Freedom

WikiLeaks Releases Syria Files

- Adam Clare

WikiLeaks continues to bring the world information that would otherwise be hidden from the masses, this time it’s millions of emails and documents from Syria. The Syria Files have been given to some media organizations to filter through (much like the last large release of documents from WikiLeaks).

This new release should shed light on the volatile situation in Syria and potential more. Already, it appears Italy was illegal helping Syria, who knows what else will be found. The more open and transparent countries are the more democratically they can function (the irony in all of this is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being threatened by America).

“It helps us not merely to criticize one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it,” the announcement quotes Julian Assange, who is currently in the Ecuador embassy in London, where he is awaiting a decision on his appeal for political asylum.
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There are 2,434,899 documents in the leak involving 678,752 different senders and 1,082,447 different recipients, WikiLeaks says. That’s about eight times the size of “Cablegate” in terms of a number of documents and 100 times the size in terms of data. Cablegate was the release by WikiLeaks of US State Department confidential cable exchanges between American embassies and Washington, which angered the US administration.

Read more.

Declaration of Internet Freedom

- Adam Clare

Around the world governments are trying to restrain the ability of people to freely share information across the internet. Bills like SOPA in the USA and Bill C-30 in Canada to the more recent TPP all focus on propping up old media monopolies and curtailing people’s privacy and communication rights. The most effective and extreme example of clamping down on the internet can be seen in the Great Firewall of China.

WIth the above in mind, it’s good to see that a group of people have taken up the challenge of creating a universal declaration of freedom for online access and participation!

The Preamble:

We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.

We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for.

Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible.

Go to the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

Canadians please check out OpenMedia.

Reading for Faster Freedom in Brazil

- Adam Clare

Prisoners in Brazil may be able to shorten their stay in jail by reading and writing. It’s only 48 days but it can make a difference, the prisoners need to read from a collection of philosophy, science, literature, or the classics then reflect on them in a submitted paper.

Educational programs like this are a good way to help people returning to society restart with more focus and support.

Prisoners will have up to four weeks to read each book and
write an essay which must “make correct use of paragraphs, be
free of corrections, use margins and legible joined-up writing,”
said the notice published on Monday in the official gazette.

…

“A person can leave prison more enlightened and with a
enlarged vision of the world,” said Sao Paulo lawyer Andre
Kehdi, who heads a book donation project for prisons.

“Without doubt they will leave a better person,” he said.

Read more.

A New Wave of Feminism in Concert with OWS?

- Adam Clare

Megan Boler has a new article on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the current state of feminism and it’s a good read. She looks at the relationships between the feminist movement and the concerns of the people involved in OWS activities.

But the tide seems to have turned. Feminism’s re-emergence was spotted on the horizon by numerous long-term feminist organizers months ago. Kathy Miriam, a professor and feminist organizer who lives in Brooklyn, recognizes this as a, “fluid, dynamic moment” in which anything is possible. As Miriam wrote in a blog post this fall:

“Can feminist solidarity reap the whirlwind and reinvent itself within new forms of social association too? … [T]he dynamism released by Occupy Wall Street [OWS] involves women – lots and lots of young women – who, like their male counter-parts are caught up in the momentum of movement-creating. This means that women are agitating, aroused anew as political actors on the stage of history. If there is any situation then, in which feminist ideas might stick and take root, this is it.

Will Occupy Wall Street be open to re-orientation through the lens of feminist action and vision? Will feminism re-invent itself as a movement within the new political situation and its forcefield of political possibilities?

Read more here.

Why We Went Down Yesterday

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Yesterday you probably noticed that most of your favourite websites were down yesterday or had a notice up warning you about two bills in front of the American government. Those bills are SOPA and PIPA and essentially if these bills pass the internet would be all but dead to American citizens and beyond!

Here’s a video by the Kahn Academy explaining the bills:

So why is this on a website dedicated to good news? Here’s why:

Never forget that when people work together stupid policies and backwards thinking from old corporate powers (who are being replace by new and better technical solutions) can be stopped! Just look at how people also stopped the Keystone XL pipeline!

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