Month: June 2009

Dansk Folkeparti tryner DR til selvcensur

Mange studieværter i DR er nu utrygge efter sagen om, at DR måtte krybe til korset og undskylde, at en gæst et radioprogram var kommet til at sige, at Pia Kjærsgaard har sagt, at indvandrere “avler som rotter”. Og det har hun ikke – hun har sagt, de “avler som kaniner”.

To ting: Studieværten skal overhovedet ikke undskylde for, hvad gæster udtrykker i et radioprogram. Og Dansk Folkeparti er tydeligvis ved at snige sig ind på rollen som øverste censurmyndighed her i landet. Folkepartiets linje for ytringsfriheden er klar: De og deres meningsfæller må sige alt om alle, men hvis nogen vover at give igen med noget, der bare minder om skyggen af samme mønt, er de klar med krav om undskyldninger, selvcensur og censur. De er bøller og tyranner, intet andet.

Om DRs selvcensur skriver Politiken:

Skal en programvært altid kunne vide om det, gæsten siger i programmet, er rigtigt eller forkert ?

Det spørgsmål er blevet aktuelt, efter at DR’s topchef overfor Pia Kjærsgaard har beklaget, at hun i et radioprogram blev tillagt et citat om, at indvandrere »formerer sig som rotter«.  (…)

»Jeg synes, det her sætter os værter i en helt umulig situation. Hvis jeg har fire gæster i studiet i en halvanden time lang udsendelse, har jeg ikke en jordisk chance for at vide, om alt det, de siger, er faktuelt korrekt«, siger Steen Bille, vært på P1’s »Kulturkontoret« i DR’s personaleblad ‘Dråben’.

Steen Bille var en af dem, der oplevede det som en brat opvågnen den dag, DR’s generaldirektør Kenneth Plummer sendte Dansk Folkepartis leder Pia Kjærsgaard en undskyldning på DR’s vegne, fordi en gæst i Sproglaboaratoriet henviste til, at Kjærsgaard engang havde sagt den famøse rottebemærkning. (…)

Monica Krog-Meyer, vært på det tre timer lange og direkte program P4 Eftermiddag, siger, at det er en rygmarvsreaktion for hende at gribe ind, hvis en gæst siger noget, der kan tolkes som et angreb på en anden, »fordi jeg synes, at det er ekstremt vigtigt, at den angrebne part får mulighed for at forsvare sig«.

Monica Krog-Meyer finder det imidlertid »dybt godnat«, at generaldirektøren sendte en undskyldning til Pia Kjærsgaard for hvad en gæst havde sagt i et program.

Og det er det da også – dybt godnat, altså. Man kan og bør måske berigtige i en sådan situation. Men undskylde, hvad en gæst siger? Det kan man jo altså ikke. Men sådan er vilkårene altså i Dansk Folkepartis udgave af ytringsfriheden.

Link: DR-værter utrygge efter Hyltofts “rottesag”

Glidebanen i aktion: Britisk politi anklaget for at waterboarde narkomistænkte

Faktisk ikke så meget “narko”, kun pot – men effekten er den samme:

Six members of London’s metropolitan police force are the focus of a criminal investigation after a corruption probe revealed allegations by a serving officer that detectives waterboarded suspects allegedly caught with a “large amount” of marijuana.

“The officers under investigation were among 10 based in Enfield, north London, who were suspended in February in one of the worst allegations of corruption to hit the Metropolitan police in recent years,” reported The Telegraph.

“The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC),” reported the Times Online. “It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested in Enfield and Tottenham.

The British publication added: “Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said ‘it would not have been in the public interest to proceed.’ It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.”

I gamle dage talte man om, hvordan “krigen mod stoffer” udgjorde en retspolitisk glidebane, fordi metoder, som man ellers ikke ville acceptere – ubegrænset isolationsfængsling, aflytninger uden dommerkendelse – pludselig blev acceptable, når det var disse væmmelige stoffer, det handlede om.

Og nu ser vi så, hvordan “krigen mod terror” har smittet af på bekæmpelsen af narkokriminalitet ved at gøre tortur acceptabelt blandt i hvert fald nogle politifolk. Måske denne udvanding af retspolitikken er det eneste formål, der nogen sinde har været med at proklamere noget så tåbeligt som en “krig mod terror”.

Link: UK cop accuses colleagues of waterboarding pot suspects (via Boing Boing)

Internetcensur – også i Danmark

Det kan godt være, at vi hører mere om internetcensur i lande som Kina og Iran, men det er også et problem her i Danmark. Dels er der den latterlige blokering af The Persian Bay, dels er der “børnepornofiltret”, som er en “frivillig” blokering af en lang række hjemmesider og servere, hvoraf de fleste formentligt ikke indeholder børneporno, som også dette blogindlæg fra Computerworld afslører:

Godt i gang med arbejdet sidder man og leder efter lidt info på noget SQL, men midt i det hele er man ved gå kløjs i sin kaffe for lige pludselig bliver man mødt med en meget stor og faretruende side hvor på der står “STOP” med rødebogstaver, nedenunder er der henvisning til straffelov og hvor meget straffe man nu kan få får at kigge på børneporno, hele den side fik jeg frem ved at skrive “how to write ldf to database” i google og vælge et af linksne som var hen på en “teknisk” side hvor der ingen nøgne damer var ej hellere børn påklædt eller gansch nude.

Da jeg så endelig havde fået kaffen op af den forkerte hals og ikke ud på skærmen, så blev jeg sgu sur hvad fanden i en i helvede Fullrate skal sgu ikke bestemme over hvad jeg vil se på nettet, det gælder om det er seksuelle billeder med sko der parre sig eller nøgne børn, ikke at jeg billiger det men da jeg bestilte internet hos Fullrate stod der intet sted at jeg købte ydelsen “bredbåndsforbindelse til det internet vi mener du bør se” nej jeg har bestilt ydelsen 20/2 til internettet, i givet fald så kunne de i realiteten bare have internettet i æske og stikke ledningen ind i æsken og sige det er internettet.

Nå men der er jo en mailadresse man kan skrive til og brokke sig hvis man mener indholdet ikke er for frækt eller indeholder nøgne børn, her det så jeg tænker hvordan i hede hulen skulle man vide det egentlig hvis man ikke kan se siden så kan man jo hellere ikke vide hvad der skulle være der – men så langt har Fullrate ikke tænkt, men afsted med mailen mere fordi jeg vil vide hvor i aftalevilkårne der står at de kan censurere, men nej mail kommer tilbage kontoen findes ikke hos Fullrate – her rejste jeg mig op og klappede af Fullrate, det satme god stil.

Den rigtige løsning på sider med ulovligt indhold er ikke at bortcensurere dem ved en teknisk filtrering, men at man sætter ind mod ulovlighederne med det juridiske system. Dette er en gammel erfaring – problemer forsvinder ikke ved, at man stikker hovedet i busken, men ved at man faktisk gør noget for at løse dem.

I stedet misbruges strudseadfærden til at udrulle en komplet infrastruktur til bortcensurering af alle ytringer, man af den ene eller den anden art ikke bryder sig om; en infrastruktur af samme type som den, de bruger i Iran, Kina og Saudi-Arabien.

Link: Nu er censuren sneget sig ind på min PC

Hvad kan vi gøre for Iran? Om troskabseder og selvpromovering

I betragtning af, at adskillige politikere nu åbenlyst forsøger at slå plat på den tilspidsede situation i Irak ved krav om “troskabseder” fra herboende muslimer og tilsvarende krav om, at regeringen skal “gøre” noget, er det måske værd at erindre om dette, sakset fra hr. Kommentar:

…consider the following thought experiment. In 1963, as King delivers his famous speech to the March on Washington, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev delivers a public message of his own to the protesters. “We would like to tell these brave voices of freedom,” Khrushchev says, “that they have the full support and solidarity of the USSR. The Soviet Union and the United States Communist Party are ready and willing to perform any measures within our power to help our American brothers and sisters obtain their rights from this oppressive regime. And although Dr. King pretends that he holds no hostility toward the American capitalist system of government itself, and wishes only to secure the ideals of the American founding for all of its citizens, we all know that he and his supporters really yearn for complete regime change in Washington. We in Moscow will do whatever it takes to help you achieve this goal.”

Let us ignore the question of Khrushchev’s intentions here: whether he is motivated by genuine sympathy and desire to aid the civil rights marchers, or a more cynical hope of destabilizing a rival government, or a narcissistic and self-righteous wish to take credit for the marchers’ achievement in order to feel better about himself and appease his domestic critics. (And before anyone gets up in arms about “moral equivalence,” let me note than I am not equating Obama’s America and Khrushchev’s Russia, merely noting that Obama and Khrushchev occupy structurally similar positions as leaders of distrusted rival powers.)

Let us focus only on a simple tactical question: would Khrushchev’s statement aid the civil rights movement? Would it be welcomed by King and his associates? Why or why not?

Hvis Krustjov dengang havde haft et ønske om at støtte King og borgerretsforkæmperne, ville han nok have holdt sin mund. Og vi kan så tage bestik af situationen og tænke tilsvarende.

I virkeligheden er det måske mere ligetil for enkeltpersoner og organisationer (uden statsstøtte) at gøre en forskel, hvis man vil: Skriv til den iranske ambassade og protester over undertrykkelsen. Og bed regeringen åbne grænsen for de iranske flygtninge, der desværre let kunne komme temmelig mange af i den kommende tid.

Læs også: Iran: This Is Not a Revolution (via Lenin’s Tomb).

USA trækker sig ud af Irak – Mission Accomplished?

Patrick Cockburn i The Independent:

American forces leave behind a country which is a barely floating wreck. Its society, economy and very landscape have been torn apart by 30 years of war, sanctions and occupation. I first came to Iraq in 1977 when its future looked rosy, but it turned out I was visiting the country at the high tide of its fortunes, a tide that has been ebbing ever since. Iraqis have been engulfed by successive disasters: the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war starting in 1980; the defeat in Kuwait in 1991; the bloodily suppressed Shia and Kurdish uprisings the same year; UN sanctions amounting to a 13-year-long siege which ruined the economy and shattered society; the US invasion of 2003; the Sunni Arab war against the US occupation in 2003-7 and the Sunni-Shia civil war over the same period.

How many other countries in the world have endured such traumas? Is it any surprise that Iraqis are so heavily marked by them? The Iraqi government announces proudly that in May 2009 only 225 Iraqis died from war-related violence, a lower figure than we have seen in any month for at least four years. Of course this is far better than the 3,000 tortured bodies which used to turn up every month at the height of sectarian war in 2006-7.

Link: Special despatch: The truth about Iraq

Iranske dissidenter i fængsel – takket være Nokia og Siemens

Tænk på dette, næste gang du køber en Nokia-telefon eller en Fujitsu Siemens-computer. Begge firmaer tjener med største fornøjelse millioner på at levere overvågningsudstyr til et regime, der bruger det til at sætte folk, der siger deres mening eller organiserer protester, i fængsel:

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.

A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for “lawful intercept functionality,” a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement’s ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.

In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression.(…)

Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, “We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts.”

But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency’s Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to “monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].” (…)

Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who became a democracy advocate and was arrested in 2003 for his opposition to the Islamic republic, said there were rumors in Iranian opposition circles that the Germans had sold the state powerful new technology that would make their monitoring efforts more effective.

“My first reaction is, ‘Wow! Why do they do this?’ Don’t they know that this will be used against the people of Iran?” said Mr. Sazegara, who now lives in the United States.

“They facilitate a regime which easily violates human rights in Iran and the privacy of the people of Iran. They have facilitated the regime with a high technology that allows them to monitor every student activist, every women’s rights activist, every labor activist and every ordinary person.”

Update, 23/6 kl. 21.30: Politiken har nu også historien (25 timer efter modspil.dk 🙂 )

Link: Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran

Ezra Nawi – en israelsk helt (fortsat)

I forlængelse af dette indlæg fik jeg i dag et svar på min protest fra det israelske justitsministerium.

Den pågældende bureaukrat skriver blandt andet, at


1. Mr. Nawi arrives every week to southern mount Hebron area and recently also to
Etzion area and joins Palestinian residents there. Together with these Palestinian
residents he knowingly enters areas in close vicinity of Israeli settlements that are
closed military areas.
2. During these weekly occurrences, Mr. Nawi provokes the local residents.
Subsequently, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the Israeli Police arrive, and are
confronted by Mr. Nawi who has often uses insults and sometimes even force
against members of the security forces.
3. Mr. Nawi was detained, arrested and investigated several times for his behavior and on March 19, 2009 was convicted of participating in a riot and assaulting two Police officers (Cr.C. (Jerusalem) 3246/07 The State of Israel v. Ezra Nawi). His case is scheduled for sentencing on July 1, 2009.

Problemet med flere af disse oplysninger er, ud over den simple omstændighed, at hverken  bosætterne eller den israelske hær har noget som helst at gøre i Hebron-området, at de ganske enkelt ikke passer. Jeg har derfor sendt justitsministeriet dette svar, som også er sendt til Support Ezra-kampagnen og den israelske ambassade i Danmark:

Thanks for your response.

I note that Ezra Nawi has been arrested and behaving the way you describe while protesting the illegal harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the Hebron area.

I also note that the settlers´ presence in the area is illegal according to international law, as installing part of your own civilian population in an area that you occupy is a war crime.

I also note that we are talking about settlements in the West Bank of Jordan, an area that Israel is currently illegally occupying and in which the Israeli military has no business whatsoever.

I also note that the events which led to Ezra Nawi´s conviction are described thus on Wikipedia, citing a considerable number of reliable sources:

“During the incident for which Nawi was charged, which was filmed and broadcast on Israel´s Channel 1, he can be seen non-violently resisting the demolition of the home before being taken into custody by members of the border police. Despite the video, which does not show Nawi violently resisting the police, he was found guilty on March 19, 2009 by an Israeli court of assaulting a police officer and participating in a riot, which scheduled sentencing for July 1.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Nawi)

I hereby conclude that Mr. Nawi´s conviction seems to be unfair, and if so he deserves a complete exoneration.

And the Palestinian population on the West Bank deserve that the Israeli army once and for all withdraws from an area where the have no business at all, and whose continued occupation is a crime against international law for which I hope all responsible Israeli leaders will one day stand
trial.

In the meantime, Mr. Ezra Nawi should be set free and, as I said, exonerated.

best regards,
…

For slet ikke at tale om, at de burde give ham en medalje for at påtale, hvad alt for mange af hans medborgere tier stille med.

Link: Free Ezra!

Iran

To ting:

1. Det er stadig slet ikke sikkert, at Ahmadinejad virkelig tabte det valg. Det ved vi ikke, med mindre der kommer en pålidelig omtælling.

2. Folk er meget, meget vrede i Iran, og der er mange af dem.

Det spiller bare ikke længere så stor en rolle, om der blev svindlet med valget eller ej. Det er tydeligvis slet ikke længere det, men hele regimet, det handler om. Hvordan vil det ende?

Jeg vil ikke kloge mig på det. Må præstestyret give sig, eller ender vi med at se en jernnæve, der knuser al videre modstand? Begge muligheder står åbne lige nu. Men Iran er et stort land med en meget gammel kultur – det kunne være rart at se det vende politisk og kulturelt tilbage til verden som et frit land, som det ikke har været i hvert fald siden 1953; det år, shahen kom til magten ved et kup.