Liza Sabater: March 2008 Archives

When the World Wide Web became a reality back in the early 1990s, many people believed that computers would create a level playing field for technologists, media workers, artists, educators and entrepreneurs. Being able to see a Website created in China or Mexico from the comfort of our U.S. homes was supposed to revolutionize how we imagined ourselves and interacted with this brave new world.

Back in 2003, the Howard Dean primary campaign foreshadowed the explosion of citizen activism that we see today. Voters went to the polls in droves back in 2004 (113 million of them). This year alone (and remember, the primaries are not over) we have had more than 120 million people casting their votes during the primaries.

A lot of this activity is happening online. As of today, the Barack Obama campaign has broken the record for the most unique donors to any primary campaign: 1,003,996 individuals have donated an average of $109 each to the Senator of Illinois. And the general elections are still months away.

So it is no wonder that organizations like the Sunlight Foundation look at this with excitement. The foundation seeks to open up Congress to make it more accessible to citizens. Part of their mission is to look for ways to use the technologies to make the government more responsive 24/7.

With so many people rushing to participate in the primaries, many are wondering how these Web-powered primaries could be turned into a real people-powered political movement in the new administration.

In a post that points to an article written by new media analyst Mark Glasser, they suggest some practices that the next president could take on in order to become more accessible to his (or her) constituents.

They include:

• A regular blog or Twitter feed;
• Wikis on major policy initiatives;
• Live online chats or video Q&As;
• Transparent, online schedule;
• A listing of all campaign contributors displayed on a Google Map;
• Creation of an online community of advisers with expertise on critical subjects.

Do you have any other ideas on how the new President of the United States should be more accessible to citizens and more open to a people-powered government? Let us know in the comments section!

Whenever I ask someone to cite an environmental disaster Bhopal inevitably comes up. Others suggest Chernobyl. When I ask for the worst environmental disaster caused by an oil company, "Exxon Valdéz" spill is invariably at the top of the list.

Unfortunately, the Exxon Valdéz pales in comparison to the millions of tons of chemical waste dumped in the Amazon jungle by the Texaco/Chevron Corporation. 18 billion gallons of toxic waste water dumped from 1964 until 1992 has earned the Chevron Amazon environmental disaster the nickname, "The Rainforest Chernobyl".

From The Treehugger blog :

¡Justicia Now! One peoples fight against Big Oil is a short documentary by the directors Martin O'Brien and Robbie Proctor, of MoFilms, who accompanied John Quigley and Daryl Hannah on their trip to to create a staged protest in Ecuador in July 2007. It was premiered at the Artivist Film Festival in November with a presentation by actress and activist Q'Orianka Kilcher and is now available to everyone to watch online. The actor Stuart Townsend also appears in the film, as does Atossa Soltani the founder of Amazon Watch and the lawyers Steven Donziger and Pablo Fajardo who are leading the indigenous people's case against Chevron Texaco. Watch this inspiring testament to the power of collaboration in the fight for justice.

The video was broken down into three parts at YouTube. With this one player we have embedded on the post you can watch all portions of the documentary. You can also go to the Justicia NOW! website and download the whole documentary as well.

It's just electrifying.

One of the first posts I wrote for this blog had to do with reproductive health. In "The Condom Carnaval" I reported on how Brazil was unleashing a condom program in time for carnaval and how it was targetting it to women in the 15 to 24 age range, since only 42% of them practice safe sex.

Well ...

The Center for Disease Control released a study almost two weeks ago describing how HPV, herpes, chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise among young women between the ages of 14 and 19 :

Chicago (March 11, 2008) - A CDC study released today estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States - or 3.2 million teenage girls - is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis). The study, presented today at the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference, is the first to examine the combined national prevalence of common STDs among adolescent women in the United States, and provides the clearest picture to date of the overall STD burden in adolescent women.

Led by CDC's Sara Forhan, M.D., M.P.H., the study also finds that African-American teenage girls were most severely affected. Nearly half of the young African-American women (48 percent) were infected with an STD, compared to 20 percent of young white women

What is mind-numblingly frustrating about these statistics is that, as I search high and low for videos or information that could address this crisis, every single one of them ends up with the same conclusion : That teenagers ought to practice safe sex by not having sex at all.

Now, as a mother I'd love to have my boys be my babies for the rest of their lives but that is just not going to happen. And if more than 50% of girls are already having sex, why aren't that reality in our sex education courses?

Just because a person reaches the age of 18 it doesn't mean that all of a sudden they're immune to STDs. Teenagers ought to learn about the ins and out of relationships. From their economics and politics, to their diplomacy and various social capitals; but more importantly, their networking supremacy. Relationships are usually treated in our culture as happening only between two people. If anything, STDs ought to expose the reality of dating : When you have sex with someone you are actually becoming part of a network of relationships, hopes, dreams but more importantly, diseases.

This is what's so amazing about the public health policy in Brazil. They are not dealing with "shoulda coulda wouldas". The Brazilian government has chosen to save lives by addressing teenagers as they are now.

When will we learn in this country that we're killing our kids by denying them life-saving knowledge?

'The Dalit movement is much more intense and dangerous now' is the headline of an article that tries to explain the roots of the discontent of the dalits or "untouchables" of India. Part of the political awakening of the dalits is attributed to their access to technology, and in particular blogs. Given that globalization is often touted as a technological and economic scourge on humanity, it can also have an opposite and more positive effect: Moving groups like the dalits in India to rise and fight for their rights.

Satish Kalsekar, publisher and activist, says, "The Dalit movement is much more intense and dangerous now than ever because Dalits are aware of the injustice due to a casteist society. They are educated and will not keep silent. It is the responsibility of other castes to see that they are treated well."

Now, the demeaned castes are getting information with as much speed as any other classes. In Mumbai there are four Dalit dailies that include the Vishwa Samrat and Lok Nayak along with a number of bloggers and websites helping in the percolation of information.

Dangle says, "Dalits are not only well-aware of their rights now but they want a share in resources. They know power, wealth and status has been the privilege of upper caste but now they are all set to struggle to have a share of power, wealth and status in society."

Which is why the story of the story of the neon pink avengers of the Gulabi gang becomes increasingly compelling.

There are rumors that I am a shameless Puerto Rican who never misses a moment to wave her Latina membership card. Well ... that may be true. Especially when it involves artists from all over the Spanish-speaking world putting together a concert to celebrate Peace among three Latin American countries that were on the brink of war, all in one week's time.

Colombia's recent bombing of a camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that was on Ecuadorian soil, sparked an international conflict involving not only the two countries but Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, France, Spain and Switzerland.

Here's what was at stake: Colombia has accused both Ecuador and Venezuela of not only harboring "international terrorists" that want to bring down their government but also aiding and abetting them. Ecuador and Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America, consider FARC an insurgent guerrilla army and as such, a domestic problem for Colombia that ought not involve any other countries in the region. So when Colombia bombed Ecuador after an alleged attack by the FARC from Ecuadorian soil, Ecuador made it clear, along with a delegation of diplomats from Spain, France and Switzerland, that the Colombian government knew they were brokering the release of FARC hostages at the time of the attack:

According to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, the attack--which killed 24 people, including Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader and diplomat Raul Reyes--spiked efforts to release French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 11 other FARC hostages.

French diplomats say they were negotiating with Reyes with the full knowledge of the Colombian government. "In the framework of the efforts that we--Spain, Switzerland, France--were making, we had contacts with Raul Reyes," French foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani told Reuters, "and I can tell you the Colombians were aware of it."

Brazil immediately jumped into the fray, demanding Colombia's apology and (along with all the countries of the region) force all parties to go to the Dominican Republic to sign a peace agreement.

Signal International, brought 500 workers they recruited in India and the United Arab Emirates to supplement a labor force depleted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now they are faced with a lawsuit claiming they brought those 500 to the United States with the false promise of their employment being a path to citizenship. An immigration round up in Tennessee and a mosque burning, along with the mass exodus of over 1,000 latino residents, has left the communities of middle Tennessee shaken and divided. In South Florida, lawyers of a former muslim scholar are fighting what they describe as "punitive government harrassment" in the guise of baseless grand juries. In Indiana, an immigration attorney denounces the SAVE act as irrational and inhumane on the grounds of how it would tear apart families and destroy not just communities but lives.

This is the state of immigration in this country and it's a sad state, indeed.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) is an organization that advances the cause of immigration as a basic human and civil right through community organizing and educating migrants and citizen about immigration law and services. It's due to their human rights advocacy that the Department of Immigrations Customs Enforcement (ICE) contacted them to announce a planned "humanitarian" raid "somewhere in Van Nuys, California".

Unfortunately, the outcome of the raid was anything but humanitarian and that's what the short documentary sets out to highlight.

There's been some interesting developments in the fight against AIDS. Here's a quick list :

1. Drugs cut HIV transmission via breast-feeding - Los Angeles Times
The controversy of allowing HIV/AIDS infected new mothers to nurse their newborns continues. Of course, transmission is at issue, yet so is survival in areas of extreme poverty and unsanitary conditions. That's why in 2002 even the British Medical Journal recommended breastfeeding since it increased the chances of survival for all babies given that infant formula has a stronger probability of increasing the rate of death due to other diseases. The practice has been to give medication to the baby of an HIV/AIDS mother if the child was born infected as well. This new study seems to indicate that all babies born of infected mothers ought to get the medication since the chances of non-infected baby of contracting the disease later is cut by half.

2. Monkey Gene That Blocks AIDS Viruses Evolved More Than Once
Harvard Medical School researchers have found a gene in an Asian monkey that may have evolved as protection against AIDS/HIV. This suggests that AIDS may not be a modern disease and may have afflicted primates (and maybe humans) in some evolutionary past.

3. House Panel OKs Increase for Bush's HIV-AIDS Program
After seven years of having the extreme right in this country forcefully tie "morality" based clauses to funding HIV/AIDS programs around the world, the U. S. House of Representatives finally approves a measure that not only removes the demagoguery from the funding, but triples the amount of money given worldwide.

Chalk one to lactivists, evolutionists and reproductive rights champions all around the world.

Amnesty International features British actor Patrick Stewart, in one of their campaigns against domestic violence. In this short yet powerful video clip, he talks about his experience as a child survivor of domestic violence. It is a moving testimony of a man who carries with him to this day the vivid images of his bloodied and battered mother.

The Center for Disease Control reported earlier this month on the long-term physical risks of domestic violence.

Although domestic violence cases are declining in the United States, we still have 1,200 deaths and 2 million injuries among women, and almost 600,000 injuries among men.

Domestic Violence Harms Long-Term Health of Victims "One in four women and one of seven men experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime," said CDC epidemiologist Michele Black. "Those who experience intimate partner violence during their lifetime were also more likely to report a range of adverse health conditions and health risk behaviors."

In the study, Black's team gathered data on 70,156 men and women who participated in the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. These individuals completed the section of the survey on intimate partner violence. Responses came from people in 16 states and two territories.

The results of the survey are published in the Feb. 8 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a CDC publication.

This means that at least 1% of our population will suffer for many years after their domestic victim-hood from chronic health conditions such as gynecological disorders, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, central nervous system disorders, gastrointestinal disorders and heart or circulatory conditions.

It is amazing though that what would seem common sense --that a body broken by violence may take a lifetime to heal-- has to be put into paper and substantiated with statistics in order to prove that it is an issue that needs to be dealt with by both public health officials and health insurance providers.

Cases in which a country aids a dissenting faction of a rival government or uses economic power in order to influence the outcomes of an general election are not rare. There is, for example, the US and international pressure on the Polish government and the crumbling Soviet bloc that gave Lech Walesa and Solidarnosc their 1989 win. There's also the case of China's use of its economic power for influencing elections in Zambia.

Yet, never in all my years, have I ever heard of a country trying to effect the outcome of a foreign country's political party primary. That's exactly what the conservative government of Canada seems to have done with last week's Democratic primaries.

This from Jeet Heer, writer for The Guardian's community blog, Comment is Free:

From news accounts, there seems to have been two separate leaks. The initial and less damaging leak came from an off-the-record statement by Ian Brodie, the prime minister's chief of staff, who sought to reassure reporters that anti-Nafta rhetoric coming from Hillary Clinton's camp wasn't serious. Brodie's account was then amplified and turned into an anti-Obama smear by a false account given in a diplomatic memo, whose origin is still unknown. Bowing to opposition pressure, Harper has promised to investigate both leaks.

Read the whole article because it gives an amazing historical re-cap of how the conservative movement of Canada is ghastly intertwined to the one here in the United States. So in context, this is seen as an attempt to damage the reputation of the front-runner of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, because most conservatives believe they cannot beat him as easily as they could beat Hillary Clinton, whom many see as the perfect rival for John McCain.

What's astounding is that, if the vitriolic arch-conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh, is credited with helping Hillary Clinton win Ohio and Texas, then Canadian TV may have been his primary ally in this effort. And since this is unprecedented, we will not know for a long time if any laws were broken or if we would have had to redo the primaries because of it.

So stay tuned because this story has just begun.

Public Knowledge is a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working to defend citizens' rights in the emerging digital culture.

They put together this might nifty video --less than 3 minutes long-- that explains beautifully why our digital civil rights are in peril if Congress doesn't pass a new law to declare equal access and usage of the internet as part of our Bill of Rights.

Watch it now!

Extra points if you watch the Daily Show's explanation of subject as well.