen to our women soldiers who were raped by their own comrades. The difference is only one of degree. No society is beyond reproach or beyond repair.

This project is not trying to create a competition of tears. It’s wrong whether men or women are suffering. It’s just that the suffering has to be visible and not called inevitable or blamed on the victim before we can stop it.

(This Q&A first appeared in The Atlantic.)

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