Human Rights

Why are Sex Worker and Public Health Advocates Annoyed with Google?
Originally composed by SWAAY (Sex Work Activists, Allies and You)
Edited by Robert Childs, Executive Director of the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition

Here in the United States we’ve always had a little bit of a problem reconciling the way we apply our ideologies at home and abroad. We have great expectations for foreign governments implementing the values we hold sacred in this nation, like democracy, self-determination and free speech. Unfortunately, our government sometimes feels less comfortable asserting these values domestically.

The most recent expression of this dialectic is in the US government’s approach is in it’s signing of a statement supporting a UN report asserting that access to the Internet is critical to individuals being able to enact their human rights. This occurs concurrently with a series of bills and industry regulations that would limit expression and free speech on the Internet domestically. The most important of these are:

1) SB 978, or the “10 Strikes” bill, which makes a minimal amount of unlicensed streaming a felony charge carrying a maximum of 5 years in prison.

2) SB 968, the PROTECT IP Act or PIPA, giving the government power to “seize” domestic sites and force search engines, ISPs, and other “information location tools” to block foreign “rogue sites” accused of copyright infringement.

3) A “3 Strikes” Policy not a law, but a dangerous industry agreement between ISPs and copyright holders to restrict the bandwidth and access of users who have been accused of infringement. The agreement would be based on 3 incidents of infringement.

We’re a week into the Egyptian uprising now, and it’s time to reassess what has taken place so far and what might come next.

We know a few things, and we don’t know a lot—and from what we can tell, the folks on the ground are also not sure what might happen. That said, we do know enough to begin to figure out the right questions to be asking.

As was true Friday, things are moving fast, so let’s jump right in.

It has been a couple of years since we first started writing about Egypt; at that time we did a series of stories that described how the country’s Constitution is designed to ensure that the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) remains the ruling party, how corruption and torture and rape are part of the justice system, how there’s a looming Presidential succession crisis, and how we better pay attention, because one day all of this was going to blow up into a national emergency, with the potential for disastrous consequences that ripple all the way from Turkey to Morocco to Pakistan.

And now...that day has arrived.

After protests that led to a change of government (sort of) in Tunisia, rioting is spreading across Egypt, quickly, the ISI (Egypt’s internal security police) is out grabbing citizens and doing what they do (we’ll talk more about that later), and the question of Presidential succession, which many people thought was headed in one direction, may now be headed off to a place that outside observers might not have previously considered.

Lucky for you, I have some reach inside Egypt, and we’re going to get a peek inside the story that you might not have seen otherwise.

Cross-posted from an article by Chris Kromm on Facing South

When Glenn Beck decided to hold his "Restoring Honor" rally last week at the very site in Washington, D.C. where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, the Fox commentator's dubious attempt to draw parallels between his right-wing agenda and King's quite different vision was blasted by civil rights veterans.

Cross-posted from an article by Chris Kromm on Facing South

As we approach the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, today the Institute for Southern Studies is releasing a new report which looks at what has changed -- and what hasn't changed -- since the deadly storm took over 1,800 lives and devastated the Gulf Coast.

Our report, Learning from Katrina: Lessons from Five years of Recovery and Renewal in the Gulf Coast [pdf], finds that many of the problems exposed in the botched federal response to the storm--from breakdowns in disaster planning to a misguided and mismanaged recovery--have yet to be addressed in Washington.

Cross-posted from an article by Sue Sturgis on Facing South

The Obama administration released the first-ever U.S. report to the U.N. Human Rights Council this week.

Prepared as part of the ongoing U.N. Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process that involved consultations with civil society groups nationwide, the report [pdf] acknowledges that the U.S. human rights record is less than perfect. However, it fails to address a number of pressing human rights issues facing the nation -- including the problems experienced by U.S. residents displaced by domestic disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

"While this report demonstrates the Obama administration's willingness to recommit to engagement on international human rights, the administration must now prove that it is prepared to not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk," said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Program.

Cross-posted from an article by Sue Sturgis on Facing South

President Obama plans to be in New Orleans on Aug. 29 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina -- a prime opportunity to put disaster recovery issues back atop the national agenda.

When times are tough, focusing on illegal immigrants helps distract the people's attention from the real threats to our economy, a Libertarian Party spokesman said Monday.

It wasn’t but a couple of days ago that we had a conversation about The Fear and the emails that are used to spread it, and I figured with that out of the way we had dealt with the topic, and that we’d move on to new things.

Well, we would be moving on, Gentle Reader, if it wasn’t for the fact that an email came in today that was so ugly, so disturbing, and so indicative of what we are about to see as the battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) begins to heat up (ENDA being possibly the next “big contentious thing” that this Administration hopes to accomplish), that I had to interrupt my story schedule to bring it to your attention.