Category — politics

In recent years, scientists who work for and advise the federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. To document this abuse, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created the A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science.

[From A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science]

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this is a great resource. we need more work like this to be present in the world. People have to know that not everything presented as knowledge is not political… in fact, i’d say none is apolitical, but the type of politics is the question, this site highlights the real partisan politics type of interference.

So, believe me, US politics don’t have a Left. Looking at the presidential candidates, I am frankly appalled. None of them would be a viable politician in Sweden. They all support the death penalty, none advocates strict gun control and all make frequent mention of their religious beliefs in public. These are extremist stances. Not even the tiny Christian Democrat party mentions God publicly in Sweden, for fear of alienating the pragmatic rationalist majority.

[From Aardvarchaeology : US Politics Have No Left Wing]

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there is a left… but… it can’t get into public politics anymore. It is impossible there is a media lockout and thus a popularity lockout. There is no more left newspapers, no more left tv, there is just the center-right. It makes no sense, but it is a form of cartelism leaning toward corporatism ala possible fascism, that determines this relationship between media and politics. The cartelism is centered in religious, military, and related tight networks. Or at least that is my hypothesis.

Today, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are asking pro-choice bloggers to join us for Blog for Choice Day!

Blog for Choice Day provides us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere and the media, while celebrating Roe’s 35th anniversary. Plus, it’s a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected.

[From Blog for Choice Day 2008]

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For me, women have a right to their bodies, have a right to make decisions about their own lives, what people should know, and what communities have involvement in. The Right to Choose, and it is a right, is a right to one’s own body, the right to religious freedom, the right to privacy. It is a fundamental and basic liberty, and a basic construction of equality of the sexes. Without the right to choose, we are basically making women into a different class of people, a class divided on gender and reproduction and a class that is subservient to the master that is the state/husband acting in the interests of the unborn which until born in my view, has no rights outside the rights the bearer gives it. The movement to take away and/or subvert the rights and equalities of women through the operationalization and politicization of the rights of the ‘not alive’ to me is clearly wrong for a liberal society.

Crooks and Liars » Justice, Guantanamo Style:
This is justice Guantanamo style. This is the process that the government contends is the functional equivalent of habeus corpus. It’s a joke. The question is whether the Supreme Court will have the courage to say so.

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just remember … this is not them doing it… torturing people… if you are and american from the u.s., this is us. we allow this to happen, and we should be ashamed. this could be your mom or dad being tortured, or your son or daughter, as it surely is for someone. torture is horrible and wrong and never justifiable.

My Liberal Identity:

found via Library Tavern

Patrick Tillman Was Murdered?:
But it comes from the AP:

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors – whose names were blacked out – said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
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umm, if this is a government cover-up … it is hugely problematic, but not more problematic than the reason pat tillman was in afghanistan to begin with… that the army and the office of the president would seek to cover this up is intolerable. how can the army trust them anymore, how can we?

this has more of the findings of the report.

The ReDistricting Game:
“The polarization and poisonous atmo-sphere that have infected the House of Representatives for the past two decades or more can be traced — in large part — to the manner in which district lines are drawn in most states.”
- Les Francis, former Exec Director of the Democratic National Committee

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cool

Feminism Friday: Using pregnancy to criminalize womanhood at Pandagon:
Of course, the other part of this is redefining what a child is, taking women’s participation in the creation of one out of the picture and relegating pregnant women to the role of mere incubators for children that men make. To call something a “child” from the moment a man shoots his load and not after a woman has grown the child for 9 months in her body is part of the project of using pregnancy as a tool to dehumanize women and subjugate us to men.

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Pandagon calls it the way that I see it.

It was the only right (ethical) choice that I had. You see I went down to google’s new york office tonight to see a colleague of mine speak on the future of the internet. I thought it was an open invite without any specific rules as to what I could do with the knowledge that I found there. I registered and attended until Google asserted the rules.

Sometimes… Google gets it wrong. You see I did not have any prior ruleset to know that they do not allow people to blog or otherwise publish their visit to such talks. They did not send one, it was not in any announcement that I received, and I’ve otherwise not seen one. However, there is a set of rules that prohibit blogging or publishing that they announced before the talk. Google said that if i wanted to blog or publicly discuss the event, I had to get their permission. If I’d have known, I would not have attended or been affiliated with the event in any way. I am a professor, was and still am, and by the very nature of my job, i cannot guarantee that I will follow their rules about publication or blogging. I couldn’t consent to them, so I had to leave. I don’t want to have to ask google for permission to speak about something that I already know a good deal about and am perfectly happy dashing an email off to colleagues to learn more. I don’t want to be obliged to them for any intellectual content or public knowledge at all beyond the general service they provide.

The rational that google said justified this request for secrecy and the privatization of knowledge was one of collegiality. I found that justification to be ironic. Colleagues share within the limits of their judgment. Collegiality is broken as soon as the judgment is turned into a ruleset, as soon as trust becomes moot and i no longer have to trust you, instead i just have to trust that you are following the pre-ordained rules. At that point in time of the announcement of rules, anyone in the room could be called colleagues, afterwards we were all subjects to Google and any collegiality was limited by Google’s rules. We were all constructed as lesser beings, less equal, more likely to damage others. We were ‘other’, and untrustworthy, which is the implication of the ‘no blogging’. If you want people to be friends, to become a community, you have to let them communicate, you have to let them establish the common ground by consent.

Thus I had to leave, as I was not going to be subject of Google beyond what I’ve already contracted. I could not consent to silence. I am surprised that the speaker in question would allow this rule, but not that surprised in the end.

Please if you have a talk where people who take ethics seriously are present, never change the rules after the fact, make them public beforehand.

Now I know 2 things,
1. Google changes the rules of public engagement to suit it’s own interpretations
2. Before I attend any future Google event, I should ask for clearly defined rules to be made public and distributed, so that I can decide to either be complicit or not beforehand.

Public access group challenges Smithsonian over copyrights:
Grabbing pictures of iconic Smithsonian Institution artifacts just got a whole lot easier.

Before, if you wanted to get a picture of the Wright Brothers’ plane, you could go to the Smithsonian Images Web site and pay for a print or high-resolution image after clicking through several warnings about copyrights and other restrictions — and only if you were a student, teacher or someone pledging not to use it to make money.

Now, you can just go to the free photo-sharing Web site flickr.com.

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Carl Malamud and his group are doing some good work on freeing and sustaining the freedom of access to public resources