Continuing our series on the evolutions that can be expected over the coming decade, we look at new directions in particle physics, media technologies that are enabling not only greater freedom, but a new communicative paradigm which will, in part, help steer us to the great discoveries of this moment in history, and a vital new understanding of global economic patterns, which will revolutionize the way governments around the world plan for domestic spending and trade policy.

Particle Physics

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN —Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire—, outside of Geneva near the French-Swiss border, is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the most complex machine ever created, and designed to smash subatomic particles together at rates of speed high enough to mimic the kind of physics that existed nanoseconds after the Big Bang, from which our universe is believed to have emerged.

The big game is the Higgs boson, a particle that is theorized to lend mass to all other particles, and which possibly exists only briefly for this purpose. The Higgs boson, also popularly known as the “God particle”, for its capacity to generate mass for other particles, has never been observed. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is believed to be powerful enough to actually generate, and record information about the behavior of, the elusive Higgs boson.

This breakthrough would confirm vital aspects of the cosmological model of supersymmetry and bring together, for the first time in the history of human science, a comprehensive model of the known universe. Another elusive gap in the standard model —which integrates Einstein’s theory of relativity with the advanced discoveries of quantum physics— that could be tested and demonstrated by the LHC, is quantum gravity.

In December, the LHC achieved a world record for high-energy particle acceleration, reaching 2.36 trillion electron volts (TeV). That threshold moves the LHC closer than any other experiment in human history to being able to reproduce and observe conditions similar to those that would have existed nano-seconds after the Big Bang, when key elements of the physical dynamics of our universe were brought into being and set in motion.

It is also believed the Higgs boson gives rise to dark matter, the theoretical substance, which contains the majority of the mass in the universe and which is clustered around galaxies. Discovering the physics of that process and possibly observing the early physics of the birth of star systems, galaxies and star-forming regions, could help to reorganize our understanding of matter, energy and the universe itself, in ways as yet unprecedented in the history of science.

Media Freedom & Decentralization

The coming decade is already poised to see major breakthroughs in low-energy, high-capacity integrated communications technologies. The complex computational technology that goes into encrypting, sending, decrypting and storing, digitized messages, including text, voice, imagery and video, is increasingly light-weight, efficient and inexpensive. Handheld phones are increasingly powerful and integrated into the world wide web. Some now use remote IP connections to provide voice services.

Social networking is the new standard for high-intensity information exchange online, with global conversations building up around issues of major controversy. The post-election demonstrations in Iran this past summer were one example, where information was shared and testimony published and proliferated around the world, despite extreme measures used to curtail open communications within the nation itself. The Copenhagen Conference on climate policy gave rise to the most extensive global policy debate ever seen, from the government level through the grassroots.

Even as economic policy and environmental science drive a more global view of human activity, the rapid expansion of dispersed information-sharing technologies and the world wide web are helping to create a climate in which a decentralized grassroots conversation emerges around any issue of major import, stripping political leaders of centralized power and requiring them to respond to more diverse views from a more informed public.

The key paradigm-shift involved in the decentralized information-freedom revolution is the decentralized aspect of it. Individuals can join a wide array of networks, for varying purposes, in order to build up and maintain significant relationships in their personal and professional lives. Deprivation of resources within borders can be alleviated through those relationships, and vital information about political leadership, public controversies or events, can be delivered from sources outside the country who also have sources within the country.

Global Consumer Protection

The financial crisis of 2008 occurred at a uniquely pivotal moment in economic history. As the failings of the “globalization” process reached critical mass —a severe widening of the gap between rich and poor, the undermining of labor rights across the world, and perilous lack of transparency and provenance for tracking money flows—, massive systemic manipulations in the financial world were revealed, as trillions of dollars in reported “wealth” evaporated almost overnight.

An integrated global fabric of economic activity and banking relations meant the freeze in lending in the US and other wealthy nations would serve as a contagion of economic stagnation in poorer nations. A global response was needed, and in April, Pres. Obama succeeded in persuading the G20 nations to agree to a global financial rescue process. The IMF would create a $500 billion fund, with $100 billion put up by the United States, over several years, to ensure malfeasance or a risky economic climate would not lead to a contagion of banking collapses around the world.

That agreement was one of the most important economic achievements of 2009, because it allowed two important things to happen: 1) there would be a means of rescuing banking systems on the verge of collapse, around the world, to prevent a deepening of the global financial crisis; and 2) nations that have never had solid records of financial transparency would be incentivized to sign up to a new regime of banking transparency and financial ethics, further shoring up the global financial system against potential abuses.

Issues related to the security of fresh water resources, the human food supply and climate stability, have led to a significant increase in overall international economic negotiation. The virtues of pragmatic shared-interest negotiations have become apparent, and economic incentivization is now part of many crisis-level negotiations. The crisis regarding Iran’s nuclear program, for instance, involves a triangular proposal that would allow Iran’s enrichment process to involve both Russia and France, providing economic benefits to all three nations, but denying Tehran the capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

Job creation is increasingly dependent on global flows of financial and natural resources. China’s enormous consumption of mineral resources has built up its economic clout, and lowered the cost of its massive nationwide industrialization and construction process, but it has also deprived other nations, as well as multinational conglomerate corporations, of the ability to do business in a dependable way trading certain mineral resources, like copper and iron ore.

China is consuming cropland in Africa, in an effort to provide for the basic sustenance of its people, and world grain reserves are being depleted in line with the depletion of fossil aquifers around the planet. These patterns of global economic impact are more than just wave trends; they are part of a new way of negotiating for the sustained prosperity of local populations. The state of California, for instance, the world’s 5th largest economy, negotiates parallel agreements, not waiting for the US to make trade deals to help shore up the California economy.

But consumer protection is the missing component that has made globalization a less flexible process, too heavily oriented toward guaranteed windfalls for big investors. The 2008 global financial crisis, rooted in financial abuses, a property-price inflation bubble and the credit markets, made clear this shortcoming of global economic policy. Transparency is one of the responses, but global consumer protection is another.

It is now likely that over the next decade, negotiations to provide for consumer protection across borders, and to ensure consumers have the ability to distinguish between businesses that negotiate fairly with workers and those that use sweatshops and abusive labor conditions to pad their profits. Improvements to global economic ethics will come from enhanced consumer protection guarantees and a more global awareness of economic activity.

Conclusion

These are just nine fronts on which major paradigm-shifts are either already underway or are likely to occur in the coming decade. The details of each of these nine areas of focus provide extensive room for overlap, and touch on literally thousands of other details of personal quality of life, political and economic stability and human potential.

One of the most critical, and perhaps underreported, aspects of the social networking revolution, is the technological capability of spontaneous alliances of thoughtful individuals to locate information, fashion reports and instigate a culture of vigilance, on virtually any issue, at any time.

There are major political and economic implications tied to this trend, and local and international institutions and governments of nation states, will have to think ahead about how to integrate genuine ethical protections into the fast-changing environment of global policy. New media connectivity and decentralized civic infrastructure have allowed for a kind of de-formalization of policy-shaping events and communications between local communities and world leaders.

There is a “bubbling-up” effect that takes place, where large numbers of people can quickly band together to act as conscience to the broader world and exert pressure on leaders; international development and crisis negotiations will take this into account, as part of a new‘transactional’ cosmology, in which leadership is always under scrutiny and the facts of human life do actually matter.

2nd Decade of the 21st Century: What’s in Store?

1. Denuclearization, Green Tech & Cooperation
2. Gender Equality, Food Security & Counter-extremism
3. Particle Physics, Media Freedom & Global Economics

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves part of a global human civilization undergoing major change at an unprecedented rate, and how we adjust to those changes will determine what quality of life and how much real democracy there is, even who lives and who dies, across the global village. For decades, postmodern philosophical theory has examined the problem of atomization of the fabric of human society, but new trends suggest there is concurrent with spreading individualism a swell of interdependence among individuals, communities and nation-states.

2010 promises to be a year of historical landmarks, with important breakthroughs in ecological science, collaborative diplomacy and key international negotiations on economics, arms reduction, democratization and security. Efforts to reform the financial system in the US, Europe and Asia, to prevent the kind of abuses seen during the sub-prime lending bubble, will bring a new focus on corporate ethics and sustainable banking practices. Micro-lending, small-business resilience and consumer protection, may gain unprecedented and concerted momentum around the world, likely in connection with rapid investment in clean energy technologies.

Green Tech

The United States is now seeing the beginnings of an historic investment in electric vehicle (EV) transportation infrastructure and cutting-edge high-speed regional rail services. By the end of 2010, the process of forging a stable, long-term EV infrastructure should be in full swing, and recognizable across much of the nation. The coming decade may see a near total shift toward EV, away from internal combustion engines for automotive transport, in new vehicles. Retrofitting will also become key to the overhaul of the US transportation infrastructure, and such initiatives will be closely linked to economic recovery.

Efforts to green the energy economy will mean direct competition against parallel negotiations on binding targets for cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The political and the technological responses will vie for prevalence throughout the decade, with both political and technological advances in GHG reduction helping to steer both investment and economic prosperity to centers of economic activity around the world. This new flourishing of economic dynamism will be key to how global political trends shape up over the coming decade.

By the end of the 2010s, the standard for new energy and transport technologies should be decidedly focused on a new zero-combustion paradigm. A number of already existing technologies will compete for prominence in this new energy economy, but we should also expect to see dramatic innovations as yet never produced, which will help to drive the transition to a zero-combustion energy and transport economy.

Denuclearization

And as the new decade dawns, North Korea has expressed its wish to bring an end to hostile relations with the United States and to comprehensively denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. While it is too soon to celebrate this New Year’s statement as a sign of any lasting peace, it affords serious consideration of the possibility that Pyongyang will now rejoin the six-party negotiations on denuclearizing, and possibly usher in a new era in east Asian security politics and global nuclear diplomacy.

Pres. Barack Obama’s initiative for a nuclear-free world has already made great strides in 2009, with the US and the Russian Federation about to sign a major new strategic arms reduction treaty, to halve the number of their most destructive nuclear warheads. This leadership, by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, is steering the international community toward a new paradigm for international security cooperation.

All five permanent members of the UN Security Council —all nuclear powers— voted this year to move global nuclear policy, through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), toward Pres. Obama’s stated goal of a “world without nuclear weapons”. The decade of the twenty-tens should, as a result, see the most important progress toward denuclearization since nuclear weapons were first tested and deployed, during World War II.

If significant progress toward sustained diplomatic cooperation is made among the world’s leading nuclear powers, the polarization problem that has plagued global politics since the onset of the Cold War more than six decades ago, could be lessened. Nations seeking to compete for defensive security with the world’s most powerful states could see the promise of nuclear weapons research diminish, as the world unites to treat all nuclear weapons as an unacceptable and immoral threat to human civilization.

Cooperation & Connectivity

But the hallmark of the tens is likely to be enhanced diplomatic cooperation as such. Key developments of the first decade of the 21st century, like the Iraq war, have shown the pitfalls of unilateral action. The trend in climate-policy talks has been mounting global pressure, from the grassroots through the level of government for far-ranging international cooperation and consensus. The economic crisis of 2008-2009 has led to unprecedented concerted efforts to shore up the banking system and prevent long-term collapse.

Connectivity may be the key word to describe the coming decade. As governments lean toward cooperation, economies integrate not through harsh bilateral trade agreements, but framework negotiations aimed at sustainability and quality of life, and security talks privilege political stability and human rights above unilateral security policy, media technologies will provide for the most comprehensive interconnectedness yet seen between populations around the world.

Both the “digital divide”, the problem of low ease of access for poor populations to the world wide web, and freedom of information —press freedom, net neutrality and communicational freedom— will be constantly at issue in nations both large and small that are emerging into more regular relations with an international community centered on democratic principles and universal rights. China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, four of the world’s most populous nations, need to grapple with the problem of balancing severe economic stress with large populations and persistent factionalism.

Democratization in this environment will depend less on the will of political leaders than on the actual use by ordinary people of information technology and the degree to which such technologies allow for more open media environments that help to create a sense of sustainable balance between diversity and unity. The vanguard of open media will gain significant political and economic clout in such nations, helping to shift the paradigm for exercise of power in complex populous nations.

Mexico, Nigeria and Bangladesh, also among the world’s most populous nations, will have to grapple with the same problems of socio-economic degradation and factionalism, while facing the problem of imminent mass migration due to climate change. Each of these nations will face desperate and heated negotiations with neighboring countries over water resources, arable land and food security. One of the most persistent security threats will be the correlation between military exercises along borders and resource scarcity.

2nd Decade of the 21st Century: What’s in Store?

1. Denuclearization, Green Tech & Cooperation
2. Gender Equality, Food Security & Counter-extremism
3. Particle Physics, Media Freedom & Global Economics

China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.

Hong Kong, once a British protectorate, has been granted special political freedoms —as part of the conditions for its return to Chinese rule, and not without significant amounts of public protest from locals demanding them—, including electoral representation and the right to demonstrate. It is a divergent political model within the still largely totalitarian system planned and managed from Beijing, and it may serve as a credible model for how to democratize Chinese institutions of government and enterprise.

In order to meet the social and political demands of coming decades, China will have to grapple with the very real problem of what impact the information revolution will have on Chinese society, which has allowed for a privileged class of central control to impose a strict authoritarian order for thousands of years. Chinese society is already democratizing in terms of information, in that the government has had to admit mistakes in attempts to reorganize and filter information of vital public interest.

The scandal surrounding attempts to cover up the outbreak of SARS in China angered governments and international bodies, and spurred a wave of dissent in China that gave more power to journalists in the state media who sought to put informational value ahead of Beijing politics. Pres. Hu’s “smokeless war” against the press and dissidents has been a questionable enterprise throughout, with limited practical success in promoting Beijing’s projection of power and apparently sparking a surge in dissent.

Authoritarian urges inherent in Beijing’s use of power, both within China and beyond, have generated a notable backlash. In March 2008, an effort to ‘Sino-ize’ the Tibetan economy and consolidate Beijing’s hold on the region led to an outbreak of violence, with ethnic clashes, street demonstrations and security forces attacking civilians in the streets. The demonstrations spread to other regions of China and to neighboring Nepal. As we reported on 31 March 2008:

Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, yesterday, as police wielded bamboo clubs and beat demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns. The UN has said Nepal’s harsh clampdown on Tibetan demonstrators violates international human rights law, including the right to peaceful assembly, as embodied in treaties signed by Nepal.

Demonstrations that began in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, more nearly 3 weeks ago have now spread to neighboring provinces in China, and into Nepal and India. The Kathmandu clashes came as large crowds accusing China of human rights abuses in Tibet tried to approach the Chinese embassy grounds.

A similar outbreak of ethnic violence broke out in the western province of Xinjiang, when efforts to centralize political control of the region and marginalize the local ethnic majority led to violent street battles. The government accused Uighur separatists of stoking the violence, while Uighur muslims from the region accused ethnic Han immigrants of undermining the economic opportunity available to the locals.

For the occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, dissidents organized a high-profile petition for political reform, calling the document itself Charter ‘08. The document, far from being an outright repudiation of China’s political establishment, calls for an incremental liberalization of the political process, and diversification of the one-party system. It opens with an explanation of the historical moment and the socio-political imperatives the regime will have to face, one way or another:

This year is the 100th year of China’s Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a “modernization” under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.

The government’s response has been to suppress the very idea of a need for liberalization and to prosecute those responsible for the petition. Liu Xiaobo, a moderate dissident and respected literary figure, was detained this summer on charges linked to the Charter ‘08 movement and has now been sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power”, a charge the very name of which is a virtual admission of China’s need to democratize. The trial was just two hours long and has been decried across the world as an unfair prosecution without adequate defense or due process for the accused.

Instead of recognizing the constructive role that responsible political reformists can play in crafting a viable future for China —in line with the international system to which China has signed up but whose values it consistently rejects—, those in power in Beijing are treating the very idea of broader political freedoms for the Chinese people as a threat to national security. As the LA Times has reported:

In the last two years, the Chinese government has cracked down on Internet sites, lawyers, consumer advocates and human rights activists, particularly after the collapse of poorly constructed schools in the Sichuan earthquake and the tainted milk scandal in 2008. Liu is a brave democracy advocate and no stranger to jail; he was sent to prison for 21 months after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and to a labor camp in 1996 after demanding clemency for others still imprisoned.

This attack on universal values and persecution of the very dissident voices that could most ably and responsibly shepherd China through a period of needed democratic progress is dangerous in the extreme. Beijing’s hard-line tactics have radicalized and even popularized separatist movements across a number of regions, and efforts to disallow protests and even individual complaints about corruption has sown the seeds of deeper dissent across the country, at a time when tens of millions have lost work due to the global economic crisis.

China has also sought, along with its persecution of dissidents and its use of military force to impose political control over satellite regions, to create a hermetically controlled Chinese-language internet, where information can only be posted if approved by state censors. Instead of seizing the Olympics as an opportunity to plan, test and exhibit meaningful democratic liberalization, the government in Beijing has sought to block websites critical of its policies and control the flow of information across all communications networks in China.

But efforts to impose a blanket censorship-enabling spyware technology on all computers in the country were complicated this summer, when complaints about the substantial security risks and negative impact on business and foreign investment forced the government to back down. In July, we reported:

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The technology may still take effect, under the guise of an effort to block pornography in order to protect young people, but there is intense resistance from the international community, and from media and business interests in China. There are concerns that aside from a gross violation of fundamental rights to open information, the software could actually destroy intellectual property, impede the functioning of computer hardware altogether, and even subject users to added security risks.

According to the OpenNet Initiative:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

Features that allow for intimate monitoring of keystrokes and usage logs could permit attacks either from within government monitoring or from non-government criminal enterprises, to access personal information, create extensive archives of data regarding individual lives and networks of people, and subject individuals to identity theft, harassment, and other kinds of computer-enabled endangerment. Such intrusive harvesting of personal data could even put children at far greater risk of exploitation via the Internet.

One of the most fundamental dangers inherent in this type of digital data-based persecution of dissent at all levels is that it first of all assists in the coverup of abusive or corrupt activity and secondly does nothing to reform areas of the political system itself that are causing anger and the spread of hostility to government policies. While the Green Dam spyware project may allow Beijing to conceal or disrupt the communication of dissent, it will do nothing to prevent the dissent-inducing abuses or systemic inadequacies from occurring.

The only practical way to ensure that government services meet the needs of real people, and thus fashion a more harmonious system, is for a freer flow of information among people and between the people and their government. Failing that, even the best-intentioned government programs will run into trouble and be a source of unrest or opposition. Persecution of dissent is an ancient tool of underdeveloped power structures; China has the wealth and technology to democratize peacefully, and can do so by liberalizing the process for selecting and evaluating party leaders, policy-makers and administrative bureaucrats.

The Hong Kong model is complicated, and has many critics, but for a nation as vast and diverse as China, facing all of the crises, political, economic and environmental, it now faces, the Hong Kong model provides a worthy example for how to usher in more permissive political processes, without giving up the integrity of the existing system or the territorial integrity of the nation.

There will need to be practical solutions that help keep long-simmering tensions in check, if China is to avoid further flare-ups of ethnic violence or the aggressive ramping up of separatist activity. Change is emerging organically, across China, and the current government will eventually have to choose between working with or against the driving forces of change. Addressing economic concerns —like quality of life, education, transport and energy— will be key to being able to shepherd the nation through the coming period of political transformation. The following are a few areas that may help ensure stability throughout:

1. Re-evaluate prosecutions like that of Liu Xiaobo, which cripple the political dynamism of the Chinese system and help ensure a sclerotic policy apparatus, unaware of the best competing ideas going forward;
2. Free political prisoners like Liu Xiaobo and other responsible dissenters, who use no methods of sabotage or violence, only words and ideas, to convey their message of liberalization;
3. Reward local officials who find creative ways to integrate citizens into the process of making and administering policy;
4. Encourage freer expression of critical views, in part to show tolerance of dissent, in part to allow for the discovery of sound ideas for making a better way for the nation;
5. Encourage local political organizing, even where dissenting views are more popular than Beijing policy: a system of competing views need not override established policy, but can allow for competing views to filter in and serve the public good;
6. Liberalize selection process for Communist party officials, as a first step toward general elections;
7. Recognize cultural and political autonomy of regional states, like Tibet and Xinjiang: a Spanish approach may work better than the militaristic all-or-nothing conquest-based approach favored until now;
8. Reform the justice system, so that low-level corruption cases and judgments benefitting ordinary citizens can gain prominence and foster a new respect for judicial process: this helps guarantee order, but also prevents corruption and abuse;
9. Take a leading role in championing fundamental political and civil rights in other nations: doing so does not violate anyone’s sovereignty, but failing to do so shows a reduced hold on domestic support for the exercise of it;
10. Prepare for an issue-based divergence of factions within the Communist party, and a credible legal process by which those factions can establish competing parties loyal to a central constitution.

Long-term stability is often cited by China’s authorities as the reason behind extremely hard-line actions. But as we are now seeing in Iran, and as we have seen in eastern Europe and the Philippines, hard-line oppression often sows unrest and brings about far more radical kinds of political change. China is too closely linked to the information technology revolution to not be affected by it, and its censoring-technology approach to manufacturing consensus is not viable; it will collapse under the weight of the challenge.

Planning for the period of liberalization that will follow is the only responsible way for the government in Beijing to move forward with long-term Chinese development and political planning. It is the only policy response that will build confidence among foreign investors and major enterprises, including banks, that wish to locate offices or factories in the country, and it will prove to be the only practical way to prevent sectarian conflict and the disintegration of political ties with the satellite states where unrest is already brewing.

A prominent Russian journalist, Olga Kotovskaya, has been killed in a mysterious fall from a building in Kaliningrad, under circumstances press rights groups believe suggest yet another attack on press freedom by shadowy individuals linked to the government. Kotovskaya had just won an important court victory over the government and should have been allowed to take back control of a TV network she had founded.

According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) website:

Reporters Without Borders is calling for a thorough investigation into the death of Olga Kotovskaya, a prominent journalist who apparently fell from the 14th floor of a building in the centre of Kaliningrad (the capital of a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania) six days after a court ruled that she had been unfairly stripped of the TV station she had created.

“Kotovskaya’s tragic and highly suspicious death needs a thorough and meticulous investigation,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It should possibly be assigned to a police department that does not come under the local authorities, whose role in her death is one of the elements that needs to be examined.”

An arbitrage court found that Kotovskaya’s TV station, Kaskad, had been taken away from her through and illegal and fraudulent process. RSF reports: ”The court ruled that the document used to transfer control to new owners had been forged. Kaliningrad’s current governor, Vladimir Pirogov is alleged to have been involved in the takeover.”

Family and associates say it is impossible that Kotovskaya, a driven and tireless journalist and a skilled businesswoman, would commit suicide just days after winning a major court victory, opening the possibility of retaking control of her network. With local government officials allegedly involved in the illegal seizure, there is widespread suspicion local authorities orchestrated her murder to prevent further legal fallout or the restoration of the station to her control.

The collusion of local authorities in the apparent murder of prominent journalists is becoming a hallmark of what appears to be a sustained attack by allies of certain figures within the government against press criticizing actions, policies and allies of those individuals. For example, the long-time ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, is accused by press-rights groups, as well as by friends and colleagues of those killed, of involvement in a number of killings in Chechnya and the Caucasus region.

Political murders and killings are an escalating worry in 21st-century Russia, as hardline leaders both seek to put down separatist movements and cling to power, despite their failure to create an atmosphere of security and stability. The period of the Putin presidency saw political assassinations significantly on the rise across Russia, and even beyond Russia’s borders, and there have been fears that Pres. Medvedev would to little to stem the rising tide of violence against the press.

It remains to be seen if Pres. Medvedev’s approach to press freedom and security will be more credible than his predecessor’s. But Medvedev recently called for a comprehensive democratization of Russia’s economy and political system, laying out his policy that an economy based on information and human knowledge, suggesting a free press would be beneficial to the development of a society of free individuals innovating and trading together to create a better future.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports:

In the address Medvedev said “freedom of speech should be backed up by technological innovation,” that Russians “should work more actively to expand the free Internet and digital television space,” and that nobody in the government “can obstruct discussion on the Internet or censor thousands of channels at once.”

He has started a video blog in which he engages the Russian public and talks about his policy goals and his hopes for a freer Russian society. But Pres. Medvedev’s policies toward prosecuting violence against the press have yet to catch up with the rhetoric of his state of the nation address. Journalists still face an overtly dangerous situation in much of Russia, and those responsible for orchestrating politically motivated killings have yet to be brought to justice.

Iran’s government has temporarily banned foreign media from operating in the capital, Tehran, in anticipation of student rallies on Monday, marking Iran’s Student Day commemoration. The government has warned against any “illegal rallies”, suggesting it fears the student rallies could turn into a new round of protests against the alleged rigging of the June presidential vote and the subsequent violent crackdown against dissent.

According to Reuters:

Police and elite Revolutionary Guards have warned that any “illegal” rally will be fiercely confronted on Monday when the country marks Student Day, commemorating the killing of three students in 1953 under the former Shah.

“All permits issued for foreign media to cover news in Tehran have been revoked from December 7 to December 9,” the Culture Ministry’s foreign press department said on Saturday in an SMS text message sent to journalists, photographers and cameramen working for foreign media in Iran.

Throughout the weekend internet connections have been deliberately slowed or disabled and cellphone networks have been interrupted. It appears the authorities are testing a series of measures designed to interfere with person to person communications, to stop people from organizing and from reporting on abuses that may be committed by security forces.

Reuters also reports that “An official at Iran’s telecommunications ministry told Reuters that Internet access and cellphone lines would be disabled on Monday.” Police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam warns that any “illegal gathering” near the universities will be “strongly confronted”, raising fears of more bloodshed and political disappearances, like those that the government used to respond to the anti-government protests this summer.

The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is warning that the situation for journalists in Iran is worsening. Over 100 reporters and bloggers were detained during the summer demonstrations; 23 are still being held. Many are treated like foreign spies, especially photographers, whom the government feels it has a fundamental right to control.

In the case of Maziar Bahari, a journalist working for Newsweek magazine, he was detained and held without charge, was interrogated and severely beaten. He was accused of espionage, was told that his magazine was in fact an intelligence agency, and was told that video of himself doing a comic sketch on Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ in which a comedian pretends to be a CIA agent was proof he was a spy.

The situation in Iran is also getting more difficult for foreign journalists. There are increasing restrictions on what they are allowed to report, and when, and by what medium. Foreign journalists are now routinely barred from reporting on public gatherings or meeting with any member of the opposition. The media clampdown is a sign the hardline government continues to find itself under pressure from internal opposition.

It is also clear that there is a connection between the government’s treatment of journalists and its plans for a potentially violent crackdown. It wants to avoid images getting out like those that showed the bloody death of Neda Agha Soltan, an innocent bystander gunned down in cold blood, in the middle of a crowded street, allegedly by a member of the Basij militia.

The government has failed to provide any democratic channel by which the opposition could address its grievances regarding the vote of 12 June 2009, which most observers, even some conservative clerics inside Iran, believe was rigged to give Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the supreme leader’s preferred candidate, a second term as president.

It is expected that Monday will bring the beginning of a new series of protest rallies, initiated by students in observance of Student Day, but supported by the Green Path of Hope movement of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and possibly winning popular support from ordinary citizens still outraged over the violence used by government forces to end the summer’s post-election demonstrations. If such rallies do emerge, the government is expected to take action to interfere.

GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, has agreed to a deal that would give Comcast a controlling interest in the media giant. NBC Universal is one of the leading producers of feature films, network television and TV news. Its flagship news services, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, could see their budgets affected by the sale, and there are concerns over conflict of interest for a cable TV and internet service provider owning a controlling stake in such a vast media enterprise. Congressional hearings and federal communications regulatory investigations are considered likely to ensue, before the deal can be implemented.

There is also concern that Comcast may use its new leverage over mainstream American media to oppose efforts to establish strong net neutrality regulations that would prevent it from using its position in web access to manipulate the content available to web users. It is clear the acquisition will strengthen Comcast’s media business and help to position the cable provider as one of the leading communications conglomerates, but media watchdogs are already ramping up campaigns of vigilance against abuses or attempts to manipulate content or access. Some seek to oppose the deal outright as a direct threat to the freedom of information and net neutrality.

The deal has Comcast paying $30 billion for 51% of NBC Universal. Comcast has pledged to make substantive efforts to preserve and reinforce the local news programming and other public interest programming at stations across the NBC O&O (owned and operated) family of media outlets. There are federal broadcast licensing agreements that will now transition with NBC Universal, requiring Comcast to take those substantive steps to guarantee funding for and access to local news programming.

Some of the commitments Comcast says it will honor, as per today’s press release, are as follows (bold type set by Robert MacMillan, for Reuters MediaFile):

• NBC has a proud history in broadcasting with both NBC and Telemundo. Notwithstanding the turbulence in the current media marketplace and the ongoing threats to the business model of a national broadcast network, the combined company remains committed to continuing to provide free over-the-air television through its 0&0 stations and through local broadcast affiliates across the nation. As we negotiate and renew agreements with our broadcast affiliates, we will continue our cooperative dialogue with our affiliates toward a business model to sustain free over-the-air service that can be workable in the evolving economic and technological environment.
• The NBC owned-and-operated broadcast stations (”0&OS “) have a demonstrated record of quality local programming in major markets around the country. Comcast also has demonstrated its commitment to local programming, including sports and public affairs, and in providing support for public, educational, and government (PEG) access programming. We want to use the combined resources of NBC and Comcast to strengthen localism
• We intend to preserve and enrich the output of local news, local public affairs, and other public interest programming on NBC 0&0 stations.
• Since NBCU was acquired by GE in 1986, the owners have abided by a policy (summarized in a filing with the FCC) of ensuring that the content ofNBC’s news and public affairs programming would not be influenced by the non-media interests of General Electric. The combined company will continue these policies with respect to the news programming organizations of all NBCU networks and stations, and will extend these policies to the potential influence of each of the owners. To ensure such independence, the combined companies will continue in effect the position and authority of the NBC News ombudsman to address any issues that may arise.
• Comcast and NBCU have strong track records in children’s programming and children’s issues. The combined company will make an expanded commitment to meeting the viewing needs of children, and the needs of parents to better control their family’s viewing.
• We reaffirm our commitment to provide clear and understandable on-screen TV Ratings information for all covered programming across all networks (broadcast and cable) of the combined company.
• We intend to expand the availability of over-the-air programming to the Hispanic community utilizing a portion of the digital broadcast spectrum of the Telemundo O&O’s (as well as offering it to Telemundo affiliates) to enhance the current programming of Telemundo and Mun2.
• As a cable operator, Comcast is committed to dealing fairly with all non-affiliated video programmers with whom we do business, and to promoting program diversity. Nearly six out of every seven channels carried by Comcast Cable systems will still be networks unaffiliated with Comcast upon the completion of this transaction.
• We plan to honor all of NBCU’s collective bargaining agreements. We respect NBCU’s existing labor-management relationships and expect them to continue following the closing of this transaction.

The deal has risks of all kinds that analysts in the fields of media, economics, stock-trading, and regulatory law, will be reviewing in excruciating detail. Congress may also be asked to hold hearings, and anti-trust lawyers at the Justice Department may also be brought in to evaluate the risks to competition in the media marketplace.

If, however, Comcast can demonstrate that it will not only honor NBC Universal’s commitments to public interest news programming and local media access, but can “strengthen localism” as it suggests and make the business profitable, the deal could wind up being of benefit to the cause of net neutrality, because an access provider would be benefitting from a media enterprise without having to stratify connection speeds in order to do so. Such an outcome could remove the perceived commercial incentive for access providers to manipulate web access in order to promote content in exchange for additional fees to content providers.

Andal Apatuan, Jr., the heir to a powerful political dynasty on the southern Philippine Island of Mindanao, and a candidate for governor in 2010, has been taken into custody after a raid by military and police forces. Ampatuan is running to replace his father as governor of Maguindanao province, his father being forced to step down after three consecutive terms due to term limits.

The elder Ampatuan had run unopposed in the last two elections, and there are rumors emerging from the region that the family was enraged at the prospect of the younger Ampatuan facing an electoral challenge. Though some members of the Ampatuan clan had been considered political allies of Pres. Gloria Arroyo, they have been expelled from her party since the massacre.

Ismael Mangudadatu, the politician who was traveling to register for the 2010 polls, along with his family and a press pool, said the gunmen were militia forces loyal to the Ampatuan clan. At least 57 people are now confirmed killed in the massacre, and news reports say anywhere from 13 to 20 were journalists. That figure makes this the worst single attack on journalists anywhere in the world for decades.

The region is now essentially under military rule, as the Philippines’ central government works to uncover the truth behind the killings, arrest those responsible and bring them to justice. There is also an urgent need to act to ensure peace and avoid a broader armed conflict emerging from the killings. Some observers fear the rise of anti-Ampatuan militia, which could make the crisis still more bloody.

The BBC is reporting:

Officials named militiamen under the control of Mr Ampatuan Jr – the mayor of a town in Maguindanao – as suspects.

All police officers from one town are under investigation for the killing, AFP news agency reported, citing government officials.

The massacre must be prosecuted aggressively, if the Manila government hopes to counter this type of violent corruption and protect the Philippine constitution. Attacks on journalists are a tool of choice of local mafia-like clans in the Philippines and elsewhere, who seek to use intimidation to cling to power.

But the Maguindanao massacre killed anywhere from one to two dozen members of the press, so the press at large cannot be expected to look in any way favorably on the alleged political backers of the killings. The central government is in a war posture against the regional leadership, and police and public officials are considered complicit and are facing investigation.

Such an extreme act of unrepentant violence is a mystery if for no other reason due to its scale. The younger Ampatuan’s rival Mr. Mangudadatu lost his wife, two sisters and a large number of key supporters. The attack appears to have been an effort to wipe out anyone involved intimately with the rival candidate, either in his personal or professional sphere.

A lawsuit by a former Washington editor for the New York Post has revealed that the paper’s Washington bureau chief told her the newspaper’s official aim was to “destroy Barack Obama”. The revelation comes amid a spreading controversy over accusations the media properties owned by conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch have been used to fabricate news, organize phony Republican rallies, orchestrate sham grassroots groups —called ‘astroturf’ organizations—, systematically misrepresent the facts and personally attack political opponents of Murdoch’s preferred party and candidates.

Sandra Guzman, a former executive editor who was dismissed after she objected to the paper running a cartoon portraying Barack Obama as an escaped chimpanzee shot dead by police. She alleges that the in-house culture of the New York Post is loaded with racist and sexist abuse. She also said the paper knew the cartoon was seriously offensive but brushed off the idea there could be any serious objection because Post directors believed only “minorities” would be offended and in one editor’s words “most of them are uneducated”.

Ms. Guzman’s revelations could bring a flurry of lawsuits against the Post and other Murdoch media properties, if there is evidence that facts were deliberately distorted in order to cause material harm to individuals. That is the textbook definition of libel, and the New York Post’s Washington bureau chief having declared the paper’s mission to be to “destroy Obama” suggests not only that libel was a possible outcome, but that there was a deliberate and coordinated effort to ensure that the paper was engaging in libel.

Some critics have been slow to see the gravity of the revelations, in part because the Post already has a reputation for playing fast and loose with facts, having an aggressive political bias and following the mold of a typical sensationalist tabloid. If we recall the film Bright Lights, Big City, based on Jay McInerney’s novel, the main character says reading the New York Post is one of his most shameful “vices”, despite the more immediate physical danger of his cocaine habit: so ingrained in the New York psyche is the paper’s ill repute.

Others argue the New York Post, like any tabloid, is really more an advertising vehicle than a news source, so somehow fact-checking cannot be expected. But Guzman’s allegations are of grave concern for a number of reasons:

1) ad-rag or not, a widely circulated newspaper may have been used as a political weapon to manipulate the media environment and undermine the American electoral process;

2) it is no minor detail that a candidate of vast popularity, whose politics won a landslide victory, with no scandal or radical ideas whatsoever was the target of a deliberate campaign of character assassination, openly admitted to by the paper’s editors;

3) Guzman’s revelations also appear to confirm that Post editors were willing to knowingly thrust into the nation’s political discourse cartoons (and by extension ideas) they knew to be nakedly racist and condoning of race-based killing.

The level of professional irresponsibility alone is shocking, but that this reckless amorality may have been part of a planned, concerted campaign, backed by a major media firm that owns nit only one of the three major cable news channels but also the Wall Street Journal, means we have to ask ourselves how many inflammatory, dangerous lies, toxic to the democratic process and designed to brainwash American media consumers, were part of this propaganda effort. Does this mean the privately-owned “free press” is extinguished, replaced by a command-and-control libel mill, bent on using the First Amendment to undermine other Constitutional liberties?

Guzmán’s lawsuit specifically and explicitly alleges that the work environment at the New York Post is “permeated with racist and sexist conduct and comments toward employees of color and women”, adding that “the Post has also repeatedly targeted people of color and women outside of the Company with its racism and sexism through racially and sexually offensive news headlines, news stories and humiliating, insulting and degrading cartoons.”

The clear suggestionis that neither her own experience of harassment and mistreatment nor the cartoon attacking Obama as a chimpanzee shot by police were isolated incidents, but that they were part of a pattern of consistent abuse and intimidation, both inside and outside the editorial offices of the paper. The complaint also alleges “unlawful retaliation” against anyone who dares to complain of the abuse and harassment, up to and including deliberate efforts to undermine individuals’ career prospects.

Specifically, Guzman’s suit alleges:

… when employees complain about the discrimination in the workplace, they are often subjected to unlawful retaliation by the White management and editors at the Company, who, among other things, unlawfully retaliate against them by unfairly criticizing their work performance, overly scrutinizing their work, giving them unjust performance evaluations, denying them assignments and/or terminating their employment.

Guzman’s complaints about the racist cartoon depicting the assassination of an ape meant to represent the president, is alleged, in the suit, to have led directly to her being fired, without cause, as an illegal act of personal retaliation for raising objections to an atmosphere of aggression, bigotry and intimidation. The chimp cartoon was such an offensive and obvious racist attack, with real potential for incitement to physical violence, that Post owner Rupert Murdoch actually was driven to issue an apology, almost unheard of despite the intense controversy and allegations of systematic distortion consistently leveled at his media company.

The allegations are gravely serious; they go to the heart of what journalism is and why the press has such a privileged place in the rights enshrined in the US Constitution. The press is thought to be a check on the arbitrary and corrupt use of power, a way for the citizenry to protect against abuses by the powerful. But the allegation that the New York Post had a stated internal mission to “destroy Obama”, coupled with the alleged climate of hostility and persecution within the Post organization itself, suggests a deliberate betrayal of everything the free press is supposed to be.

It suggests a concerted effort to manipulate the truth, destroy an individual’s character and career, possibly based on a routine system of doing exactly that within the organization itself, and a campaign of fear-mongering, distortion and intimidation either explicitly or implicitly condoned by the tabloid’s owner.

While it is fundamentally problematic for the government to launch investigations of media outlets for behavior that might be intended to destroy politicians’ careers or manipulate voters’ behavior, even in cases of systematic libel, civil courts could provide a means for further investigation into the allegations against the paper, and other media outlets are virtually guaranteed to probe as deeply as possible the critical and outrageous substance of the allegations, putting the post in a far deeper hole than where it already finds itself.

Pres. Obama has reportedly secured Chinese president Hu Jintao’s pledge of cooperation on global economic recovery, efforts to curb emissions and combat climate destabilization, and nuclear non-proliferation, both in Iran and North Korea. The pledge of cooperation came despite Obama’s demand that China honor the “universal” human rights of its people, alongside differences over how strongly to pressure Iran to guarantee its nuclear pursuits are legal and peaceful in nature.

Sustained, serious cooperation on efforts to reform and improve international banking standards and limit abuses may be key to guarding against Chinese prosperity eroding American prosperity, and helping to prevent a return to risky, predatory behavior at major US banks. China’s banking system has long been assailed in the west for lacking transparency and condoning behavior banned by international economic treaties. Hu’s pledge of recovery cooperation implies progress on removing such inefficiencies an abuses from the Chinese banking system.

Pres. Obama gave a town-hall format talk to a closed-door gathering in which he spoke against censorship and said the freer the flow of information in a society the stronger that society will be. His remarks were censored by Chinese authorities and the comments on censorship were barred from any media distribution within China. One website that posted the remarks was forced to take them down after just 27 minutes.

The episode highlights the serious divide between Chinese and American policies toward the meaning of people’s government. This means specific details of how to tackle Iran’s nuclear programme, or North Korea’s, will be harder to agree on. Beijing has long tended to be sympathetic to the authoritarian urges of the Iranian regime, though it is suspicious of theocratic politics in general, and North Korea is China’s historic ally. China sees attempts to dictate to Tehran what it is permitted to do militarily or economically as a potential threat to its own sovereignty vis a vis international law.

On climate destabilization and emissions reduction, China is a complicated partner: the Chinese government has demanded special freedom to aggressively ramp up carbon emissions, possibly until per-capita levels rival those in the industrialized democracies. But climate scientists say such a scenario would push the world over the brink into irreversible climate change, possibly with catastrophic consequences for billions of people around the world.

China’s pledge of cooperation is being treated with skepticism by those in western industry who believe it is more a ruse to permit China to negotiated strict limitations on industrial rivals, while ignoring emissions capping requirements altogether. For that reason, Pres. Obama’s visit to China is considered to be a vital step toward securing Beijing’s collaboration on a system of transparent international verification of to achieve emissions targets, reductions and related innovations.

On economic recovery, banking reform is key, but the vast trade imbalance between the US and China, which owns trillions of dollars worth of US dollar currency and government bonds, is another crucial negotiating hotzone. China cannot afford to see the US fail to pay in full on time the debt obligations it has with Beijing, but neither can China afford to see the US dollar decline in value or the influx of US consumer cash for goods and services decline.

Both nations are engaged in a complex catch-22, where no part of the puzzle can be let slip, but no part of the puzzle is entirely secure. Cooperation on economic recovery means both nations will seek to serve and protect that synergistic relationship, while cooperating to find ways to protect against its potential pitfalls. For now, Hu is making pledges that China has traditionally been unwilling to honor; the hope is that Pres. Obama has been able to convey the novel problems of these times, and that Pres. Hu has been able to see China’s future in a new, more interdependent, international light.

John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Barack Obama in last year’s presidential election, today introduced in the Senate the “Internet Freedom Act”, in a brazen bid to make the internet far less free for the average web surfer. The bill would bar the FCC from enacting regulations that would prevent internet service providers from interfering with users’ preferred content choices, penalizing small content producers and slowing the internet down broadly in order to collect fees for higher-speed services, which the providers would select.

The concept of net neutrality is not new; in fact, McCain introduced his bill on the same day as the FCC actually moved forward on a plan to establish net neutrality in the United States. McCain argues that net neutrality regulations will hamper “innovation” in the internet services marketplace and therefore slow job creation. But a vast and very impassioned movement, both among businesses and users, has fought long and hard for net neutrality regulations, because without them, the free press in the United States may literally disappear.

Major ISPs have sought to persuade policy-makers that they should be able to technically manage and interfere with specific travel routes for specific data online, privileging services that pay them for access to a wider audience and marginalizing anyone who does not. McCain is making the specific pitch the ISPs have used repeatedly in their arguments that they should be allowed to seize control of the Internet —which they did not build— in order to better control users’ browsing habits.

McCain’s proposed legislation, while posing as a defense of “internet freedom” may actually be a legal assault on the First Amendment, which mandates that:

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble [...]

That specific prohibition on Congressional interference in the “press” is being turned on its head by Sen. McCain. He alleges the ISPs are entitled to total “freedom” to control and manipulate the information that others create and which paying customers are seeking to access. McCain confuses the paper-mill for the writer or editor who actually takes the risk of speaking truth to power or expressing an untested view.

McCain’s bill would be a very deliberate attempt by Congress to abridge the freedom of the American citizenry to speak freely in the public square, to produce or to access the press they personally seek and/or to “assemble” in online communities, should those communities not pay the fees ISPs would demand for better quality connectivity.

If the bill McCain is proposing passes the Congress and becomes law, it would be the end of the Internet as we know it, because it would remove any effective obstacle to major connectivity providers using their networks to select among users’ content choices, leading to a kind of profit-based censorship of online content. Content creators, the journalists, media outlets and network and website designers of today, would find themselves severely restricted in their ability to employ the Internet’s resources freely.

There are rumors circulating that Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, is dead, or in a coma. The rumors are unconfirmed, which also means not proven false, and this has spurred still further speculation that the rumors might be true and Iran’s government struggling to determine how to see a smooth transition to a successor’s reign. The most prominent cleric after Khamene’i is a staunch opponent of the government of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, himself a former president of the Islamic Republic, is the most prominent cleric after the supreme leader and chairs the Assembly of Experts, the panel of clerics tasked with selecting and anointing the supreme leader. He has been openly critical of Ahmedinejad and the 12 June elections in which apparent fraud returned him to power. Were Khamene’i to depart the Iranian political scene, Rafsanjani might be seen as a likely successor.

The rumor seems to have begun when Michael Ledeen, a “neoconservative” American political watcher affiliated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote in his blog on Tuesday that “Yesterday afternoon at 2:15 pm local time Khamenei collapsed and was taken to his special clinic. Nobody – except his son and the doctors – has since been allowed to get near him. His official, but secret, status is ‘in the hands of the gods’.”

There appear to be reports emerging from Tehran that the atmosphere on the streets is “abnormal”, implying either a gathering mood of intrigue or a new wave of heavy security. Opposition leaders have reportedly contacted the government seeking clarification. Tabnak, a website linked to the government, has said the rumors are a “shameless lie” and part of a plot by the west to “destabilize” Iran.

Ledeen has repeated the claim, citing an anonymous source which he classes as “excellent”. But Ledeen is coming under criticism for past involvement in rumors that turned out to be untrue, and is even being accused of having deliberately spread misinformation or being a career propagandist. The Guardian writes:

Ledeen has a track record in spreading misinformation, according to the US magazine Vanity Fair, which claimed he was linked in the false reports that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger – one of the main pretexts for the invasion of Iraq.

And in January 2007 he falsely reported Khamenei’s death.

Vanity Fair’s article on the false intelligence regarding yellowcake uranium from Niger reported:

To trace the path of the documents from their fabrication to their inclusion in Bush’s infamous speech, Vanity Fair has interviewed a number of former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), and the Pentagon. Some of them refer to the Niger documents as “a disinformation operation,” others as “black propaganda,” “black ops,” or “a classic psy-ops [psychological-operations] campaign.” But whatever term they use, at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public.

Ledeen’s connection to that disinformation campaign certainly raises questions about the credibility of his claims about the Ayatollah Khamene’i. There have long been discussions and rumors about Khamene’i’s health, but despite Ledeen’s questionable reporting in the past, news organizations around the world have picked up this story, in part due to the tight media restrictions in Iran which make it difficult to verify or refute such rumors.

The phenomenon of “re-tweeting”, reposting and linking back to items already posted on the real-time updated short-message feed site Twitter, has allowed for the emergence of what sometimes turns into a global roundtable discussion, made up of short, sometimes superfluous, sometimes provocative ideas, and in many cases links to surprising but potentially effective online sources that spread a message or expand and deepen awareness of an issue.

The system is “democratic” in that there is no requirement that content be either serious or pop puff-pastry… sometimes the issue is war and peace, human rights and elections, green innovation, tax policy, or emergency response, and others it’s celebrity profiles or the aimless and globally irresonant banter of reality TV personalities. But that same aimless catch-all quality can make for quick tracking of politicians’ remarks and positions, or just links to useful but otherwise hard to find headlines.

The key feature of the RTRT (retweet roundtable) effect is the fostering of communication. True, too short a message limit makes for usually facile hyperbole, not particularly conducive to establishing communicative links, but the rapid-fire twittering chatter-sphere is an upsurge of communicative activity generally. And that is meaningful, both for information gathering and for sharing ideas and points of view.

In the heat of debate, especially debate fanning out over a broader population, ideas flame up and flame out. And in many cases, what’s left are stronger, more viable ideas, less susceptible to bias or narrow interests. Also in communicative intensification —i.e. idea sharing, brainstorming, linked research and debate—, we can see the productive emergence of bridge memes, like RT (retweet) and RT (roundtable), and even RT (route, as in how to get from A to B, or better still from A to Q and back to A, without falling prey to pitfalls and sand-traps).

Memes are irreducible snippets of meaning, independent of their executors and which serve mainly to perpetuate the presence of their underlying meaning —like gestures or words, or phrases unique to a given language— and which generate new meaning by their interaction and proliferation. Bridge memes are identical in appearance or seem to be, but in that resemblance allow for the convergence of distinct concepts with entirely separate realms of meaning attached.

The re-tweet does enable a kind of global roundtable to develop, in which anyone can talk to anyone, without directly messaging, and in which a single piece of information can gather an improbable amount of attention, simply by being RT’d, repeated, copied, reiterated, by one and then another person, each with his or her own unique reasons for passing the message along, filtering it or morphing it.

We then have to ask whether the re-tweet is the new model for public discourse. I tend to favor long essays, long personal letters, and a certain amount of immersion, reading and learning that allow the mind to form new matrices around ideas, not just tweet and chirp and chip away at them. But the short-form quick-burst message system is linking people around the world into one buzzing chatty web, in which ideas and politics, entertainment and emotion, struggle and celebration, all mix together to hint at, to point toward, to approximate, the human story.

From there, we can link people known and unknown to us, cherished and problematic, rival or reasonable, to whole new worlds of text and information that provide a chance at knowing more than we knew before. Long essays can be part of that. And short poems. Foreign languages can work their way in. And translations. Spontaneous or well-versed. A blending of alphabets. A blending of interests. A blending of disparate worlds that want to know and understand each other, but haven’t had the chance to talk things out.

The RTRT, the global roundtable of the linked and underscored, insinuating and energetic, short message, the colloquium of spontaneous tribes in a web-work of communities, can form new grammars, new rules of the road, new signposts, new semiotics. The facile can be a vehicle for the profound, and the profound can integrate itself into the technologically simple.

It’s all about the network… who you link to, who’s linking to you, what your messages are trying to accomplish. The locus from which one unknown personality informs thousands of others about the dealings of a teen pop star might, on a random day, when inspiration strikes, serve as a way to rapidly propagate an item of serious human or political interest, an emergency, a humanitarian crisis, a declaration of moral indignation.

The trivial can assume a social role, building up the communicative ability to inform when the time comes to put aside the trivial and take notice. And in the meantime, people who feel a need to find like-minded souls to share an interest in the trivial, can do so, ever fascinated, ever acquiring more information, useless or not, enriching or not, ever expanding their underlying project: that of communicating… that someone is out there…

Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.

After a summer of hullaballoo and expectation, and the hopes that the device would be introduced along with the new iPods at a September event, it now looks like the Apple tablet will be introduced sometime in early 2010. Reports suggest Steve Jobs has “reset” the tablet project multiple times, out of concern the projects presented were not offering consumers a distinct enough field of uses to warrant an entirely new field of computing and device manufacture.

Now, Gizmodo reports it has confirmed that Apple has initiated negotiations with major print publishers, including not only McGraw-Hill —a major publisher of educational materials—, but also The New York Times and others, with the aim of securing content distribution rights and format collaboration to deliver textual content to readers via iTunes.

Such a system would allow publications to secure subscription payments from readers who want a full-access pass to content that more closely resembles a printed page than the way web pages work now. McGraw-Hill and Oberlin Press are said to be working with Apple to make textbooks available through iTunes, with the aim of allowing them to be published and viewed on the touchscreen tablet device.

The new Apple device would allow for full-color digital publishing, unlike the Amazon Kindle, which uses a grayscale eInk e-paper display. E-paper may be evolving, and it should eventually be capable of rich color displays, but at present, Amazon insists the grayscale look is meant to mimic the simple black-and-white pages of paperback novels and newsprint.

Textbooks are an important area of market innovation for the touchscreen tablet project. As Gizmodo notes:

The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.)

There is also a feeling that the touchscreen tablet might be something like Apple’s way of proposing a head-on rival for the burgeoning “netbooks”, micro-laptops that are cheap, small, lightweight, and focused on using web-based services and applications. It’s an important move to make, because while MacBooks sales are strong, Apple has had to reduce the cost of its cheapest MacBook already by $100 to $150, in order to keep its market share among students.

Steve Jobs has said netbooks are “junk”, and while some have proposed that the iPhone is really Apple’s response to that market, it has the drawback of requiring an AT&T monthly contract and not really being a strong word-processing platform. There are hopes, however, that the tablet might be cheap enough, maybe $500 or $600 at the high end, to undercut the appeal of the much less technologically advanced netbooks.

Jobs has been particularly demanding that a device with as much potential to revolutionize user interface standards not turn into another Newton, the Palm-like device that came just a little before its time. AppleInsider reports:

It seems like a long time coming. Nearly two years have passed since AppleInsiderexclusively reported in September of 2007 that Apple’s next big product initiative would be a modern day reincarnation of its beloved-but-defunct Newton MessagePad. And it’s believed the device had been slowly evolving as an R&D project for at least a year prior.

The 10-inch, 3G-enabled tablet, akin to a jumbo iPod touch, is the latest brainchild of chief executive Steve Jobs. That distinction, as insiders will tell you, carries its share of baggage. Under the critical eye of Jobs, contours must be precise, each pixel of the interface has to match a particular vision, and there can be no fault — no matter how slight — or it’s back to the drawing board.

The Apple tablet will be a vital step forward in the evolution of edgeless electronic reading devices, because right now, there is no e-reading device that is equipped with a fully functional graphic-user interface (GUI) or laptop-style operating system. A touchscreen tablet computer that runs an advanced full-service version of Mac OS X will push the envelope of digital media manipulation, and allow Apple to take the lead in setting standards for the next generation of on-screen “print” content.

DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.

When DVR allows one to rewind only that which is being viewed (because the program in question was not pre-recorded), then cuts off the rewind and saved material if the channel is switched, deliberately or accidentally, the viewer experiences this feature of DVR technology as punitive. The viewer is punished for not correctly interfacing with the efficiency-oriented technology, which is provided by entities that prefer the programming be viewed in the allotted time-slot and not recorded or viewed later.

This type of control flies in the face of what consumers expect to get from such digitally enhanced technologies. There are competing views on the salient function of digital content delivery: that it is designed to liberate content, and thus the end-user’s access to informatioon, or to control it, and thus dictate or pre-determine the end-user’s freedom of access.

Even now, late as they are catching on, ebooks are being treated by some as a means by which to charge per chapter, per page, per word, or even per viewing “session”. Major multinational corporations, like Google, are digitizing massive amounts of text, from throughout history, in the hopes of being able to build a business model around access to digital text. Google wants to deliver a free service, but it wants to profit from that service as well, likely by advertising or by commercial tie-ins — online books sales and the like.

Microsoft was beginning to initiate its approach to digitized text, ebooks, and digital text-reading devices, before the year 2000, and its plans counted on being able to “own” or “control”, with full licensing rights, 90% of all text ever produced throughout history, within 50 years. It foresaw a world in which hot new content might be worth hundreds of dollars, or where one would pay a penny per word, or pay a unit-cost every time a given portion of text was called up and accessed.

Google’s digitalization plans and licensing agreements may preclude that dystopian world of wholly owned and controlled textual content… or it may help bring it into being. So, there is an effort to prevent Google’s gaining too vast an influence over textual content. The web, we know, operates on the principle that content is free, and netizens are passionate and quick to form flash protest movements, beyond borders, when such freedoms are threatened.

But the tension between access and control is not going away. The Associated Press (AP) —which exists in part to foster the free flow of reliable information around the world, to counter repressive environments of censorship, public or private, and to make sure reporters doing that work have a viable means of professional empowerment, that they are rewarded— has declared it will charge for content to the extreme of banning unpaid quoting.

The policy will likely find its way into the federal court system in the United States, as copyright laws allow for the use of information from news sources, once the information is published. The rule of thumb in digital publishing has normally been that if words are quoted for informational purposes, the quote is justifiable, so long as the original source is cited. In most cases, digital publishers and reporters go as far as to link back to the original source.

The AP has been criticized by freedom of information advocates for hypocrisy. Its online business has grown exponentially through viral quotes and linking, but it now demands that no one, anywhere on earth, not even for educational purposes, quote five or more words without paying the AP for the right to do so.

The problem of protecting the earning rights of AP reporters is understandable. The news organization has to be able to profit from publishing its material, which is harder to do if whole stories are quoted and reposted free of charge. But the AP’s response to this problem might pose the most serious threat to the free flow of information seen since the Internet went global.

The problem with such attempts to clamp down on and control the user’s access to information is that, although digital technology enables such efforts, the overarching trend, and the real purpose of digital technology, is to liberate content and grant increased access to the end-user.

Digital text should not be harder to pick up and put down, free of punitive charges and pop-up ads (including “display ads”) than would be printed text… any such blockages run counter to the liberational logic of digital technology.

Similarly, digital video might be constrained by ads that block access to viewing, but should move ever more in the direction of the freedom of return access afforded by the printed word or printed still images. The problem facing digital content providers, then, is how to secure a revenue stream in connection with allowing that enhanced access to information, the way newspaper and book publishers do.

This is not a small problem, but the quality of the answer will determine the resilience of any digital content enterprise and the level of freedom of access enjoyed by the end-user broadly, across the landscape of digital publishing. Is there an ethical obligation not to set back the progress toward increased freedom of access? Maybe. But failure to participate in that logic of liberation will set back a business’ prospects over the long term.

While covering an anti-G20 protest in Pittsburgh, a CNN reporter was hit with a chemical agent. It appears the chemical substance was fired by police at demonstrators in an effort to disperse the crowd. It is unclear from the video what event occurred to prompt the order declaring the demonstration illegal. It appears the demonstrators may have strayed from their assigned, agreed route, in an effort to get closer to the site of the G20 meeting.

During the CNN report, even as it appears something is being fired by police, the following announcement can be heard over a public address system:

By authority of the city of Pittsburgh Chief of Police, I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vecinity. If you remain in this immediate vecinity, you will be in violation of the Pennsylvania crimes code. No matter what your purpose is, you must leave. If you do not disperse, you may be arrested and/or subject to other police action. Other police action may include actual physical removal, the use of riot-control agents and/or less-lethal munitions, which could cause risk of injury to those who remain.

Brian Todd, the CNN reporter who was gassed by police firing chemical agents at demonstrators said the original route of the march had been blocked by several rows of riot police. The demonstrators, he said, reacted by shifting their route to an open street. Todd reported: “The protesters shifted several streets over, in different directions. Every time they confronted police, they shifted over.”

Todd also reported that once the tear gas took effect “It was hard to see and hard to breathe”, but said by the time he was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, “I’m doing fine; it’s completely out of our system”. While it seemed some of the demonstrators did disobey police instructions, the need for the use of tear gas has been questioned.

Wolf Blitzer sought to confirm from Brian Todd that he was in fact “a credentialed member of the media” and that he was authorized to be on-site at the demonstration. He said the street was technically an open public street, but that “the cops aren’t really paying a whole lot of attention to who’s media and who isn’t.”

FOX News has relentlessly smeared and defamed the umbrella organization for volunteer community groups, ACORN, openly participating in a concerted nationwide effort to promote false charges of illegal activity and force the group to stop all involvement in efforts to bring urban and minority voters to the polls.

In its latest broadside against the group, FOX News has spent two months consistently parroting charges made by Republican members of Congress, who say ACORN is a “criminal enterprise”, apparently due to those Congressmen’s misunderstanding of criminal law and alleging sweeping responsibility for the actions of people who actually defrauded ACORN itself. Essentially, ACORN is being accused of fraud because it was the victim of fraud.

This is like elected officials, whose job is to adhere to the highest standards of public service, telling people victimized by identity theft or credit card fraud that they, as victims, are in fact the fraudsters. Or worse, it would be like law enforcement telling accusing someone who is violently assaulted through no fault of their own that they are the assailant and should serve jail time as a result.

What’s worse, in the case of the accusations against ACORN, is that this is not just a misallocation of blame or an unfair slander; this is part of a prolonged, coordinated effort to derail effective public service activities aimed at extending the right to vote to more Americans. Millions of Americans cannot vote because they are not registered, or because they don’t know where to register or that they need to.

The current controversy regarding ACORN has to do with the unsubstantiated accusation that its voter outreach efforts are “voter fraud”. The false charges tie in to the scandal over the politically motivated firing of 9 US attorneys by then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. One of those federal prosecutors came forward to testify that he had been dismissed because he refused to initiate federal prosecutions for the very accusation being leveled again now, because there was no evidence.

Multiple judges have already ruled that ACORN had no responsibility for the alleged fraud, and that ACORN was in fact the victim of the fraud, who brought the fraud to light and sought legal retribution for those individuals who violated both their contracts with ACORN and the law. No court of law and no federal prosecutor found any evidence that ACORN sought to inflate voter-registration numbers in order to then permit anyone to vote more than once.

ACORN is being accused of the crime committed in a situation in which ACORN was actually the victim. FOX News takes this perversion of basic reasoning, and then broadcasts the headline time and again throughout the summer that ACORN is “a criminal enterprise”. Is not FOX News, by this same standard, a criminal enterprise? Taking money from groups whose agenda is to “rig” elections, spreading lies that favor those groups, and doing material harm to not just ACORN but hundreds of community organizations that depend on it.

FOX News, which refused to run ads previewing Michael Moore’s film Sicko, documenting the systemic failure of healthcare in the United States, is now running ads by a shadowy front group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights —known to be affiliated with the team behind the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth smear campaign—, whose specific goal is to derail Pres. Obama’s healthcare reform plan.

Immediately before that ad ran, anchors read a FOX News headline “Pres. Obama’s healthcare plan scarier than cancer; meet the woman who fears for her life” and after the ad, a preview of Sean Hannity’s slam campaign against “government-run healthcare”, which, by the way, is not actually on the table in the current healthcare debate.

These facts clearly demonstrate not just a political leaning, but a willingness to refuse specific information to the public and to present false information, distortions and even outright lies, in order to push a specific political agenda. The FOX News headline “Pres. Obama’s healthcare plan scarier than cancer; meet the woman who fears for her life” may refer to a woman who is “afraid” and who may tragically be suffering from cancer, but it overtly lies about Pres. Obama’s reform plans.

The reform as written —in line with the framework laid out by Pres. Obama for health reform, and as he repeated time and again in speeches, not just this year, but going back to before he announced his campaign for the presidency— is designed to guarantee that no one would be denied treatment for pre-existing or costly conditions. The woman with cancer need not fear; she would be more likely to have her care fully covered under proposed reforms than she is now.

But FOX News chooses to exploit her, to use her sad situation to spread terror among the American public. Is this done in order to hurt Pres. Obama politically? Is it done to help specific monied interests? Is it done to serve the interest health insurance companies have in prolonging a status quo in which the market for health treatment is rigged to favor their profits over positive health outcomes or cost-effectiveness?

Or is it all part of a blanket assault on the rights of Americans to know the truth about the world, as told by a free and independent media, not bound by the influence motive either of government or of private power brokers? Is it of a kind with the ACORN story? A crude attempt to kill off a network of community-level non-profits whose aim is to lift up the voiceless and defend the rights of those who can’t defend themselves?

What motivates FOX News to so persistently use terror as a storytelling mechanism, even when the facts have nothing to do with the version of events FOX News staff report? What motivates this cable network to use its media influence to knowingly repeat lies as if they were facts and to smear public servants, community groups, its own critics, and anyone who strays from the Republican party line, as enemies of the nation?

Maybe it doesn’t matter what the underlying reason for the lies and the bias and the promotion of terror in the minds of its viewers might be… maybe in the end, it only matters that FOX News has taken upon itself the goal of undermining anything and anyone who works against the political leadership of the Republican party, and the often deranged worldview it projects, are all symptoms of the same illness: a pathological incapacity to see and to relay evidence or truth.

To study the reporting of FOX News from one day to the next, from one week to the next, from one year to the next, is to witness a range of ongoing, deep-seated pathologies, an almost obsessive allegiance to certain themes, even to the passion for delivering certain claims as fact, despite the lack of evidence to support those claims.

This if FOX News, but is it really, in any traditional sense of the word, a news organization? Or is it just a 24-hour-a-day 7-days-a-week always-on campaign advertisement for one political party? And if that’s what indeed it is, should its funding and its ability to profit from its activities, its ability to broadcast in the weeks before an election, be curtailed under campaign finance laws?

FOX News is accusing ACORN of running afoul of electoral laws, without evidence, while every day we see evidence that FOX News is a Republican ad campaign masquerading as something else. Does that make it criminal? Does that mean its lies are strategic? Does that make it responsible for deaths that might result from the lies it has told about healthcare reform, if its efforts to kill the reform are successful?

One could imagine a campaign where activists who oppose the message and the methods of FOX News were to request that all federal tax breaks (federal funding, in another form) be barred from going to any of FOX News’ owners or directors, until there is a thorough and complete investigation of the organization and the manner in which it crafts a pre-packaged political message to be conveyed through its distortions of the news of the day.

The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.

According to CNET:

Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are joining with a few library associations to oppose the settlement, Peter Brantley, the Internet Archive’s director, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. The coalition, which is expected to be announced in a couple of weeks, will be co-led by antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Brantley said.

The settlement treated authors as a class in a class action suit to prevent the unauthorized use of their material by Google, and was reached by the Authors’ Guild. It should be the case that only those authors represented by the Guild —some 8,000— are part of the pertinent class, but publishers and some Google competitors argue the settlement flies in the face of copyright law and gives Google far too much control over textual content online.

Google has also reached settlement with the Association of American Publishers, and would take 30% royalties from any revenues generated by its Google Books search site. Some authors view the process as a threat to their own control of their material, while the Authors’ Guild and the AAP view the settlement as an opportunity to make sure they 1) set a precedent for payment and 2) expand the basic revenue stream they can access via online media.

TG Daily reports:

Hundreds of writers, the National Writers Union, libraries and a group of professors from the University of California have already expressed concern over the deal, mainly in terms of the freedom Google would have to set prices and fears over whether Google would protect the privacy of users.

According to Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, Google’s intent is nothing less than to dominate or replace the entire library system in the US. “If this deal goes ahead, they’re making a real shot at being ‘the’ library and the only library”, he has told the BBC. The BBC reports that “Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923.”

Meanwhile, the US Dept. of Justice has opened an investigation into the potential anti-trust issues the settlement could raise. Kahle warns that “The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways — all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach.” Opponents fear Google’s control of so much textual material will lead to a profit-driven standard for access to most books, sidelining the system of free libraries and tradeable hard-copies in print.

The coalition announcement comes at a crucial time: in April, a judge ruled that authors should have four more months to decide whether they wanted to opt out of the Google Books settlement with the Authors’ Guild. The deadline for that process is now approaching —4 September 2009—, and Google is preparing to take full advantage of its rights under the settlement. A final hearing on the fairness of the agreement is scheduled for 7 October, and it will likely be there that the coalition first brings serious weight to bear on the process.

• NOTE: Cafe Sentido’s publisher, Casavaria, has agreed, on a case by case basis, to permit Google Books to show a “limited preview” of books it currently has in print and which are available for purchase. These are promotional agreements, aimed at driving online sales of the print book itself, and are not the same sort of online publishing involved in the Authors’ Guild case.

The Iranian government has ordered the closure of an opposition newspaper which was to publish a statement by opposition candidate Medhi Karoubi —3rd in the June election tally—alleging Iranian security forces were raping political prisoners. Karoubi had made the claim previously, and says there is evidence to support the claim; his statement was to defend himself against criticism from the government and might have included evidence. The paper’s closure effectively stops the publication of his statement in the Iranian press.

Mr. Karoubi had refused government efforts to persuade him to abandon the chief opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and was allegedly himself assaulted by government-linked militia after emerging from a prayer service delivered by Ayatollah Rafsanjani, a reformist former president. Opposition figures and human rights groups have alleged there is a concerted and violent intimidation effort ongoing in Iran to break up the opposition and force its leaders out of the public eye.

Mohsen Rezai, the one conservative who opposed Pres. Ahmedinejad in the June vote, agreed not to join opposition protests against the outcome, but the son of one of his top aides was detained and killed while in custody. Rezai has called the prosecution of opposition leaders, including some prominent political figures, illegitimate “show trials” and denounced the brutal treatment of people detained for supporting calls for electoral transparency.

The allegations that security forces have been raping female prisoners added to the popular outrage about revelations they had tortured and brutally beaten prisoners, killing an unknown number. The revelations were concrete enough and the popular and institutional outrage so severe that Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i was forced to close the main prison camp where the abuses were allegedly taking place.

In response to the newspaper’s closure, protesters gathered and began chanting slogans critical of the regime. According to Reuters:

Dozens of opposition supporters chanted “death to the dictator” on Monday after police prevented a protest rally in front of the building of a reformist daily which says it has been temporarily closed down, a witness said.

Police at the scene in central Tehran prevented the demonstrators from gathering outside the offices of the Etemad-e Melli newspaper of leading reformist Mehdi Karoubi, the witness said.

Mehdi Karoubi said in response to the closure that “this behaviour and intimidation will not silence me and I will raise the issues I deem necessary”. He added that “I will only shut up when all the dimensions of these incidents have been examined and the people are told the truth.” Though the supreme leader and the president have pushed forward as if to establish a new administration, there is still a major and telling absence of clerical support for the new administration.

According to the LA Times, “A statement purportedly signed by a group of Tehran judges condemned the treatment of prisoners and the televised confessions of suspects allegedly mistreated and held in solitary confinement for weeks without lawyers.” Authorities also revealed they may release French researcher Clotilde Reiss, who was detained and prosecuted for sending photos of opposition protests to friends via e-mail.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has announced he is founding a new opposition movement called the Green Path of Hope. The movement may encompass a broader coalition of opposition parties, and may even win support from some more conservative clerics who are angry about the brutality of the government’s crackdown on reformists.

Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, the supreme leader, has been maneuvering to consolidate control over state institutions for an ever tighter circle of trusted allies. His own son Mojtaba Khamene’i was named to head the shadowy government-linked Basij militia, alleged to be responsible for some of the most brutal elements of the crackdown, including summary executions. Now, he has named Sadegh Larijani, son of Speaker Ali Larijani, as the new chief justice.

The apparent efforts to consolidate power and establish an effective hereditary authority over the Iranian constitutional system is seen by some as a shrewd attempt to rule out all dissenting views or opposition-linked political figures. Others view it as a sign of mounting desperation among the circle of leaders including the supreme leader, the president and anyone who may have had a hand in alleged efforts to manipulate the June vote count.

• Iran Opens ‘Riot’ Trials for Opposition Protesters
• Iran Prisoner Abuse Stokes Outrage Against Government
• Khatami Calls for Referendum to Judge Iran Government’s Legitimacy
• Iran Government Attacks Civilians During Friday Prayers
• Rafsanjani Decries Iran Crackdown, Urges Release of All Political Prisoners (updated)
• Iran Association of Researchers & Teachers of Qom Declares Vote-count Illegitimate
• Iran’s President Ahmedinejad Orders Probe into Shooting Death of Neda Soltan
• Kalemeh, Mousavi’s Web Site, Shut Down by Iranian Authorities
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election

Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov were abducted from the headquarters of the children’s charity Save the Generation on Monday, 10 August, and found dead the following day, their bodies riddled with bullets and stuffed in the trunk of their car. The gruesome murder is the latest in a long string of killings of rights workers and activists investigating or with access to evidence about atrocities and human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Sadulayeva ran the children’s aid organization Save the Generation and her murder puts the gravity of the increasingly out of control political violence in Chechnya in high contrast. The US has expressed grave concern over the mounting campaign of violent killings of people advocating human rights in Chechnya. Amnesty International says the killings are a clear sign of the “climate of impunity” that reigns in the war-torn republic.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian warlord turned Chechen president, blamed by many of the rights workers and investigators slain in recent years for such killings, said the killing was particularly “cruel” and is being viewed as “a challenge to the authorities”. Many observers view such statements from Mr. Kadyrov as simple obfuscation; some fear that his authoritarian regime has actually spawned an out-of-control fractious culture of random violence and brutality, which may lead to a new Chechen war.

The European Union has demanded a transparent and credible probe into the campaign of killings in Chechnya and related to investigations of human rights abuses there. The EU issued a statement reading “It is important that an investigation into these latest murders is conducted promptly, transparently and thoroughly. The perpetrators must be brought to justice”.

Sadulayeva and her husband are the latest in a series of human rights advocates murdered in cold blood, apparently in connection with their work to bring the truth to light and/or defend the rights of the defenseless. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the most vocal and persistent investigative journalist in Russia working on issues of Chechen atrocities and major corruption, was gunned down in her apartment building in Moscow.

Politkovskaya was killed on then-president —and Kadyrov backer— Vladimir Putin’s birthday. In January, Russia’s most prominent human rights campaigner, Stanislav Markelov, was murdered in cold blood, along with Anastasia Baburova, a reporter who had worked with Politkovskaya, at 3 in the afternoon, just a mile from the Kremlin.

Markelov and Baburova had been instrumental in developing evidence against a Russian colonel, Yuri Budanov, who was jailed for his role in the brutal kidnap, rape and murder of a young Chechen woman. Budanov had been released from prison only days before Markelov and Baburova were assassinated.

In July, human rights worker Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and murdered. Her body was found dumped outside Chechnya, in a neighboring Russian republic. Kadyrov was widely thought to be behind the killing, as Estemirova’s work for the Memorial Human Rights Center had revealed evidence of official corruption and involvement in atrocities and political killings.

Estemirova once told a friend and colleague that Kadyrov had directly sought to intimidate her during a one-on-one interview with him. Some say that, like Politkovskaya, she predicted her own killing, but Estemirova said she was not afraid and that Kadyrov appeared to her to be nothing but an unintelligent thug. She called him a “genuine idiot” and suggested the interview helped her confirm that his regime has no reason for being other than his own ongoing campaign of terror.

The LA Times reports today that violence against those seen as sympathetic to would-be insurgent groups in Ingushetia, another troubled mostly Muslim republic in Russia’s south Caucasus, is escalating. According to the Times’ reporting:

Day after day, insurgents attack police and government officials with ambushes and bombings. And day after day, security forces unleash what human rights activists describe as a campaign of killings, abductions and torture in their efforts to force calm upon the land.

Now Ingushetia is struggling under the weight of a new terror, one that seeps over the mountains from Chechnya, a neighboring mostly Muslim Russian republic.

The report also alleges that Ramzan Kadyrov is sending death squads into Ingushetia to carry out a campaign of torture and murder of those linked to Ingushetian separatist groups or sympathetic political organizations. In June, a bombing nearly took the life of the Ingushetian president; Russian president Dmitry Medvedev almost immediately called for Kadyrov to expand his crackdown on militants.

Kadyrov said publicly that “when we hunt for criminals, there can be no borders”. While Moscow has authorized “joint Ingush-Chechen security operations”, according to the LA Times, it is in fact Kadyrov and his Chechen forces that are carrying out the campaign of raids and killings. These actions have left Ingushetia in a dangerous limbo between government and chaos, with no real accountability for the worsening rash of killings.

Sadulayeva’s killing demonstrates the dangers at work in Chechnya and how far Russian support for Kadyrov’s regime has allowed the rule of law to deteriorate across the North Caucasus region. The situation has become so dangerous that Novaya Gazeta, the paper for which Anna Politkovskaya worked, and which had collaborated with Markelov, Baburova and Estemirova, said it will no longer operate in Chechnya.

On its website, Novaya Gazeta’s editors issued a statement asking “Do these massacres mean that a coordinated campaign to destroy human rights advocates has been launched in Chechnya?” It went on to explain that ”Following a number of international human rights bodies and charities, Novaya Gazeta has decided to suspend the activity of its journalists covering events in Chechnya”.

Ramzan Kadyrov earned international recrimination for personally taking control of the investigation into the murder of Natalya Estemirova, just a month ago, and it is widely expected that there will be no credible investigation into the killings of Sadulayeva and Dzhabrailov. Concerned rights workers and free press advocates warn there may be a campaign of intimidation, disappearance and killing to help conceal the chain of responsibility for the murders.

- · – · – · – · -

More reporting on political killings in Russia and Chechnya:

• Who Killed Natalya Estemirova?
• Open Letter to Pres. Obama from Reporters without Borders
• Frontline UK Hosts Debate on Gov’ts Impeding Press Freedom in War Zones (video)
• Court Clears Three Accused in Politkovskaya Murder
• Trial of Accused in Politkovskaya Murder to Be Held in Open Court
• Politkovskaya Investigation in Disarray, Supporters Say Russian Gov’t Sabotaged Case
• Russian State-Owned Media Launch Smear Campaign Against Litvinenko
• Litvinenko Poisoning Death Now Carries Stain of Blame-the-Victim Allegations
• ‘Objectively Verifiable Truth Now Suspect’

During a brief mission to the North Korean capital Pyongyang, former US president Bill Clinton secured the release of two jailed Korean-American reporters, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Lee and Ling had been sentenced to 12 years hard labor for allegedly violating North Korean law by filming without state permission. Clinton met personally with DPRK leader Kim Jong-il, who is reported to be in ill health, and there is speculation the visit could create an opening for US-DPRK dialogue on a range of issues.

It likely included the goal of arranging the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, but also of providing some insight into what the US might require in order to advance a meaningful range of humanitarian aid to the isolated country. The White House has stressed throughout that there was no direct communication from Pres. Obama to the DPRK government, and that Mr. Clinton’s trip, which included top-ranking current and former aides as well as Secret Service protection, was “a private mission”.

Speaking to a crush of journalists and supporters, Laura Ling fought back tears while expressing gratitude to all those involved in securing their release:

30 hours ago, Euna Lee and I were prisoners in North Korea. We feared that at any moment, we could be sent to a hard labor camp. Then we were told we were being taken to a meeting. We walked through the doors, and there before our eyes stood President Bill Clinton… Euna and I would just like to express our deepest gratitude to Pres. Bill Clinton and his wonderful, amazing, not to mention, super-cool team…

Ms. Ling also said that upon seeing the former president, “We were shocked, but we knew instantly in our hearts that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end. And now we stand here, home and free”. Ling, the sister of American television journalist Lisa Ling, spoke at a ceremony surrounded by family and dignitaries, including former Pres. Clinton and former VP Al Gore, who runs the media company, Current TV, where the two reporters work.

Clinton’s visit has been touted as a private mission, but an opportunity to re-open dialogue with the reclusive “rogue” state, especially on negotiations about its pursuit of nuclear weapons and international demands that it cease development of technologies related to building and deploying those weapons. The US administration of Pres. Barack Obama, however, said it is incumbent upon North Korea to verifiably recommit to nuclear disarmament, in order to further such dialogue.

Pres. Obama told the press today that “We have said to the North Koreans there is a path for improved relations, and it involves them no longer developing nuclear weapons and not engaging in the provocative behaviour they have been engaging in”. Conservatives have assailed the trip as capitulation to state terror and have said the deal gives too much “ransom” for the release of hostages, while critics of that view say the same conservatives now angered by Clinton’s winning release by way of a personal visit and brief dialogue, supported and defended Pres. Reagan’s dealing thousands of deadly missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages in the Iran-Contra affair.

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial today, by Stephen Yates and Christian Whiton, charging that “The two prior U.S. administrations engaged in prolonged discussions with Pyongyang and provided aid in return for false promises to end its nuclear program. Mr. Clinton’s visit has continued the pattern of rewarding Pyongyang for bad behavior.” It is not clear that the visit rewarded the North in any substantive way, but as the possibility of dialogue begins to open up, it must be considered that direct, bilateral dialogue may not be the most effective means of persuasion.

Yates and Whiton argue that a strong international nuclear planning group is needed, to ensure that nuclear deterrence is targeted, credible and multilaterally applicable. This is not contrary to existing security policy, and the Obama administration has signaled its preference for engaging Pyongyang through the established program of six-party talks, involving regional allies of the US and China, which while sharing close economic ties to the US is a major supporter of the North Korean regime.

Adam Nagourney, writing for the New York Times, suggests that the trip has shown an important domestic political development, the increasing harmony between the most visible and influential families in Democratic party politics. Bill Clinton greeted his former vice president Al Gore, upon returning two journalists who work for Gore’s Current TV channel, is married to Pres. Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Obama is pushing aggressive advances in carbon-emissions reductions and healthcare reform, the policies that Clinton and Gore have long championed, while reviving their administration’s cost-cutting “Reinventing Government” program and expanding the AmeriCorps volunteer service. And it has been reported that Clinton’s trip was the product of a request by former VP Al Gore to intervene in order to secure the release of the two captive reporters. This reunion is, in some ways, the most visible collaboration between the two men since early in Clinton’s second term as president.

Convergence of views and interests among the Clintons, the Gores and the Obamas, means an increased likelihood of establishing a unified national party strategy for the 2010 and 2012 elections, and a more effective means of lobbying the public on key issues of policy and reform. Observers are already speculating that conservative ire over Mr. Clinton’s diplomatic errand may be linked to fears of what an Obama-Clinton-Gore alliance could mean for their chances at chipping away at the sizable Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Pres. Obama must now seek a strong and united front among allies, including Russia and China, in confronting the North Korean security risk head-on. There are rumors of behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts aimed at arranging a unified approach to the resolution of this crisis and the planning for future negotiations based on demands the US is prepared to make, now that Ling and Lee are safely home. Such reports remain unconfirmed, and no date is set for a next round of binding negotiations.

An anonymous State Department official is cited by the AFP as having revealed that former president Bill Clinton’s visit was requested by North Korea as early as 24 July, and that Mr. Clinton wanted to make sure there was a verifiable pledge to release the journalists before he took the trip. In light of those revelations, it is thought the North was, rather than seeking concessions from the US, seeking a high-profile political figure to carry their own diplomatic message to Washington. No report as yet reveals what, if anything, DPRK ruler Kim Jong-il or his aides requested Mr. Clinton convey to Pres. Obama after his return to the US.

Rights policies and copyright laws have always been controversial, providing legal “ownership” over information (text, mechanical processes, ingredient formulae) to individuals or organizations, despite that information being of use to others. They are designed to provide a commercial value to the production of new types of information (creative new directions in language usage, technical inventions, medical research and innovation), but they can also impede the free flow of information where it is most needed.

The “fair use” doctrine was brought into copyright law as a response to this problem. Where the use of copyrighted material is of inherent value to society, it need not be considered an infringement of the commercial rights or interests of the copyright holder: these uses tend to related to educational uses of fragments of text, informational reproductions of copyright-protected materials that either provide context or background for a review or report relating to that content or a field discussed by it.

But digital technologies, which allow the easy, speedy reproduction of huge amounts of copyrighted material (whole books, detailed technical documents, musical recordings and feature films), have raised entirely new ethical questions about fair use and strict licensing policies. “Viral” marketing and content distribution has helped organizations large and small spread their message and their commercial reach across a global network of content-seekers, but has also threatened to erode the royalty-generating potential of some content.

Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.

And efforts by media giants to control the distribution and use of content through strict licensing policies, some of which propose or implement by-the-word fee schedules, now threaten to undermine the very concept of a free and independent press whose job description includes speeding reliable information to the public without legal or technical impediments, wherever possible.

How can major content providers, including trade guilds and press cooperatives like the Associated Press or the AFP, protect their revenue stream and funding portfolio, without actively countering the free flow of information among free people?

• Join the discussion on The Hot Spring Network

Human Rights Activist Estemirova Murdered in Chechnya :: Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile. [Complete text...]

Natalya Estemirova is only the most recent victim of an apparently politically motivated assassination, carried out against a journalist or human rights worker investigating atrocities committed against civilians in furtherance of corrupt uses of state power. In an article on “Journalists Around the World at Risk of Violence or Imprisonment“, we explored this May the problem facing journalists across the globe, who still face mounting and extreme dangers just by virtue of doing their jobs.

Conflict zones are especially dangerous places, and even nations with a long and successful history of defending and promoting freedom of the press, like the United States, have warned crusading journalists that stepping outside strict protocols could put them in harm’s way with no guarantee of protection (Iraq war, 2003).

The north Caucasus region, Sudan’s Darfur, eastern DR Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq and North Korea, are just an example of the range of physical risks journalists are facing. How can governments and news agencies work together to ensure greater freedom and better guarantees of protection for journalists doing the most necessary and most perilous work?

• Join the discussion on The Hot Spring Network

The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.

Fair use doctrine is a fuzzy area of copyright law. Competing interests often seek to define fair use more liberally or more conservatively, depending on their particular interest in any given piece of content. The AP has aggressively defended its right to control all media produced through or in relation to the agency, but even some of its members say the AP has gone too far afield in claiming copyright control authority. One famous case involves a photo of Barack Obama which was used as a template for the now globally famous artistic rendering, produced by artist Shepard Fairey.

The AP considers the image to be part of its library of copyrighted materials, due to a similarity between the Obama portrait and a photographic image produced by an AP-employed photographer. The photographer says the particular image is not part of the AP’s catalogue and he has not requested its action on his behalf. He even said that as a journalist, there is a multiple interest in producing work for professional compensation, producing information for news consumption, and producing an iconic image that is, by the nature of its effect, part of the commons.

The AP’s new licensing policy means that publications across the web will have to abandon the AP altogether. It is, whether intended to be or not, a death blow to potentially millions of small publishers (individuals, in many cases) whose work could serve as a viral distribution platform for the news agency. Critics hope an online backlash could elevate other news agencies with more liberal quoting policies, to rival the AP and serve as opposition to this licensing policy, which threatens to undermine the free flow of information around the globe.

The AP’s aim is to profit from a 100% command and control licensing strategy, requiring registered use rights for all publications everywhere that seek to quote the AP or refer to their reporting. That command and control strategy will have an immediate chilling effect on the flow of information around the world. It will assist authoritarian regimes in controlling the information available to the public, both within and beyond their borders, as web reporters see themselves shackled and unable to relay AP content virally.

The AP has no plans to compensate online publishers to provide free links to their content and has announced no plans to provide royalty compensation to Twitter posters who direct web traffic to AP content. It is possible, even, to see the AP’s new licensing strategy to be an attempt to “double-dip”, charging multiple times for the same content. Publishers already pay the AP to republish their stories in full, meaning that anyone linking back to those stories may also find themselves charged for re-use or for announcing the content put out by those paying AP partners.

The principle of net neutrality is also under threat from policies like what the AP is now proposing. While fair compensation for work produced is a laudable goal in content creation, the AP seeks to guarantee that no mention of its work be made without some compensation being provided. This is a radical expansion of copyright with extraordinarily high proposed fees ($2.50 per word) that would serve to impede global information flows and reduce the informational value of an open internet.

In fact, the AP appears to be establishing an effective end to the doctrine of fair use, even charging $7.50 to educational institutions that want to use 5 words of AP content for any reason. The policy page falsely claims that this fee is necessary to obtain “permission to legally post”, when in fact, educational use is considered to be the most expansive area where fair use applies.

If the legal viability of such a policy is upheld, the AP would have undue control of global information flows. Giving one institution such veto power over the creation of new content (barring even uses which are designed to be contextual, informational, and which cite the AP as source and link back to the full content, thus adding to the commercial value of the material produced) would amount to an internet culture effectively censored by one commercially-interested institution.

Incredibly, the AP provides RSS feeds that can be used to embed AP content on websites, including not only headlines, but excerpts from articles that range in length from 10 words to 50 words. Not only is this a direct subscription to the standard of viral posting across the internet, where third parties publish or quote excerpts and link back to the original content, it is an attempt to piggyback on the uncompensated work of other publishers.

The use of RSS essentially belies the very idea that the AP has an implicit need or right to control, license and gain from every parcel of 5 words its writers produce. The AP is a cooperative designed to guarantee the free flow of reliable information from around the world and to ensure that journalists are compensated for their work. Its best interests would be served by barring the full republication of its articles, or the unauthorized use of its images, while allowing for clearly innocuous or even beneficial postings of citations with links and other short mentions of its content.

In fact, the US Copyright Office specifically states that “summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report” is considered standard fair use by the 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law. News organizations have to grapple with a very special sort of copyright problem: their work is intended to expand the depth and range of the commons of information and ideas: information and ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted, and so while they produce copyrighted materials, they are not necessarily entitled to 100% total control of that material, where the public interest might be served by reference to or quoting of that content.

The proposed system of licensing fees by the word, or by the 5 word set, poses a very dangerous, very extreme threat to the foundations of a free press and the functioning of an open internet. Aggressive legal action by the AP, as seen elsewhere, could hamper innovation and slow people’s access to needed information, while reducing the AP’s own reach and undermining the total value of its products.

This publication will no longer quote the AP and will make a consistent effort to use other sources wherever possible, to avoid linking to AP-produced content or risk in any way (from the news of this policy arriving on 3 August 2009 onward) falling prey to the totalizing license structure proposed by the AP for its content’s spread across the web.

It is our contention that the AP (RSS is evidence) has knowingly sought to benefit from a symbiotic relationship with small publishers and that its change of position, to now seek to extract prohibitive rates of payment for the continuation of that practice, is unethical and highly irresponsible in light of its likely adverse impact on press freedom and the free flow of information. It is furthermore our contention that enforcing this policy will have the effect of enhancing authoritarian rulers’ grip on power and their ability to manipulate information and control what information reaches the public within their borders.

Natalya Estemirova was a seasoned journalist and well-known human rights activist and researcher. She was one of the leading sources of information about human rights abuses and major atrocities committed in Chechnya, and was considered a leading voice against authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Kadyrov denies involvement in her killing, though rights groups and independent observers consider it likely there is some connection between the killing and groups allied with Pres. Kadyrov. The question remains: who killed Natalya Estemirova? We may never have an official conviction that determines culpability, because those responsible for other high profile killings of journalists and activists who reported on atrocities committed against the Chechen people have never been brought to justice.

Stanislav Markelov, a top human rights investigator, was murdered in cold blood earlier this year; his killers remain at large. Anna Politkovskaya, a friend and colleague of Estemirova’s, was murdered in 2006, in her apartment building, the crime still unsolved.

As we reported on 15 July:

Kidnapped while leaving her home in Grozny, Chechnya, in the morning, her body was found at 17:20 local time (13:20 GMT) in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, near the city of Nazran, according to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency. Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman for the regional interior ministry told the press the victim had two wounds to the head and that “it was clear she had been murdered in the morning”.

Natalya Estemirova, a close friend and investigative colleague of Anna Politkovskaya, was one of the most prominent human rights campaigners still active in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered on then President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, leading to widespread speculation it was meant to send a sign of allegiance to Putin, who backs Kadyrov’s hardline regime in Chechnya and had been openly critical of reporting by the crusading journalist.

Russia is listed as one of the most dangerous places for journalists. At least 20 journalists and human rights workers have been assassinated since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000, and many believe there are links between elements of his power base and the killings. Chechnya, in particular, is a republic beleaguered by years of war and brutality. Indeed, the violent death of Natalya Estemirova is evidence of how dominant the logic of cruelty has become in the power structure of the Chechen state, backed by Moscow.

Ramzan Kadyrov is widely viewed as ruling more through the brutal expression of raw power than by any legitimate electoral process, though he and his allies dispute his involvement in political killings. Kadyrov has been accused of direct involvement in atrocities by Politkovskaya, Markelov and Estemirova, as by many others. That common thread has led increasing numbers of human rights and press rights groups to call openly for his prosecution, though the Chechen and Russian governments say there is no evidence against him.

Pres. Medvedev has said Estemirova’s killing is an outrage, but coordination of the investigation is seen by many as slow-moving and partial. Ramzan Kadyrov has, amazingly, announced he personally will head a Chechen government investigation of the murder. Supporters of Ms. Estimirova and her accusations against Kadyrov say such an investigation could never be legitimate or transparent.

In fact, for many in Chechnya, it is as if the war has never ended. The first war flared up into a much more brutal and sustained 2nd Chechen war, and now, in the aftermath, the hardline regime of former rebel Ramzan Kadyrov, which is said to be closely backed by Moscow, stands accused of ongoing atrocities against dissidents and reporters investigating warm crimes and systematic corruption.

The war blisters on in the terror experienced by those who know of or have experienced first-hand the atrocities of the regime. Some still speak of “genocide”, a word that for Chechens harkens back to the Stalinist era, when the entire Chechen population was unilaterally expelled and relocated, their language and culture brutally suppressed. That legacy of marginalization and brutality led to the popular Chechen resistance, when Moscow invaded militarily in 1994.

And the deep divisions have persisted, as the factions broke apart, old rebels (like Kadyrov) aligned themselves with Moscow, and others were targeted for elimination by any means, by a new hardline security establishment. In essence, Natalya Estemirova is the latest victim of the Chechen war, which lives on in the damaged and degraded society in which ordinary Chechens still struggle to defend their liberties and achieve enough dignity to be free of persecution.

Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.

Socio-economic barriers to such free flow of information are just another kind of information control that establishes dangerous demographic stratification into privileged and marginalized groups. Governments across the world are using web filtering technologies to censor the information available to their citizens and crack down on dissent.

In China, in Iran, in Cuba, aggressive web filtering measures and electronic spying technology have been used to prevent the spread of information unfavorable to the government leadership, to obscure corruption, and to hunt and persecute members of a would-be democratic opposition. In China, web filtering censorship has perhaps reached its zenith, with major multinationals collaborating in the “Great Firewall of China”.

Web searches routinely rule out links that contain information banned by the government, and the government has explored barring any website not entirely in Mandarin from being viewed inside China. Talk of the parallel Chinese internet has given way to concerns the government has opted for a technologically more realistic total filtering program.

“Cyber dissidents” are now an entirely new area of press targeted by government censors and security forces. In China and Iran, cyber dissidents are jailed simply for linking to materials that the government has sought to keep away from the public eye. Iran’s government has repeatedly shut down opposition websites in order to prevent democratic assembly, to cover up violence against civilians or to obscure challenges to official diktat.

China recently delayed plans to implement a draconian filtering system based on a new “green dam” software platform. The government is believed to have been taken aback by the broad-based and persistent expressions of anger over the plans, as the nation’s population continues to move into contact with the online medium and is demanding more transparency.

But Pres. Hu Jintao came to office promising a “smokeless war” against the press and cyber dissidents, and China has been criticized across the world for efforts to manipulate the information made available to its citizens, including distortions of the unrest a year ago in Tibet and Sichuan and now in Xinjiang, which many say could foment violence against people of Tibetan or Uighur ethnicity, depending on the case.

Efforts to use internet filtering to cover up the massacre of unarmed civilians at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 are part of that ongoing war against the free press. The Beijing government fears acknowledging what took place there could delegitimize the current regime and sow political unrest. Pro-democracy advocates say that like any government in a free democracy, China’s government could acknowledge its mistakes, promote electoral reform, and liberalize its political process, without destabilizing the country.

In remote regions like Darfur in western Sudan or North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conditions of extreme danger for aid workers and violence against journalists means information filters very slowly through the population, worsening already catastrophic situations of persistent conflict and human suffering.

Violence against women in Darfur is persistent in part owing to the fact that Darfuri women have virtually no access to information distribution systems. They are almost never able to report crimes against them to any public authority or international group. And medical service workers are often unable to locate people in need of help, as the remote region is plagued by lack of communicative media.

There is also concern about the effects of internet usage on the development of human cognitive abilities. Social cognitive structures are thought to be directly affected by use of communicative media, and the internet as achieved fundamental alterations in the communicative structure of society; facing that reality, it must be a universal right of all people to participate in the direction and development of that medium in reference to their own daily lives.

In May, I reported on this for The Hot Spring Network:

“Cognitive science has revealed a human brain notable for its plasticity. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the Internet not only shapes itself to the mind but shapes the mind to itself”, writes Ana Menéndez in this month’s Poets & Writers magazine.

What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?

The internet and attendant communications technologies have a visible decentralizing effect that enhances the democratic influence average people can exert in the public sphere. In the US election of 2008, that was evident in online information sharing and organizing. In the Spanish election of 2004, it was evident in the popular outcry that was so ably communicated by sms, that helped uncover a government disinformation campaign.

Clay Sharky, of the TED initiative, explains in a video address how social networking services and a new generation of web applications and smart phones, are coming together to empower individuals across the world and bring about the end of “top-down” controls in the political sphere. This effect is operating even in authoritarian societies, where in some cases the best information available comes from individuals posting anecdotal reports online.

Perhaps the world’s most developed and advanced campaign for net neutrality, or legal constraints on internet service providers’ (ISP) ability to plan or carry out systematic filtering of content, has taken root in the US. Motivated by a fierce defense of First Amendment rights and an understanding of the democratizing effects of open flows of information, the net neutrality movement has won important victories both in Congress and among federal regulators.

In March 2008, I reported for Cafe Sentido that “We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society.” But that moment is being met with stepped up efforts by governments and businesses to control the freedom of ordinary people to access and control information.

Such efforts are a direct assault on democratic freedoms, and measurably impede the ability of people to gather information related to risks to their health or safety or to orchestrate the dissemination of information that may favor their social, economic or ideological interests. As the US Bill of Rights‘ commitment to a first-order freedom of the press shows, all other democratic rights are built on the foundation of a free and independent media culture. So access to the web must begin to be treated as a basic measure of human rights everywhere.

Follow these links for more information on:

• Press Freedom & Persecution of Journalists
• Net Neutrality & Internet Freedoms
• Human Rights & Democratic Freedoms

The 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been declared ended, with the taking of the Tigers’ last strongholds, the reported “liberation” of the civilian population of the region, and the killing of LTTE founder and supreme commander Velupillai Prabhakaran, whom the government declared to have died on 18 May 2009, in an attack on an ambulance reportedly carrying LTTE leaders.

There has been no major flare-up in violence, and the LTTE says their new direction will be non-violent resistance to the Sri Lankan government’s control of the area they will still seek to separate from Sri Lanka. They have named a new leader, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the militant group’s former head of international relations and an alleged arms smuggling kingpin. The executive committee of the LTTE has said he “will lead us into the next steps of our freedom struggle according to the vision of our esteemed leader”.

Pathmanathan has said the Tigers will adapt the means of their “liberation struggle” to suit the times, saying the times require non-violent means. According to the AP:

The defeated Tigers said they have set up a head office and an executive committee to move forward their campaign for an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have claimed discrimination at the hands of Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese.

Pathmanathan said earlier the Tigers would abandon their armed struggle and use nonviolence to achieve their goals, and he promised the group would reorganize itself based on democratic principles — a major change from Prabhakaran’s dictatorial leadership style.

The government of Sri Lanka has celebrated its military defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebel group and has signaled its desire to promote tourism as a new industry, now that the country is thought to be safe from bombings and clashes between the government and rebels. There are plans to develop the eastern coastline for beach-oriented tourism, and plans to develop transport infrastructure, to better service an influx of travelers.

The head of Sri Lanka’s Tourism Development Authority, Bernard Goonetilleke, has told the press “We are working to develop infrastructure – building roads, power supplies, and bridges where they currently have ferry services. We also want to plant trees along the roads to beautify the place.”

Goonetilleke said an area around Arugam Bay, near a 300-acre lagoon, along the eastern coast, would be a site for planned developments, possibly a move to attract surf tourism. He said that “at least 12 to 13 hotels” would be built in Passigudda and suggested that a number of islands would be developed for resort tourism, with thousands of hotel rooms in total.

But after 26 years of civil war and the spring offensive, Sri Lanka has a lot to clean up before conditions return to a state of peacetime normalcy. An estimated 495,000 internally displaced people, most of them ethnic Tamils forced to flee the government’s offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels, still have no way to return home or find resettlement.

A number of sources have reported soaring numbers of deaths among the internally displaced in Sri Lanka’s camps, as high as 1,400 per day. The government says those figures are exaggerated and that the highest reported number of deaths on any given day is 11. Now comes the news that encephalitis and meningitis have broken out among the internally displaced persons (IDPs), and that the outbreak is severe enough that UN staff have been warned to stay away from certain areas.

According to Xinhua:

Meningitis and encephalitis have erupted in Sri Lanka’s northern Vavuniya district where about 300,000 Tamils civilians displaced by the last phase of war between the government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels are being housed, a local newspaper said on Sunday.

The Sunday Times reported that 14 new encephalitis cases were detected in the Vavuniya General Hospital over the past week.

There are concerns the disease is either extremely virulent or is being undertreated, possibly due to inattention to the needs of Tamil refugees. Official figures for treatment of meningitis in Sri Lankan hospitals showed the fatality rate had dropped to 5%. The Sunday Times report found that fatality was running as high as 50% for cases as the Vavuniya General Hospital.

There are concerns the government will not be held to account for alleged war crimes (like the bombing of civilian areas with cluster munitions or the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals). The Asia director for Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, has expressed dismay at the IMF’s announcement it will soon make a loan to the Sri Lankan government.

Adams said:

To approve a loan, especially $600 million more than the government even asked for, while they have hundreds of thousands of people penned up in these camps is a reward for bad behavior, not an incentive to improve…

While the IMF says the loan will help Sri Lanka to repair its fiscal situation and devote resources to reconstruction of the war-torn Tamil north, Human Rights Watch was critical of the approach: “Current government policies, however, in failing to respect human rights standards, threaten post-conflict reconstruction, reconciliation, and stability, and thereby undermine the purpose of the loan”.

Disputes over death reports, alleged bombing of civilians and rumored ongoing ill-treatment of encamped refugees has led human rights workers, journalists and international observers, to argue that greater freedom for the press would help resolve such disputes about what is going on in the camps. But even two months after the war was declared officially ended, the government’s war on the press persists.

Perhaps in furtherance of its plans for a reborn Sri Lanka, free of the ills of war, or perhaps from inertia, or from fears that the old security crisis could return, the Sri Lankan government appears to be continuing its strict control of all media operating in the country. With numerous physical attacks on journalists, including several high-profile murders, foreign journalists have also had their visas revoked or their stories censored.

Now, AP reporter Ravi Nessman, the wire service’s chief correspondent in Sri Lanka, has been forced to leave, after the government refused to renew his visa. The reason given was that no foreign journalists are allowed to stay in the country for more than 2 years, but other journalists have said they have never heard of any such rule. The press-rights organization Reporters without Borders (RSF) says Nessman was expelled for reporting on the facts of the war.

RSF says “After attacking human rights activists and doctors, the government is now taking it out on foreign journalists who reported on the suffering of the people. It’s extremely unfortunate”. The watchdog group also says it has information that no fewer than “eight foreign reporters or contributors to international media” have been forced to leave Sri Lanka in 2009 alone.

Over 30 Sri Lankan journalists have been forced to flee, due to violent assaults and/or threats since the beginning of 2008. Ongoing intimidation of the press has mystified some observers, who say it shows the Sri Lankan government is not willing to leave behind some of the authoritarian measures it used during the conflict with the Tamil Tigers. Others worry that heavy-handedness toward ethnic Tamils could cause the conflict to re-ignite.

Sami al-Haj, a reporter working for TV news network al-Jazeera, was jailed for six years at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, before being cleared and released. He is now setting up a team to file suit against former Pres. George W. Bush and other officials within his administration for damages related to his imprisonment.

Al-Haj says torture is still ongoing at Guantánamo Bay and that the entire facility exists beyond the rule of law the United States Constitutional system requires. His lawyers say Pres. Obama must close the camp immediately in order to avoid continuing the violations of US law that began under the last administration.

The lawsuit will be a joint legal action, possibly under class-action rules, aimed at singling out those individuals who planned and ordered both the mass detentions without legal process and the abusive treatment allegedly received by a large number of those detainees during their prolonged detention at the prison camp.

The Guardian reports:

The case will be initiated by the Guantánamo Justice Centre, a new organisation open to former prisoners at the US base, which will set up its international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month.

“The purpose of our organisation is to open a case against the Bush administration,” said co-founder Sami al-Haj, an al-Jazeera reporter from Sudan who was illegally detained by US authorities for over six years. He was freed in May 2008.

The legal action is likely to be staged in Europe, at the urging of al-Haj’s attorneys. Al-Haj admits there is no legal authority for the European courts to force extradition of former US officials for civil suit, but he says the suit would bar travel for some officials to Europe, as they might be detained and forced to attend trial, should the suit go through.

Al-Haj says he was twice interrogated by British intelligence officers, once in Kandahar, in 2002, and once at Guantánamo Bay. He says he was not mistreated by the British agents, but that they urged him to “cooperate” with American interrogators and if released to serve as spy for the US intelligence agencies. That al-Haj now appears to have been cleared of any suspicion and was simply functioning as a journalist, has his legal team seeing a clear and deliberate campaign of coercive interrogation as responsible for his detention.

It would be another innovation in international legal process for European courts to allow a civil lawsuit against Bush administration officials, and the same arguments made by Bush administration lawyers against such a proliferation of legal venues for seeking to punish US officials for their policy actions might be made by Obama lawyers as well, who might fear “venue shopping” aimed at targeting US officials, regardless of wrongdoing.

Pres. Obama remembers TV news “icon” Walter Cronkite

Café Sentido’s own editor and director, J.E. Robertson, wrote today:

American journalism has lost one of its elder statesmen. Walter Cronkite was one of the founders of broadcast journalism, pioneering a warm, conversational style for delivering facts with detachment and gravitas. The old-style newsman delivered news to the American viewing public about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the protests of the 1960s, the Moon landing (40 years ago Monday), Watergate and other major moments of crisis and achievement.

Robertson finished his obituary with the no word-mincing line: “He will be missed, but his example stands implacable.” We stand behind Walter Cronkite’s principled, ethical pursuit of hard facts and truth-telling reportage. We stand behind his willingness to go beyond the story to get to the underlying truth that power-brokers might consider convenient to keep hidden.

Reporter and historian David Halberstam wrote for The Atlantic, today:

He knew by instinct the balance between journalism and show biz; he knew you needed to be good at the latter, but that you must never take it too far. He was enough of an old wire-service man to be uneasy with his new success and fame. He was just sophisticated enough never to show his sophistication.

In addition, he had physical strength and durability. Iron pants, as they say in the trade. He could sit there all night under great stress and constant pressure and never wear down, never blow it. And he never seemed bored by it all, even when it got boring. When Blair Clark and Sig Mickelson recommended him for the anchorman job, that durability, what they called the farm boy in him, was a key factor. He was the workhorse.

Pres. Barack Obama lauded Cronkite’s “integrity” in a video statement released to the press (embedded above), saying:

He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day, a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. In moments of tragedy, Walter looked us in the eye and shared our pain … and he brought us all those stories large and small which would come to define the 20th century.

That’s why we loved Walter, because in an era before blogs and email, cell-phones and cable, he was the news. Walter invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down.

Frazier Moore, writing for the Associated Press, says of Cronkite that he spoke nightly to a “nationwide community gathered to watch [him]“, and that he:

… clearly embraced the possibilities of new media. He had plied his trade in newspapers, radio and at a wire service when, in the early 1950s, he answered the call of a cutting-edge but primitive emerging media platform called television.

Even for Americans who remember Cronkite declaring “and that’s the way it is” every evening in his heyday, it’s hard to fully recall the heights to which he took TV news. And vice versa. Simply put, at CBS News, he invented the role of anchorman and prevailed in that role until his retirement …

Walter Cronkite had openly lamented the direction of television and print news and the corrosive effects of the “24-hour news cycle”, which he felt drained the news business of thought and deliberation, creating a landscape of snap reporting with less and less depth and little to no background to give perspective.

But many in the news business have touted Cronkite’s passionate interest in new technologies and his willingness to take the work of the field reporter to the cutting edge of radio and television media, despite his early start in the business of ink and newsprint. More than oppose emerging media which had shifted the news culture away from his principles, he urged fellow reporters to be rigorous, thoughtful and given to probing investigation, so that the service they provided would be worthy of the expectations the public invests in the free press.

Ted Anthony, also writing for the AP, observes:

Barely a generation has passed since Walter Cronkite disappeared from our evenings. But the notion of one man — a single, authoritative, empathetic man, morally reassuring and mild of temper — wrapping up the world after dinner for America seems incalculably quaint in the technological coliseum that is 21st-century communications.

Many of the network farewells to the CBS anchorman, who died Friday at 92, seemed built around the notion of the father figure. Anchors and reporters who are part of another age — a still-unfolding era of community feedback, viewer outreach and social-media interaction — struggled to summon the idea of anchor as monolith.

NPR’s Scott Simon called Cronkite “a trusted voice of reason”:

Cronkite was a great broadcaster. He spoke to masses, not niches. He grasped that when the news was urgent, people would turn to the broadcaster not only for information, but for sincerity and calm.

Millions of people felt better to hear from this man who seemed experienced, but not jaded. He had a visible sense of grief in tragedies, and a little boy’s delight in the glory of space shots. He had gray hair and hound-dog bags under his eyes, but ageless sincerity.

Al Jazeera said the legendary anchor’s death is “the end of an era”, noting how “his legendary voice became associate with key events” during his long years at CBS. The video tribute notes the rare courage of a mainstream news anchor telling it like it is, giving in one of his most influential broadcasts his assessment as an independent observer of the ill-fated war-effort in Vietnam, in which he said:

… it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people, who lived up to their pledge to defend to democracy, and did the best they could.

Praised by news organizations around the world for his simple and straightforward way of delivering the facts of the day, the Al Jazeera montage gives Cronkite the last word, signing off in his signature style with the phrase “And that’s the way it is”. The online video does not note this, but the message is implicit that 24-hour TV news organizations like Al Jazeera, or CNN or France 24, owe their existence in part to this incomparable pioneer of the medium.

Howard Kurtz observes, in his piece for the Washington Post, that:

It is hard to remember, in this age of niche cable channels feeding every obsession, how dominant CBS and NBC (and, much later, ABC) were in their heydays. Every senior member of Cronkite’s news team — including, at various times, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Bernard Kalb, Fred Graham, Daniel Schorr — was a recognizable celebrity in his own right. (They were almost all men.) You got your morning paper, and then you watched Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley at night, perhaps while eating a TV dinner.

Kurtz delves into the reverence so many in the news business had for Walter Cronkite, for his legendary status, but also for his humanity, his principles, his professionalism, the equanimity with which he approached the work of trying to find out what was true:

[Tom] Brokaw has called Cronkite the “gold standard,” and at a time when journalism commanded a whole lot more respect than it does today, he was its undeniable symbol. Perhaps it was his wire-service training, at a time when print experience was still considered valuable for broadcast journalists. Perhaps it was his calm demeanor, his mastery of understatement, his disdain for on-air showmanship.

Another write-up in the Washington Post credits Cronkite for having “shaped the medium and the nation”. Xinhua editor Wang Guanqun praised Cronkite’s “professional experience and kindly demeanor”, and quoted several American comments on his death. In the short Xinhua newsclip, Wang also wrote: “Cronkite pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was regarded as the ‘voice of TV news’ by New York Times.”

In this moving CBS video, Walter Cronkite gives an account of his long evolution as a journalist, in his own words: “I think I was a workaholic from the very beginning… it was the newspaper work for me; I just fell in love with the darn business”. He laments dropping out of college and says he always regretted it, but goes on to explain how he met his wife and achieved so much as a journalist.

Cronkite talks of how Edward R. Murrow called him and asked him to come to work at CBS, the beginning of the most significant and lasting part of his legacy. He says Murrow’s famed “Good night, and good luck” was in part the inspiration for his adopting the catch-phrase “And that’s the way it is”. He also notes that it was on one of his evening news broadcasts that the Beatles first appeared on American television. In the end, he says he’s lucky to have spent his whole life in journalism, adding “I think it all worked out pretty well”.

President Barack H. Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW

Washington, DC 20520 cc: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton US Department of State 2201 C Street NW , DC 20500

Paris, 1 July 2009

Dear President Obama,

As you are about to visit Russia at President Dmitri Medvedev’s invitation, the international press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the frequency of crimes of violence against journalists in Russia and the prevailing impunity for those responsible.

Russia is currently ranked 141st out of 173 countries in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. According to our research, at least 20 journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Vladimir Putin became president in March 2000. The latest victim was local newspaper editor Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, who died on 29 June of injuries received in April.

Harassment and attacks on journalists have increased since mid-2008. Three cases in particular have shocked us. Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetia.org website, was shot dead in Ingushetia in August 2008 after being illegally arrested. Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a local newspaper near Moscow, had to have a leg and several fingers amputated after being badly beaten in November. Anastasia Baburova, a young Novaya Gazeta reporter, was fatally shot in the head in downtown Moscow in January.

This violence, which does not spare the capital, is even more marked in the Russian Caucasus. The report of a fact-finding visit to Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia that Reporters Without Borders issued on 25 June highlighted the deplorable circumstances in which journalists work in these republics and the almost complete absence of press freedom there. As you may know, two of the journalists gunned down in Moscow in the past five years, Paul Khlebnikov in 2004 and Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, had spent much of their time covering Chechnya for Russian and international readers.

Neither of these murders has been effectively investigated. The fifth anniversary of the death of Khlebnikov, a US citizen who edited the Russian edition of Forbes, is on 9 July. The judicial authorities suspended the Khlebnikov investigation at the end of May because of their inability to identify a suspect, although they subsequently told relatives it would be relaunched. The acquittal in February of three alleged accomplices to the Politkovskaya murder was overturned last week. The investigation continues but without convincing results as regards the masterminds, although that is the key issue.

We understand that relations between the United States and Russia are not limited to the issues of human rights and the rule of law. But it would be wrong to ignore them. Russia is an inescapable presence on the international stage and if it wants to be seen as a reliable partner and factor for stability, it must pledge to do more to respect human rights and freedoms.

Your words will carry more weight as US-Russian relations enter a new phase and we therefore urge you, during your talks with Russian government officials, to raise the issue of violence against journalists, especially the cases mentioned in this letter, and the impunity enjoyed by those responsible.

We thank you in advance for giving this matter your attention and we look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Jean-François Julliard, Secretary-General

• This letter was originally published by RSF on 3 July 2009

Reporting from Cafe Sentido on anti-press violence in Russia:

• Human Rights Activist Estemirova Murdered in Chechnya
• Frontline UK Hosts Debate on Gov’ts Impeding Press Freedom in War Zones (video)
• Court Clears Three Accused in Politkovskaya Murder
• Top Russian Human Rights Advocate Murdered in Cold Blood
• Trial of Accused in Politkovskaya Murder to Be Held in Open Court
• Politkovskaya Investigation in Disarray, Supporters Say Russian Gov’t Sabotaged Case
• Russian State-Owned Media Launch Smear Campaign Against Litvinenko
• Litvinenko Poisoning Death Now Carries Stain of Blame-the-Victim Allegations
• ‘Objectively Verifiable Truth Now Suspect’

Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile.

Estemirova, who had worked with assassinated investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya and was a winner of the , was a vocal critic of the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, who is accused of widespread human rights abuses, political killings and war crimes. Russian authorities, from the Putin era and into the Medvedev era, have refused to fully investigate allegations against Kadyrov, preferring to cast him as a patriotic hardliner unwilling to let Chechnya secede from the Russian Federation.

Kidnapped while leaving her home in Grozny, Chechnya, in the morning, her body was found at 17:20 local time (13:20 GMT) in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, near the city of Nazran, according to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency. Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman for the regional interior ministry told the press the victim had two wounds to the head and that “it was clear she had been murdered in the morning”.

Natalya Estemirova, a close friend and investigative colleague of Anna Politkovskaya, was one of the most prominent human rights campaigners still active in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered on then President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, leading to widespread speculation it was meant to send a sign of allegiance to Putin, who backs Kadyrov’s hardline regime in Chechnya and had been openly critical of reporting by the crusading journalist.

Numerous critics both inside and outside of Russia have alleged that a shadowy network of political figures aligned with Pres. Putin —whose administration employed more active and former spies than any Russian government on record— was conspiring to eliminate critics and consolidate the Putin-centered power bloc that installed Kadyrov in Chechnya. Putin was initially dismissive of the significance of Politkovskaya’s murder, a reaction that shocked many, including political allies.

Now, various groups are calling for a full accounting of Russian political assassinations throughout the post-Soviet era, many of which have never been fully prosecuted or resolved. Human Rights Watch today “urged the Russian government to launch a full, independent, and transparent investigation into Estemirova’s murder”. The HRW statement reads:

“The Russian authorities should take every possible step to bring Natalia Estemirova’s killers to justice,” said Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch. “It seems to be open season on anyone trying to highlight the appalling human rights abuses in Chechnya. It’s high time the Russian government acted to stop these killings and prosecute those responsible.”

Is Russia getting away with murder in Chechnya? There has been triumphalist recasting of the entire Chechen conflict by Russian authorities in Moscow, who now say the resistance is dead and Chechnya is firmly aligned with the Russian Federation. But throughout the process of “resolution”, the assassination of activists, lawyers, and dissidents, has been a persistent stain on Russia’s Chechnya policy.

The pattern is so persistent and visible that Vladimir Putin has alleged it is part of a conspiracy by his political enemies to destabilize the Russian Federation. Some allege the underlying security strategy for Chechnya was to use overwhelming, indiscriminate and brutal force against anyone who would impede outright military reconquest by the Russian military. Putin often justified military and paramilitary actions critics called war crimes as an aggressive counter-terrorism effort to secure Chechnya.

According to the Huffington Post:

A report was released on the same day as Estemirova’s killing, which calls for Russian officials, including Prime Minister Putin, to be held accountable for crimes while they have been in office.

Today, President Dmitry Medvedev expressed outrage at the killing and pledged a thorough prosecution. A spokeswoman told the press the president views as evident the possible connection between her murder and her professional work. Medvedev will now be under pressure to demonstrate that his administration really is serious about prosecuting such political killings, though specific pronouncements on the process of the investigation or the security officials who will lead it have not been given.

But in powerfully ill-fated timing, Pres. Medvedev was in Sochi today, visiting with political and military leaders from Ingushetia, and praising the “success” of security operations to crush a separatist movement he termed “terrorist”. According to Radio Free Europe:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said after meeting near Sochi with acting Ingushetian President Rashid Gaysanov that security forces have had “success” in their counterterrorism operation against Islamic militants in Ingushetia, RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service reports.

Medvedev did not specify what he meant by success or where it was achieved.

The wave of violence includes a recent assassination attempt on the life of Ingushetian president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. He survived the attack, but had to turn over power temporarily to Gaysanov. Medevedev has long been seen as part of the Putin bloc of power and an heir to Putin’s security policies. Russian military interventions in the Caucasus region have raised fears —and allegations— of the kind of abuses seen in the Chechen conflict.

There is concern Russian authorities have sought to further harden their security stance after making nice with US president Barack Obama, who while visiting Russia met with human rights campaigners and said the US was committed to seeing the spread of “universal values”, commentary many in Russia saw as open criticism of the Putin-Medvedev power bloc and its much maligned security policies.

The Guardian newspaper, for instance, is reporting:

The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US’s commitment to “universal values”.

The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.

Critics and dissidents have intensified their complaints of government interference with media and with rights campaigners and non-governmental investigations over the last decade. Questioning whether Estemirova’s murder is more evidence of “impunity” for political murders in Russia, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) today praised Estemirova for her work with the group:

Reporters Without Borders is appalled and saddened by today’s murder of former journalist Natalia Estemirova, the Russian human rights NGO Memorial’s representative in Chechnya. …

Estemirova helped Reporters Without Borders conduct a fact-finding visit to Russia’s three Caucasian republics – Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan – in March. The information and analyses she shared with Reporters Without Borders reinforced our conviction that the Caucasus is on the brink of chaos and that human rights activists like her are bravely filling the gap left by a dwindling independent press.

RSF also demanded of Russia that: “The authorities must publicly condemn this murder and demonstrate a real determination to combat impunity.” RSF recently sent an open letter to Pres. Obama, urging him to call on Russian officials, during his meetings with Pres. Medvedev, PM Putin and others, to call to account all those responsible for violence against the press. The letter noted “According to our research, at least 20 journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Vladimir Putin became president in March 2000.”

This month alone, Estemirova was actively denouncing alleged involvement of Chechen security forces in a number of murders, including the home-invasion murder of Madina Iunusova, a young widow whose husband had been killed in a “police action” in Chechnya. In another case, Rizvan Albekov and his son Aziz were abducted by police, and subsequently gunned down with automatic weapons in what was intended to be an “exemplary punishment”.

According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the kidnappers put their prisoners on display in front of  a group of young men, ordered Albekov to confess his guilt in aiding Chechen rebels, then opened fire when he indicated he had not. They allegedly then threatened to do the same to anyone who had aided the rebels.

Estemirova had accused Kadyrov and his cronies of running sinister brothels filled with sex slaves, kept prisoner by threat of violence, and forced to service the soldiers who serve Kadyrov’s interests. She allegedly told a fellow journalist that Kadyrov had sought to strike fear into her in a private interview in 2008, adding that the authoritarian Chechen president seemed to her to be a “genuine idiot” and that his regime existed simply to serve the whims of his power.

• Frontline UK Hosts Debate on Gov’ts Impeding Press Freedom in War Zones (video)
• Court Clears Three Accused in Politkovskaya Murder
• Top Russian Human Rights Advocate Murdered in Cold Blood
• Trial of Accused in Politkovskaya Murder to Be Held in Open Court
• Politkovskaya Investigation in Disarray, Supporters Say Russian Gov’t Sabotaged Case
• Russian State-Owned Media Launch Smear Campaign Against Litvinenko
• Litvinenko Poisoning Death Now Carries Stain of Blame-the-Victim Allegations
• ‘Objectively Verifiable Truth Now Suspect’