Open call for evidence of Russian protests

I am aware there are protests going on in Moscow regularly against the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. Given the significant restrictions on freedom of the press, it is not safe for Russians to post pictures of the protests without becoming the next target of the FSB (the successor to the KGB).

Because of this unfortunate reality, if you have evidence of the current protests and you want to make sure the world can know about what is going on please send pictures to stidmatt@gmail.com so I can post them here so the world can know what is happening today. The world needs to see as many pictures as possible, and the people who are protesting against the status quo need to be as safe as possible, so posting with your own name is not safe. If there are protests in other authoritarian states and you want to make sure the world knows, please feel free to send me those pictures as well.

You will remain anonymous if you don't give me your name and I will not ask for your name for your safety.

If you send me a photo that is not from where you claim to be I will find out and you will be blacklisted. Don't even try to recycle old pictures.

Warning: I have a virus scanner so don't even try to send me any bad code. If you send me one bad email you will be forwarded directly to spam forever so don't even try.

When we shall have peace

A ceasefire just started in Israel, which hopefully will continue, but given the scope of the destruction in Gaza and who is currently leading both sides I doubt it will last. The beginning of this conflict was justified, but the way IDF went about it was completely unjustified with targeting non-military targets. If the IDF had only targeted the military base of Hamas and used their immense intelligence gathering effectively there would be absolutely no doubt that Israel would have been on the right side of the conflict. Instead there have been far too many attacks by the Israeli government on civilian homes which brings them down to the level of Hamas in how they target non-military targets and they blew it big this time. There are now pending charges for crimes against humanity on both sides which I have no doubt are legitimate and hopefully will remove military support from both sides.

The Israeli government has continued to breed extremism with their latest onslaught on houses in Gaza but have not targeted military targets, with most of the deaths being those of civilians. This is a war crime and there needs to be justice. As long as Israel continues to bomb Palestinian homes in these events and evict them to build settlements in the West Bank without due compensation young Palestinians will continue to have nothing to lose. As long as the blockade on Gaza prevents them from trading with the outside world (For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World ~ US Declaration of Independence) and preventing food and medical supplies from reaching the people who need them and preventing the development of the Gazan economy people will have no other option but to revolt against the Israeli government. Trade is invaluable to people because it brings opportunity. The other major barrier to peace is the taking of Palestinian land without compensation which no wise government in history willfully takes the land of people who live on their land because if they steal too much there will be a  revolt. It unfortunately worked in the Americas because disease killed the Native American population before they could fight back (which is the largest genocide in the history of the world) but the Israelis don't have diseases that will kill the Palestinians before they will fight back against the evictions. All of these actions make people look for any way to improve their well being and this is how groups like Hamas are able to get people to follow them because they offer a way to get people's homes back, even though their ideology is extremely misguided and historically doomed to fail.

One important point is that Israel is a democracy and when center-left parties have been in office there have been improved relations with Palestine. The attacks on Palestinian homes occur when either Likud becomes the government in Israel or Hamas becomes the government in Palestine. Attacks by Israel like the one this month are invariably linked to the leadership of the right wing. Attacks on Israel (such as the Yom Kippur War) are of course rightfully defended and every state has the right to self-defense. This means if there is to be peace in the region the government of Israel needs to return to the center-left led by Kadima which will almost definitely lead and sign an armistice agreement with the Palestinian Authority. This is essential to any path to peace,

There needs to be an agreement that the UN will defend any side that is in the defensive given a resumption of attacks. There needs to be a right to education for all people in the area. Property rights need to be absolute and if either government takes land from anyone there must be just compensation. Access to courts is absolute regardless of citizenship.

Also, Israel needs to change their laws and have real freedom of the press which currently doesn't exist under a system of gag orders which exacerbate extremism and lack of information for Israelis increasing the power of their extremist government. This policy is contrary to the claim that Israel is a free democracy because no nation can be free when you need the government's permission to publish information that doesn't have to do with things whose release would threaten national security, such as nuclear passwords.

The cost in Israel of these extremist governments increase the number of Israelis who support these sorts of policies. Racism is increasing among people on both sides of the conflict of all ages. There is no global leader today, except maybe Pope Francis, with the cultural clout to help bring people back to a place where we can live together in peace. This is what we need. The world needs leadership and we have no one who is willing to use their power effectively. I hope President Obama will prove me wrong with his current actions on the Southern Border which has become a humanitarian catastrophe, but given 6 years of compromise (which historically was the bringer and keeper of slavery in the USA) it will take a lot more work which I hope will come. We cannot afford to have a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East with either side getting annihilated which is what the current Government of Israel will cause if they continue the actions they are doing with disproportionate attacks.

We also need to increase communication between people on both sides of every conflict. Peace cannot happen without dialogue and once there is dialogue we will realize we are all people and that war is a pointless endeavor.

With all of this we need strong treaties that are proportionately reinforced and strong leadership that can bring people together to recognize that we are all brothers and we are all our brothers' keeper. Only then can we have lasting peace. Otherwise war and suffering will continue.

We should have stood up earlier

This is extremely to me, as a blogger, someone who had family in Germany in the 1930s and has studied the era of the rise of Hitler in my free time, and as an American.

This man should not be persecuted for reporting on something the government doesn't want to be leaked, because when the government gets to determine what constitutes freedom of the press it is the fox watching the hen house and it is impossible for anyone to be a neutral party when they are the person being investigated.

This is a very dangerous path, and it leads to where there is no independent journalism. I don't scare easily, but this does scare me. Democracy cannot thrive when freedom of speech is curtailed.

This is the gift of compromise. Democratic voters have been so willing over the last 20 years to make amends to the Republicans that the difference betwen the right wing Democrats and mainstream Republicans truly is small on a number of important issues. Sure, the Democrats still do some good things like the environmental action this week, but it is not enough. We need to protect our liberties and not allow them to do these actions in the background when we are not watching and celebrating a victory.

Shame on President Obama. He is giving up his heritage. This persecution of a journalist is treason.

Source:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/244525/risen-obama-administration-is-this-generations-greatest-enemy-of-press-freedom/

Website Censorship

The FCC has finally caved into Comcast et al to allow them to block certain websites. This is a very slippery slope because they can just slow down the base service and the only decent speed will be for the people who pay up, effectively discriminating against small website owners like me. This is a very slippery slope I have no desire to explore. We need to keep the internet as a free and open forum where all people can talk freely. Looking across the world access to internet and other freedoms are very closely correlated and we need to make certain the United States stays ahead of the curve. We need to defend our constitution.

Call your representative and senators today: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/net-neutrality-finally-dies-ripe-old-age-of-45

More legalese explanation: our founding fathers put in a public postal service as a job of our government. If our founding fathers were alive today I have no doubt they would see the existence of a free and open internet equal to importance to a well run postal service because of the possibility of corruption of companies that deliver mail. Having public oversight in a democracy provides a protection that the private sector in a monopolistic or oligopolistic market cannot provide. The same can be said about the internet, there will only be one major internet provider in any area, and we have seen Comcast become the largest ISP in the nation. Without regulation it is very possible that Comcast could abuse their position and removing these regulations will do just this. We need to protect our liberties in the spirit of our founding fathers to protect the free flow of information which was clearly important to them and is the American way. This decision is not just an assault on the internet but a direct assault on the fabric that makes America such a special and unique country among 196 different nations. This type of decision is going to damage our position on economic and liberty indexes and erode our liberties when these companies abuse their position for all of these reasons. History has shown unregulated monopolies routinely abuse their position, which is why we have the FCC in the first place to protect our civil liberties and political and economic culture.

Your American tax dollars at work in Israel

The latest news story coming out of the almost 70 year old humanitarian crisis in Israel is on Reuters this week.

Yes, Israel is detaining Palestinian children as young as nine years old and bombing residential areas.

This is a very short-term action by the Israeli government and reminiscent of the Russian attack on Gori in 2008 and nearing the treatment of how Nazis treated Jewish children during the Holocaust. One would think a country that was formed in response to a genocide wouldn't commit another one, learning from their mistakes, but given the vast number of news stories about how Israel treats non-Jews, I have serious suspicions about their internet censorship. Salon (which I know is liberal) did a good report on what I would consider de facto internet censorship because in order to print anything Israeli reporters need to get it cleared by the government. How can Reporters Without Borders give them such good rankings and claim that Israeli reporters "enjoy real freedom of expression despite the existence of military censorship"? This sounds about as stupid to me as saying "North Koreans have real freedom of movement despite the fact that many families are locked away for decades for something their ancestor did." It is completely absurd, and I have lost my trust in Reporters Without Borders.

Support freedom, oppose Likud.

European Privacy Law Improvement

Concerning: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57590869-38/eu-court-lawyer-backs-google-in-right-to-be-forgotten-case/

A case in the European Court of Justice recently decided that European residents do not have a right to force search engines like Google (the main party because they are the best search engine for most things) to eliminate results on them. This is a good decision for several reasons:

1. If you have committed a violent crime and are seeking employment the last thing you would want is for a potential employer to find that information. If the (I'm dying not to say crazy people) plaintiffs in Spain had won their case then a felon (or the reasonable equivalent in their country's law) would under  EU law have the right to remove their information from the internet making it harder for people to find their crime. Also, there are many types of search engines that are specific to finding information about people and if the EU gave people this right to remove their information from search engines than private investigators who companies hire to screen their employees would be unable to check that their applicant is safe unless if they had to go right to the specific location where the crime is placed. Since this is extremely tedious looking through every local court in the entire European Union this would of course be an absurd ruling and make background checks far too expensive for most small businesses to do because of the time it would take to get all that information every single time. This has no benefit to society and it is good that the EU decided people have no right to remove publicly available information from search engines. While I would understand some laws for people who have been acquitted of a crime removing information, a blanket allowance of removing information is a very slippery slope, and such a law would be extremely difficult to get right. An easier approach would be to not have restrictions on information (except threats, obviously) and that if someone acted inappropriately based on information they found on someone online they would be committing a crime which would be hitting the problem at the source, easier to enforce, and have no possibility of devolving into an infringement of the freedom of speech which is critical for democracy to function.
2. The website that hosts the information was not the party being targeted, it was the search engine which only directs people to other information. If one search engine started getting infringed on another search engine would pop up (probably through the Tor Network) that would allow people to get the information anyways. Information wants to be free. Despite their best attempts, both North Korea and China cannot block out the outside world's information, which makes this entire purpose completely moot.

I am pleased with this decision, it would be like arresting journalists for uncovering government corruption, like is happening right now with Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, but it is most like Julian Assange's charges for hosting a website whose purpose was to host news stories that are not covered by the private media. Now we just need to insert whistleblower protections to our laws to prevent further abuse of power as the next step.