Glenn Greenwald points out that the "war on terror" is being carried out illogically. The U.S. has now dropped bombs on six Muslim countries that have had nothing to do with 9/11. We are currently obsessed with how to attack another Muslim country (Iran) that had nothing to do with 9/11. At the same time, we constantly reassert that our friendship with Saudi Arabia, a country with documented ties to 9/11.
Many people have been arrested for recording public arrests, and many others have had their cameras confiscated, and that's here in American where we have the First Amendment. At Gigaom, Matthew Ingram takes a look at this problem and concludes that the freedom of the press applies to everyone, even bloggers:
University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, who has written a research paper about the right of citizens to record public events under the First Amendment, told Reason magazine that rulings by three separate federal appeals courts have upheld that right. And one recent appeals court decision specifically referred to the fact that the ability to take photos, video and audio recordings with mobile devices has effectively made everyone a journalist — in practice, if not in name — and therefore deserving of protection.Ingram's article cites to another well-written article, this one by Rodney Balko, titled, "The War on Cameras." Balko's article discusses the right to privacy of police. Here's an excerpt:
University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, author of a 2010 paper in the Pennsylvania Law Review about the right to record, says such legal vagueness is a problem. Citing decisions by three federal appeals courts, Kreimer says the First Amendment includes the right to record public events. “The First Amendment doesn’t allow for unbridled discretion” by police, he says, “and it’s particularly concerned with clear rules when free speech rights are at stake. Even if there is a privacy interest here, people have to know when they’re going to be subject to prosecution.”Here's the article by Seth Kreimer; it's titled: "Pervasive Image Capture and the First Amendment: Memory, Discourse, and the Right to Record."
Andrew O'Hehir sees the benefits of home schooling, but is highly critical of Rick Santorum's proposed "solution" to the problem with deficient public schools:
As a home-schooling parent on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Santorum, I’ve observed his emergence — and, to a lesser extent, that of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow — with a certain queasy fascination. It’s difficult to imagine a hypothetical universe where I’d ever vote for Santorum for anything, but sometimes his rhetoric on home-schooling strikes one of those weird political nerves where the quasi-libertarian right and the quasi-anarchist left hold similar views. In a recent Ohio speech, for instance, Santorum described the predominant model of public education as an artifact of the Industrial Revolution that has become ill-suited to a post-industrial age: “People came off the farms where they did home-school or had a little neighborhood school, and into these big factories … called public schools.” That’s a crude but historically accurate summary, and many of the home-schoolers I know in New York City and other non-heartland locations would agree that that legacy — standardized education aimed at creating a standardized workforce — is problematic.
We have done nothing to change course, despite the rapid rate at which we are exhausting the Earth's resources. In a recent TED talk, Australian Paul Guilding tells us that it is beyond dispute, beyond any margin of error, that "the Earth is full." To sustain current human activity, we'd need 1.5 Earths. Therefore, we are at the "end of growth," and Guilding says it's well underway. The evidence is all around us. So how are we going to respond and react to this crisis? And now for an opposing point of view, also at TED: Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down.” OK, so one expert says we're in massive trouble and the other says things have never been better. No wonder people are so suspicious about experts.
See this new report on the most recent revelation by Wikileaks:
Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor. . . . Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'. Stratfor 'is monitoring Bhopal activists for Dow Chemicals, Peta activities for Coca-Cola', WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed at a press conference in London today. However, what could cause the greatest embarrassment for the U.S. government is his suggestion that information is also being gathered by paying contacts from agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.It appears, then, that a for-profit enterprise engaged secret shady dealing is being exposed by the non-profit Wikileaks, whose mission is to make harmful information public. Many more stories are expected to emerge based on the release of five million emails from the private intelligence firm, Stratfor. Until today, I had never heard about Stratfor. That's about to change, big time, based on the Wikileaks releases. The suggestions that Stratfor has numerous ties to paid U.S. government sources is extremely troubling. We'll see what happens to those profiteers. As I recall, Bradley Manning never made a penny when he released U.S. cables, but he has been imprisoned ever since, and often tortured by the U.S. government.