Fact or fiction? Scene from the 1955 British movie of George Orwell's 1984 resonates today, though many sophisticated systems of government snooping are invisible to the ordinary citizen.
There’s an elephant in your room – and it never, never forgets.
It’s Big Data, and, says Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, co-author of a book by the same name, it is “A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think.”
From cradle to grave (and even before birth) we’re tracked, trailed, photographed, videoed, scrutinized, biometrized, analysed and….you can see where this is going.
Mayer-Shoenberger is a fan of Big D for its ability to put together information that connects patterns we could never understand from smaller bits and bytes. He also has some warnings about what can happen when staggering amounts of personal data are put together to map our lives in a virtual human cybergenome.
Q: Is Big Data just Big Brother writ larger -- an era of total surveillance?
A: There are two important elements. One is the obvious fact that we’re collecting more information than ever before and most of it is in a digital format. That creates a much more comprehensive capability of surveillance.
Q: And the other?
A: It takes the quality of ephemerality out of our communications. We used to depend on things we said or did being plausibly deniable. They would go away. We could say they never happened. Now that’s much more difficult.
Q: What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas?
A: If you look at Facebook and Twitter, the younger generation uses them as an ephemeral way of communicating. They don’t realize it doesn’t disappear like water cooler gossip. What I say will stay with me and may be used against me in the future.
Q: And the effect on behaviour?
A: What’s happening goes beyond surveillance per se. In the past, watching was done in the same time frame. Now it’s the panopticon. That was a prison in which inmates didn’t know if they were being watched, so they had to assume they were watched all the time. That created compliance without active watching.
Q: No escape?
A: There’s a “data shadow” following us that transcends time, which is new. And this may freak you out, but in the Big Data age there’s an even bigger problem, our vastly increasing reliance on probability.
It means calculating propensities based on probabilities. We’re using all that data to predict a 90 per cent likelihood that the person standing in front of us is going to commit a crime next week. So punish him now – like Minority Report. Or take him into an interview and persuade him not to do it.
Q: This isn’t science fiction. Ordinary people in Britain have been arrested because surveillance data predicted they might cause trouble during the royal wedding.
A: Right, and in the U.S. there’s “predictive policing” in a number of cities. They use Big Data analysis to determine where and what time crime spikes. But this is deeply troubling because profiling becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Olivia Ward has covered conflict, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to Europe, South Asia and the U.S., winning national and international awards.
Feroze Varun Gandhi, an estranged member of India's famous Nehru-Gandhi family, was jailed in the months before India's 2009 national election for making anti-Muslim speeches.
At one political rally, Gandhi told a throng of onlookers, “These people have scary names like Kareemullah and Mazaharulla. You will be scared if you run into them in the night. But if anyone raises a finger against Hindus or if someone thinks Hindus are weak, I swear on the Gita that I will cut that hand.”
Gandhi purportedly compared one of his political rivals to Osama bin Laden. Later confronted with the video tape, he denied making the comments. "That is not my voice. Those are not my words," Gandhi at the time told Times Now, a news channel in New Delhi.
Yet his comments stoked furious debate in India, which trumpets its standing as the world's largest democracy yet also has a history of religious-based violence. The magazine India Today called Gandhi a "messiah of hate."
After a 20-day detainment and two criminal charges of making hate speech, Gandhi was released on bail and won a seat in India's parliament. His victory came even though election officials found the video evidence of Gandhi's venomous comments to be authentic.
Of the 88 witnesses who were scheduled to testify against Gandhi, all have recanted.
"This is probably unprecedented in the history of a criminal case," Tehelka writes.
The magazine charges that witnesses were threatened and bribed by the police; testimonies were taken without a judge in court; crucial witnesses, including the forensic expert, were not summoned by the public prosecutor; many were not even questioned.
Tehelka reporters Rahul Kotiyal and Atul Chaurasia say they have many witnesses admitting all of this on camera.
Gandhi's comments received intense scrutiny largely because he is a great-grandson of India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, although Varun Gandhi has been estranged from India’s Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty for the majority of his life.
While his cousin Rahul Gandhi is seen by some as a future prime minister of India for the Congress Party, Varun Gandhi is the most visible young politician for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has a vocal and influential Hindu nationalist following.
Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state and the base of the Gandhi family's power, said Tuesday it would challenge Varun Gandhi's acquittal.
If there is good news to be found in the Gandhi scandal, it is that India's national media continues to come of age.
In 1990, India had just a single television channel. But today, there are hundreds of all-news cable channels and a flourishing newspaper and magazine industry, which thrives on reporting stories on government corruption and self-dealing.
Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead
If Pakistani authorities were trying to stifle coverage of
the elections by throwing New York Times reporter Declan Walsh out of the
country, it backfired.
So much so that his explusion on the eve of the vote has become part of the election story -- newly
elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif said a briefing that he will look into
Walsh’s expulsion after taking the oath of office, Telegraph’s reporter Rob
Crilly tweeted.
Last Thursday at 12.30 a.m., Walsh received a short letter
hand delivered to his home in Islamabad informing him that his visa was
cancelled, according to The New York Times. He was given 72 hours to leave
Pakistan.
Walsh, 39, is a veteran reporter. He has been covering Pakistan since 2004, first
for The Guardian and more recently the New York Times.
It is easy to pick on local journalists through
intimidation or worse but taking on what is probably the world’s most powerful
newspaper is another matter. The story
has been picked up everywhere.
The ministry of interior's decision also backfired in another way because it
overshadowed a positive development – this election was the first in
Pakistan’s history that one elected, civilian government finished its term and
peacefully - so far - handed the reins to another government.
Pakistani citizens braved many obstacles to cast their
ballots, and in huge numbers, too.
The violence from extremists “did not deter Pakistani
citizens from casting their vote in unprecedented numbers and reconfirming
their determined support for democratic rule, thereby defying extremist threats
and actions,” as the European Union’s election observation mission stated.
An experienced, respected journalist like Walsh has been
good at teasing out such nuances in a country most of the world sees as a
basket case.
As Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper noted in an editorial: “The
powers that be must realise that such efforts only boomerang and work to
enhance Pakistan’s image as an unwelcome place for journalists.”
Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in
the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on
Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour
Oldish news. But we thought we'd share this Toronto Star image from last November showing the aftermath of an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City, now that the shattered car's two dead occupants are at the heart of fresh controversy flaring up in Washington.
There's not much dispute that Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama were cameramen working for the Palestinian TV station Al Aqsa. And there's not much dispute that Al Aqsa TV is under the thumb of Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza, and was then engaged in a frenzied weeklong mini-war with Israel.
Among the sample of fury on Twitter: "Outrageous," "Insane," "Unbelievable," "legitimizing terror," "making mockery of journalism."
Also, some pushback: "Please thank @Newseum for standing its ground in the face of Zionist thugs."
Even the Israeli Embassy in DC jumped in tweeting, "It seems like a critical mistake mixing operatives of a recognized terrorist org, Al Aqsa TV, as journalists. We hope @Newseum reconsiders."
The Newseum is indeed standing its ground. In a statement of response, it reiterated that the two Palestinians were cameramen. They were travelling as all of us did during those frantic days in Gaza -- in cars emblazened with duct-tape media markings.
"Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi were cameramen in a car clearly marked 'TV,'" the Newseum statement said. "The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers all consider these men journalists killed in the line of duty."
I didn't encounter Salama and al-Kumi personally that week. And I personally hope this flareup does not distract attention to other great reporters lost in 2012, like the utterly brilliant Anthony Shadid of the New York Times.
But the question of who, really, is a journalist -- and who decides -- seems well worth revisiting. Here's how it first flared last November, in an unusually heated exchange between Israeli spokesman Mark Regev and Darren Jordon of Al Jazeera.
Who makes the call, deciding between journalists and propagandists? And the next question, after you parse that one, is are unarmed propagandists fair game for targeted strikes?
Reporters Without Borders says no, actually, citing a International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia-backed ruling that media organizations were not legitimate targets for "merely diseminating propaganda."
Comments, concerns, caveats? Feel free to weigh in. We're all ears.
Mitch Potter is the Star's Washington Bureau Chief, his third foreign posting after previous assignments to London and Jerusalem. Potter led the Star’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won a 2006 National Newspaper Award for his reportage. His dispatches include datelines from 33 countries since 2000. Follow him on Twitter: @MPwrites
Jodi Arias trial watchers in downtown Phoenix. (AP photo)
Fear. Love. Sex. Lies. And dirty little secrets: that's what the case of Jodi Arias boils down to, according to her defense lawyer.
The prosecution agrees on one thing in that list: Lies. They have repeatedly painted the 32-year-old woman as someone who has a fleeting familiarity with the truth.
Now, the jury has to decide which version they buy.
They've been hearing testimony - and what testimony it has been; graphic, sexual, shocking - since January. On Friday, the lawyers finished their closing arguments, and Judge Sherry Stephens finally handed the case over to the eight men and four women who will decide if Arias is guilty of first-degree murder.
She is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander. He was stabbed repeatedly, his throat was cut, and he was shot.
(I wrote about the trial on Saturday, if you need to catch up on the whos and whats.)
Arias now admits she killed Alexander, but says he was abusive and it was self-defence. The state says Arias planned the attack on Alexander -- who the prosecution has repeatedly described as a "good man" -- and is seeking the death penalty.
If they decide against premediation, the jury could find Arias guilty of the lesser charges of second-degree murder, or even manslaughter, and her lawyers pleaded with the jurors to set aside any negative feelings they might have for the defendant.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez reminded the court during his closing arguments that Alexander felt he was being stalked by Arias - and that Alexander himself described his ex-girlfriend as the "worst thing" that had ever happened to him in a text message.
The trial has become must-see TV and a gift for cable channels like HLN, which has dedicated hours of programming to it. Details are discussed endlessly online -- follow the hashtag #jodiarias on Twitter and you'll see what I mean.
But for some people, this is not at all entertaining. When I spent a few days in the courtroom in Phoenix, I was struck by the presence of Arias' mother, but was especially aware of Alexander's family. His brother and two extraordinarily striking sisters sat two rows ahead of me in court, listening attentively, as they have through the trial - their reactions to upsetting testimony captured by the courtroom cameras.
There's plenty of debate as to how long the jury will take in their deliberations. But I would wager that for the families, on both sides of the courtroom, the waiting is far from the hardest part.
Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.
Index of most dangerous countries for journalists. (Committee to Protect Journalists)
Nigeria is a new addition to the list of the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist, joining mainstays such as Pakistan, Somalia and Mexico.
Five journalists in Nigeria have been murdered since 2009. None of the cases have been solved.
“Investigations into these killings are usually carried out with sloppiness, and no real culprits are caught," said Ayode Longe, a senior officer with the Media Rights Agenda, a press freedom group in Nigeria. “That has emboldened others to assault journalists, believing nothing would be done to them."
The global index is released each year by the Committee to Protect Journalists and calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population.
The index also found soaring impunity rates in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil.
The CPJ said conditions for journalists are improving in Nepal and Russia, "although both nations remain dangerous for the press."
The analysis founds increasing anti-press violence in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil, where national leaders are unwilling or unable to address the issue. In Somalia, 23 journalist murders have gone unsolved over the past decade.
The CPJ report highlights the cased of Wali Khan Babar, a journalist with Geo TV in Pakistan who was murdered in 2011.
While several suspects connected to one of the country’s leading political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, are facing trial, the prosecution has been hindered by the murders of five people connected to the investigation, including witnesses and police officers.
In November 2012, an eyewitness was gunned down two days before he was due to give testimony, the CPJ said.
Iraq is said to be the most dangerous country in which to be a journalist. Over the past 10 years, there have been 93 unsolved killings of journalists in the country of 33 million. Somalia was ranked No. 2, followed by the Philippines, where 55 journalists have been murdered without any convictions in the country of 94 million.
Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead
It was probably going to be a wild goose chase, we knew, as we set out at the crack of dawn 10 years ago this morning.
But gas in Baghdad was then barely a penny a litre. And the faint whiff of a whopper beckoned four hours south. Nothing burned, nothing gained.
A cloudless sky was forming as we wheeled away from the Palestine Hotel. Moments later, we were struck by the astonishing sight of one of the kindest souls I've ever met -- American human-rights activist Marla Ruzicka jogging -- jogging! -- all alone on the banks of the Tigris.
But that was Baghdad, circa late April 2003. Saddam was gone, the Green Zone didn't yet exist. The landlines were toast, wiped out by America's Shock And Awe aerial bombardment, but Iraq's first makeshift cellular network was still just an idea. Our biggest worry was finding enough electricity to keep our laptops and satphones running.
It was the fragile calm between violent storms. Iraqis were numb with the enormity of regime change. There was room for reporters to roam, with a reasonable expectation of safety.
It wouldn't last. Exactly two years later, as a festering insurgency intensfied, Ruzicka died in a tragic bomb blast near the Baghdad airport. But on this morning she could jog with impunity, perhaps the first woman ever to do so, wearing short shorts, on Iraqi soil. She flashed us a knowing smile and thumbs up.
Still, Uday, our Sunni Arab driver, was nervous, refusing to speed south at anything less than 150 kms/hour. Ameer, our Shiite translator, and British reporter Inigo Gilmore, my safety-in-numbers travel companion, hung on tight as we made the four-hour journey in two and change.
When we got to the hospital in Nasiriya, Inigo and I split up, fanning out to find the Iraqi doctors and nurses who tended to Pte. Jessica Lynch on our own. Get every account, one by one, individually. Then regroup and compare notes in search of telltale inconsistencies.
We were stunned, by the end of the process, to discover the notes matched perfectly. Three Iraqi doctors, two nurses, one hospital administrator and other locals, one after another, all seamlessly debunking in granular detail the biggest Pentagon myth of the war in Iraq.
Four days later, CNN's Aaron Brown placed us in the klieg lights for a live satellite broadcast to set the distorted record straight.
We all get things wrong. Sometimes badly wrong. But the hardest, most sobering lesson I draw from the Lynch debacle is that even when you get it right, myth sometimes myth wins.
Jessica Lynch has done her part, in the ensuing years, to set the record straight. But war requires enemies, armies require heros. And, as she noted this month, if a frightening number of Americans continue to this day to believe the wildly inflated, Hollywood version of Lynch's rescue, "that's on them."
Mitch Potter is the Star's Washington Bureau Chief, his third foreign posting after previous assignments to London and Jerusalem. Potter led the Toronto Star’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won a 2006 National Newspaper Award for his reportage. His dispatches include datelines from 33 countries since 2000. Follow him on Twitter: @MPwrites
News of the Boston Marathon bombings broke a few minutes
after the first explosion last Monday, and almost immediately the Star’s foreign
editor Lynn McAuley asked me to grab my passport and make my way to Boston.
We didn’t know how many fatalities there were, or if I’d
be able to make it to Boston.
After rumours of a possible bombing at a Boston
library, the airspace over the city was closed.
In the Toronto
Island airport lounge,
the gravity hit home as Boston-area residents frantically juggled cellphones
and laptops, trying to account for their family and friends.
After arriving in Boston, I headed
for a planned candlelight vigil at Boston
University. When tragedy
strikes, most arriving reporters head either for impromptu memorials, typically
advertised on Twitter or Facebook, or to area hospitals and blood donor centres.
I wore a windbreaker that had a small maple leaf on it, and
although the vigil was cancelled, a man approached me and asked if I was
Canadian.
Toronto resident Farhan
Mumtaz, 18, a first-year pre-med student at Boston University,
told me he’d been fielding calls all day from people afraid he might have been
injured. The Pakistan
native said he was praying that the bombers weren’t Muslim because life for
many Muslims was hard enough in the wake of 9/11.
My editors and I debated how much of his quotes we’d use for
our story, and decided that since no one had claimed responsibility for the
bombings, and there were no suspects, it was too early to raise the issue of
religion in our coverage.
The workday wasn't over. It was after midnight but there was still an hour or so to go to file updates for the Star's final edition. I walked as close as I could to the marathon finish line, and interviewed a few runners there who were picking up bags of clothing they had would have retrieved earlier if they could have completed the race.
In many foreign assignments logistics is a key challenge, and
Boston was no
different.
Each day, editors would ask whether I could chase down a
string of purported developments in the case. On Tuesday, The New York Post
reported a pair of Saudi nationals were guarded and being questioned in the
hospital.
Later, CNN erroneously reported an arrest had been made in
the case, a report that left me sprinting across Boston to a courthouse where I thought a
suspect would be arraigned. (Much of downtown Boston remained closed to taxis and other
vehicles throughout the week.) As CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said on air, "That's what happens in these cases.. you go with what you have."
Downtown Boston was mostly shut off to traffic during the manhunt. (Rick Westhead/Toronto Star)
After a prank call led to the evacuation of the courthouse,
taxi driver Steve Sullivan spoke for so many when he told me locals were
frustrated over the incorrect media reports.
“You reporters wonder why no one trusts you these days?
Because of garbage like this,” Sullivan said.
It's a fair point, and I went out of my way not to upset the hundreds of people who earlier had gathered in Dorchester, Mass., to remember 8-year-old Martin Richard, one of three people killed by the blasts. An editor once told me that the best way to approach people for quotes at times like this was to explain we want to write "tributes" about the victims.
It was good advice that helped me connect with many locals in Dorchester who eyed the TV cameras warily. I wound up with a better understanding of the blue-collar community.
As a Star colleague remarked, covering such a big
story can make you feel small. In the same way that the Star would have all
reporters and editors dedicated to a story of this magnitude unfolding in Toronto,
The Boston Globe and U.S. national TV networks committed huge resources to
coverage.
Even if we couldn’t connect with families in local hospitals
(police understandably locked them down) we decided to try to use
law-enforcement experts to explain how police and FBI would be pursuing their
investigation.
That led me Wednesday to a string of explosions experts such
as former FBI special agent Kevin Miles who explained how crime scenes are
processed and how even details like the colour of the smoke from an explosion
is telling.
On Thursday, the FBI released photos and video of the
suspects but seemed no closer to making an arrest as the evening unfolded. I
filed the last update to a story on the video footage at about midnight and
planned to return to Toronto
the following morning.
A few hours later, that plan changed.
At about 4 a.m. on Friday, a friend who worked for a large U.S. media
company sent me a string of text messages. (He figured I might have ignored one
message alone.) He said police scanners were full of chatter about a manhunt in
nearby Watertown.
After a quick shower, I grabbed my bag and jumped in a taxi.
The cabbie needed convincing to go to Watertown,
but a fare that was about double his regular price settled the matter.
The first sign of trouble in Watertown was police tape that closed off a
road near a local Dunkin’ Donuts. A state trooper stood on the other side of
the tape, and said repeatedly he didn’t know anything about what was happening.
A reporter from Miami said he’d
heard that the shopping mall across town was closer to the manhunt and we raced
across Watertown,
talking our way past several police checkpoints on the way.
For most of Friday, we were huddled in a plaza parking lot,
watching convoy after convoy of police, ATF and military vehicles race past.
The Boston
police have media relations figured out.
At one point, they brought the few dozen reporters there
bagged lunches: ham, turkey and corned beer sandwiches, apples and oranges and
potato chips. They also generously offered free diesel to the TV trucks. But tensions were incredibly high. At one point, police jumped into a group of reporters and grabbed one journalist away, searching his bag.
Every hour seemed to bring a dramatic development. At one point, a local sheriff told me that an MIT police
officer had been shot. “He didn’t even have time to draw his
weapon,” the sheriff said, revealing some news that hadn’t yet been reported in
the press.
Finally, at 6 p.m. Massachusetts
governor Deval Patrick showed up at the parking lot surrounded by guards and
reported the manhunt had failed.
I met up with Muna Shikaki, a U.S.-based correspondent for
Al Arabiya, and headed back to Boston.
But on the drive, NPR reported a gun fight in Watertown. It was like something out of a
movie. We darted off the highway, and returned to the suburb.
Hours later, police relaxed the roadblocks and we made our
way to the street where Dzhokar Tsarnaev was found.
Sean Finn sat on his front porch, sipping a Bud Light while
his son flipped through a book of hockey cards.
Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was
based in India as the Star’s
South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011
and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead
A U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad on April 9, 2003. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevi)
Ten years ago this week a group of Iraqis –- with a crane handily supplied by the U.S. marines –- lassoed a statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of a Baghdad square and toppled it to the ground: cheers followed in Washington -- and years of tears in Iraq.
The tragi-comic back story of the battle with Saddam’s statue was told in the New Yorker by journalist Peter Maass, who watched as Iraqis chipped away with a sledgehammer at the statue’s base, a symbolic act that mirrored the Bush administration’s bungled attempt at a quick, clean break from the dictator’s brutal regime.
A series of fumbles with American and Iraqi flags ensued, until the marine cavalry saved the day. It supplied the “iconic moment” of victory the TV cameras were hungry for, in spite of protests from some journos who were eager to tell the inconvenient truth, that the war was only beginning. Those who dissented were rewritten out of “history.”
“Very few Iraqis were there,” Maass wrote. “You can also see, from photographs as well as video, that much of the crowd was made up of journalists and marines.” Nevertheless, the event neatly substituted for reality. And it was a great leap forward for the statue-toppling events that have now become de rigeur when dictators tumble.
In 2011, a sculptured golden fist that symbolized Moammar Gadhafi crushing a U.S. fighter plane was smashed by rebels, along with a life-size statue of the Libyan strongman. But fewer hacks were there to snap the moment. Statues of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were smashed with even less fanfare when the Tahrir Square protesters won the day.
Last month an amateur video showed opposition groups celebrating the destruction of a statue of Bashar Assad’s equally ruthless father, Hafez, in a newly-taken town.
But the statue-smashing tradition goes back much farther, to the ancient world, when newer conquerors would raze and smash the symbols of older ones.
But they lacked the technology and propaganda machines of later eras. In the 19th century, German-born artist Johannes Oertel painted a heroic picture of American patriots pulling down a statue of British king George III in Manhattan in 1776 – but eyewitness accounts contradicted his portrait of cheering native people, elegantly dressed women and children looking on. Rather, they said, it was a rag-tag mob.
Fast forward to the Soviet Union in 1991, when Moscow had its own stage-managed “iconic moment” to show the world that communism had collapsed.
Nikolai Amelin, a 28-year-old street sweeper with a buff body and blond, chiseled features, was plucked from the crowd by a PR-smart aide of President Boris Yeltsin and asked to put a rope around the the massive statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky – the prime enforcer of Joseph Stalin’s terror. The crane Amelin was riding ripped the statue from its base. Overnight, he became the surprised, but triumphant, face of the New Russia.
“It was a decisive moment and it felt like a fantasy,” he told me a decade later, from his sleek central Moscow flat. Now a much-in-demand model, he commanded a wage that few Muscovites could dream of. But at the dawn of the plutocratic Putin era, his old revolutionary spirit was still simmering. He joined a protest movement against developers who were forcing the poorest market vendors from their patches of pavement.
“There are two parallel lives in Russia,” he said bitterly. “The life of the state and the life of the people. They have no meeting point.”
And Dzerzhinsky?
The 15 tonne statue that once loomed over the KGB’s sinister Lubyanka Square is resting in Moscow’s retirement home for old Soviet artifacts, outside the Central House of Artists. Last year the Moscow authorities announced it would be restored to its old glory – and awarded the title of an “object of cultural heritage.”
Olivia Ward covered the former Soviet Union from 1992-2002. She has reported on conflicts, politics and human rights there and in the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.
Battery caged hens are crowded together causing excessive feather loss and chafing. Birds on lower tiers are often covered in excrement from higher tiers. Photo courtesy of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals. (CNW Group/Vancouver Humane Society)
ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council -- is an organization of high flyers who prefer to sail under the radar.
The corporate-funded coalition of big companies and mainly state lawmakers promotes a right-wing agenda of deregulation, privatization, anti-labour measures and shrinking of women’s and minority rights and environmental protection. It works through “model bills” that are handily presented to legislators and replicated in viral fashion across states.
But ALEC has crossed the publicity “whoa” line in the past month as a series of articles on “ag-gag” bills were published, throwing light on prospective laws that aim to criminalize investigation of animal cruelty to keep factory farm businesses free of prying eyes. The latest, published Sunday, was from the The New York Times.
Stop reading now if you’re eating.
We’re talking about Vermont veal calves skinned alive, deathly sick California cows pushed out to slaughter with electric prods, Wyoming pigs punched and kicked, Tennessee horses burned with caustic chemicals to improve their gait.
But the evidence painstakingly obtained by animal rights groups – including the Humane Society of the U.S. – is now under threat from bills tabled in at least a dozen state legislatures.
They would make it illegal to secretly videotape animal cruelty on farms, or to apply for a job without declaring oneself a member of an animal rights group or a journalist. And some decree a 48-hour-or-less time limit for turning over videos to the authorities, hobbling the ability to do lengthy investigations.
If the ag gag laws were in place in 2010, Cody Carlson told the Center for Media and Democracy, “I might be writing this from a cell.” Carlson, a former Humane Society investigator, exposed stomach-turning abuses at Iowa egg farms. A subsequent government investigation caused the biggest egg recall in U.S. history.
That wouldn’t happen if the recent bills go into law.
Although the current bills are watered-down versions of draconian “model bills” originally proposed by ALEC -- which were eventually defeated -- media monitors and activists are pointing fingers at it as the inspiration for the laws.
“We must be careful about drawing a straight line from ALEC to the new bills,” says Rebekah Wilce, CMD’s lead writer on food rights. “But it was the ideological predecessor of the bills.”
ALEC originally proposed a law slapping those who covertly filmed animal abuse on livestock farms with a U.S. terrorist listing.
“This is another way to hamstring the checks that democracy and an informed society are supposed to put on everything from corporations to government,” Wilce said from her Madison, Wisconsin office. “It’s similar to the idea that if you can’t win an election, try to hamstring the vote.”
Sadly, cows, pigs, chickens and horses don’t get a vote in state legislatures. But it will be clear in the coming weeks what kind of animals do.
Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights in the U.S., former Soviet Union, Middle East and South Asia. She is consulting a vegetarian cookbook.
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