Kids were intimidated with assault rifles for no good reason that I can see.

Yet our cookie-cutter media outlets, so many of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch, did not report this incident: that police raided meeting of journalists and bloggers AT GUNPOINT in an apparent effort to disrupt independent coverage of the Republican National Convention and stifle any display of disapproval for the direction in which the Republicans have taken the nation – and will continue to take us.

Watch this video and you tell me if you think these kids were a real threat.

Regardless, the home in which they were staying was raided by police with assault rifles and their computers and journals confiscated. Most were told they could not get their possessions – including house and car keys – back until Monday September 8th. This harassment was meant to send a message:

“Do not coordinate public activity. Roll over and play dead.” And, as Bill O’Reilly is so fond of snarling at anyone he doesn’t like (after turning off the person’s microphone) “Just shut up.”

Sadly, that video is no longer available, so here’s a video that gives an overview of what peace protestors were facing. Note this fact:

‘Normally it is the taxpayers, the citizens of a community, who bear the cost of liability for misconduct by their government officials. That way, the officials must answer to the public for their actions. By the RNC (Republican National Convention) purchasing liability insurance on behalf of the city of St. Paul to cover claims of police misconduct, they have literally funded the abuse of police power in order to enhance their political agenda.’

So will you “just shut up” about this incident? Or will you express outrage? Will you write or call the Mayor of St. Paul? Because this group was monitored and targeted simply for doing what average Americans have always done: try to get their voices heard.

Should we not protest this incident, those who bully and repress will be emboldened to go even further. And technology will help them.

Technology exists now to monitor you without you even knowing it’s being done, and to silence you as reported in Silencing Online Speech In Tunisia:

“..it seems the email accounts of some Tunisian Internet users are being monitored by Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) without their knowledge. DPI is a technology that has the ability to monitor the online activity and filter the traffic on the network by removing “unwanted” material from the actual body of received emails.

Recently, I asked Robert Guerra – a Toronto-base technologist who helps NGOs with data privacy, secure communications and information security about this. These are his comments: [Read more →]

Thanks to a blogger discovering my blog about Haiti’s troubles, I have discovered a cornucopia of information about the world: Global Voices! I’ve added RSS feeds from this organization to the right sidebar because I believe this is a news source that is more than worth your while to follow.

These are the stories you don’t hear because U.S. media is so consolidated. Yet they are the stories we need to hear so we can connect with our brothers and sisters around the world.

Check out this blog post, for instance, entitled Ramadhan, Prayers and Clean Blogging which, frankly, shows us that our Muslim brothers and sisters are more like us than they are different.

Global Voices is very concerned – as we all should be – with freedom of speech. This is not something that we in the West can take for granted. Because once speech is silenced, injustice and poverty grow.

During the Republican National Convention, Amy Goodman – the long standing and respected host of Democracy Now - was arrested, along with dozens of journalists. To quote her:

“They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter.”

“One of the police kept shouting at me ‘Shut up, shut up,” she said. “It was extremely threatening.”

Watch this video, put yourself in her place and decide for yourself if there was any reason to arrest her. [Read more →]