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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

UN expert slams censorship by Israel, Palestinians

GENEVA (AP) ? The government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are all unduly limiting free speech through restrictive laws, intimidation and censorship, a U.N. human rights expert said Tuesday.

The global body's independent investigator on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, said the measures have had a chilling effect on the work of journalists and peaceful activists, and urged Israel and the Palestinians to uphold international standards on free speech.

"I am concerned by the recent attempts to limit criticism of Israel regarding its policies and practices of occupation, and questioning of Israel as a Jewish state," La Rue said as he presented his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He cited a law adopted last year that allows Israeli authorities to fine publicly-funded institutions that commemorate the so-called "Nakba," or catastrophe, an Arabic term used by Palestinians to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish residents during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.

"The law severely undermines their right to freely express their opinion, preserve their history and culture, and to their right to commemorate the Nakba, which is an integral part of their history," said La Rue.

He also questioned an Israeli law that makes it a civil offense to call for a boycott against Israel and its products, as well as those produced in the settlements in the West Bank.

"Calling for or participating in a peaceful boycott is a legitimate form of expression which is internationally recognized," La Rue said in his report. "Moreover, given that lawsuits can be brought against individuals without any proof of damages, it creates further incentives for self-censorship, including on the Internet, to avoid litigation. "

He voiced similar criticism of a bill to amend Israel's defamation law, which would sharply increase fines without the need to prove damages.

"If adopted, it will create a significant chilling effect and will discourage investigative journalists, human rights NGOs and individuals expressing critical views," said La Rue.

Israel should also drop the practice of having a military censor review articles on issues of national security prior to publication, he said.

Israeli diplomats in Geneva didn't comment on the report because the country has officially suspended its work with the 47-nation rights council, which Israel accuses of being biased against it.

But in Jerusalem, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor noted the government "fully cooperated" with La Rue.

"We will study his report carefully and seriously," he said. "We remain totally committed to freedom of speech for all, and we will examine very closely the recommendations with the aim of making whatever improvements may be necessary."

La Rue also criticized the Western-backed Palestinian Authority for requiring publishing licenses and censoring publications according to broad and vague rules. He also expressed concern at reports that Facebook users were harassed for posting unfavorable comments about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib said the report would be dealt with "positively and seriously."

Palestinian law "guarantees the freedom of the press, and normally we exert all our efforts to guarantee that," he said.

Khatib also said there has been a "major improvement" in press freedom over the past four years. "However, there have been individual, rare cases, but they were solved because of the power of the civil society and public opinion," he said.

In Gaza, the ruling Hamas faction, which seized control of the coastal strip from Abbas' forces five years ago, has introduced a new requirement for foreign journalists to name a local contact, which could lead to self-censorship, La Rue said. He criticized the excessive force used by Hamas to disperse peaceful protests and cited "arbitrary arrests and detention of protesters and journalists monitoring demonstrations."

Hassan Abu Hashish, chairman of Hamas' Gaza government press office, called the report "slander."

"Freedom of the media and freedom of speech in the Gaza Strip is well ahead of other Arab countries and the West Bank," he said.

________________________________________

Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Dalia Nammari in Ramallah, West Bank, and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

___

Report: http://bit.ly/M3gORH

___

Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Scenes From Militarized America (Theagitator)

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China promises Taiwan investors bank loans

BEIJING (AP) ? China has promised Taiwanese investors up to $95 billion in loans from state banks as it tries to build closer ties with the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

The director of the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office made the announcement at a weekend forum on mainland-Taiwan relations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The two sides separated in 1949 amid civil war and have no official ties but are rapidly building commercial relations. The communist mainland has announced a series of concessions in recent years to Taiwanese companies and farmers in an effort to build public support on the island for eventual unification.

Four state banks will offer credit totaling 600 billion yuan ($95 billion) to Taiwanese-invested mainland businesses, the official, Wang Yi, was cited as saying at the forum in the southeastern port of Xiamen, which faces Taiwan.

The pledge comes amid a mini-stimulus launched by Beijing to reverse an economic slump with more spending on building airports and other public works and promises of more bank loans to private companies to generate jobs.

The mainland is Taiwan's biggest trading partner. The island exported goods worth a total of $124 billion to China last year. Taiwanese companies have invested $130 billion in China over the past two decades and much of the island's labor-intensive manufacturing has shifted to the mainland, where wages are lower.

China is increasingly important to Taiwan as a market as global demand for the island's exports weakens. Mainland Chinese investment in Taiwan totaled only $132 million as of last year, due partly to restrictions imposed by the island's government to avoid being dominated by its giant neighbor.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who was re-elected in January, has pursued amicable relations with Beijing. The mainland's President Hu Jintao has tried to woo Taiwanese by showing the economic benefits of closer ties.

Still, polls in Taiwan indicate no more than 10 percent of its people want political integration with the mainland, while 60 to 70 percent favor the status quo. The rest support formal independence, a step that China says would lead to war.

Wang, the Cabinet official, also said Beijing will ease controls on mainland access for Taiwanese and expand rice imports from Taiwan and outbound mainland tourism to the island, according to Xinhua.

The validity of mainland entry permits for Taiwanese will be extended to two years from one, Xinhua said. It said the number of cities where Taiwanese arriving by air can apply for the permit will be expanded to 31 from 28.

A program that allows residents of nine cities in China's southeast to visit Taiwan's outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu will be expanded to 11 additional cities, Wang was cited as saying.

Mainland tourism authorities have set a target of 1.8 million Taiwan-bound tourists this year, according to Xinhua.

Also, the mainland's National Natural Science Foundation of China will launch a fund with an annual budget of 30 million yuan ($4.7 million) to pay for research by scientists across the strait, the report said.

Associated Press

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Sassor wants to let users know just how much electricity their gadgets are wasting (hands-on)

Everyone knows that their game consoles, appliances and HDTVs are energy vampires, and while Energy Star-certified products tell us which gadgets are more green-friendly than others, we still don't know just how much juice they're actually sucking down in a given day. Enter Sassor, a start-up from Japan that's created a system to monitor the electrical consumption of anything plugged into a wall outlet -- from PCs to refrigerators. It tracks power consumption using current sensors clamped onto power cords, which communicate wirelessly via ZigBee with a module (based on an Arduino design) that uploads the info to the cloud.

Gallery: Sassor electricity monitor system hands-on

Through the web portal, users can track energy consumption on a per-device basis in real-time, letting them figure out which gadgets are most responsible for their sky-high utility bill -- and take appropriate steps to correct the problem. Currently, it's aimed solely at businesses, but once Sassor's on its feet, funding-wise, the plan is to also put them in people's homes. The company told us it'll ditch ZigBee in favor of a WiFi solution in such future iterations, and it'll make an SDK and the system APIs available to all so that people can program for the platform and improve it in ways currently not contemplated. Alas, there's neither a timetable nor a price for the consumer version just yet, but you can see some pictures of the hardware's innards below.

Sassor wants to let users know just how much electricity their gadgets are wasting (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'Can we all get along?' King's question still lingers 20 years later

Twenty years later, Rodney King's simple yet profound question still lingers, from the street where Trayvon Martin died all the way to the White House:

"Can we all get along?"

Spoken as fires of rage and frustration wrecked huge swaths of Los Angeles, the plea distilled centuries of racial strife into a challenge ? and a goal. Today, the various answers to his question measure the lasting significance of King, who died in California Sunday after he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was 47.

"It was a critical question at a moment of crisis that forged our human bonds with one another," said Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson. "It grew up out of the hope and the desire, especially of people of color, to see this nation come together."

And it came from an unemployed construction worker who, through an accident of history, now stands among the unforgettable names of America's racial journey ? names like Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, and even larger figures who died too young.

The nation first saw King as a black man curled up on the ground by his car, being beaten by four white police officers. On parole for a robbery conviction, he had been drinking, then speeding, and had refused to pull over. Police finally pulled King from his car, then struck him more than 50 times with batons and boots.

One of King's legacies is that he raised the curtain on the video age: If a man had not stepped outside of his home and videotaped the beating, King would have been lost to history.

"The biggest impact was that it was actually on tape," said Dom Giordano, a talk radio host in Philadelphia. "It was so rare, except for something like Bull Connor, to have this type of footage."

King became an enduring symbol of police brutality ? proof positive, to many people, that the dogs and fire hoses Connor, the Birmingham police chief, loosed on civil rights marchers in 1960s Alabama had merely been updated, not eliminated.

"He represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial profiling movement of our time," the Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday.

The videotape was the central piece of evidence at the four officers' trial, which became a classic piece of modern racial drama. Did King bring the beating on himself by resisting arrest, symbolizing that black people blame racism for the consequences of their own actions? Or was there an ingrained police culture of violence against black people, backed by a system designed for black people to lose?

There were no blacks on the jury in the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. After the police were acquitted ? one got a mistrial ? Los Angeles was engulfed in a fiery uprising that lasted three days, killed 55 people and injured more than 2,000.

"There was the articulation of a pent-up rage that had not been heard before," Dyson said. "A sense that we do count, a sense that you're going to pay attention to us."

Yet many viewed it as a spasm of lawless, pointless self-destruction, with much of the damage done to black areas. The aftermath highlighted a fundamental division in the way justice, and progress, is often viewed through the lens of race.

"I don't think white America said, now we have to make changes because they rioted," said Giordano. Instead, he sees change as a result of people living, working and starting families with other ethnicities.

Can we all get along? Giordano says yes.

"What has changed is more the meat and potatoes, day to day things," he said. "For every instance like a Trayvon Martin, I do see things routinely that indicate that we are getting along, that we are moving past racial tensions."

A few weeks ago, Giordano had King on his show, which draws a largely conservative audience, to promote his new autobiography. Nobody called in to revisit the trial or to say that King deserved what happened to him.

"That's progress," Giordano said. "I think the audience would have rejected him 20 years ago."

But Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney and activist who has brought numerous police brutality charges against police, is not so hopeful.

"That videotape showed white America what black America already knew," he says. "But the sad part is, it showed what white America has been and still is in denial about."

Coard named several unarmed blacks who were killed by police in the past 20 years ? Amadou Diallo, Elanor Bumpurs, Sean Bell, and others. "Nothing has changed," he said.

But what about the election of the first black president? "Barack Obama had to get Secret Service protection before any other candidate," Coard responded. "He got four times the amount of death threats as George Bush. Why is that?"

"The video and the verdict grabbed America by the throat and said, what are you going to do about this?" Coard said. "And the answer was, not a damn thing."

Los Angeles' police department certainly changed. Years of investigations revealed corruption and "a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force," according to a federal government report. The Justice Department forced the LAPD to implement reforms.

"Some good came out of a very tragic situation. There have been positive changes," said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who attended the officers' trials.

"(King) himself was never viewed as a hero. But what happened in that case changed the LAPD and Los Angeles forever.

And what about the nation? Did it heed King's challenge?

"The jury is still out," said Dyson.

He places King's question alongside some of the seminal black expressions of the past century, from W.E.B. DuBois identifying "the problem of the color line," to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" and Malcolm X's "by any means necessary."

"You ain't got to be highly educated and deeply connected to a bourgeois black infrastructure," Dyson said, "to make a statement that articulates that summarizes the hopes, aspirations, dreams and determination of a people."

___

Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at www.twitter.com/jessewashington or jwashington(at)ap.org.

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