The spreading Occupy movement has seen one after another sit-in, protest camp or march brutally and inexcusably assaulted by paramilitary police actions, using chemical agents and other weapons of war, against unarmed, nonviolent citizens exercising their basic constitutional rights. The result has been a rash of unfettered violence across the world against pro-democracy advocates.

In Egypt, officials have openly said they should be allowed to use military violence against civilian demonstrators, because it is being done across the United States. After the atrocities of Oakland, when police fired rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters at point-blank range at penned-in, unarmed demonstrators, sending ex-Marine Scott Olsen to the hospital with a fractured skull and brain injuries, the use of paramilitary tactics seems only to have spread.

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week staged an unannounced, midnight raid on the original Occupy Wall Street protest site, using chemical weapons, LRAD combat sound cannon, and police officers in riot gear swinging wildly with billy clubs against anyone in sight, regardless of threat or posture. There has been no penalty, and no punishment, for officers engaged in aggravated assault against civilians.

Mayor Bloomberg deployed counter-terrorist police helicopters to the scene of the violent assault, to prevent news helicopters from filming what occurred. Press were banned from the site, by what authority it remains unclear. At least 26 journalists were assaulted, beaten, injured, and/or detained, on the night of the Zuccotti Park raid. There was a planned, deliberate use of violence and combat tactics against unarmed, nonviolent, even sleeping and prone demonstrators.

The brutality of the raid was so severe that when City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Washington Heights) rushed to the site to observe and to make the case against the use of violence to disperse the protesters, he was assaulted by police and arrested for disorderly conduct. According to the New York Daily News: Several people detained with him told me Rodriguez was bleeding badly from a gash in his forehead. Still, by 6 p.m., he had not been arraigned and his lawyer, Leo Glickman, had not been allowed to see him.

Glickman says his client is not even being afforded the basic due process protections afforded to any arrestee and that the citys treatment of the protest and of the councilman is an effort to silence the movement. At least one retired state Supreme Court justice also found her attempts to provide legal observation to the raid obstructed. The Daily News reports the scene as follows:

Retired Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith can’t believe what she saw this week. At the urging of her son, who joined the Zuccotti Park protests weeks ago, Smith had volunteered to be a legal observer in case of mass arrests.

She received a text message early Tuesday that a bust was imminent, so she got to Zuccotti around 1:30 a.m. As she exited the subway at Broadway and Dey St., she met a wall of cops in riot gear who were preventing people from getting anywhere near the park.

“There was a black woman standing next to me,” Smith said. “She kept frantically telling the cops her daughter was in the park and she wanted to make sure the girl was okay.”

“All of a sudden, a cop takes his baton and cracks her in the head,” Smith said. “She hadn’t done a thing. Then they started chasing people down the street.”

Smith’s efforts to get police to recognize her as a legal observer proved futile. Likewise, several reporters who were arrested while covering the protest found their press credentials worthless.

Crimes were committed by authorities that directly violate the Constitution of the United States and its fundamental protections for free speech, freedom of the press and the freedom of the people to peaceably assemble. The denial of access to counsel for some and the barring of press and legal observers from the scene is a clear attempt to circumvent the right of the people to petition their government for the redress of grievances. Some First Amendment advocates have accused the city of barring press and legal observers in order to 1) undermine the evidentiary process and 2) allow for impunity in the use of extreme force by police.

Across the United States, we are witnessing, sadly, one after another mayor decide that the free exercise of constitutional liberties is a threat to public order, only to deploy paramilitary tactics to crush peaceful protests.

There are accusations of a coordinated planning strategy among mayors to determine what level of force they will deploy, and by what means, to crush the demonstrations. Some mayors offices have claimed the right to secrecy for security reasons, and there are Freedom of Information filings being made to learn who knew what when, and who gave which order that led to police firing on demonstrators, or using chemical weapons in unprovoked attacks against citizens.

In Egypt, where the nonviolent Tahrir Square uprising brought down the dictator Hosni Mubarak, in just 18 days between January 25 and February 11 of this year, authorities are now openly citing the actions of American mayors and police forces as justification for their use of extreme violence against nonviolent civilian demonstrators calling for genuine democratic reform. Mayors Bloomberg, Emanuel, Quan and others, are aiding and abetting the use of extreme violence to crush pro-democracy movements across the world.

This is not hyperbole. This is not interpretation. This is what is happening:

• In the streets of New York City, paramilitary forces were deployed, using tactics designed for armed combat in a warzone, using weapons designed specifically for combat in a war zone, deploying chemical weapons against unarmed civilians and banning all press coverage of the event.
• In the streets of Oakland, police shot a former Marine in the face at point-blank range, while he was penned in, and despite his having no weapon of any kind, posing no threat to anyone, and doing nothing of any kind in violation of any law. When he fell to the ground, gushing blood and good samaritans rushed to his aid, which not one of the police present did, an Oakland police officer fired a flash-bang grenade apparently loaded with tear gas directly into the huddle of people trying to help him, as if to finish off the protest with one last shot.
• At UC Davis, police walked along a row of nonviolent student protesters linking arms, and deployed a chemical weapon directly into their faces, with reckless and abject disregard for their health, their wellbeing, their rights, the rule of law or their own obligation to protect and serve.

In each case, the authorities behaved in direct contravention of the Constitution of the United States, and carried out brutal, wanton, physical assault against unarmed civilians. The violence against journalists in New York City is among the most worrying developments, because it suggests a depraved disregard for American law at the highest levels and directly mirrors the kind of planned atrocities being carried out in countries where corrupt regimes are actively trying to stamp out all pro-democracy protest.

In Egypt, the escalation of official violence against protesters has left 33 people dead since Saturday. The lesson of military impunity taught by Mayor Bloombergs assault on demonstrators has been learned, and is being treated almost as legal precedent by corrupt regimes unwilling to consent to any genuine open democratic process. The consequences are increased impunity, increased suffering, the deaths of innocents and an attempt across the region to roll back the democratic gains of the Arab spring.

People across the United States should stand together, regardless of party or ideology, and demand that there never again be even one instance of law enforcement being deployed to use force against any civilians exercising their basic rights.

- – -

Related:

• The Oakland Crackdown (discussion)
• What is the Meaning of This?
• Occupy Wall Street, with a People-centered Investment Bank

Rupert Murdoch has, today, told a Parliamentary committee in London that he was “clearly” misled by unknown persons within News Corp. Several of the committee members have sought to clarify who may have been responsible for misleading him. His son James told the committee that “What happened at News of the World was wrong”, adding that “the company has admitted liability, and we have set up the appropriate compensation schemes”.

The first question was directed to the son, James Murdoch, who was asked what new information had come to light, since the time he had said, in 2008, that there was no apparent information relating to further illegal phone hacking. He prefaced his response with a brief explanation that he and his father were cooperating fully with police, that they took this matter extremely seriously and that they wanted to make sure that all evidence came to light.

Rupert Murdoch interjected, before his son’s response to the question, saying that he wanted to add “This is the most humble day of my life.” He was thanked by the minister asking the question, and the hearing continued.

When asked if he recognizes that as chief executive of News Corp. he is ultimately “responsible”, Rupert Murdoch said flatly “No.” The question was repeated, and Mr. Murdoch specified “The people I trusted, and the people they trusted.” He added “I have known Mr. Hinton for 52 years, and I would trust him with my life.”

Mr. Hinton resigned from News Corp. last week.

Rupert Murdoch also said the decision to close the 168-year-old newspaper News of the World was “far from” commercial in nature, and stemmed from his family’s being “ashamed” of what the paper had done.

When asked about payments made to victims of the illegal spying, James Murdoch said the legal settlements included payments that did not, in his estimation, require any approval from the global company or the board of directors.

James Murdoch was asked about what standards were in place to allow for hiring individuals who would file no invoices. He said he had no knowledge of any established practice for doing so, and said reporters and staff could use cash for such contacts but would normally have to report having done so.

He was also asked whether News Corp. had any practice in place allowing for other forms of remuneration, aside from cash, cheque or bank transfer. He said he had no knowledge of any.

His father said “reporters have no authority to make payments”, in cash or any other form, and that this authority rests with the managing editor.

Rupert Murdoch as asked if after having been raked over the coals in the UK press, he could think differently in future about using his news outlets to do the same to other, potentially innocent people. He declined to say whether he would change his practices, saying “it’s not deliberate” when his newspapers and news outlets cause harm or discomfort to subjects of their reporting.

Critics may bristle at this suggestion, given allegations that News Corp.’s tabloids not only spied on and/or harassed potentially thousands of individuals, but that there may be a tendency to report without evidence or even fabricate accusations, in order to pressure public figures or profit from unfounded gossip.

The elder Murdoch then added, tapping his hand repeatedly on the table, “This country does benefit greatly from having a free press, and so having a transparent society, though it may be inconvenient for some people.”

James Murdoch, when asked for a third time what the nature of the information was that he said came to light only after prior litigation was closed and police had closed their prior investigation, he said that he had been led to believe that there was no additional information to be sought.

He had testified earlier that three sources of information regarding the investigation into illegal phone hacking led News Corp.’s managerial executives, himself included, to conclude that there was no need for further investigation:

• The finding of police that no further evidence of wrongdoing was known to exist;
• The PCC finding that the situation had been properly dealt with;
• The conviction of two individuals for criminal phone hacking, with no evidence of further wrongdoing.

He also said that had he know then, in 2008, what he now knows, he would have supported further internal investigation by News Corp. He also repeatedly

He was asked yet again: “What do you know now that you did not know then?” Murdoch cited the civil litigations underway “at the end of 2010, which indicated to us that there was wider involvement”. He did not specify what information, aside from the fact that “there was wider involvement” of News Corp. media properties and personnel in illegal spying.

The question was posed to both Messrs. Murdoch what sort of coaching they had before testifying today. James Murdoch answered that they consulted counsel on the nature of such hearings, and what to expect, as they were new to the forum, and that they were eager to cooperate, to show that they take the allegations seriously and want to get to the bottom of what went on.

Rupert Murdoch was asked if he in fact had such a “hands off” approach to management as he had suggested in his earlier testimony. He responded that “hands off” was probably not the appropriate way to describe his style of management, but that he felt it was possible he had “lost sight of” some activities and developments at News of the World, “because it was such a small” part of the overall News Corp. business—roughly 1% of global revenues, according to some reports.

He denied speaking once or even twice daily, as has been alleged, to the editor of one or more of his UK newspapers.

There were probing questions regarding payouts to alleged victims of illegal spying activity. There was, for instance, a difference as wide as compensation paid in the amount of £20,000 and £600,000, for the same sort of illegal spying, according to the committee’s questioning.

James Murdoch was then asked to answer whether News Corp. paid the legal fees for Clive Goodman, who was convicted of criminal wrongdoing in the prior phone hacking investigations.

“I was very surprised to hear that the company had made contributions to certain legal fees.” When asked who authorized the payments, he answered that they were done in consultation with the firm’s legal officers, and “the management of the legal cases”.

Rupert Murdoch said “it could have been” Les Hinton, or “the chief legal officer”, and that whoever made the decision, “it would have been on the advice of the chief legal officer”.

Murdoch said it was “sad” that Les Hinton stepped down, after “52 years service”, and that Mr. Hinton resigned, saying that though he was not involved in what took place, he was in charge when it took place, and he felt it was better for him to step down.

He was asked how much “all of these characters”, including Mr. Hinton, Ms. Brooks and others who have resigned, received as compensation upon their resignation. He noted Mr. Hinton’s “would be considerable”, given his many decades of accumulated pension benefits, but said such information was “confidential”.

James Murdoch was again asked whether he could accept or believe that News Corp. was paying legal fees for an employee convicted of illegal phone hacking.

“These are serious litigations, and it was important for all of the evidence from all involved to get to the court at the right time.” He said the “strong advice” was that it was “customary” to cover costs for co-defendents, in order to ensure compliance with legal requirements.

Rupert Murdoch, when asked if was time to cut someone like Clive Goodman loose, to let the prosecution ‘do their worst’, said he “would like to do that”, but that he was not aware of the specifics of what News Corp. was in fact doing, with regard to Mr. Goodman’s legal fees or what the terms of his contract had been regarding such issues.

James Murdoch was again asked about the question of what is now known, specifically with regard to an outside legal review having written an opinion that there was no further evidence to be examined and no indication of further wrongdoing.

It is now known that several cubic meters’ worth of documents and evidence were not yet examined by Scotland Yard, at the time the police investigation, the PCC findings and the legal review were issued, suggesting that there was nothing further to look into. Critics have been pressing for information as to whether undue influence of some kind was used to secure those findings and ‘wipe the slate clean’, even before an exhaustive investigation had been concluded.

One of the questions asked regarded whether Rupert Murdoch had entered Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence, “through the back door”. He said he had, and that he had been asked by the prime minister or the prime minister’s staff to do so. The questioning was contentious, almost as if attempting to draw him out emotionally, as it was suggested that heads of state and others enter through the front door, and he was asked to enter through the back door.

He said he had made many visits to Number 10, during the tenures of various prime ministers, including Gordon Brown, where he had been asked to enter through the back door. It was unclear at first, whether the question was intended to bring to light suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of Prime Minister David Cameron or whether it was simply meant to embarrass Mr. Murdoch.

Nothing explicitly suggestive of wrongdoing was revealed in that line of questioning.

Much of the hearing was devoted to personnel issues: How did information become known to News Corp. management, regarding the involvement of various editors, executives and contractors, and when? Who was paid what, and when, and by what means? How was compensation calculated? Were internal investigations thwarted by an effort to mislead top executives? Is there evidence of lying or giving false evidence?

The most significant sticking point seemed to be, throughout the hearing, that a file with emails suggesting wider wrongdoing was given to the outside law firm Harbottle and Lewis. The Harbottle and Lewis file, repeatedly referred to as “the file” or “the emails” during today’s questioning, was reported by the BBC to be a “smoking gun” making evident that News Corp. was aware of wider criminal activity as early as 2007.

Neither Rupert nor James Murdoch seemed willing to reveal who at News Corp. had direct knowledge of the information contained in the Harbottle and Lewis file. The question was posed repeatedly throughout the hearing what information came to light that was not known to top executives in 2007 and 2008, and who might have been responsible for hiding that information. It was also repeatedly asked what the two top executives thought could explain how the outside law firm had issued a report finding no extant evidence, while in possession of this “smoking gun” bundle of documents.

Neither offered an explanation of how that would have happened, though they both said it was important to understand that News Corp. relied on the advice of Harbottle and Lewis as evidence that there was no further wrongdoing to look into.

Rupert Murdoch’s personal connection to the people at the top of his organization was evident, when he was asked whether the close relationships with top officers of the News Corp. family of media properties blinded him or his son to what they may have been doing. Mr. Murdoch was more animated in his response to that question than to any other and vigorously defended Les Hinton by name, saying he did not believe Mr. Hinton misled him or abused his trust in any way.

Asked if people under him might conceal information “in order to curry favor” with the boss, he said “not my trusted advisers”, but that such behavior would be human nature, and “it’s my responsibility to see through that.”

“No, I think it’s terribly wrong. There is no excuse for breaking the law at any time.” He added that it is legitimate for journalists and news outlets to campaign to change the law, but never to break it.

Rupert Murdoch said that he often had contact with prime ministers over the years, and that perhaps his closest relationship was with Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor of the exchequer. He lamented that his relationship with Brown was now so strained and broken, after news came to light News Corp. reporters had spied on Brown’s family. He said he hoped in time he could repair that friendship.

Brown gave an impassioned denunciation of the “sewer” culture that seemed to have taken over the tabloid publications of News International, Murdoch’s UK subsidiary.

UPDATE, 11:55 am EDT: At 4:52 local time, there was a disturbance that appeared to include an attempt, which caused a sudden reflex response from all present, to reach Rupert Murdoch. It is not clear whether something was thrown or whether an individual attempted to breach security and/or attack Mr. Murdoch. As the disturbance occurred, James Murdoch jumped to his feet to defend his father.

The hearing was immediately suspended, for 10 minutes, and cameras were pointed to the wall and/or ceiling, in keeping with protocol.

Security appear to have detained at least one individual, and the BBC reported that a “white substance” of some kind, now perhaps confirmed to be a “pie of foam” thrown at Murdoch. Twitter had come alive with comments regarding foam, a pie in the face attempt and Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng leaping to his defense, swatting at the protester.

UPDATE, 12:10 pm EDT: The BBC is now reporting the item thrown at Rupert Murdoch was “a plate of shaving foam”, or the like, and that the incident constitutes an extremely serious and improbable breach of security. A former volleyball player, Ms. Deng reportedly smacked her husband’s attacker and hurled the foam pie back at him.

According to the BBC, police detained, and cleaned up the assailant, then escorted him out of the building, taking him into custody.

The hearing resumed at 5:09 local time, with Rupert Murdoch no longer wearing the jacket that had been smeared with the foam from the assailant’s pie.

UPDATE, 12:26 pm EDT: The questioning was some of the toughest of the day, when it resumed. James Murdoch was asked whether settlements that cost News Corp. significantly more included non-disclosure clauses and whether that was an indication of an attempt by the corporation “to buy silence”. Murdoch said that suggestion would not be true.

Murdoch said the illegal hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s voicemail was “a total shock”. He said it was totally unacceptable and something News Corp. would not and cannot justify. He later added that “Illegal activity has no place in this company [and] that goes for the whole company.”

The allegation made by the actor Jude Law that his phone was hacked, while he was on American soil, was raised, as a possible indication that News Corp. employees may in fact have engaged in police bribery and/or illegal spying in order to gain access to private information of victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.

Citing a litany of revelations about illegal and unethical activity by British tabloid journalists, including an admission by CNN’s Piers Morgan, who used to edit Murdoch’s News of the World, that he had, while working for the Daily Mirror, used phone hacking to win a scoop, the last minister to question the Murdoch’s asked, pointedly: ”Is it not the fact, is it not the truth of the matter, that journalists at the News of the World felt entitled to go out there and use blagging, deception and phone hacking, because that was part of the general culture of corruption in the British tabloid press, and that they didn’t kick it up the chain to you, because they felt they were entitled to use the same methods as everybody else.”

She then asked Rupert Murdoch whether or not he had considered suing Harbottle and Lewis for having failed to reveal evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing, allegedly in its possession. James Murdoch answered that they had not yet explored that possibility. When pressed as to why he had not read through the entire file containing evidence of widespread criminal wrongdoing, James Murdoch answered he had seen enough of it, but that he would “be happy to” read more, looking somewhat quizzical and disgruntled for the first time in the hearing.

Rupert Murdoch was asked, given his testimony that he was not a “hands off” chief executive, whether he had considered resigning. He said no, but that those who misled him, whose identity he did not know or would not reveal, should be the ones “to pay”. He added, “I think I am the best person to clean this up.”

UPDATE, 12:30 pm EDT: Rupert Murdoch made a closing statement, which the committee agreed to, apparently after Mr. Murdoch continued his appearance, despite the assault he underwent.

“At no time do I remember being as sickened as when I heard what the Dowler family had to endure.” He added that he wanted “to thank the Dowlers for graciously giving me the opportunity to apologize in person. I would like all the victims of phone hacking to know how deeply and personally sorry I am… the depth of my regret for the horrible invasion into their lives.”

He denounced paying police bribes and using illegal phone hacking as “wrong” and said they had no place in the company he runs. He added that “It is our duty not to prejudice the outcome of the legal process.” He also noted that he had been led to believe by executives at News International, and others, that with the convictions of Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, in 2007, the phone hacking issue had been fully exposed and resolved.

In a shocking development, a former News of the World reporter and key whistleblower in the phone-hacking scandal now sweeping the News Corp. media empire and British political landscape has been found dead at his home in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. Sean Hoare was the first named journalist to have alleged that Andy Coulson, former News of the World editor and top media officer for Prime Minister David Cameron, knew of and openly encouraged illegal phone hacking and other corrupt practices.

The death is not, at present, being treated as suspicious. But, the investigation is ongoing, and police have yet to publicly confirm the identity of the deceased. A cause of death is not yet known. The news comes as Mr. Hoare’s testimony lends weight to several ongoing inquiries into alleged illegal spying and corruption, and just one day before Rupert Murdoch, his son and the former head of his UK newspaper operations, are scheduled to testify before Parliament.

According to the Guardian:

[Hoare] told the [New York Times] that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson’s insistence that he didn’t know about the practice was “a lie, it is simply a lie”.

Mr. Coulson was arrested on July 8, for questioning in connection with the alleged campaign of illegal hacking, bribery and attempted influence or intimidation of public officials. Specifically, Coulson was suspected of lying during previous inquiries into the alleged illegal activity at News International’s tabloid publications, under his management.

The Wall Street Journal is an historic and storied publication, known for top-quality journalism and meticulous reporting of facts relevant to financial markets and economic activity more broadly. It is a mainstay of American print media, and has long been known for honoring the bright line that must be drawn between editorial viewpoints and news reporting. Since 2007, however, it is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and not all of that legacy remains certain to everyone.

And Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is rapidly losing journalistic and commercial cachet, as the scandal over bribery and illegal phone hacking deepens. Now, at least three members of the Bancroft family, which sold the Wall Street Journal and other DowJones properties to Murdoch in 2007, say they would not have done so, were they aware of the corruption and illegal spying allegedly rampant at his UK-based tabloids.

According to ProPublica and the Guardian:

The downward spiral of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has deepened, as Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, accused of bribery and illegal hacking of private phone messages and other documents, has now been arrested. Now, the multinational News Corp., which owns not only the now closed News of the World, and other British newspapers, but also Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, in the US, is facing criminal investigation in the UK and the US. There is mounting expectation that concrete evidence of police bribery will come to light, as the chief of the London Metropolitan Police, has now stepped down.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Late Sunday, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, known as Scotland Yard, resigned due largely to connections between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson cited intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corp. tabloid editor to advise police on public relations; that editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.

The arrest of Brooks is the most serious development to date in the ongoing investigation into alleged pervasive corruption and spying at Murdoch’s UK tabloids. She had been considered to be a “firewall” for the media boss, and he had pledged to protect her. The Scotsman is now reporting that Murdoch’s firewall has burned through.

Her arrest also makes the situation still more uncomfortable for Prime Minister David Cameron, whose former media director was also arrested in connection with the scandal. According to the Scotsman:

The arrest of somebody who was a personal friend of the Prime Minister David Cameron has also put the focus back on him. Mr Cameron met Brooks up to 14 times in the 14 months since he became Prime Minister, Downing Street revealed last week, including social occasions, private meals and two stays at his official country retreat, Chequers.

And the Tories yesterday had to deny reports that Brooks had told Mr Cameron to take on Andy Coulson, her successor at the News of the World, as his director of communications so that he would have a direct line into News international.

The New York Times has reported on the intense media fixation on Ms. Brooks’ arrest, as she has long been a figure of controversy, intensely criticized for the methods of the newspapers she edited:

The blogosphere was awash with taunts on Sunday for Ms. Brooks, who once edited The News of the World, a News International tabloid that has been accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and others, including a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered. The paper was Britain’s best-selling Sunday tabloid until it closed last week.

“Rebekah Brooks will be allowed one phone call after her arrest. By rights, we should all be able to listen in on it,” Toby Hadoke, a British comedian, tweeted sardonically on Sunday. Some questioned whether the arrest, just two days before Ms. Brooks was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee with Mr. Murdoch and his son James, was little more than a pretext to avoid being eviscerated in public.

The Independent is reporting that the arrest caught some by surprise, including Ms. Brooks herself, and appears to indicate that the fortunes of News Corp. generally might be steadily declining:

While she was still chief executive of News International and the “fifth daughter” of the Murdoch clan last week, Rebekah Brooks wrote to Scotland Yard offering to be interviewed as a witness in its intensifying investigation into the phone-hacking scandal.

The extent to which the fortunes of the former editor of The Sun and the News of the World have been transformed in the space of 72 hours was underlined at midday yesterday when she arrived at a London police station in the expectation that she would be helping police with their inquiries – only to find herself under arrest.

Brooks is the second top executive to step down in recent days who spent most of her life working for Rupert Murdoch. It had been widely considered crucial to Murdoch’s effort to contain the scandal to keep his top-ranking allies inside the corporation. On the outside, and now facing extreme legal pressure, Brooks, Hinton and others, are expected to provide more useful information about what is now widely perceived as a culture of routine corruption and illegal spying, at least across multiple News Corp. publications.

The resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Service chief, has led observers to speculate that police involvement in the scandal may be more widespread, and reach higher into the ranks, than was previously suspected. Stephenson was firm in his claim that this was not the case:

I have heard suggestions that we must have suspected the alleged involvement of Mr. Wallis in phone hacking. Let me say unequivocally that I did not and had no reason to have done so. I do not occupy a position in the world of journalism; I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging; nor of its apparent reach into senior levels. I saw senior figures from News International providing evidence that the misbehavior was confined to a rogue few and not known about at the top.

One can only wonder about the motives of those within the newspaper industry or beyond, who now claim that they did know but kept quiet. Though mine and the Met’s current severe discomfort is a consequence of those few that did speak out, I am grateful to them for doing so, giving us the opportunity to right the wrong done to victims – and here I think most of those especially vulnerable people who deserved so much better from us all.

He took pains to make clear that he knows of nothing improper in a contractual business relationship with Neil Wallis, a former editor for News of the World, who some suspect of having been involved in the illegal hacking. Wallis was arrested last week in connection with the investigation, and there have been questions raised about the coincidence of Stephenson’s treatment at a spa where Wallis worked.

Murdoch has hired the public relations firm Edelman to manage “damage control” for News Corp., which is steadily losing ground both in terms of public reputation and the confidence of investors. There are allegations of illegal hacking and bribery in the United States, and calls from some to break up the media conglomerate. There are also questions about what the firm was hired to do, and whether this indicates a potential strategy aimed at limiting the release of facts about what took place at News Corp.’s publications.

News Corp., the New York-based multinational media conglomerate whose majority shareholder is the controversial billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is now facing an FBI investigation for illegal activity in news gathering. Long maligned by press advocacy groups as a leading source of biased and abusive media activity, and even of attacks on genuine news sources, News Corp. is now being accused of having authorized bribery and/or hacking activity to gain illegal access to the private files of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Murdoch hacking scandal has been rapidly spreading across the Atlantic, since it was revealed last week in Britain that the News of the World tabloid had not only hacked into the private voicemail of a 13-year-old murder victim, but had deleted messages, interfering with criminal evidence and a police investigation. Some raised concerns that the illegal hacking was not only obstruction of justice, but that it may have made it more difficult to identify and mount an effective legal case against the murderer.

Since then, the scandal has widened, as news has come to light of investigations into illegal hacking at numerous News Corp. publications, going back to 2002. Prime Minister Cameron’s hand-picked (and now former) media director Andy Coulson, who had Murdoch’s UK operations, has been taken into custody. Several other employees of the media company have been arrested, and now Mr. Murdoch and his son will be required to give sworn testimony to the British Parliament, this coming week.

Rebekah Brooks, whom Murdoch had said he would protect, come what may, has now resigned, under significant pressure from inside the Murdoch family, from among her former staff and from Britain’s political elite. According to the Washington Post:

TheHotSpring.net :: As the Pentagon issues its official cyber-security posture, it is imperative that we move into the era of strategic cyber-security with one paramount aim: that cyberspace not be militarized in any substantive way by any nation. Cyberspace should operate much the way our space exploration has worked: aiming for technological superiority and peaceful, international cooperation.

The Pentagon’s publicly released policy report suggests that were a military-type cyber attack to lead to damage and casualties comparable to a conventional military attack, it might be treated as an act of war and warrant a military or cyber-military response. But wisely, at least as is publicly known, there is no existing plan to organize a “cyber force” to militarize cyberspace as already exist with land, sea and air.

The Internet was developed in large part by Pentagon advanced research as a communications tool, to help improve the chances of ably protecting against an intercontinental or sea-borne attack during the Cold War. But as a tool of civilian communication it has far outstripped the projected value and productivity of its original design.

So much so, there is a growing legal movement, across the world, to treat Internet access as a basic human right, on a par with access to clean air and clean water. Knowledge, of course, has nearly the same value, in terms of determining whether an individual or a population will have the ability to compete and to stave off oppression, in a technologically organized global civilization.

Cyber-security is an issue of human rights and democracy. If governments, foreign or domestic, are able to use the Internet to impose their will on otherwise free people, real freedoms can be infringed and democratic societies can become vulnerable to the whims of tyrants. But cyber-security is in many ways like environmental security: just as we have a right to clean drinking water, we have a right to unobstructed access to information.

This should be the aim of any regime of national cyber-security, not the application, or projection, of centuries old military force doctrine to the world of digital information and communication. In the atmosphere of true hyper-convergence, the web beyond Facebook and gMail, the integrated freedom of the individual depends on the integrated civil liberty of the world wide web.

Just as we expect to go about our days without tanks rolling down our streets, we must demand we have the liberty to use the Internet as we choose, and safely, without military intervention or monitoring.

The mounting protest movement in Jordan is organizing massive new demonstrations, calling for constitutional reform that will maintain the monarchy, but establish a fully elected, democratic government. The protests were reportedly sparked by high and rapidly escalating food prices.

There are reports that riot police today attacked demonstrators, though protest organizers say they do not believe security forces linked to the monarchy were involved in any violence. They are calling for comprehensive anti-corruption reform, and the ouster of all political officials linked to corruption and/or intimidation of the civilian population.

King Abdullah II has pledged substantive political reform, including a path to some sort of constitutional monarchy, but protesters now say the reforms have been too slow, and may not be happening at all. There are now demands for immediate action to punish the police responsible for the attacks, against both peaceful demonstrators and journalists.

According to the AFP:

At least 10 people, mostly journalists, were injured on Friday when police tried to stop clashes between pro-reform demonstrators and government supporters in central Amman.

Police used batons to disperse the clashes outside city hall, beating and injuring nine journalists who were wearing orange vests marked “press,” an AFP reporter at the scene witnessed.

The Washington Post is reporting the attacks on pro-democracy demonstrators were carried out by gangs of pro-government demonstrators. It is unclear whether these gangs reflect the wider trend in the region, of regimes using armed thugs to intimidate opponents, in an attempt to debilitate pro-democracy movements.

The Post also reports, however, that King Abdullah II has agreed to key democracy demands: “to have prime ministers and Cabinets elected from parliamentary majorities, but he later said it may take two to three years to put an elected government in place rather than one appointed by the monarch.”

Newspapers in the UK and TV networks around the world are reporting that UK prime minister Gordon Brown says his bank accounts, property records, his children’s medical accounts and other private accounts, were illegally accessed by the Sun tabloid and/or the Sunday Times, another of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in Great Britain. The allegation appears to implicate one or more journalists in gaining private, privileged information relating to the personal health of at least one of Brown’s children, along with other private information.

The former prime minister was first warned of newspapers’ attempt to illegally access personal data regarding himself and his family, as long ago as 2003, raising suspicions of a decade-long campaign of illegal spying. A 2003 Plymouth police investigation, called Operation Reproof, uncovered evidence of the illegal attempts at data acquisition, allegedly an effort by at least one private investigator to purchase private information, on behalf of unnamed journalists.

According to the Guardian:

The purchaser of information on the three Labour politicians was Glen Lawson, another private detective in Newcastle upon Tyne, according to police records and court transcripts obtained by the Guardian.

Lawson, who still trades in Tyneside under the name Abbey Investigations, refuses to say which journalists contracted him to pursue Gordon Brown and other members of the Labour government. He told the Guardian at the weekend: “I am not going to make any comment”.

In September of last year, Wired magazine reported that reporters working under Andy Coulson, who was by then a top media adviser to PM David Cameron, had systematically and persistently sought to spy on hundreds of individuals. According to that report:

Although Coulson has long insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity, sources who worked at the tabloid told the N.Y. Times Coulson not only knew about it, he actively encouraged it. A dozen former reporters said the hacking was so pervasive at News of the World that everyone knew about it. “The office cat knew,” one longtime reporter said.

It all began to unravel in November 2005, when three aides to the royal family noticed that new voicemail messages received on their mobile phones were appearing in their mailboxes as if they’d already been listened to and saved. Then stories about Prince William began appearing in News of the World that made them think their phone accounts had been compromised.

Mr. Coulson was arrested, and his computer seized by investigators, last week, as information of a programmatic and pervasive conspiracy began to emerge, suggesting that News of the World had routinely flouted the law and spied on thousands of people over several years. It is alleged that “fewer than five” police officers implicated in the scandal may have been made more than £100,000 for their assistance in illegally accessing private information.

Among the alleged victims of the hacking campaign were: the British royal family, the former prime minister, a thirteen-year-old murder victim (whose voicemails were erased by reporters seeking to deny information to all other sources—they face possible obstruction of justice charges), British soldiers killed and wounded in war, victims of the tragic 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. It is now believed at least 4,000 people had their phones hacked by reporters and investigators working for Rupert Murdoch.

There are now allegations that Murdoch’s reporters may also have hacked into the accounts of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The family of the young girl who was killed say they have had no communications of any kind from News of the World, News Corporation or any of its executives to apologize for the damage caused by its illegal spying on the murder victim.

The office of former British prime minister Gordon Brown has released the following statement:

Gordon Brown has now been informed of the scale of intrusion into his family’s life. The family has been shocked by the level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details have been obtained. The matter is in police hands. The police have confirmed Mr Brown is on Glen Mulcaire’s list. And sometime ago Mr Brown passed all relevant evidence he had to the police.

(Mr. Mulcaire is the private detective accused of running an illegal campaign of spying on public officials, crime victims, and others, on behalf of one or more of Mr. Murdoch’s publications. He has been under investigation for months, relating to the allegations, before this scandal brought down the 168-year-old News of the World.)

The scandal continues to spread now, as Prime Minister David Cameron has denied knowing about some of the allegations regarding his media director Andy Coulson, despite the Guardian newspaper having provided that information to his top advisers. The leader of the Labour party, Ed Miliband suggested Cameron was not entirely truthful, saying his claim “does not add up”.

With evidence of illegal hacking, bribery and other crimes, now affecting multiple Murdoch publications, the top executives of News International (the UK subsidiary of NewsCorp) are now coming under closer scrutiny. A shareholder’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and other top executives has now been revised to include misconduct relating to the phone-hacking scandal.

The suit had been alleging corporate misconduct relating to Mr. Murdoch’s having used $675 million of NewsCorp money to buy his daughter’s television network. The revision to the lawsuit now alleges “a culture run amok”, in which Mr. Murdoch routinely acted without any effective oversight from the board of directors. One of the plaintiffs alleges that Murdoch’s son, recently promoted to the third highest position in the global firm, is deeply implicated in the illegal spying scandal.

According to Reuters:

Back in May, Grant & Eisenhofer and Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann filed a consolidated Delaware Chancery Court complaint against the officers and directors of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), claiming that the News Corp board fell down on the job when it approved the $615 million acquisition of a film and television production company wholly owned by Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth. “Enough is enough,” said the 51-page complaint.

Turns out enough wasn’t quite enough after all. Late Friday, facing a deadline to respond to News Corp’s motion to dismiss the case, the plaintiffs firms amended their complaint to add allegations based on last week’s revelations in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. Weighing in at 94 pages, the newly-amended complaint accuses the News Corp board of ignoring the tabloid’s “unlawful and reprehensible activity” even as the evidence of the scandal built.

Rupert Murdoch is now also facing the possibility of being denied the right to take over control of BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster of which he currently owns 39%. He had sought to prevent an investigation into the legality of the takeover, fearing an investigation could prevent the takeover. Now, he has floated a proposal to force an inquiry, in order to prevent political interests halting the takeover.

It is unclear whether an investigation will begin in the United States, after revelations reporters working for Murdoch’s multinational conglomerate may have illegally accessed private accounts of victims of the 9/11 attacks. The allegations relate to police information regarding attempts to buy information regarding 9/11 victims’ private accounts. An investigation in the United States could affect some of Mr. Murdoch’s most prestigious and powerful media properties.

National Public Radio is a resource that belongs to the American people. It is not government controlled, has no editorial bias in terms of ideology or party, and is the nation’s most extensive network of committed professional journalists delivering reliable information to American citizens, via the radio. Federal funding is a commitment to enabling the American people to benefit from the founding principle that a free and independent press makes us freer and more resilient to the challenges a democracy faces.

Far from wasteful spending, federal NPR funding is necessary to guarantee that the American people have an affordable way to counter for-profit corporate media, much of which filters information through editorial offices with political or corporate biases. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”. The legislation proposed by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives abridges the freedom of the American people to have their voice heard, and directly limits the freedom of journalists to deliver reliable information to the American people.

NPR is offensive to extremist conservatives and radical partisans with a corporate or right-wing ideological bias, because it tells the truth. When politicians lie, they are found out. When corporations cheat the government or the people, they are investigated. When mainstream for-profit media get even simple stories factually wrong, NPR gives the people depth of coverage and fact-based reporting.

In a political climate where the Republican party, in apparent absence of any constructive idea for how to govern —no useful ideas for climate destabilization, no useful ideas for energy innovation, no useful ideas for job creation, no useful ideas for ending the foreclosure binge, no useful ideas for safeguarding or expanding the middle class—, seeks to establish and to capitalize from flagrantly biased media —like Fox News—, which help the party organize and advertise and which report flat-out falsehoods to further the party interest… an attack on NPR is clearly an attack on the people’s right to know the truth.

Because ordinary people can access public radio, build community centered programming, and use federal funds to make sure the information in their community is not biased, NPR looks to wealthy corporate interests —and to those unfortunate partisans who rely on wealthy corporate interests to help them persuade the people their service might be worth something— like a threat to their campaign of biased, interested information.

The people of the United States actually do need NPR, because there is no other national network of truly independent journalists committed to doing straightforward professional reporting of fact and context. NPR receives donations from listeners, but, like PBS, requires federal funding to allow radio stations in less affluent, less media-rich corners of the country to fund the production of professional quality content and/or licensing of NPR national content.

A radio network does not maintain itself, and a public radio network not funded by corporate commercial advertising does not aim to turn a profit, clearly. The mission of NPR is to make sure the fabric of American news media includes at least one standard of top-quality professional news reporting and radio broadcasting. We have a right to keep that best manifestation of a free and independent press, and no politician serious about the quality of our media or our democracy, could argue otherwise.

As a measure of how serious the individuals pushing this legislation are about —well, about pretty much anything—, when the United States is involved in two wars in Asia, with pressure to intervene militarily in Libya, with communities across the country experiencing a rash of foreclosures and the gutting of funds for their educational systems, food and fuel prices soaring, unstable countries being further destabilized, and an allied monarchy in Bahrain using extreme violence against pro-democracy demontrators… with the 3rd largest economy on Earth having suffered simultaneously the 5th worst earthquake in history, a catastrophic tsunami that has taken thousands of lives and destroyed and entire region and what is already the 2nd worst nuclear disaster in world history, they called an “emergency meeting” to force through legislation barring federal funding to NPR.

The callous and shamefully partisan nature of this proposal is glaringly obvious and should be deeply offensive to any American who cares about democracy as such. If we want to have a real and functioning democracy, we need to have media that tell us the truth, without seeking profit or party gain. NPR is that medium, and what NPR does, its journalists do to make sure we have the truth at our disposal and so can be fully free citizens of a truly open society.

What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.

The three estates were the “Lords Spiritual” (bishops of the Church of England), the “Lords Temporal” (the House of Lords) and the Commons. The members of the “Fourth Estate” sat in the reporter’s gallery of the parliament and were, by their influence as writers, researchers, editors and publishers, the most significant of the four groups in terms of their ability to move public opinion and channel the influence of popular sentiment into the decision-making of the government.

In other words, the press are the necessary foundation of political influence for the people. It is through the press and what it does for the dissemination of evidence and of fact-based independent analysis that the citizens of a free republic are able to monitor, judge and influence the actions of their government. It is through the press that the governed are able to ensure they are governed only in line with their informed consent.

Since the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, the war on journalists has escalated across the world. The chaos in Iraq and the attitudes of hardline regimes like that led by Vladimir Putin during his years as president of the Russian Federation, have led to the expanding of violent persecution of journalists across the world.

In the last 10 years, the spread of the Internet, and its open transfer of information across the world, has put authoritarian regimes on the defensive, and they have responded by lashing out at print reporters, bloggers and human rights activists. In high profile cases across the Caucasus, Russian operatives and pro-Russian regimes have assassinated journalists with impunity.

Most of those cases remain unsolved. Investigations have been curtailed, and human rights advocates involved in the investigations have been targeted. In Iraq, in Colombia, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, journalists have been targeted for abduction, arrest, abuse, and even death. In Iran, China, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, journalists are routinely detained, accused of spying, and used as props to make it seem the regime in question is combatting foreign infiltrators.

In all of these cases, it is understood that the methodology is intended to intimidate witnesses of all kinds, whether ordinary civilians, potential defectors or journalists and human rights advocates.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been diligently tracking aggression against the press in nations with rising pro-democracy movements and mass demonstrations calling for change. They reported on Friday:

The regime of Hosni Mubarak, in its violent quest to cling to power, engaged in what many observers described as an “unprecedented” and coordinated attack on journalists across the nation, beating and detaining foreign journalists, falsely accusing them of being “infiltrators” or Israeli and/or Iranian “spies”.

The violent and “sustained” sexual assault on Lara Logan, a CBS reporter working in Cairo, on the day Mubarak resigned from power, has been blamed by some on the paramilitary “thugs” the regime hired to attack journalists. Sexual assault was reportedly a routine tactic used by Mubarak’s paramilitary mercenaries to attack women who were seen as critics or opponents of the regime.

While Mubarak was still in power, NPR reported that “reports of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault against women by government security forces are rampant”. The connection between abject corruption, attacks on the press, impunity and the brutalization of the civilian population, is clear.

We need to celebrate the committed and courageous work of the world’s truth-tellers, journalists who take the serious personal risk of entering into the dark, threatening corners of the world, or dare to lift the cloak that covers up political corruption, who risk their lives just for the opportunity to report facts to whomever might read or hear their words, as heroic defenders of democratic freedoms.

Their work, performed with no weapons, no legal power, no prosecutorial authority, often at great personal risk, is the necessary underpinning for any informed and widespread resistance to arbitrary power and abuse of whole populations. When the free and independent, and now international, press is heard explaining and denouncing illegitimate power grabs and pervasive abuses, it motivates the human conscience generally to reject those responsible and move forward independent of their corrupting methods and aims.

That is an heroic achievement, and a gift to the rest of us, given by human beings willing to stand between the truth and a lie, defining the difference with their own human dignity.

The revelation that Lara Logan was sexually assaulted, after being abducted, falsely accused, then released, by Mubarak regime, has renewed accusations Mubarak used sexual assault to intimidate female critics

Lara Logan —a courageous CBS News reporter who was abducted by the Mubarak regime, falsely accused of being an Israeli spy and held without charge, for reporting on the protest movement in Egypt— is now reportedly recovering from a sexual assault she suffered while covering the demonstrations. She reportedly was attacked by a “dangerous element” on the very day Hosni Mubarak left power.

She suffered the regime’s persecution directly, returned home after her release, then chose, courageously, to go back and to continue reporting. Human rights observers worry that hers was just one of many cases in which the regime attempted to silence its critics by any means necessary. According to the LA Times, “The [CBS] network said that a group of 200 people were then ‘whipped into a frenzy,’ pulling Logan away from her crew and attacking her until a group of women and Egyptian soldiers intervened.”

Logan was shooting footage for a report on 60 minutes, in which she was hoping to get a sense of the mood of the crowds in Tahrir Square. Journalists were routinely brutalized by the Mubarak regime amid the recent wave of protests. The Committee to Protect Journalists, of whose board Logan is a member, says at least 140 journalists were wounded or killed in the Mubarak government’s violent crackdown on dissent.

CPJ released this statement:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news that CBS correspondent and CPJ board member Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and beaten in Cairo on Friday while covering rallies marking the resignation of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. “We have seen Lara’s compassion at work while helping journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs,” CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger said. “She is a brilliant, courageous, and committed reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers.”

The news raises still more concern that the crimes committed by the Mubarak regime before the dictator relinquished power may have been just the tip of a cruel iceberg, a systematic regime of arbitrary detention, false charges, brutal assaults and disappearances. There are renewed calls for criminal investigations into the exact nature of all high-level discussions relating to the government’s response to the protests.

We stand with Ms. Logan in her process of recuperation and healing, and we call on authorities in the United States and throughout the international community to demand a full, open and relentless investigation to uncover any evidence of connections between the Mubarak regime and the gangs of armed thugs and agitators who sought to disrupt the peaceful demonstrations and assault demonstrators, and bring all parties connected in any way to the assaults to justice.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: Public broadcasting in the United States is not like state-run television in other countries, where the ruling party often influences the editorial stance and the quality of reporting. In the United States, there is an absolute wall of separation between politicians for elective office and the editorial process that shapes what is produced by public broadcasting.

We are all familiar with the conservative complaint about “liberal media bias”, which stems from a survey of voting habits that found many newspaper reporters were more liberal than the average American voter. There was never any evidence shown, however, that this influenced their reporting. Reporters, as a profession, are duty bound to report fact; it is editorialists, the kind of commentators that rule cable news networks and talk radio, that tend to infuse their “informational programming” with political bias.

There is, also, to the chagrin of many social conservatives, another problem with the “politics” of mainstream media: to many, who long for a world of yesteryear, it is disconcerting that our contemporary world is different in so many ways from what they long for. When media report on these facts, some hardline conservatives view those facts as “biased”, when they are really just the world we live in.

The American democratic quest for justice and equality, for protecting our own freedom by making sure that of others is not eroded or infringed, has made women and minorities more equal before the law and before the social conscience of younger generations, than ever before. Gay and lesbian Americans are now seen first as members of society and later as having a unique quality that puts them in a group subject to habitual marginalization.

These are facts. They do not arise from any media bias, and they are not the result of any journalists voting for Democrats. It’s just the way we, as a free and independent society of democratic republicans, have evolved, in our effort to foster a more just and humane future.

Public broadcasting is in many ways the most unbiased media we have. Editorializing is limited to specific cases regarding specific issues, and whether it’s PBS or NPR, the “editorializing” tends to lay out an historical argument that viewers themselves can interpret. When facts contradict one’s worldview, the informational environment can be a source of great frustration, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean anyone is trying to bias the world for ideological purposes.

In fact, the only time in recent memory when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting saw any attempt at political manipulation, it was with the appointment of a pro-Republican political operative who attempted to alter the programming and content of PBS to promote conservative ideology. There was an ethics inquiry, an investigation and a resignation.

Politics is the only good reason for trying to shut down public broadcasting in the United States, and common-sense independents know a valuable public service when they see one. In many communities, PBS and NPR are the only serious sources of news, information and quality children’s programming, other than the corporate television networks.

Sheltering young children from the intense commercialization of our public space, at least for the early years, almost requires PBS, as no other television format allows for so little commercial content or commentary on the nature of our reality. PBS provides educational programming, including college courses, documentaries about cutting edge science, and some of the most serious, unwavering and prize-winning investigative reporting in the world.

The First Amendment to the United States reads, in part: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” We are all familiar with this ideal, but we don’t often think very hard about how deeply relevant the language of the First Amendment is to the functioning of our democracy.

In order to “de-fund” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a project some hardline conservatives seek to carry out in order to further specifically partisan and ideological aims, it would be necessary for Congress to make a law abridging (restricting) one of the only truly independent press outlets in the United States. This would be an infringement on all Americans’ rights, even those who long for times gone by or to hear only voices under the editorial control of private interest on air.

Right now, we get our information from as many or as few sources as we see fit. Right now, we have a committed corps of independent journalists working to get the truth to the American people, their work supported by unconditional funding from the people of the United States, in support of their model of free and independent inquiry and investigation.

Public broadcasting makes us free, helps to shore up our right to good information from reporters not beholden to private interests or to government authority. We cannot allow such a backslide on our First Amendment rights; we cannot allow a politically motivated coup take over such a vital segment of our informational spectrum.

Keith Olbermann, who shocked the media world last month when he stepped down from his post at MSNBC, where he was the network’s most visible and successful primetime host, will be joining Current TV, where he will host a 1-hour nightly primetime show and serve as the network’s chief news officer.

Olbermann reportedly told a conference call with reporters that “nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media,” adding that “nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news that is produced independently of corporate interference.” He called Current’s viewer-centered editorial process “the model truth seeking entity” in television media today.

Olbermann said the opportunity to host his own show on Current is “the most exciting event” of his career in television, and expressed great optimism about the contribution Current TV can make to revitalizing and revolutionizing the media environment for cable news and the hard work of truth-telling in such a hostile and perspective-driven environment.

Olbermann also called Current the only truly independent source for “independent news and information” on television in the United States. His program is expected to begin airing in late spring, perhaps sooner than 6 months after his departure from MSNBC. Current’s open format and privileging of independent journalism should allow Olbermann more editorial freedom than he previously had and to be a still more forceful voice for liberal priorities.

Speculation has already begun as to what time-slot Olbermann will take, and which former MSNBC colleague he will find himself competing against for viewership. The network is signing up interested viewers for email updates on Olbermann’s schedule and programming.

After intense pressure from Amnesty International, foreign governments, private business and the press, Egypt’s new vice president Omar Suleiman pledged yesterday that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who is reputed to have launched a Facebook page denouncing police brutality and political persecution, would be freed. He was abducted by regime police near the beginning of the pro-democracy demonstrations, on 28 January, and was not heard from publicly till today.

The Facebook page, “We are all Khaled Said“, was reportedly used to organize the most far-reaching pro-democracy campaign in Egyptian history, bringing together opposition groups, human rights watchdogs, concerned citizens and tech-savvy young people who see no need for military government and want to determine their own future. On Sunday, news began to spread around the world that a security agent had leaked information that Ghonim was being set up on trumped up charges and was likely to face torture.

Ghonim gave an exclusive live interview to a private Egyptian television channel, DreamTV, after his release this afternoon. The release appears to have been a gesture to business leaders the regime seeks to keep close relations with, and possibly to satisfy demands from foreign governments that political detentions end. The interview has stirred and inspired citizens across Egypt, reframing the official story and reminding ordinary Egyptians that the regime, and not the demonstrators, is the source of suffering and strife.

The interview was intensely emotional; Ghonim spoke of the deep patriotism of the pro-democracy activists, of people who are putting their lives and their livelihoods at risk for the sake of giving their nation a better future, free of political persecution and authoritarian violence.

According to the Guardian:

Ghonim’s stature across the country now appears destined to rise dramatically if the post-interview reaction on the internet is anything to go by. Calls are being made for him to stand as president. Others predicted that his performance, which was being acclaimed as a tour de force of calm but explosive political passion, would inevitably boost the numbers of those attending the latest mass demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir square and elsewhere this morning.

“I am not a hero. I only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can’t name,” said Ghonim, who sobbed throughout the interview, which ended with him being overcome with emotion as he was shown images of some of those who died in the uprising.

Ghonim said he was not tortured and that his jailors did not mistreat him, but said the methods of the security forces were not acceptable to the protest movement. But he said he was shocked to hear that people inside the prison had heard he was a “traitor”. “Anyone with good intentions,” he said, is viewed as a traitor, “because being evil is the norm.”

He added that “If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, let this country go to hell.” He said the protest movement was spontaneous and grew from the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and that far from being traitors, the organizers’ sincere aim was to save their country from the ongoing disaster of authoritarian rule.

Ghonim said every Egyptian has a right to have full and complete information about what the government is doing with the wealth it draws from the people. “Inside I met people who loved Egypt,” he said “but their methods and mine are not the same. I pay these guys’ salaries from my taxes, I have the right to ask the ministers where my money is going, this is our country.”

There are now calls for Ghonim to be given a leadership role, at least as spokesperson for the coalition of pro-democracy parties. The interview is also being seen as a potential threshold moment, after which the regime will no longer be able to pursue a strategy of persecution and detention or of talking reform while seeking to disperse the protesters gathered at Tahrir Square.

Tuesday has reportedly been labeled a “day for decorating Tahrir Square”, which some in the movement hope will be another opportunity for hundreds of thousands to flood the square in central Cairo, which is now being called adoringly “Free Cairo”, “the Free Republic of Tahrir” and “the embryo of a new nation”.

The new burst of nationwide inspiration to support the pro-democracy movement could give weight to the activists’ argument that a swift transition to a coalition caretaker government of opposition parties would be the most responsible and orderly way to move Egypt forward and leave the chaos of the crackdown behind. US president Barack Obama said yesterday that Egypt “will not go back” to the repression of the last three decades, and the new popularity of Wael Ghonim appears to signal that Egypt’s wider population agrees.

Al Jazeera says the campaign of persecution has escalated dramatically, as a “gang of thugs” broke into their offices, destroyed equipment and set fires, threatening the staff and carrying out what appeared to be a concerted effort by government forces to shut down international media reporting on the protests in Tahrir Square.

According to the Guardian:

The Cairo office of al-Jazeera was ransacked by pro-government “thugs” today, as the Arabic language news channel also said its news website had come under attack by hackers.

Al-Jazeera said its office had been stormed by a “gang of thugs” who burned equipment, on a day of reports of escalating violence against journalists covering the Egyptian uprising.

Al-Jazeera’s website was also hacked, with a banner advertisement reportedly replaced by a fake ad saying “Together for the Collapse of Egypt” and linking to a site attacking the network. A spokesman for the Qatar-based network said “Our website has been under relentless attack since the onset of the uprisings in Egypt”.

The network is also reportedly investigating the attacks, alleging there is a concerted and sweeping attack against all forms of free press in Egypt. “While the deliberate attacks this morning were an attempt to discredit us we will continue our impartial and comprehensive coverage of these unprecedented events,” said the network spokesman.

Starting on 2 February, Mubarak’s regime has organized and carried out a comprehensive undercover war against the press, with agents provocateurs —many reported to have been carrying government ID— not only surrounding and intimidating, but attacking with deadly weapons, members of the press from across the world.

Over the last two days, Hosni Mubarak has made Cairo the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. After Mubarak’s new prime minister issued an “apology” for the lethal violence waged by pro-Mubarak gangs on Wednesday and into Thursday’s pre-dawn hours, the government appeared to be engaged in an even more intense campaign of violent assaults on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators and journalists.

Throughout the day Thursday, forces loyal to Pres. Hosni Mubarak —acting in lock-step with statements by both Mubarak and his new vice president that reporters and democracy activists are “foreign agents” and enemies of Egypt— escalated attacks against journalists and protesters, beating, stabbing, kidnapping and persecuting them in an apparent attempt to “eliminate witnesses” to whatever is about to follow.

Mubarak and his government have seized public media and are using television and radio to issue fabrications and propaganda alleging “foreign agents” are instigating the protests and trying to destabilize Egypt and subject Egyptians to violence, scarcity and chaos. There are reports the government is using Internet media to spread lies and calling on Egyptians to target foreign journalists and dissidents and to treat Friday’s protests as a dangerous even staged by foreign spies.

Mubarak’s campaign against the media appears designed to “clear the battlefield” of any obstruction to an extreme and bloody totalitarian massacre of his opponents. Seasoned war correspondents, including journalists who have studied or reported on violent extremist groups across the region, say they have never seen such a pervasive and coordinated campaign to assault journalists.

Journalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United States, Bahrain, Qatar, Russia, France, and elsewhere have been targeted for attack and/or kidnapped and held unlawfully or interrogated by paid gangs or by agents of the Mubarak regime. Major global news networks have been so consistently and gravely threatened with brute force they even took down live feeds showing Tahrir Square at a distance Thursday.

Cairo has degenerated from a city gripped by peaceful protests to a place where an exhausted and morally bankrupt totalitarian regime is now waging a lascivious assault on humanity itself. Mubarak’s character as leader appears to be the driving force in what is a mounting tragedy, and it is the character of a man who reacts to an historic opportunity for his nation to be transformed for the better by first ceding partially, appointing a reputed torture chief to be his vice president, then sending snipers and thugs to spill the blood of his people.

Since the beginning of the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations, Mubarak’s paramilitary forces may have killed more than 300 of their fellow Egyptians. Death counts for last week’s nationwide rash of violence range from 100 to 300, while the death count for Wednesday and Thursday is currently estimated between 8 and 13. There are fears that many people have yet to be heard from and may be suffering from untreated wounds, or worse.

Now Hosni Mubarak is using state radio and TV to incite violence against “foreigners” and dissidents, using the strategy Slobodan Milosevic used to foment genocide in Yugoslavia and the leaders of the Rwandan genocide employed to seduce their followers into murdering family, friends and neighbors. Mubarak has flagrantly sought to turn all of Egypt into a country overrun by a violent, visceral fear of foreigners, of the press or of human rights activists.

In the last two days, Mubarak’s regime has organized and carried out a comprehensive undercover war against the press, with agents provocateurs —many reported to have been carrying government ID— not only surrounding and intimidating, but attacking with deadly weapons, members of the press from across the world.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has published this summary of assaults:

• The Washington Post told CPJ that the paper’s Cairo bureau chief, Leila Fadel, and Linda Davidson, a photographer, were among a number of journalists detained this morning. Their unidentified driver and translator were also picked up, and the driver was beaten. Fadel and Davidson were freed late today, but the status of the driver and translator was unclear.

• Corban Costa of Brazilian Radio Nacional and cameraman Gilvan Rocha of TV Brasil were detained, blindfolded, and had their passports and equipment seized, according to Brazilian news accounts. The two were reportedly held overnight without water in a windowless room in a Cairo police station. An officer forced the reporters to sign a statement in Arabic saying they would immediately leave Egypt for Brazil, reports said. “We had to trust what he said, and sign the document, “ Corban said. They said they will be sent back to Brazil on Friday.

• Polish state television TVP said that five journalists working in two crews–Krzysztof Ko?osionek and  Piotr Bugalski; and Micha? Jankowski, Piotr Górecki, and Pawe? Rolak–were detained in Cairo and that one of their cameras was smashed. Krzysztof Ko?osionek and Piotr Bugalski were released, according to Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

• The New York Times reported today that two of its reporters were released after they were detained overnight in Cairo.

• Canadian Globe and Mail journalist Sonia Verma tweeted today that she was being taken “into some kind of custody.” She later reported that she was held by the military for three hours.

• CNN-IBN reported that video journalist Rajesh Bharadwajm was “taken away” from Tahrir Square by military forces. Bharadwajm’s status was not immediately clear.

• Maurice Sarfatti, who writes under the name Serge Dumont, was arrested twice within the past day, according to a statement from the daily Le Soir. The Belgian journalist, who was freed late today, works for a number of European publications.

• A German freelance journalist was briefly detained between Alexandria and Cairo, Frank-Dieter Freiling, a senior vice president of ZDF-German Television, told CPJ in an e-mail.

• Three Romanian TV crews were detained Wednesday and Thursday in Cairo, according to Antena 3 producer Vlad Petreanu, who e-mailed CPJ with details. On Wednesday, Adelin Petrisor, a reporter for the state-owned broadcaster TVR, and an unnamed cameraman were detained by Cairo police, searched, and later released. On Thursday, police detained Realitatea TV reporter Cristian Zarescu and his unidentified cameraman. Authorities confiscated their tapes before releasing them. Also on Thursday, Antena 3 reporter Carmen Avram and cameraman Cristian Tamas, were stopped by police. The men sent a text message late today saying they were being held for questioning.

• Mubarak supporters stormed Cairo’s Hilton Hotel searching for journalists, Al-Jazeera reported today. Journalists inside the hotel posted a Tumblr entry that said: “About 20 foreign journalists are currently holed up.” No injuries were immediately reported, but the journalists’ status was unclear.

• Rachel Beth Anderson, a freelance videographer in Cairo, tweeted that “cameras & phones disappearing from journo hotel rooms in the Semiramis hotel! We’re locked inside by staff who says its orders from outside.”

• Fox News reported that correspondent Greg Palkot and producer Olaf Wiig were hospitalized after being beaten by protesters in Cairo.

• The Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported that its correspondent in Egypt, Bert Sundström, is recovering from stab wounds to the stomach in a Cairo hospital. STV said it lost touch with Sundström as he was reporting in Tahrir Square and when they finally reached him on his cell phone, a man answered and told the station that he had been “taken by the military.” STV’s Ingrid Thörnqvist told the online Aftonbladet: “He is seriously injured, but the condition is stable.”

• The Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini said its correspondent in Cairo, Petros Papaconstantino, was “briefly hospitalized with a stab wound to the leg” after an attack by Mubarak supporters in Tahrir Square, according to The Associated Press. The reporter wrote on Kathimerini‘s site: “I was spotted by Mubarak supporters. They … beat me with batons on the head and stabbed me lightly in the leg. Some soldiers intervened, but Mubarak’s supporters took everything I had on me in front of the soldiers.” AP also reported that an unidentified Greek newspaper photographer was punched in the face.

• The Associated Press reported that CBS reporter Mark Strassman and a camera operator were attacked while trying to photograph people throwing rocks. Strassman told AP that demonstrators punched and sprayed with Mace his camera operator, whom he did not identify. “As soon as one started, it was like blood in the water,” he said.

• Dima Salem, a reporter for Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, was attacked by pro-Mubarak supporters who took her cameraman’s equipment and tried to beat her, the station said. Witnesses helped them escape, Al-Arabiya reported on the air.

• Two Al-Jazeera English journalists were attacked by Mubarak supporters, the Qatar-based satellite station reported on the air. Three other network reporters were detained in Cairo, the station reported. No names were given.

• Alfred Yaghobzadeh, a French photographer working for SIPA Press agency, was beaten while covering street protests, according to AP, which moved a photo of the journalist being aided by witnesses.

• The AP reported that men wielding sticks disrupted operations and seized satellite equipment at one its locations.

• A BBC producer tweeted that Margaret Evans, a CBC reporter, was forced to hand over recording equipment to military forces in Tahrir Square.

• Margaret Warner, a senior correspondent for the U.S.-based “PBS Newshour,” had her camera confiscated. Warner tweeted today: “PBS NewsHour arrives Cairo. Camera gear inspected & confiscated. 2 hours & we’re still haggling.”

• At least four Spanish journalists were attacked in Cairo, according to news reports. Joan Roura, a correspondent for TV3, a Catalan public television station, was attacked by men who tried to steal his mobile phone while he was conducting a live broadcast for the 24 hours news channel. Assaults were also reported against Sal Emergui, a correspondent for Catalan radio RAC1; Gemma Saura, a correspondent for the newspaper La Vanguardia; and Mikel Ayestaran, a correspondent for the newspaper Vocento/ABC.

• Several Turkish journalists were attacked by Mubarak supporters, according to news reports. Cumali Önal of Cihan News Agency and Do?an Ertu?rul of the Turkish Star Dailywere attacked and beaten by pro-Mubarak supporters on Wednesday. Both were in stable condition today.

• Men with knives seized Erol Candabako?lu, a Turkish Fox TV reporter, along with his unidentified cameraman and driver on Wednesday while they were filming in the Boulaq neighborhood of Cairo, according to news reports. The Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that Egyptian police later freed them.

• Metin Turan, a reporter for the Turkish state-run TRT channel, was assaulted today and beaten by Mubarak supporters, who seized his camera, money, and cell phone,according to the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. The reporter escaped and sought refuge at the Turkish Embassy; embassy officials told the paper they would take Turan to the hospital because he suffered from wounds and bruises. Isa Simsek, a photographer for Today’s Zaman, was also assaulted today by a Mubarak supporter, according to news reports.

• Popular Egyptian blogger Mahmoud (aka “Sandmonkey”) tweeted: ”I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apar& supplies taken.” He said he was briefly detained.

• Wally Nell, a photographer for the California-based Zuma Press agency, was wounded under the 6th October Bridge at the Corniche on the Nile in downtown Cairo, according to accounts posted by family and friends. Those accounts described Zell as having suffered multiple pellet wounds after being fired upon by police.

• At least four contributors to Demotix, a U.K.-based citizen journalism website and photo agency, were also attacked, Turi Munthe, Demotix CEO, told CPJ in an e-mail. The four included Nour El Refai and Mohamed Elmaymony.

• The British-based communications company Vodafone accused the Egyptian government of hijacking its text messaging services and sending out text messages supportive of Mubarak, according to news reports.

• Multiple journalists for state-owned or government-aligned media have resigned or have refused to work after the government put pressure on them to sanitize the news or to not report on violence against demonstrators, several CPJ sources said. Shahira Amin, an anchor on the state-owned Nile TV channel, said on the air: “I refuse to be a hypocrite. I feel liberated.”

A senior Egyptian judge has called for the indictment of of Hosni Mubarak for crimes against humanity, saying what occurred at Tahrir Square on Wednesday and Thursday was clearly “a massacre” and must be described as such. The International Criminal Court could begin proceedings against the dictator immediately, given the wide array of evidence mounting against him.

The US Department of State has obtained information that the Egyptian Interior Ministry was responsible for ordering the mass detention of journalists. That information may ultimately tip the balance of power in Egypt, as those under Mubarak and in charge of the military see the long-time ruler’s position is untenable.

There are reports that foreigners, including unarmed students seeking to escape the violence and make their way to the airport, may also have been targeted for attack. Foreign governments now have to consider not only whether Egyptians are in jeopardy, but whether their own people are coming under violent assault by agents of the regime.

The governments of the United States and the European Union are reportedly meeting to discuss policies for diplomatic intervention to help speed the process of democratic transition, and there are calls for the Arab League to intervene, to show a united front and in the interests of the Egyptian people and the region, demand the removal of Pres. Hosni Mubarak from power.

There are reports today that Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, has gone to Tahrir Square to join the hundreds of thousands massing there for the “day of departure” rally, in which pro-democracy demonstrators, reportedly including a Catholic cardinal and a top Muslim cleric, who were seen holding hands and calling for national unity.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was attacked by gangs of pro-Mubarak forces for the second consecutive day, on Thursday, was forced to broadcast from “an undisclosed location”, describing himself as “scared” about what might be about to happen and saying ordinary Egyptians were becoming afraid of what the government might do. He described the day as “the second day of all-out attacks” against pro-democracy and human rights activists and foreign and domestic journalists.

Field reports found doctors were treating many of the demonstrators for gunshot wounds, the shots having been fired by snipers and pro-Mubarak gangs.

Footage was shown in which a police van clearly speeds its way through a crowd of pedestrians, mowing down several and not stopping.

The degeneration of civil society in Egypt is absolutely owing to the failings and moral perversions of an illegitimate regime and of its leader Hosni Mubarak, a man the whole world now sees has been thoroughly corrupted by 30 years of unaccountable rule and arbitrary exercise of power.

A prominent Egyptian scholar, Fouad Ajami, told CNN on Thursday that “last night we entered the dark period” in which “we saw really naked the cruelty of the regime”. He said Mubarak’s cruelty and violence turned the peaceful protests into “a fight for the country”. Where Egyptians were using peaceful means to call for a change in the country’s form of government, the government is using machetes, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire, to kill Egyptians in the streets.

The International Criminal Court should begin collecting evidence from every possible witness as to the nature of Mubarak’s exercise of power, not only during the last ten days, but throughout his period of uninterrupted “emergency” rule. The United Nations should immediately begin drafting a new treaty declaring any prolonged period of “emergency rule” a crime against humanity and resolving to investigate abuses committed under all such regimes.

It is fundamentally unfair to the victims of such brutality that the world wait until millions of souls are steeled with the uncommon courage required to go into the streets and face down a potential onslaught from hired mercenaries and secret police. To overthrow a dictator, and avoid the defeat of a Tianenmen Square, Egypt’s people are trying to get not one, but literally millions of brave citizens to stare down the symbol of state-sponsored violence.

In 1989, in Beijing, it was one man against a column of tanks. In 2011, in Cairo, it is hundreds of thousands of brave souls against gangs of paramilitaries hired to intimidate, to injure and to kill, in order to defend a dictator. Indeed, while the 2nd of February was the day Mubarak sent his forces into Tahrir Square to spill Egyptian blood, the 4th should be the day the people’s interim government is installed, and Hosni Mubarak exiled forever to face criminal charges.

The “Day of Departure” rally has swelled the ranks of pro-democracy demonstrators occupying Tahrir Square. Reuters reports the prime minister has instructed the army to “assist” journalists and protect them from the armed pro-Mubarak gangs roaming the city. The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont gave an interview describing a harrowing experience of being detained multiple times by armed men, some wielding machetes, being forced “to kneel in front of a wall”, being detained for 2 hours by the army, which he described as “polite and disciplined”.

The Guardian is reporting:

The putative opposition figurehead Mohamad ElBaradei and another prominent opposition figure, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, have both been seen either in or on their way to Tahrir Square, according to a number of accounts.

Inside Tahrir Square, a “relaxed atmosphere” prevails among the hundreds of thousands gathered, and there appears to be an atmosphere of safety and security, though armed “vigilantes” appear to be blocking access to the square. Foreign media continue to describe difficulty accessing the site of the demonstrations, and live feeds from the square have been harder to set up than on Tuesday, when over a million people filled the square demanding Mubarak’s departure.

The protests scheduled for today were aimed at gathering millions of Egyptians in the streets for a march from Tahrir Square to one or more of the presidential palaces, where they would demand the immediate resignation of Pres. Hosni Mubarak and all of his ministers. It is not clear at this writing (7:52 am EST / 2:52 pm Cairo time) whether that final, key phase of the march will take place, but there does appear to be a much greater show of united national opposition to the Mubarak regime, from all levels of society.

A commenter on the Guardian website, who has been speaking with her husband who is presently at Tahrir Square, reports:

Eyewitness reports in Tahrir Square confirm the presence of Amr Moussa in the square with the pro-democracy demonstrators. He is the current secretary general of the Arab League and former minister of foreign affairs, is a liberal politician.

The Catholic Cardinal in Egypt was witnessed hand in hand with a Muslim cleric, both in their religious dress with the pro-democracy demonstrators. He was speaking about national unity, stating that the myth of sectarian strife is only made by the failing government security apparatus and urge people to unite as Egyptians. The Muslim cleric also stated the same.

Yesterday, Pres. Hosni Mubarak said in an interview that “If I resign today, there will be chaos”, but that claim appears to be belied by the massive opposition to his rule and by the peaceful nature of the protest. The only chaos that has occurred over the last 11 days appears to have been deliberately instigated by forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak, whether they were secret police or hired “thugs”.

The brutal crackdown that occurred in central Cairo over the last two days has reportedly led top United States government officials to speak directly to the top officials under Mubarak and in the Egyptian military, to chart a course for his departure from power, with an interim government to include opposition parties and possibly the military.

UPDATE, 10:44 am EST (5:44 pm Cairo): Video from the Guardian newspaper shows massive crowds, described by some as the single largest public pro-democracy protest in the history of the Arab world, at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Demonstrators urge embattled Pres. Hosni Mubarak to “please, leave now”; one says “Everything is destroyed. What more do you want? Just leave,” while another says “Please, Mr. Mubarak, if you love this country, leave this country.

The demonstrations are being called the “Day of Departure”, and there have been reports across the world media throughout the day that top Egyptian government officials may be in talks with military leaders and foreign governments to discuss a swift exit for Hosni Mubarak. The exact shape of the interim government has not been agreed to or made public, but opposition leaders are reportedly being urged to negotiate with the government to speed Mubarak’s departure.

That hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out has surprised many, as there was such a serious escalation of violence over the last two days and what appeared to be preparations by the regime for a violent crackdown to crush the protests. Across the region, some observers have described a mood of “euphoria”, with one Yemeni parliament minister saying “this is the great Arab revolution” and that corrupt regimes will be swept from the scene.

UPDATE, 12:34 pm EST (7:34 pm Cairo): The Guardian is reporting:

The Egyptian army is manning checkpoints at all entrances to the square, searching people for weapons before allowing them in. No pro-Mubarak protesters are being allowed into the square, following days of clashes between the two groups. The atmosphere — in the square at least — has been relaxed and peaceful, although skirmishes and gunfire were reported later in central Cairo (5.18pm).

The Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has reportedly said he will not run for the Egyptian presidency in future elections (5.10pm). However, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, who was in Tahrir Square today has reportedly suggested he is considering running for president (3.37pm).

Youth activists in Egypt have drawn a list of four very specific demands that they want to be met, including the dismantling of the ruling NDP government, a new constitution and the creation of a committee to have responsiblity for appointing a transitional government (5.05pm).

That the military is protecting every entrance to Tahrir Square, and allowing pro-democracy demonstrators into the square, while barring all weapons and all pro-Mubarak supporters, is a positive development, allowing for a far more peaceful and safer atmosphere than in recent days. There are sporadic reports of “skirmishes” and gunfire in the streets surrounding the area, but a swelling crowd and atmosphere of jubilation and defiance inside the square.

The New York Times reported earlier today that the Egyptian military may be in agreement with a plan to remove Mubarak from power and transition to an interim government representing a broad coalition of opposition parties. Calls for the dismantling of the governing NDP government are in part an effort to prevent the rigged parliament (83% went to Mubarak’s party, despite vehement opposition from the population) from undermining the peaceful transition to truly electoral government.

Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister installed over the weekend by embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, has made public apology for the violence that occurred yesterday in Cairo’s Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square. Shafiq addressed the nation, saying “As officials and a state which must protect its sons, I thought it was necessary for me to apologize and to say that this matter will not be repeated”. He called the bloodshed “a disaster”.

The apology comes after images were broadcast around the world of heavily armed thugs assaulting reporters and peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators, many of them found to be carrying official identification as state security forces or police. Anti-Mubarak protesters had said these so-called baltagayyah were paid gangs sent by Mubarak and Suleiman —the new vice president and Mubarak’s director of intelligence (and political detention and torture) for 15 years— to crush the popular uprising against the regime.

Shafiq acknowledged that the attacks appeared to be part of a coordinated campaign of violence, but that “no one had prior knowledge”. He described his being “surprised” to see camels in Tahrir Square, which many have interpreted as a subtle acknowledgement that he had thought the crackdown would look different than it did. Others have suggested Mubarak ordered Shafiq to make the apology, because he may have some “deniability”, may not have been involved in the planning.

There was swift, furious and angry reaction to Shafiq’s words on Twitter, where anti-Mubarak voices seemed convinced this was another way for the government to conceal its ongoing campaign to detain and intimidate the opposition and its supporters. Several feeds accused the government of continuing arrests and tactics of “humiliation” and suggested the investigations Shafiq spoke of would be what so many feared when Mubarak spoke of investigations: a widespread cover-up targeting dissenters and concealing Mubarak’s role in the chaos.

Many have also expressed concern that Wednesday demonstrated that the new Mubarak-Suleiman regime was formed specifically in order to take a more hardline, authoritarian posture to the protests. Shafiq expressed a willingness to go to Tahrir Square personally to meet with the pro-democracy demonstrators. Shafiq also said that he and Vice President Suleiman met today with leaders of several opposition parties and that talks to implement a transition to democratic rule would include demonstrators from Tahrir Square who have been calling for Mubarak to step down.

But key opposition figures rejected the claim, saying they would now negotiate with Mubarak, Suleiman or Shafiq. They say the three are part of a brutal authoritarian response to peaceful demonstrations, which has —as Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported Tuesday— left at least 300 killed and over 3,000 injured, with masses of opposition supporters detained. Yesterday, at least four were killed and over 1,500 injured when pro-Mubarak forces —apparently organized by the regime— assaulted the demonstrators.

UPDATE, 10:33 am EST: Reports from Cairo say at least 8 human rights workers and pro-democracy workers from the Hisham Mobarak Law Center and the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights. Nicholas Kristof has put out a message on Twitter saying that journalists have been arrested by Mubarak police forces. The crackdown appears to continue, even as PM Shafiq says he wants to visit with and negotiate with demonstrators. One of those detained may be the father of one of a demonstrator who gave an emotional interview to Al Jazeera last night.

There are reports the police are accusing the protesters of being foreign agents, and it appears the Mubarak regime continues to be using the strategy that the nature of the crackdown and the meaning of the pro-democracy movement can be covered up.

There are more reports today of live ammunition being fired in Tahrir Square. Demonstrators have been injured and it appears the violent crackdown continues, even as the prime minister calls for negotiation and hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians mass in support of the pro-democracy movement.

UPDATE, 2:48 pm EST: Billionaire Richard Branson is has said Mubarak must resign, and he may lead a campaign to divest from Egypt if Mubarak or his regime remain in power. He called on business and political leaders from around the world to join together and issue a “clear statement of intent” calling on Mubarak to leave office immediately and allow a peaceful transition to electoral democracy.

UPDATE, 2:54 pm EST: The Guardian is reporting, via live updates on the crisis in Egypt:

While Christine Amanpour was allowed to interview Mubarak, her ABC colleagues have been running from pro-Mubarak mobs: “A group of angry Egyptian men carjacked an ABC News crew and threatened to behead them today in the latest and most menacing attack on foreign reporters trying to cover the anti-government uprising.”

Earlier today, NPR reported that doctors volunteering at the makeshift outdoor field hospital that had been set up in one corner of Tahrir Square said they treated huge numbers of wounds from knives, blunt objects, fire bombs and bullets, adding that snipers had been “backing up” the pro-Mubarak mobs from rooftops around Tahrir Square. It is another sign that professional security forces had been sent in to wage a paramilitary assault on peaceful demonstrators and journalists.

UPDATE, 3:00 pm EST: It is 10:00 pm in Cairo. The clashes that rocked the city throughout Wednesday and into the pre-dawn hours of Thursday were more sporadic and less intense Thursday, and Tahrir Square again filled with pro-democracy protesters, defying the regime’s use of force. But reports from Cairo, filtering through Twitter and international media, suggest the crackdown is in fact widening, as human rights workers and journalists are now being detained and brutalized.

Voices among the demonstrators say the security forces detaining human rights lawyers suggested they were to be slandered as foreign agents, as part of a Mubarak-led cover-up of the regime’s violent crackdown. Mubarak himself told ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour that he is “disturbed” by the violence that occured on Wednesday and into Thursday, but that his government was not responsible. Protesters, and some journalists, have warned these remarks presage a strict authoritarian crackdown intended to reclaim Mubarak’s hold on power.

Vice President Omar Suleiman announced today that Mubarak’s son, Gamal, would not seek election to replace his father in the presidential elections scheduled for the fall of this year. It also appears Gamal Mubarak has resigned from the ruling National Democratic Party, though the specific motivation for doing so was not made public.

The government also reportedly froze the assets and prohibited the travel of key figures that were dismissed from the government last week by Mubarak. That move is being interpreted as one of two things: either an attempt to conceal evidence of the regime’s wrongdoing by barring witnesses access to foreign media, or to paint Mubarak as a man of law and order willing to cooperate in investigations of corruption within his administration.

UPDATE, 6:40 pm EST: Today a small candlelight vigil was held by human rights supporters in Old Damascus, to mourn the pro-democracy demonstrators who have died in Egypt. Syrian authorities failed to intervene when a group of 20 men “dressed in civilian clothes” but apparently coordinated, assaulted and, from eyewitness accounts, brutally beat the 15 unarmed civilians gathered in front of a police station.

While Mubarak’s new prime minister has apologized for the violence in Tahrir Square and said he will investigate the causes, and Mubarak’s vice president and chief intelligence officer said fall elections have been moved up to August, Pres. Mubarak himself defiantly said his government is not responsible for the violence and blamed one of the opposition parties.

Meanwhile the crackdown has reportedly been ongoing and in some ways intensifying. Journalists are now so flagrantly and directly under assault from security forces in central Cairo that multiple networks have shut down their live feeds. There are reports of at least 13 people killed, as pro-Mubarak forces appear to continue attacking demonstrators. Cairo has become the world’s most dangerous city for journalists, almost overnight, and Mubarak’s regime is being condemned for the violence.

UPDATE, 8:12 pm EST: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer explained on air that the mounting rash of violence and political detentions targeting journalists “has made it impossible for us to show live pictures”. Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau put out a tweet saying the same, that maintaining the live feed from Tahrir Square was putting their lives in danger. They pledged to bring back the live feed as soon as security conditions improved.

The atmosphere of violence and the persecution of journalists should be something the Egyptian military could control. It appears to independent observers that the military has taken the view that the “pro-Mubarak” forces are probably a mix of citizens and paramilitaries and that restraint is preferable.

Today the military mobilized to keep the pro-Mubarak gangs out of Tahrir Square, at least for part of the day, and pr0-democracy demonstrators in the square began fortifying and securing barricades to make sure armed cadres could not entre the square. Makeshift field hospitals were set up at one corner of the square to back up the main field hospital set up inside a nearby mosque, and activists were reportedly detaining armed attackers they were able to subdue in a holding area.

The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.

It is often said that secrecy is required for any meetings where people relay information to executives of the government, because without secrecy there could be no “candor”. Candor is certainly, in most settings, a virtue, but it stretches the imagination to come up with a circumstance where candid analysis of a problematic situation would be so shameful in nature as to warrant blanket secrecy for ALL such encounters. It is well understood that analytical understanding and participation in wrongdoing are not the same thing.

Top advisors on energy policy, security policy, and diplomatic outreach, may have problems bridging the divide between their own government’s intentions and those of a foreign power, but then, that’s what diplomacy is, and everyone understands it as such. Using official secrecy powers to cover up malicious accusations, or even evidence of wrongdoing, is wrong-headed, and contrary to basic democratic values. The people have a right to know what their government is doing and on the basis of what information.

Julian Assange is being made into a synonym for WikiLeaks by global media hype. This is not only disingenuous, it also poses a grave disservice to the reading public. WikiLeaks is a very logical step in the digital media revolution. If it weren’t Assange, it would be someone else. It might not be a site so explicitly devoted to the anti-secrecy cause, but it could be any number of sites that simply post documents that would otherwise have been kept secret.

The innovation is not WikiLeaks at all, or Julian Assange, but as Todd Gitlin points out in an “Entanglements” post for the New Republic, the database. The database is a major functional foundation of the digital age, helping to structure and administer everything from everyman blogs to travel websites, to Google and the work of government itself. That a given webpage, an article in an online newspaper, for instance, is not just a computer file, but a portal that links back to numerous other files and databases, is a major feature of the web today.

WikiLeaks is a logical next step in transparency. Now, maybe there are key psychological drivers related to the life and tastes of Julian Assange that have made WikiLeaks the comprehensive document dump that it is, but even critics have to admit that WikiLeaks has been somewhat more selective in its release of documents that most media reports suggest.

Yes, it is a major achievement to have access to so many hundreds of thousands of documents, and to share them with major newspapers, but that is not the same as putting everything willy-nilly into the public domain. This is a test-case for modern democracy: can we survive major releases of information that our elected leaders wish to keep concealed, without those leaders asking us to cede more power to them? Can we remain democratic, despite the embarrassment of our elected leaders?

I’ve chosen phrasing that makes it seem absurdly childish to consider the alternative: that we cede power to leaders who would request we become less free in order that they suffer less embarrassment. In part, I chose these words because what is patently absurd is never necessarily avoidable. Everything depends on what people are willing to accept. All too often, we do accept the patently absurd from major institutions, especially where not doing so would make us aware of our own responsibility in society.

WikiLeaks may not be the most convenient fact of life for people wishing to do business in government offices that rely on discretion and cooperation for efficacy. But does that inconvenience mean it is an evil to the public good? Does it mean we should forfeit our sacred liberties, like the freedom to know about our government, its deliberations and its actions? Does the problem posed by WikiLeaks mean a free society should make itself less free to prevent such discomfort? It seems doing so would only worsen the problem.

And then there’s the question as to whether any of this really impacts national security. As WikiLeaks and its defenders have many times pointed out, not one official from any agency has yet come forward with any incident in which any person or persons were harmed as a result of information WikiLeaks released into the public domain. But beyond that, we have the question of just how precarious is a security policy that relies so heavily on secrecy?

“Sources and methods” is thrown around a lot as a term of art: secrecy is about protecting “sources and methods” for intelligence gathering. Intelligence gathering is harder if specific sources and methods are compromised, because defensive action can be taken to prevent the use of those particular sources and methods to gain access to specific information. This is very true, and very relevant. But, intelligence gathering that relies entirely on having the upper-hand yielded by surprise attack is not really all that effective.

The state of any art develops, and as it does, methods and techniques are engineered and reverse engineered and re-engineered. Everyone is trying to achieve the same set of goals with more or less the same tactical limitations (except where technology and/or size make a difference). It is not true that all ideas about how to gather intelligence or specific results emerging from specific intelligence gathering techniques need to be kept secret in order to protect the usefulness of specific sources or even the secret existence of specific methods.

If intelligence works, it should be understood to have worked. If official release of documents is in some ways counterproductive (leaking sources to harm individuals or leaking information to achieve a performative difference in some component of the story), the unauthorized acquisition of leaked documents by non official sources (journalists) can be highly constructive. Exposing methods, ideas or biases, that might be embarrassing can lead to improved methods, ideas and perspectives that replace outmoded or inefficient precursors.

We cannot, in good conscience, as citizens of a free country, accept the excuse from policy-makers that only in an atmosphere of official secrecy can they do the difficult work of maintaining good strategic relations and of keeping our nation and our allies safe. The only real grounds for that argument is the proposition that they are not equipped to do it any other way. We should demand, however optimistic it may seem, that our public servants actually achieve the standards we expect of them, so that their work is not an embarrassment so much as a demonstration of heroic devotion to a mind-bendingly difficult art.

There are reports online that suggest the US Dept. of State may be seeking to suppress the use of data and information emerging from WikiLeaks document releases, telling possible recruits that all such information remains “classified”, i.e. secret, and that any use of such data, including reposting of links to the leaks themselves or to WikiLeaks generally, will disqualify them from serving at the Dept. of State. Critics say this is an attempt to avoid facing reality and an undemocratic demand against the the right to free and open debate.

The argument for not prosecuting government officials who careful and strategically leak secret information that has been approved, if unofficially, for release is that once released, the information pertains to the public domain and the impact has been calculated to be of use to those in office or to official policy aims. That the debate and contemplation of new information now widely disseminated throughout the public domain, across the world, should be considered tantamount to a prohibited act flies in the face of basic reason.

Whether or not those in power want to admit it, the information is out there. The substance of private conversations is now known, back-channel diplomacy has been released into public view, and people are, rightly, embarrassed by some of what was said. But it really is not too far fetched to imagine that what citizens want of their government, given these details, is for those in positions of influence to address the problem, not to try to suppress free and open debate of the substance of policy revelations.

The leaks have been generated, the information is out there. There may be a feeling there is a need to shut down the publication making the information available, before what has not yet been released is released, but there are serious legal impediments to doing that, and WikiLeaks has famously build itself an “insurance policy”. The insurance, against aggressive action to shut down the site or imprison its founder, Julian Assange, is reportedly an encrypted file, already downloaded to computers across the world, that allegedly contains ultra sensitive information, which would be released if certain lines are crossed.

Tactically, this makes real action to suppress debate at least very problematic. But beyond that, there’s the issue of democracy itself: the United States government exists within a strict Constitutional framework that, in theory, requires it to honor the work of journalists who seek to uncover information that would otherwise be kept secret, whether inside the halls of power or out among the people or in foreign lands. The freedom of the press is primordial to the institutions of a true democratic system of government, and the United States cannot simultaneously serve that interest and take action to silence a media outlet.

The Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), whose students were allegedly the targets of one State Dept. official’s apparently rogue gag order, has apparently refined its position on the WikiLeaks blackout. The dean of SIPA has said that students “have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena … without fear of adverse consequences”.

The initial warning reportedly came from a SIPA alumnus, employed by the State Dept., by way of the Career Services office at SIPA. The school has since retracted the warning, saying that it does not seek to silence debate or to control what information students research or discuss in their pursuit of a thorough education in global politics.

John Coatsworth, dean of SIPA, issued an email, obtained by Wired, which called the Career Services warning “guidance”, and which reads in part:

Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.  The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to SIPA students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom.

Columbia appears to have put to rest the issue of whether it would censor its students at the direction of one State Dept. official, but it remains unclear, despite State Dept. objections, what motivated the alleged lone censor to seek to suppress debate at one of the nation’s most prestigious schools of international politics.

MSNBC anchor and news analyst Keith Olbermann will be back on the air on Tuesday evening, after being indefinitely suspended, and thus missing his Friday and Monday programming. MSNBC president Phil Griffin had suspended Olbermann, alleging that three campaign donations violated the ethics rules for journalists employed by NBC News. The suspension had appeared to many to be politically motivated, given Comcast’s plans to take over the network, and the likely incoming president’s staunchly pro-Bush views and past fundraising activity.

The suspension of Olbermann —in a media climate where MSNBC rival FOX News has literally and very explicitly set itself up as an arm of the Republican electoral campaign, inviting candidates to come on air to fundraise and actively promoting those candidates it interviews, while news anchors attend fundraisers to draw donors and actively donate themselves, and where MSNBC has permitted various Republican commentators to be both employed by the network and actively involved in GOP politics and fundraising— raised the suspicion and the ire of progressives across the country.

A nationwide grassroots campaign to demand Olbermann’s reinstatement began almost immediately, and as of this morning, the news had broken that Olbermann would be back on the air by Tuesday evening. It is clear the outpouring of criticism and the intensifying accusations of political motivations put pressure on MSNBC to end the suspension. Almost overnight, the network lost its credibility as an open and critical political voice where progressives could be heard to one where this seemed to be some kind of fluke whose days were doomed as a corporate takeover approached.

The damage may be done, considering how difficult it has been for progressive press and civil rights groups to get clear information from NBC/Universal about the nature of the decision to suspend Olbermann. There have been sporadic calls for investigations into the motivations of the executives involved in the decision to suspend the journalist, even as the network alleges there were clear violations of the company’s journalistic ethics rules.

There has been a clamoring from the right and from corporate front groups that lobby to oppose pro-consumer and public-health reforms to steer the mainstream media toward a kind of corporate-right doctrine, where markets are sacrosanct and criticism of corporate institutions is considered counterproductive and un-American. FOX News has modeled itself after this doctrine, and has actively sought ad dollars (donations?) from the very entities that push this doctrine of media bias.

In the wake of the Republican victory in the midterm elections, conservative politicians have been crying foul that there remain any dissent or any opposition to their views, in politics, in the mainstream media, or across the nation. There is mounting controversy over the leadership push by right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who once promised she would use a leadership role in the House of Representatives to investigate members of Congress for holding “un-American” views, essentially a bludgeon designed to stamp out dissent and persecute anyone who opposes the Republican agenda.

The media are struggling to understand the meaning of a “wave” election that comes just two years after the historic landslide victory and Pres. Obama’s record vote numbers (Obama won fully 60% more votes in 2008 than Ronald Reagan in 1980). In fact, the story is very simple: in 2008, Pres. Obama won nearly 70 million votes, more than 26 million more than Ronald Reagain in 1980, and by far the most ever received by any candidate for president. In 2010, most of the presidential electorate of 2008 did not participate, making the electorate demographically more conservative and more Republican.

The majority of Democratic candidates who lost were “conservative Democrats” or DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) who actively opposed Pres. Obama and helped the Republicans spread unsubstantiated smears of the president’s major reform agenda. They did not, however, lose because they were conservative or because they criticized the president; they lost because they had put the political maneuvering for their own re-election above the truth and above the interests of the people: neither Democrats nor Republicans have any reason to support such people, and of course, the devil who betrays you is worse than the devil who hasn’t yet turned on his or her principles for cheap political advantage.

Will the Olbermann suspension be the first in a wave of corporate attempts to manipulate the media, dampen criticism of Congressional Republicans or undermine the free press in the United States? First things first: it is not the first case. The real question is: can the media, made up of actual people, whose profession is journalism, do the research and privilege the facts, and be relentlessly critical of those who seek to mislead, so that the press remains a powerful defender of American freedoms and political and corporate interests cannot take over?

Olbermann will likely be emboldened by this attack on his character and on his freedom to make decisions of conscience in how he carries out his duties as a journalist and as a citizen. He will likely have tough words for anyone in politics or in the media who opposes the free press, and he should, we can expect, continue to push the idea that ending net neutrality is a threat to our democracy and a violation of the First Amendment (he reported on this the very week he was suspended, by the way). Maybe the suspension will raise the profile of the issue of press freedom, and cause more citizens to stand up and be counted as favoring the First Amendment over the corporate echo-chamber.

Amid allegations the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using membership dues and donations from foreign firms to wage an all-out ad-war against Democratic politics, at least 275 members are demanding the group cease its “punitive campaign” against anyone who supported the Affordable Care Act and reveal their sources and methods of funding the ads.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has lodged its second complaint in two years against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for what it sees as overtly partisan attack ads and possible misuse of members’ donations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has refused to reveal what sources of funding are being tapped to fund its political attack-ad campaign.

On 21 October 2010, the ICCR issued an open letter urging all of its members to send formal requests demanding the Chamber release the full details of its donation and campaign funding system. The letter read, in part, as follows:

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and its members, a coalition of 275 institutional investors representing $100 billion in assets under management, including shareholders in [our company], are writing to express our profound concerns about our company’s potential role in furthering the highly politicized agenda of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 2010 mid?term election and the Chamber’s continued hostile opposition to health care reform.

As widely reported in the press, the Chamber has taken an extremely antagonistic position on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and is using its considerable political and financial influence to punish those members of Congress who voted in favor of the bill and further, to obstruct its implementation. Specifically, the Chamber is reportedly spending up to $75 million this November, much of it in the form of a calculated series of attack ads. As active proponents of quality and affordable health care for all Americans and investors in [our company], we are requesting that [our company] review and fully disclose how its membership dues to the Chamber are being spent to ensure that our company’s funds are not contributing directly or indirectly to this campaign. In addition we urge you as a dues?paying member of the Chamber to join with other companies to challenge the Chamber’s political campaign and its ongoing opposition to health care reform.

As responsible shareholders we are invested in [our company] because we believe you are committed to good corporate citizenship. We are concerned that membership in the Chamber could be construed by the public as implicit support for its deliberately divisive and exceedingly negative campaign. We believe this “guilt by association” could have a deleterious effect on our company’s image and ultimately, adversely impact shareholder value.

Apple Computer has left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce altogether, allegedly in protest over its overtly antagonistic political attacks against Democratic politicians and progressive politics. The organization is now seen as biased and as misusing its legal and tax status as a 501(c)(6) account holder to influence political outcomes in favor of one party over another.

Small businesses, which have benefited from the various reform policies of the Obama administration, have complained the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has misrepresented its relationship with them and has misused membership dues, in order to work on behalf of major multinational corporations and Republican politicians, many of whom have labored tirelessly over the last two years to oppose tax breaks that would benefit small businesses.

Questions have been raised about whether the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is actually violating federal election law by not disclosing the specific names and figures of every donation funneled into campaign advertisements. The Supreme Court ruling that unleashed this flood of secret corporate money to buy airtime and crowd out citizens’ voices, ironically called Citizens United v. FEC, actually operated on the assumption that all such donations would be disclosed in a near immediate and fully transparent fashion.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court “swing vote” who wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, actually included in his ruling the (some say “naïve”) assumption that “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions.” He went on to explain that the right of corporate entities to spend was conditioned on the presumption that: “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS (both groups founded by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie), along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other 501(c) groups, appear to believe that the ruling was at least in this respect a gross misreading of American electoral law, in that they reserve the right to keep absolutely secret. The problem is: if that is the case, the entire logic of the ruling would be undermined, necessitating a reversal and a ban on unlimited spending.

As Joe Conason has noted in Salon:

When Kennedy, along with his four conservative colleagues, overturned the century-old limitations on corporate funding of political campaigns, he justified this enormous gift to his fellow Republicans with what amounted to a false promise. Full and timely disclosure of the sources of the expected flood of corporate money, according to Kennedy, would serve the same essential purpose as the discarded restrictions, keeping voters informed by exposing politicians and their business benefactors.

Conason pulls no punches in his critique of Kennedy’s ruling, and many on the left and right of the political spectrum would agree his tone is fair, given the consequences in undermining the power of individual citizens’ voices to play a role in the election debate. He suggest that “With the zeal of an internet huckster, he claimed that technology would dispel the aura of corruption and secrecy that inspired McCain-Feingold and earlier attempts to restrict corporate money.”

For the most part, Conason’s critique is in line with all the critics of the ruling who predicted it would lead to an incredible glut of untraceable campaign spending, a more far-reaching and severe “aura of corruption and secrecy”, and the very deliberate and unashamed cloaking of a new pay-to-play system under the heady comfort of a legally unfounded Supreme Court mistake in judgment.

The fact that the 501(c) groups in question have roundly rejected any request that they disclose their source or methods of financing for political attack campaigns, and that they have seen fit to coordinate their spending with Republican political campaigns —both violations of the law as interpreted under Citizens United— implies they no more took seriously the legal founding of the ruling than do its critics.

According to Conason’s reporting for Salon:

A recent study by Public Citizen, the nonpartisan organization founded by Ralph Nader, shows that effective disclosure of spending by “independent” groups has dropped from 98 percent in 2004 to 32 percent this year. Political malefactors like Karl Rove, who were unable to conceal the sources of the “Swift Boat” sewer money six years ago, feel so liberated by Citizens United that they are now collecting and spending tens of millions of dollars without bothering to register as a political committee, let alone disclose the names and interests of their fat-cat backers.

The impunity with which millionaire and billionaire financial backers have poured money into these attack campaigns, some allegedly writing checks for as much as $20 million, suggests there was either 1) no legal founding for the Citizens United ruling or 2) such profound naïveté on the Court that the fitness of several justices to serve must be called into question.

That the U.S. Chamber now appears poised to reject its own members’ demands to know who is funding attacks that many of them perceive to run contrary to their interests, or to confer with membership about the nature of its advertising, suggests the possibility that there is, in fact, some wrongdoing to conceal. So far, the Chamber has provided no clear explanation as to how it can take foreign donations into the same account used for its attack ads, yet not use any of that money for those ads.

Daniel Ellsberg —who worked for the State Department, the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation and who leaked secret documents (the ‘Pentagon Papers’) spanning the history of the Vietnam war and bringing to light the truth about behind-the-scenes planning that went on at the highest levels of the government— speaks to DemocracyNow! about the WikiLeaks release of over 391,000 secret documents relating to the prosecution of the Iraq war from 2004 through 2009.

Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has denounced the release of documents, alleging that WikiLeaks and their source(s) may “already have blood on their hands”. Ellsberg reminded Amy Goodman that “unfortunately, a lot of actual blood has been spilled” in the two wars the WikiLeaks “war logs” relate to. And even as Adm. Mullen demands media silence on the Iraq War Logs, and the administration threatens prosecution, the Pentagon has reportedly released a statement saying they have confirmed no vital sources or methods were compromised by this release of documents.

Ellsberg goes on to criticize the Obama administration for not resisting the heavy-handed approach taken by the US government against freedom of information throughout the so-called “war on terror” period. “I think this administration is moving really aggressively toward using the Espionage Act as an official secrets act, in which case, we’ll know even less than we do about the lies that prolong wars and get us into wrongful wars,” he told Goodman.

While Pres. Obama has sought to end the process of secret detention, extraordinary rendition, extra-constitutional prosecution and open-ended imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the process has faltered. Intense pressure from conservatives to avoid prosecuting terror detainees in federal courts, and allegations that abusive treatment of detainees between 2001 and 2008 has made fundamental evidence inadmissable at prosecution, have made it nearly impossible to transition away from the Guantánamo paradigm at the speed Obama had sought.

Now, with Julian Assange using WikiLeaks to publish hundreds of thousands of secret documents, observers are split on the meaning of the event. On the one hand, there are national security hawks who favor official secrets laws and view the leak as a threat to national security; on the other hand, there are those who say a free society cannot be afraid of a free press, and the government has an obligation to be more, not less, transparent. For those who see the world this way, the WikiLeaks problem is more a problem of why a government would keep such secrets in the first place.

The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Joseph Robertson, Cafe Sentido’s editorial director, with Davoud Geramifard, a Persian mixed-media artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, Canada, whose documentary Voices of the Unheard was screened at this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City…

CafeSentido (editor Joseph Robertson): Was it a difficult choice to film undercover in Iran knowing you might not be able to return as a result?

Davoud Geramifard (director): Going back to make this film was a conscious decision. I knew that I might be arrested, or even killed, as it happened before to many Iranians who tried to do the same thing. The saddest case was Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian who was murdured and raped just for taking pictures outside the notorious Evin prison. But how could I live in peace if I had chosen to be indifferent or silent about the brutalities that I felt for many years in Iran. Someone had to do it, and I hope others continue on this path, because unless we expose these critical issues, we would not be able to gain what our people has been fighting for.

CS: How are the people who were filmed? Have any of them expressed concerns about repercussions? Or are they excited to be speaking out?

DG: My participants are OK at the moment. I have constant contact with them, and till now, there has not been any issue for them. However we are still preventing the mass distribution of the film, and our goal is to show the film in festivals across the globe for now. My participants are proud of what they did, otherwise, they would not have been in the film from the beginning. The Iran that they have portrayed has been missing from the the psyche of outside world for such a long time, that they wanted to take the chance and speak out. I think now it is the responsibility of the international community to respect their courage and HEAR their stories, and do not leave them alone.

CS: Did you have a specific structure of three or four key areas you wanted to cover? Or did you break the film into chapters only after shooting?

DG: I had the structure planned carefully prior to the shoot. I did an academic research that took about two years. I identified and categorized various secular communities, and wanted to have the best structure, so that each category could have a member in the film. I knew the style that I wanted to use, and I wanted to add something to the filmmaking language as well as being fare to the topic. Each participant and his/her environment actually dictated and formed the style, and I wanted the film to allow them to be comfortable.

CS: If there’s a corner of life (or multiple) in Iran you’d like to film but weren’t able to, what would it be? And why? Will you try to do that work without a change in administration?

DG: There are many topics that I want to explore and put into film in Iran. Currently I’m working on my next documentary, Cyber Revolution which is about the use of web-based social media in the formation of emancipatory movements in Iran. This is something I can do without returning back to Iran. I dream of doing docs on topics such as the woman’s rights movements, worker’s situation, and the bitter story of the Iranian oil industry which from my perspective is the real problem of Iran and Iranians. I’m also writing a script for my first fiction film, which I hope I can bring in front of the camera it in a neighboring country, before it is too late!

CS: What role do you believe economic trends play in the mindset of the people you spoke to? Does this vary by generation?

DG: Economics trends play a crucial role. Many of my participants see Iran as a rich country that should be strong, regardless of its oil reserves. The new generation needs work, they demand a good lifestyle, at least something similar to their father’s generation, but the Iranian government prefers to spend the Iranian money on expanding their influence in the region, or buying more arms and building a stronger repressive “Revolutionary Guard”. Inflation rate is galloping in Iran, gas is rationed, but they send billions of dollars for Hezbullah. Iranian people are not happy with that. I personally believe that the deterioration of economics combined with free communication with the outside world will be the Achilles heel of the Islamic Republic. The moment they cannot find buyers for their oil, they are on the verges of collapse.

CS: What issues (aside from political change) did you find are central to the reformists’ agenda?

DG: I think that the 30 years-long experience of the Islamic regime has convinced a fraction of the “insiders” (AKA the reformists) that free trade can prevent the total collapse of the regime. These people who are also famous as “technocrats” want people to have jobs and a little bit of freedom, so that they can be able to buy, spend and be “happy” on a consumerist or liberal democratic level. In order to make this minute change take shape, they have to for example give more freedom to the women, or to the students. Real political change, or the change of the constitution or the theocratic system has not been a part of their agenda. This notion has been forced on them just after the election, by the people whose need for change is much more drastic than the change the reformists were seeking.

CS: Were you conscious of crafting an aesthetic or a mood for the film or for any of its chapters?

DG: Absolutely. I wanted the film to have something to say with its form and aesthetics. Documentary filmmaking is an important part of cinema. I have studied it in academia and as a maker I wanted to add to this rich legacy. I studied form in both fiction and documentary extensively and wanted the film to blur the boundary between these two, because that is what satisfy me the most as a maker. In addition to that, I wanted the film to be poetic and non-expository. Poetry is the most important form of art in Iran. Even in our daily conversations we use tropes, so I always and almost unconsciously go back to that legacy and try to use it in a visual way. Finally I should mention that I think the style of this film was partly dictated by the subject. I wanted the viewer to feel as a member of the communities that they are encountering in the film. Thus I went for a verite style to create that comfort.

CS: What role did sound play in how you put the final cut together?

DG: Music and sound are my passion right after cinema. Sometimes I feel if my love affair with cinema was not this much dominant, I would have been a musician. However this secondary love story has crafted a good listener out of me. I think sound and music should add another layer to a film, and they should be able to speak for themselves. In the film, if you compare the use of sound in the opening of the first chapter with the second one, you will get the most important message of the film. In urban Iran, one wakes up with the dominant sound of religion in the morning (call to prayer); that is how ideology tries to penetrate one’s personal space. But in a nomadic regions with the lack of a religious order, one wakes up with the sound of nature, the sound of a rooster.

CS: Are there more unheard voices you feel it would be important to highlight?

DG: There are many. Iran has not passed its civic rights movement yet. Discrimination is vivid in that society. Gender inequality still persists. Gay rights has been ignored in Iran. Women rights are neglected on daily basis. Religious minorities still does not enjoy equality. In fact Iranian constitution only recognizes 5 religions officially, and there is no chance for agnostics or atheists to voice their existence openly. Ethnic minorities are heavily suppressed to a degree that their languages cannot be taught in the schools of their region. Iran has once been the land of diverse groups of people who shared the same motherland, regardless of their differences. It is heartbreaking to me as an Iranian to see what this regime has made out of Iran. But one day we will take it back, we will build it again and once that day comes if I was alive, I’m going to make sure that no human being faces repression and voicelessness in our land.

CS: What advice would you give journalists and filmmakers who want to report on situations like the one in Iran?

DG: Please familiarize yourself deeply with Iran before going there. Please read the contemporary history of Iran, as well as a bit of ancient history. Iranians are still sad about Alexander’s attack, the Arab invasion, and the Ajax operation. We live with our past, so learn it well before going there. Please read from authentic sources, I will recommend Edward G. Browne, and Morgan Shuster to begin with. Please recognize our 150 years fight for democracy. Please go inside the houses, rather than staying outside on the sidewalks. Iranians cannot speak freely with you in the middle of the streets. The Iran you will see in people’s houses is the uncensored Iran. If you want to understand Iran, travel in every region. Iran is not only Tehran.

On 4 June 1989, the Chinese military moved into Tiananmen Square to disperse a long-running student and citizen protest in favor of democratic reforms. The military were reportedly ordered to use deadly force and opened fire, killing an unknown number of unarmed civilians. The anonymous man in the above photo became known around the world as an icon of human rights, when he stopped a column of tanks by standing in their way, a moral and human challenge to the military crackdown.

In Hong Kong yesterday, thousands joined a candlelight vigil to honor those who died at Tiananmen Square. The annual commemorative ceremony is a reminder of the special political freedoms enjoyed by residents of the former British colony. Communications between Hong Kong and mainland China, however, were constricted, and surveillance of the whereabouts and activities of foreign visitors was reported to be intensified, as the government sought to keep information about the massacre from filtering through to the population.

China has fought hard to avoid entering the open media environment of the 21st century: the current president Hu Jintao notoriously launched a “smokeless war” against press and dissidents in the first Central Committee meeting after taking power. Regional protest movements have been suppressed in national media; the outbreak of SARS was suppressed, raising the ire of public health officials who accused the political elements of the government of endangering the population and the wider world.

The special freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong are not widely known inside China, or at least not publicly discussed. Journalists, government critics, bloggers and even internet cafe owners, have been or are presently jailed, for violating censorship laws. Google and other major western firms were forced to agree to blanket censorship regarding certain search terms like “democracy” or “Tiananmen Square”.

But earlier this year, when it was revealed that someone inside China had hacked into Google’s corporate email and internal communications, Google announced it would no longer filter its searches, challenging China’s government to deal with the problem of an open web. Again this year, websites have been blocked or shut down, traffic redirected, and service disrupted, as China’s government sought to suppress information about the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Google has recently announced it will no longer use Microsoft software, as it was discovered the Chinese hack of Google’s corporate communications was linked to a weakness in Microsoft’s web browser software. China’s government has also had access to Microsoft code, raising fears that access could make computers around the world vulnerable to illegal and possibly harmful surveillance and hacking.

The broader issue for China is how it can fully open its economic system when the central government so forcefully retains control over the flow of information inside China. Google has refused to allow the censored site to remain under Beijing’s control and is now redirecting search traffic to an uncensored site outside of China, but the conflict has only made the matter more urgent: how can China continue to advance if its government cannot allow Chinese people to know what their government does or has done?

The web is democratizing business and innovation the world over, but Tiananmen Square continues to be a measure of how unwilling the Chinese authorities have been to allow true informational freedom to the Chinese people. 2008 saw the Charter ’08 movement demanding the People’s Republic reform politically to allow more personal, organizational and media freedom in mainland China. The leaders have been prosecuted and jailed, and some are in hiding.

The Guardian reports that a proposed piece of legislation up for debate in the Italian senate would mean:

No more reporting of criminal investigations before they come to trial (even if that takes years). No more recording or photographing of anyone, even a Mafia boss, unless that person approves. Only members of the state-approved “National Order of Journalists” allowed to film or record. Fines approaching half-a-million euros for publishers who transgress, with €20,000 per reporter also on the table.

Such extreme limitations on press freedom could undermine the very functioning of democracy in Italy, and may violate basic principles of democratic personal freedom and freedom of information that underpin the European Union and the obligations of its member states to afford and protect basic human rights.

Help inform the debate with specifics about Italian media law, European Union legislation on informational freedom, and the underlying motivations for this proposed radical expansion of the Italian government’s censorship powers…

• Join the discussion now on the Hot Spring Network

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now looking at ways to use legislation that grants the power to regulate traditional phone networks in order to establish a regulatory paradigm of ‘net neutrality’, meaning internet service providers (ISP) who provide connectivity cannot block or slow traffic to some sites while privileging traffic to others. Bandwidth itself is an important limiting factor in the physical environment, and so efforts to expand bandwidth may be crucial to making real net neutrality work.

Legally, it would be difficult for the United States Congress to pass any law that undermines net neutrality, because under the current legal infrastructure, such online access discrimination is illegal, and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly warns that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…” Each of those rights would be abridged if a law overriding the current net neutral standard were enacted.

But for bandwidth to be expanded, hardware needs to be put in place, all legal nuance aside. So bandwidth multipliers could be the optimal way forward. This would entail a complex array of advanced technological enhancements to existing networks, to allow all wires, cables and transmitters to maximize the bandwidth usage at any given time, without impeding the access of any one household or location to the broader network. If such a smart-connective network could be built, it would require perhaps unprecedented collaboration from ISPs.

To achieve genuine bandwidth multiplier effects, that could benefit remote or underprivileged communities, businesses, and low-budget organizations and publishers, we would need to see the following:

1. More open sharing of traffic flows and traffic-flow data between ISPs;
2. A regulatory framework that allows for this kind of information sharing, but prevents collusion and price-fixing;
3. Technological advances that optimize data flow, minimize energy seepage, and cross-relay traffic across distinct types of network (cable, wire, fiber-optic, wavelength);
4. More powerful, adaptive, remote-hosting servers;
5. A more secure, more easily manipulated cloud-computing environment;
6. Microprocessors able to calculate likely processing time and likely bandwidth time, then compress and decompress files at ‘invisible’ speed, to optimize bandwidth usage.

It is likely that the kind of advances needed to achieve genuine expansion of bandwidth to remote locations will have to do with spontaneous wireless hotspot placement, and physical technical innovations that allow for such solutions, but practice and software can do much of the work to get us started.

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Google has announced it will stop censoring search results for users in China. This radically reverses the dynamic of its relationship with the Chinese government, which had demanded as a condition of being searchable in China that the internet giant systematically bar certain content from appearing in lists of search results. Google had agreed to enter the Chinese market filtering out search results related to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of June 1989, even to the word “democracy”, but a cyber-spying attack that originated in China caused Google to rethink the validity of the initial agreement.

It is presumed the Chinese government will eventually shut down Google altogether in mainland China, should the search giant not revert to filtering certain key words from searches generated by users inside China. But as of Tuesday, full blockage had not gone into effect. The San Jose Mercury News, however, is reporting that “One day after Google stopped complying with China’s censorship rules, state-sponsored media ratcheted up verbal attacks on the search giant, and several of Google’s key business relationships in the country appeared to be in serious jeopardy.”

According to Wired:

The recent hack attack on Google, Adobe and other companies occurred through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability that affects many versions of Internet Explorer, according to Microsoft and a security researcher with a leading anti-virus firm.

Microsoft learned about the vulnerability only Wednesday evening, said the researcher, who asked not to be identified because he’s not authorized to speak with the press.

Over 30 firms were hacked, in what appears to be a state-corporate espionage operation, though it is still unclear what sort of information was compromised, or if any documents were deleted, altered or accessed. At least 34 companies were attacked, and reports suggest the hack was designed to access the companies’ secret proprietary source code, possibly to allow further future hacks, censorship operations or blanket espionage linked to specific software.

Wired has also reported that:

Anti-virus firm McAfee has published a blog post confirming that a previously undisclosed vulnerability in IE was used to hack into several of the targeted companies. The attacks have been dubbed “Operation Aurora,” believed to be the name the hackers gave their attack. A McAfee spokesman told Threat Level that the company’s researchers had been working with a number of companies that were targeted in the attack since last week, prior to Google’s announcement.

There has been a “bumper crop” of malware, in recent months, meaning a build-up of malicious software that would allow hackers to remotely access private, proprietary information, if anti-virus software is not yet attuned to the specific technical functionality of the attack.

Google’s announcement that it will no long participate in China’s “voluntary” censorship/filtering program is, clearly, a direct accusation against the Chinese government, and a sign the software and search company does not believe it can reasonably defend its interests, or the interests of informational freedom, by agreeing to a pact which it says Beijing has refused to honor.

Google is now redirecting search users inside mainland China to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong. According to the New York Times:

Just over two months after threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions from hackers, Google on Monday closed its Internet search service there and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.

While the decision to route mainland Chinese users to Hong Kong is an attempt by Google to skirt censorship requirements without running afoul of Chinese laws, it appears to have angered officials in China, setting the stage for a possible escalation of the conflict, which may include blocking the Hong Kong search service in mainland China.

Google says China’s government was involved in the attack, and has violated the terms of the agreement Google made, which allowed certain search terms to be blocked inside mainland China, in exchange for a largely open operating policy. Somewhat surprisingly, China’s government has said through the state-run Xinhua news agency that Google’s move is a violation of its agreement with Beijing, which the government alleges included a ban on accusing the government of illegal hacking.

Clearly, the media environment is too constrained and authoritarian to allow for Google to operate freely as an open information media enterprise. Google’s challenge to Beijing, it is thought, will most likely result in Google’s search engine pages being banned outright in mainland China, and a more intense censorship clampdown on other search engines and social networking websites.

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