Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Category

China Drops School Fees For 150m Children

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on December 13, 2006
in Civil Rights, Economics and Political
. 0 Comments

China is to abolish tuition and other fees for 150 million rural students, in a bid to narrow the gap between wealthy coastal provinces and poorer regions.

The students will be exempt from tuition fees over the course of their compulsory nine-year education.

The move would cost 15bn yuan ($1.9bn) a year, the China Daily said, or about 140 yuan ($18) a child.

But children of rural families who have migrated to China’s booming cities will not be included.

The new policy is “part of a major move to relieve the financial burden of farmers and to develop a new countryside,” the state-owned newspaper said.

In the first phase of the programme, which took effect this spring, more than 50m students living in western provinces – some of China’s poorest – were exempted.

bbc

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Congress Outlaws “Pretexting”

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on December 11, 2006
in Civil Rights and Political
. 0 Comments

A law passed late last week—right before the 109th Congress wrapped up its final session—will outlaw pretexting, the practice of obtaining someone else’s phone records without their permission. Pretexting has been going on for years, but the practice recently moved into the public consciousness with the recent scandal over HP’s investigation into leaks of confidential information by one or more of its board members.

Passed by voice vote on Friday night, the legislation calls for fines of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison for individuals engaging in pretexting. Companies caught pretexting would face fines of up to $500,000.

ars

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China Agrees To Ban ‘Transplant Tourism’

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on December 4, 2006
in Civil Rights and Health/Bio-Tech
. 0 Comments

Maybe the thought of bad publicity as it gears up for the 2008 summer Olympics forced China’s hand. Maybe not. Nevertheless, China finally bowed to international pressure and agreed to ban transplant tourism, the practice of treating rich westerners with “donated” organs, often taken from executed prisoners.

At a summit on transplants in Guangzhou in mid-November, the Chinese government declared: “Payments for organs and transplant tourism are not permitted”.

The declaration further specified that written consent must be obtained from donors, or from the family if the donor cannot consent. Chinese nationals will receive priority, and foreigners will only be treated under special circumstances. The declaration, which becomes law on 1 January, will severely tighten restrictions on China’s transplant surgeons, and transplant facilities will be regularly inspected to ensure compliance.

“It’s very encouraging,” says Keith Rigg, a UK surgeon based in Nottingham who attended the summit. “They’re aware there’s been a lot of bad publicity.”

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Homeland Security Assigns Terror Scores to Travelers

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on December 4, 2006
in Big Brother and Civil Rights
. 0 Comments

Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

The government calls the system critical to national security following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department’s Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS’ analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

cnn

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Feds Leapfrog RFID Privacy Study

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on October 30, 2006
in Big Brother and Civil Rights
. 0 Comments

The story seems simple enough. An outside privacy and security advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security penned a tough report concluding the government should not use chips that can be read remotely in identification documents. But the report remains stuck in draft mode, even as new identification cards with the chips are being announced.

Jim Harper, a Cato Institute fellow who serves on the committee and who recently published a book on identification called Identity Crisis, thinks he knows why the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee report on the use of Radio Frequency Identification devices for human identification (.pdf) never made it out of the draft stage.

“The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report,” Harper said. “There’s such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.”

wired

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Olbermann: Our Gov’t is More Dangerous Than Our Enemies

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on October 20, 2006
in Big Brother, Civil Rights and Political
. 0 Comments

thanks to ElDad

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Chinese City Makes Spreading ‘Rumors’ Online Illegal

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on October 20, 2006
in Civil Rights, Freedom of Information, Law, Political and Web News
. 0 Comments

Reportedly concerned with the dissemination of rumors on the Worldwide Web, anyone using the Internet to spread malicious rumors in the Chinese municipality of Chongqing is now subject to a fine of up to 1,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan ($126-633) or even detention of five days or more. The recently-enacted regulations seek to bar Chongqing netizens from using the Internet to make “defamatory comments or remarks, launch personal attacks, or seek to damage reputations online.” The new regulations follow rules introduced in August by the State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television that restricts video clips satirizing the government and celebrities.

ars technica

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Will The Next Election Be Hacked?

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on October 2, 2006
in Big Brother, Civil Rights, Computers, Freedom of Information, Neoliberal Globalization and Political
. 0 Comments

The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation’s election systems – with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America’s 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election – and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised “sleepovers” before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio – where, as I recently reported in “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency – a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.

Rolling Stone

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Study Finds U.S. Bias Against Women in Science

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on September 22, 2006
in Civil Rights, Science Misc., Sexuality and Society/Social Systems
. 0 Comments

Women are being filtered out of high-level science, math and engineering jobs in the United States, and there is no good reason for it, according to a National Academies report released on Monday.

A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses—biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition—and found no good explanation for why women are being locked out.

“Compared with men, women faculty members are generally paid less and promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions,” the Academies said in a statement.

“These discrepancies do not appear to be based on productivity, the significance of their work, or any other performance measures.”

Female minorities fare the worst, the study found. And the expert panel said the discrepancies are costing the country many talented leaders and researchers and recommended immediate and far-reaching changes to change the balance.

yahoo

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Congress Legalizes Torture

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on September 22, 2006
in Big Brother, Civil Rights, Human Rights Violations, Law, Military and Political
. 0 Comments

Defiant GOP senators and the White House ended a standoff Thursday over legislation authorizing the CIA’s tough interrogations and military tribunals for terrorism suspects.Both sides appeared to bend some to reach an arrangement that would allow the CIA program to go forward while ensuring that accused terrorists would not be convicted in tribunals with evidence they could not see or challenge.

Under the bill, high-value detainees could face interrogations using methods that fall somewhere between simple assault and torture, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., but would exclude waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

newsobserver

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Illigal Evidence Now Legal In Court

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on June 16, 2006
in Big Brother, Civil Rights and Law
. 0 Comments

The Constitution does not require the government to forfeit evidence gathered through illegal “no knock” searches, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, in a far-reaching ruling that could encourage police with search warrants to conduct more aggressive raids.

The 5 to 4 decision broke with the court’s modern tradition of enforcing constitutional limitations on police investigations by keeping improperly obtained evidence out of court. The “exclusionary rule” has been imposed to protect a series of rights, such as the right to remain silent in police custody and the right against warrantless searches.

But the broadly worded majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., suggested that the nation has moved into a new era of improved policing in which such strong medicine may no longer be justified.

infoshop

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At Least the US Senate Blocks Gay Marriage Ban

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on June 7, 2006
in Civil Rights and Political
. 0 Comments

The US Senate has blocked a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

President George W Bush had backed the ban, saying marriage between a man and a woman was the most fundamental institution of civilisation.

But the motion gained the votes of 49 senators, 11 short of the 60 needed to allow the process to go forward.

Critics say Mr Bush is trying to win back disillusioned Republican voters ahead of November’s mid-term poll.

Supporters of the amendment remained defiant.

BBC

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Dumbing Us Down: An Interview With John Taylor Gatto

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on April 20, 2006
in Big Brother, Civil Rights, Neoliberal Globalization, Political and Society/Social Systems
. 2 Comments
If anyone is qualified to intelligently analyze the institution of modern schooling, it’s John Taylor Gatto. While teaching in the public schools of Manhattan for 30 years, Gatto was named New York State teacher of the year as well as New York City teacher of the year three times. Then, at the height of his teaching career in 1991, he published an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled I Quit, I Think… and promptly quit.

Since then, Gatto has traveled the world lecturing and writing about the perils of his former profession. His first book, Dumbing Us Down : The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, has become a modern classic of today’s home-schooling movement. His latest book, The Underground History of American Education, chronicles the often-chilling origins of our schooling system, and details why and how children are damaged by it. Extensively researched and thoroughly documented, it is the standard by which all critiques of compulsory schooling must now be compared.

Today Gatto is busy working on The Fourth Purpose, a three-part, six-hour documentary series which “will tackle the American school system: present, past, and future—its anomalies, its history, and the alternatives. The idea is to throw a bucket of ice-cold water in the faces of pundits, experts, and bureaucrats.”
————-

So what, then, is the primary objective of compulsory education?

The primary objective is to convert human raw material into human resources which can be employed efficiently by the managers of government and the economy. The original purposes of schooling were to make good people (the religious purpose), to make good citizens (the public purpose) and to make individuals their personal best (the private purpose). Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command. In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from Japan to the United States.

alternative press review

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Police Fire on Mass Nepal Protest

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on April 20, 2006
in Activism, Big Brother and Civil Rights
. 0 Comments

Nepalese security forces have opened fire on protesters in the capital, Kathmandu, killing at least three people, hospital sources say.

At least 100,000 people defied a shoot-on-sight curfew, marching on central Kathmandu to rally against the absolute rule of King Gyanendra.

Doctors say at least 40 others were injured, some seriously.

BBC

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The Click That Broke a Government’s Grip

Published
by
DrQuickbeam
on February 21, 2006
in Activism, Big Brother, Civil Rights, Freedom of Information, Political, Resistance and Web News
. 0 Comments

The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper’s computer system attacking the Communist Party’s propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters’ pay if their stories upset party officials

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li’s memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China’s most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government’s Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief’s plan to muzzle his reporters.

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