In a message dated 3/6/2008 8:10:05 AM Eastern Standard Time,
innocentkiller(a)gmail.com writes:
By "flaunting their sexuality," I was referring to being openly
gay with a partner, holding hands, sharing a room, that kind
of thing. I guess "flaunting" was a bad choice of words, "publicly
displaying" would probably be closer to my point.
A quick comment here: I think that in a conservative society people would
expect men to share a room with men and women to share a room with women. That
would not be raising any eyebrows.
As for two men holding hands in public, one of the first things I noticed in
my first exposure to Middle Eastern culture is that it is actually quite
common for two men to walk down the street hand in hand. This is no more a sign
of their sexuality than two men kissing each other on the cheek when meeting
in some parts of Europe or the Middle East.
Anecdotally, in the 1980s my friends and I used to love watching the
Jordanian English news at 10 pm every night. The opening line was always "His
Majesty the King today ..." which was often followed by our having a betting pool
over how many people he would kiss.
D
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In a message dated 3/6/2008 1:46:02 AM Eastern Standard Time,
Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu writes:
around since then who have spoken to his integrity. The basic point here is
that, while it would be worth talking about had any foundation money been
spent extravagantly, Jimmy funded Wikipedia out of his own pocket for a long
time, and the amount of cash we are talking about here is insignificant.
Sorry, this is a false assertion. Apart from some established
wiki-mythology, is there any evidence that Jimmy funded Wikipedia out of his own pocket
ever? He did not.
As for the amount of cash being insignificant, that too should be placed in
context. For instance, the goal of the first fundraiser was $70 thousand, so
$30 thousand is over 40 percent of that. The goal of the next fundraiser was
about $300 thousand (I don't remember the exact number off hand), so $30
thousand is 10 percent of that.
Danny
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This looks like good news:
============================================================
Germany: New basic right to privacy of computer systems
============================================================
The German Constitutional Court published on 27 February 2008 a
landmark ruling about the constitutionality of secret online searches
of computers by government agencies. The decision constitutes a new
"basic right to the confidentiality and integrity of
information-technological systems" as derived from the German
Constitution.
The journalist and privacy activist Bettina Winsemann, the politician
Fabian Brettel (Left Party), the lawyer and former federal minister
for
the interior Gerhart Baum (Liberal Party), and the lawyers Julius
Reiter and Peter Schantz had challenged the constitutionality of a
December 2006 amendmend to the law about the domestic intelligence
service of the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The amendmend
had introduced a right for the intelligence service to "covertly
observe and otherwise reconnoitre the Internet, especially the covert
participation in its communication devices and the search for these,
as
well as the clandestine access to information-technological systems
among others by technical means" (paragraph 5, number 11). Parts of
the
challenges also addressed other amendmends which are not covered here.
The decision of today is widely considered a landmark ruling, because
it constitutes a new "basic right to the confidentiality and integrity
of information-technological systems" as part of the general
personality rights in the German constitution. The reasoning goes:
"From the relevance of the use of information-technological systems
for
the expression of personality (Pers?nlichkeitsentfaltung) and from the
dangers for personality that are connected to this use follows a need
for protection that is significant for basic rights. The individual is
depending upon the state respecting the justifiable expectations for
the integrity and confidentiality of such systems with a view to the
unrestricted expression of personality." (margin number 181). The
decision complements earlier landmark privacy rulings by the
Constitutional Court that had introduced the "right to informational
self-determination" (1983) and the right to the "absolute protection
of
the core area of the private conduct of life" (2004).
[...]
Constitutional Court Press Release (only in German, 27.02.2008)
http://www.bverfg.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg08-022.html
Constitutional Court Decision (BVerfG, 1 BvR 370/07), (only in German,
27.02.2008)
http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20080227_1bvr037007.html
Video from the announcing the decision:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630696719785982383&hl=en
Comprehensive press and background coverage (only in German)
http://netzpolitik.org/2008/neues-grundrecht-auf-gewaehrleistung-von-vertra…
Germany's Highest Court Restricts Internet Surveillance (27.02.2008)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3152627,00.html
The most spied upon people in Europe (27.02.2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7265212.stm
(Contribution by Ralf Bendrath - EDRi member Netzwerk Neue Medien)
More at:
http://www.edri.org/edrigram
phoebe ayers wrote:
> On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david(a)fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>> Cary Bass wrote:
>>> The Jury for Wikimania 2008 bids have met and are pleased to announce
>>> that Wikimania 2008 will be held in Alexandria, Egypt.
>> I'm offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe
>> (rotation) trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other
>> civil rights (local laws). While visitors to Egypt are certainly not at
>> the same risk, I refuse to spend any money in a country that -- as
>> recently as 2004 -- sentenced someone to 17 years of prison and two
>> years of hard labor for posting a personal ad on a gay website[1]. A
>> blogger was imprisoned in 2007 for four years for "insulting Islam and
>> defaming the President of Egypt."[2] Jimmy Wales even attended the
>> Amnesty conference denouncing the censorship. No legal or cultural
>> reforms since give me confidence that the situation has improved.
>>
>> Wikimedia and its projects have an abundance of people from marginalized
>> groups and political advocacy organizations participating at every
>> level. A place that persecutes, censors, and prosecutes such groups
>> under the banner of snuffing out "Satanism" is not a location that
>> affirms the pluralism and intellectual freedom of Wikimedia.
>>
>> People raised these objections early in the bidding process, but I have
>
> As a jury member, I do not remember any comments from you on this
> subject, David; perhaps I missed them. At any rate, what are you
> trying to accomplish by sending this message after the winner was
> announced, and not before when we were discussing the bids?
Other people raised these objections during the bidding process; I
didn't have to. Even if no one had brought the issue up, everyone on the
voting team should have been aware enough of the problems to them under
consideration without further prompting.
I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Egypt's human rights record
would cripple the bid enough that it wouldn't win.
> Wikimania and Wikimedia are both global in scope, which means that
> while we can condemn censorship and loss of human rights everywhere
So the "condemnation" amounts to docking a modest number of points for
"local laws"?
> we must also take into account a global range of values.
What is this supposed to mean? How can we balance condemnation with
toleration?
> Our projects
> focus specifically on free knowledge, and I expect that will be
> highlighted at the conference.
Even putting gay rights aside, Egypt's record of imprisoning political
and religious dissidents is directly counter to affirming "free knowledge."
It's clear that some of the previous threads about Wikimania drifted
off-topic and became unproductive. However, I think that several
serious concerns got lost in the noise, and that we cannot drop the
topic from the list without addressing them, especially as people are
starting to plan their travel. If we can be assured that safety
concerns are being taken seriously by the WMF and the Wikimania
organizers and are not being dismissed or ignored, this would go a
long way toward improving the tone of discussion on the list.
I have two main concerns with Wikimania so far.
First, the coverage of the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy and
images in the Muhammad article on Wikipedia have sparked protest from
many people, some of whom have made frightening and violent threats of
reprisal against Wikimedia. These threats become more immediate and
worthy of concern in a region where there is recent history of
violence in response to religious controversies. This would be an
extreme reaction, but I don't think that we can discount the
possibility. It only takes a few extreme voices to cause a serious
issue, and we need to be aware that this may happen and have a plan to
ensure that attendees are not put in danger.
Secondly, I am also concerned that the local organizing team has not
been sufficiently responsive to concerns about safety. A risk which is
dismissed is one which is not being mitigated. Every location has some
risk involved, and there should always be consideration of those
risks. But I can't find any indication that this is happening here,
and I would like to know that someone is considering it and taking
reasonable steps to mitigate it.
Even if the safety concerns were completely without merit, perception
of risk is important to an event which can only be successful if a
diverse crowd of people attend. People are going to choose whether or
not to go based on what they think is true. If people do not go
because they think they will not be safe, even if they should have no
reason to think so, the event is harmed by the failure to address
their concerns.
So I would like to know:
What plans are in place to ensure attendees' safety at Wikimania?
What happens if we get threats of violence at the event?
Cheers
I asked Ward about this and he said someone must be putting words in his
mouth.
Cheers,
Brian
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Putting the utter stupidity of discussing Jimbo's sex life at all aside, I
> will say that this episode rings true for me in one important sense. As an
> employee of a for-profit wiki, I've had the *entire* 20+ person staff
> agree
> unanimously that they love Wikipedia despite Jimmy Wales, emphasis on the
> "despite". Part of me recognizes that all this hullabaloo is a product of
> the media's inane focus on the cult of celebrity, but still...wouldn't we
> just be better off without him? My moral compass swings to a resounding
> Yes.
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 1:30 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 04/03/2008, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > The bigger problem are the allegations mentioned in the article about
> > > use of foundation funds. Three specific claims are made:
> > > -Jimbo tried to expense a $300+ bottle of wine
> > > -Jimbo tried to expense a massage parlor visit
> > > -Wikimedia foundation took away Jimbo's credit card.
> > > Obviously, of it any of that were true, it would be super bad, and
> > > nothing can be done but watch it play out.
> > > But, far more likely, if it's false, the foundation needs to find out
> > > that it's false, and then get that word out ASAP. I haven't seen
> them
> > > say it's not true. I haven't looked hard, but then-- nobody else
> out
> > > there is looking hard either. If I haven't seen "the facts" on the
> > > issue, neither has almost everyone else.
> >
> >
> > Sue Gardner did answer on Danny Wool's blog, fwiw.
> >
> > Mostly the media interest is as cheap tabloid filler. All the London
> > commuter papers, with the focus of the "story" being dumping people
> > using technology. In between fabulously newsworthy reports on Kelly
> > Osbourne's haircut.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
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>
Hey -
you may remember that a while ago, we asked for community submissions on:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stillman_Wiki_Wall_Photo_Contest
There was a pretty, light-up photo wall in our San Francisco office
space when we moved in (the previous tenant was a designer), so it was
only natural for us to use it to feature photos taken of and by
members of the community. We picked 9 of the submissions and put them
on our wall:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_Stillman_Contest_Wall_1.j…
This is still missing the little labels attributing the photographers
and describing the content - those will follow shortly, and I hope we
can get away with fair use until then ;-). But I can tell you, it
really makes the pictures look quite amazing. It's the kind of low
cost effort that really creates a "Wikipedian" atmosphere.
We also have a big corkboard on our kitchen wall that has dozens of
photos from Wikimedia events on it - it's really quite lovely. :-)
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
At Sue's request, and in response to the expressions of concern on
this list, I've been looking into the question of safety for attendees
at this summer's Wikimania in Alexandria. I did not have any
presumptions one way or the other regarding what the likely answers to
this question might be.
Primarily by consulting sources I have in DC and in the security
industry, who helpfully pointed me to online sources as well, I think
I can walk through some basic issues for those who are wondering
whether attending Wikimania in Alexandria poses unusual or exceptional
risks.
The short answer is this: while there are some parts of Egypt that
might be problematic for Wikimanian travellers, travel to Wikimania in
Alexandria appears to be not a threatening prospect in particular.
I'll spell out some of my reasoning below.
1) If you research Egypt, you'll find that points of greatest tension
involve the Egypt/Israel border (places like Gaza), which are
emphatically not where we're going to be.
2) Many countries, including the U.S.A., routinely post updates for
their citizens regarding risks associate with travel. In the U.S.,
there are "travel alerts" (concern about relatively short-term
threats) and "travel advisories" (concern about longer-term, more
systemic threats within a particular destination country). Currently
(as of today), there are no "travel alerts" associated with any Middle
Eastern destination -- there are of course many "travel warnings"
regarding countries whose relationship with the USA is tense. (Take
Pakistan, for example.) Egypt, however, currently has no "travel
alerts" or "travel warnings" associated with it.
Travel warnings: <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.ht
>
Travel alerts: <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/
pa_1766.html>
3) Despite how it may look to outsiders, the Egypt and Israel get
along pretty well, under the circumstances. (You can blame/thank Jimmy
Carter for this.) There are border tensions, but, as I have noted, we
are not going to be situated at the border.
4) There is a useful general links for how the USA and other nations
view the risks associated with travel to Egypt:
<http://www.allsafetravels.com/CountryPage.aspx?countryid=149> (a
multi-country listing)
See also http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/state/archive/1998/april/s…
(an old alert from the US State department, but it gives you an
idea how much things have calmed down since 1998).
5) Here's a recent report from Ha'aretz regarding border tensions, but
one of the things you should take away from this article is that Egypt
and Israel are actually discussing with each other how to respond to
border problems. And, as I said, we won't be on the border.
6) Want the fullest possible warning of what can go wrong for
Americans in Egypt? You can find it here: <http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1108.html
>. But note how much this document references the Sinai and the
border, which is where we won't be -- we'll be in Alexandria (a city
of six million people on the Mediterranean Coast), or in transit to or
from an airport (probably in Cairo, I'm guessing).
7) How to register with the local consulate if you're an American: <http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/tips/registration/registration_1186.html
>.
8) Now, everything I've said with regard to safety talks primarily
about Americans (that's most of the data I could put my hands on in a
hurry) and, more importantly, assumes nothing about whether we'll be
prominent as Wikimedians (or whether the protest against images of the
Prophet on Wikipedia are going to be generating ongoing conflict).
But it should be noted that there are Muslims everywhere, not just in
the Middle East, and it can't be assumed that anyone who's not in
Alexandria as a Wikipedian is necessarily any safer than if they're in
(to take an obviously relevant example) Amsterdam as a Wikipedian.
I can't give anyone any assurance that the images-of-the-Prophet issue
won't heat up, or that the political situation in coastal Egypt will
remain stable, but the evidence we have now suggests that the library
at Alexandria is a reasonably safe and stable place to hold a
conference, in my view.
--Mike Godwin
Just a quick comment here:
I think the problem is that various issues are being conflated and confused,
so that each person participating has valid points, but they are talking
about different circumstances and therefore talking past one another.
1. Respecting local customs: This is a given anywhere you travel, and should
be considered as such. For instance, when entering a mosque, you remove your
shoes. When having dinner with the queen, you do not burp at the end of the
meal to show your satisfaction. Most of this is common courtesy. There are,
however, some societies where accepted social norms would truly impinge on the
freedom of Wikipedians. For example, I am hard pressed to believe that
Wikimania will be held in Saudi Arabia, where women are required to cover
themselves in what Westerners would consider a restrictive fashion, or where someone
like Florence would need a note from her husband or son to appear outside in
public alone. That said, Egypt is not, I repeat, is NOT, in any way like that.
It is a country whose economy is fueled by tourism, and they have seen
Western women before.
2. Respecting local laws: I am not going to discuss the Egyptian sodomy laws
per se, but suffice it to say that among Egypt's many tourists are many gay
tourists, and I don't know of anyone arrested for that. In fact, it is harder
to get into the Cayman Islands if you are gay. That said, do not have sex
with your partner in midday in a bustling market. But hey, I would go so far as
to suggest the same behavior in Amsterdam.
3. Travel advisories and terrorism: Yes there are travel advisories and yes
there is terrorism. Such is the world we live in. There is terrorism in New
York and London and Madrid too, and any discussion about which is more
"dangerous" is, to me at least, like discussing in which make of automobile you are
likely to be rearended (in the traffic sense). You wear your seatbelt and take
the right precautions, and Fate does what it pleases. In 2002 no one avoided
Indonesia because of threats of a tsunami.
4. Wikimedia stuff: This is perhaps the most interesting conundrum. I
remember some dumb film where they dumped a bunch of bad guys off in Harlem with
White Power t-shirts. They were not happy. In other words, the real question is,
to what degree will the Muhammad image controversy impact the local
population at the time of teh conference. Will the issue exacerbate? Are there angry
people looking specifically for infidel Wikimedians, while they ignore the
South Korean tour bus across the street? Could there be peaceful
demonstrations? Could these demonstrations turn violent? Could the whole thing blow over? I
think that this is the real issue and what Florence asked Sue to
investigate. It seems to be the most intelligent next step.
Danny
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http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23906
(in the bush in Africa)
"Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine that was the only video camera owned by
a local resident for miles around. The marginal benefit that one
uncommon piece of technology can have when no others are around must
be immense."
Getting our content and the requisite technology out to the world has,
as far as I recall, always been expressly part of what we're all doing
here.
- d.
