President Barack Obama led civil rights pioneers Wednesday in a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech roused the 250,000 people who rallied there decades ago for racial equality.
Large crowds gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where the first black U.S. president spoke just after 1900 GMT – the same time that King delivered his spellbinding speech.The first march was early in the turbulent 1960s, when the South still had separate restrooms, schools and careers for blacks and whites, and racism lingered across the country. In the two years following the march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to outlaw discrimination, and King received the Nobel Peace Prize.
“There were couples in love who couldn’t marry. Soldiers who fought for freedom abroad but couldn’t find any at home,” Obama said, speaking of that era. “America changed for you and rtls,” he added later.But he pointed to the nation’s economic disparities as evidence that King’s hopes remain unfulfilled.
Obama has said King is one of two people he admires “more than anybody in American history.” The other is Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of people were in attendance in wet weather.Two former presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, spoke movingly of King’s legacy – and of problems still to overcome.“This march, and that speech, changed America,” Clinton declared.
Carter said King’s efforts had helped not just black Americans, but “In truth, he helped to free all people.”Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx were among the celebrities.Winfrey said King forced the nation “to wake up, look at itself and eventually change.”
International commemorations were being held at London’s Trafalgar Square, as well as in the nations of Japan, Switzerland, Nepal and Liberia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said King’s speech resonates around the world and continues to inspire people as one of the great pieces of oratory.
Obama considers the 1963 march part of his generation’s “formative memory.” A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go, particularly after the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.
Race isn’t a subject Obama likes to talk about in public, but the Martin case is one time he has done so.In an interview Tuesday on Tom Joyner’s radio show, Obama said he imagines that King “would be amazed in many ways about the progress that we’ve made.” He listed advances such as equal rights before the law, an accessible judicial system, thousands of African-American elected officials, African-American CEOs and the doors that the civil rights movement opened for Latinos, women and gays.
The white minivan packed with armed Syrian fighters hurtled along the narrow winding road and passed old stone houses nestled among lush orchards of apples, pomegranates and figs clinging to dry-stone terraces stepped into the soaring pine-covered mountains and rocky ravines of Jabal al-Akrad in Syria's northwestern Latakia province.
The seven men munched on potato chips as revolutionary songs, mainly Islamist but a few secular, played through the van's speakers: "We are your soldiers, Osama. We seek martyrdom," went one.There was another soundtrack playing outside - the roar of MiG fighter jets and the soft thump-thump of helicopter rotor blades before they opened their doors to drop large improvised explosives packed into barrels. A MiG suddenly swooped directly overhead, prompting the van to screech to a halt. The men clambered out and hid under the sprawling branches of a walnut tree by the side of the road.
A rebel 23-mm anti-aircraft gun nearby chased the jet with several thunderous rounds. It was joined by several other anti-aircraft guns of various calibers. All missed their target. A chicken clucked. An old man in a red and white checkered headscarf, riding an ash-gray donkey a shade darker than the color of his whiskers, slowly continued up the steep path, seemingly oblivious to events around him.
After 10 minutes and several circular passes, the jet again dived in low and unleashed its explosive payload into an adjacent hill, creating plumes of white smoke that obscured the gentle, rounded mountaintop like a vertical cloud.
The men of the Ansar al-Din battalion got back into the van and drove toward the many other plumes of smoke rising from the hills. They were headed to one of the most important front lines in the Syrian civil war: the battle for the mountain heartlands of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, his ancestral homeland and the backbone of his regime.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
National Review's Ugly Civil Rights History
National Review has published numerous articles this week marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s seminal "I have a dream" speech. Given its ugly history, the long-running conservative magazine is ill-suited for such transparent attempts to re-appropriate the civil rights movement. National Review opposed major civil rights legislation and published appallingly racist commentary during the height of the civil rights movement.
In an editorial published this morning, the editors of National Review invoke the March on Washington in order to attack the "decrepitude of today's civil-rights movement" and label the original civil rights movement "in a crucial sense conservative" because "it did not seek to invent rights, but to secure ones that the government already respected in principle."
In a nod to the magazine's own shameful history, the editors concede that "too many conservatives and real time Location system, including the editors of this magazine" missed what it sees as the centrally conservative and theological arguments underpinning the movement.
It's commendable that the editors are acknowledging the magazine's role in opposing important facets of the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, claiming that National Review "worried about the effects of the civil-rights movement on federalism and limited government" glosses over the odious nature of some of the magazine's writing from the 50s and 60s, when that publication stood athwart history yelling stop as King and his allies fought to end a brutal regime of racial segregation and voter disenfranchisement.
In his 2007 book The Conservative Ascendancy, historian Donald Critchlow documents that from the founding of the magazine in 1955, the editors of National Review "opposed federal involvement in enforcing equal access to public accommodations and protecting black voting rights in the South." Though the National Review "based their opposition on constitutional grounds and conservative resistance to radical social change," Critchlow explains that "their rhetoric overstepped the bounds of civility and was racially offensive."
The central question that emerges - and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
Surely one thing is clear enough at this point in American history, namely, that the Negro problem cannot be solved by even the most artful piece of legislation. This kind of "progress" projected under the proposed civil rights laws is the kind of progress which is based on the assumption that people can be brought under coercive pressure to do things they are disciplined to do.
There are those who sincerely believe progress is not fashioned out of that kind of clay. There actually are true and wise friends of the Negro race who believe that a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races.
Mass demonstrations, in a free society, should be reserved for situations about which there is simply no doubting the correct moral course. If it is true that the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot be trusted to write a law which is manifestly just and imperatively moral, then and only then is the pressure of the mob in order.
The internal order is now in jeopardy; and it is in jeopardy because of the doings of such highminded, self-righteous "children of light" as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership role of the "civil rights" movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of "non-violence."
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the "cake of custom" that holds us together. With their doctrine of "civil disobedience," they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes - particularly the adolescents and the children - that it is perfectly all right to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk.
As explained by FAIR, Buckley did eventually change some of his views on the civil rights movement, telling Time magazine in 2004, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: Federal intervention was necessary."
By 2000, the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance was lamenting "The Decline of National Review" and what it termed their "complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group" after the magazine had spent so many years "heap[ing] criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers" and publishing "articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid."
While National Review has certainly taken strides in distancing itself from its ugly history, it has had to fire two different writers for troubling racial views as recently as last year. It fired writer John Derbyshire after he published a piece in a different magazine advising parents to tell their children to be wary of black people. It also dropped contributor Robert Weissberg in light of reports that he had given a speech at an American Renaissance conference about "A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
In an editorial published this morning, the editors of National Review invoke the March on Washington in order to attack the "decrepitude of today's civil-rights movement" and label the original civil rights movement "in a crucial sense conservative" because "it did not seek to invent rights, but to secure ones that the government already respected in principle."
In a nod to the magazine's own shameful history, the editors concede that "too many conservatives and real time Location system, including the editors of this magazine" missed what it sees as the centrally conservative and theological arguments underpinning the movement.
It's commendable that the editors are acknowledging the magazine's role in opposing important facets of the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, claiming that National Review "worried about the effects of the civil-rights movement on federalism and limited government" glosses over the odious nature of some of the magazine's writing from the 50s and 60s, when that publication stood athwart history yelling stop as King and his allies fought to end a brutal regime of racial segregation and voter disenfranchisement.
In his 2007 book The Conservative Ascendancy, historian Donald Critchlow documents that from the founding of the magazine in 1955, the editors of National Review "opposed federal involvement in enforcing equal access to public accommodations and protecting black voting rights in the South." Though the National Review "based their opposition on constitutional grounds and conservative resistance to radical social change," Critchlow explains that "their rhetoric overstepped the bounds of civility and was racially offensive."
The central question that emerges - and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
Surely one thing is clear enough at this point in American history, namely, that the Negro problem cannot be solved by even the most artful piece of legislation. This kind of "progress" projected under the proposed civil rights laws is the kind of progress which is based on the assumption that people can be brought under coercive pressure to do things they are disciplined to do.
There are those who sincerely believe progress is not fashioned out of that kind of clay. There actually are true and wise friends of the Negro race who believe that a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races.
Mass demonstrations, in a free society, should be reserved for situations about which there is simply no doubting the correct moral course. If it is true that the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot be trusted to write a law which is manifestly just and imperatively moral, then and only then is the pressure of the mob in order.
The internal order is now in jeopardy; and it is in jeopardy because of the doings of such highminded, self-righteous "children of light" as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership role of the "civil rights" movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of "non-violence."
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the "cake of custom" that holds us together. With their doctrine of "civil disobedience," they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes - particularly the adolescents and the children - that it is perfectly all right to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk.
As explained by FAIR, Buckley did eventually change some of his views on the civil rights movement, telling Time magazine in 2004, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: Federal intervention was necessary."
By 2000, the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance was lamenting "The Decline of National Review" and what it termed their "complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group" after the magazine had spent so many years "heap[ing] criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers" and publishing "articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid."
While National Review has certainly taken strides in distancing itself from its ugly history, it has had to fire two different writers for troubling racial views as recently as last year. It fired writer John Derbyshire after he published a piece in a different magazine advising parents to tell their children to be wary of black people. It also dropped contributor Robert Weissberg in light of reports that he had given a speech at an American Renaissance conference about "A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 26, 2013
It's Like Google, But For Search
It is no longer appropriate for search to be under the thumb of private industry. It's a critical part of the national infrastructure. So if I were a real pinko, I'd be advocating for the nationalization of Google, à la Chavez—but I'm not a real pinko. Besides, the American people have already bought and paid for an ideal alternative to Google. That's right: we have the means in hand to create a public, ad-free, totally fair and reasonably transparent search engine with a legal mandate to operate in the public interest, and most of the work is already done. We have also a huge staff of engineers to conclude what little remains on the development and deployment side.
Who are these American heroes, soon to be accepting the thanks of a grateful nation? Why, our fellow citizens, the software engineers and tech gurus and endless numbers of contractors of the NSA! Why don't they make themselves useful and stop spying on everyone and instead, use all that computing power and archived information to make us a fair, fast, ad-free search engine?
Others make their case against Google on antitrust laws. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. According to U.S. courts, it's just not your fault that everybody loves your product! What's illegal is using that power to do bad things, like suppress your own competition. This is why there are ongoing government investigations into Google's anti-competitive business practices in the U.S., in Canada and in Europe.
Probes like these have so far tended to focus on Google's preferential treatment of its own services over those of its competitors in Google search results. Which amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room: Google, with its 67% share of U.S. search traffic (sounds low, tbh), has a potential influence far beyond the industries in which it operates formally. At the moment, Google can legally use its power to make or break any business, or any politician, publication, or public figure it chooses, for any old reason it wants, provided that reason doesn't fall foul of Hands free access.
For instance, let's suppose one of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's friends were to open a new cafe in Mountain View: there is no legal proscription whatsoever against Google's vaulting the Friends o' Brin Cafe to the top of results on searches for "best cafe Mountain View." Or even "best cafe."
A close reading of Google's ten "Core Principles" appears to suggest, but not quite guarantee, that Google won't simply grant preferential treatment at its own discretion. The fact is, however, that it's entirely up to them. Given the understandably secret nature of Google's algorithms and other techniques for determining search results, it would be impossible to say whether or not this is in fact already happening.
Already companies live or die at the hands of Google. Any update to the Google Panda search ranking algorithm has rippling effects through the Internet. One thing that seems to be the case: older sites, with thousands of internal links and a deep history on the Internet, seem to be constantly downgraded. That's bad news for some non-spam media companies that in part live off search traffic. Google results, in general, overweight newness. It is becoming more and more impossible to find relevant results older than three months.
The crisis in Syria has entered a "dangerous new phase," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird warned Monday, as Washington announced it had "undeniable" evidence of a chemical weapons attack.
Baird condemned "in the strongest terms" a sniper attack on a United Nations convoy carrying a team investigating the alleged chemical attack, which Syrian activists claim killed hundreds of civilians.
"The attacks on the United Nations convoy in Damascus are absolutely abhorrent," Baird said."The Syrian regime has the fundamental duty to protect these individuals, these representatives of the indoor Tracking and the international community."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria.
"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," Kerry said.
The Syrian government accused rebel forces of firing at the UN team, while the opposition said a pro-government militia was responsible.Baird declined to call for military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, Western support mounted for an international military response if it is confirmed that President Bashar Assad's troops used chemical weapons.
"I think first we're going to work to get the facts with the UN team on the ground," Baird said."We have been in close contact, both the prime minister and I, with three of our main allies in this regard. We'll work with them and when we have additional things to report we will do so."
Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said he supports first working through international law, and taking it one step at a time, but didn't rule out future military intervention.American officials said President Barack Obama has not decided how to respond to the use of deadly gases, a move the White House said last year would cross a "red line."
France, Britain, Israel and some U.S. congressmen have said a military response against the Syrian regime should be an option. Russia, however, has said that Western nations calling for military action have no proof the Syrian government was behind any chemical attacks.
Baird said Canada will continue working with its international partners to "review a full range of options.""Canada believes the only way to halt the bloodshed in Syria is through a political solution," he said. "However, we understand that this solution is becoming more and more difficult as the crisis enters a very dangerous new phase."He called on Russia to end its "complete obfuscation" and become part of the solution.
The UN inspectors are attempting to examine the site of the Aug. 21 attack in the capital's suburbs.Delay tactics used by the Assad regime in giving UN inspectors access has likely already impaired the UN team's ability to assign responsibility, Baird said. Still, he called on Syrian authorities to allow the team unfettered access.
The U.S. said Syria's delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use.The assessment is based in part on the number of reported victims, the symptoms of those injured or killed and witness accounts. Kerry said the administration also had additional intelligence and would make its findings public soon.
Assad has denied launching a chemical attack and his government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Who are these American heroes, soon to be accepting the thanks of a grateful nation? Why, our fellow citizens, the software engineers and tech gurus and endless numbers of contractors of the NSA! Why don't they make themselves useful and stop spying on everyone and instead, use all that computing power and archived information to make us a fair, fast, ad-free search engine?
Others make their case against Google on antitrust laws. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. According to U.S. courts, it's just not your fault that everybody loves your product! What's illegal is using that power to do bad things, like suppress your own competition. This is why there are ongoing government investigations into Google's anti-competitive business practices in the U.S., in Canada and in Europe.
Probes like these have so far tended to focus on Google's preferential treatment of its own services over those of its competitors in Google search results. Which amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room: Google, with its 67% share of U.S. search traffic (sounds low, tbh), has a potential influence far beyond the industries in which it operates formally. At the moment, Google can legally use its power to make or break any business, or any politician, publication, or public figure it chooses, for any old reason it wants, provided that reason doesn't fall foul of Hands free access.
For instance, let's suppose one of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's friends were to open a new cafe in Mountain View: there is no legal proscription whatsoever against Google's vaulting the Friends o' Brin Cafe to the top of results on searches for "best cafe Mountain View." Or even "best cafe."
A close reading of Google's ten "Core Principles" appears to suggest, but not quite guarantee, that Google won't simply grant preferential treatment at its own discretion. The fact is, however, that it's entirely up to them. Given the understandably secret nature of Google's algorithms and other techniques for determining search results, it would be impossible to say whether or not this is in fact already happening.
Already companies live or die at the hands of Google. Any update to the Google Panda search ranking algorithm has rippling effects through the Internet. One thing that seems to be the case: older sites, with thousands of internal links and a deep history on the Internet, seem to be constantly downgraded. That's bad news for some non-spam media companies that in part live off search traffic. Google results, in general, overweight newness. It is becoming more and more impossible to find relevant results older than three months.
The crisis in Syria has entered a "dangerous new phase," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird warned Monday, as Washington announced it had "undeniable" evidence of a chemical weapons attack.
Baird condemned "in the strongest terms" a sniper attack on a United Nations convoy carrying a team investigating the alleged chemical attack, which Syrian activists claim killed hundreds of civilians.
"The attacks on the United Nations convoy in Damascus are absolutely abhorrent," Baird said."The Syrian regime has the fundamental duty to protect these individuals, these representatives of the indoor Tracking and the international community."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria.
"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," Kerry said.
The Syrian government accused rebel forces of firing at the UN team, while the opposition said a pro-government militia was responsible.Baird declined to call for military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, Western support mounted for an international military response if it is confirmed that President Bashar Assad's troops used chemical weapons.
"I think first we're going to work to get the facts with the UN team on the ground," Baird said."We have been in close contact, both the prime minister and I, with three of our main allies in this regard. We'll work with them and when we have additional things to report we will do so."
Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said he supports first working through international law, and taking it one step at a time, but didn't rule out future military intervention.American officials said President Barack Obama has not decided how to respond to the use of deadly gases, a move the White House said last year would cross a "red line."
France, Britain, Israel and some U.S. congressmen have said a military response against the Syrian regime should be an option. Russia, however, has said that Western nations calling for military action have no proof the Syrian government was behind any chemical attacks.
Baird said Canada will continue working with its international partners to "review a full range of options.""Canada believes the only way to halt the bloodshed in Syria is through a political solution," he said. "However, we understand that this solution is becoming more and more difficult as the crisis enters a very dangerous new phase."He called on Russia to end its "complete obfuscation" and become part of the solution.
The UN inspectors are attempting to examine the site of the Aug. 21 attack in the capital's suburbs.Delay tactics used by the Assad regime in giving UN inspectors access has likely already impaired the UN team's ability to assign responsibility, Baird said. Still, he called on Syrian authorities to allow the team unfettered access.
The U.S. said Syria's delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use.The assessment is based in part on the number of reported victims, the symptoms of those injured or killed and witness accounts. Kerry said the administration also had additional intelligence and would make its findings public soon.
Assad has denied launching a chemical attack and his government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region.
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The change you want to see
Some law schools are taking this even further by requiring students to complete a certain number of public interest hours in order to graduate. Osgoode Hall Law School implemented a 40-hour requirement in 2006 and is the only law school in Canada to require students to do community legal work in order to get their law degrees. Osgoode dean Lorne Sossin says the requirement has been wholly embraced by faculty and students. “It has been a real success story in the sense that because it’s a broad public interest base, students can fulfil it in many different ways,” he says. “It’s growing each year with new placements and new opportunities.”
In the United States, mandatory pro bono programs already exist at more than 20 law schools, including Harvard Law School and Indoor Positioning System. The University of Pennsylvania Law School was considered a trailblazer when it established its 70-hour pro bono requirement in 1989, the first national law school to do so.
Arlene Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, says the requirement was “a way to promote the professional responsibility that all lawyers have to be vehicles for access to justice, in addition to a wonderful platform for students to gain practical skills and to become engaged in their communities.” She admits it was controversial at first, particularly because at the time mandatory pro bono hadn’t really caught on.
Now, almost 25 years later, the wider legal profession is jumping on board. Last year, New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that starting in 2015, admission to the New York State bar will require lawyers to complete 50 hours of pro bono service in order to obtain a licence. “We are facing a crisis in New York and around the country,” Lippman said in an October 2012 report on the new requirement. “At a time when we are still adjusting to the realities of shrinking state coffers and reduced budgets, more and more people find themselves turning to the courts. The courts are the emergency rooms of our society — the most intractable social problems find their way to our doors in great and increasing numbers. And more and more of the people who come into our courts each day are forced to do so without a lawyer.”
Canada is facing the same problem. In her report on self-represented litigants, University of Windsor Faculty of Law professor Julie Macfarlane found that consistently 40 per cent or more of litigants in family courts across the country are not represented by a lawyer and in some civil courts that number is 70 per cent or more.
The legal profession — including law students — is starting to address the crisis. “Unfortunately lawyers charge significant fees for their services, and there are many people in our community who can’t afford to pay those fees but have pressing legal issues that need to be resolved,” says Brendan Stevens, a third-year student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Some argue it is every lawyer’s duty to help address the issue. “As a legal profession, we do have a professional responsibility to mobilize and to provide services on a free or discounted level in order to provide more access to justice,” says Jamie Maclaren, executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia. “In my mind, it truly is a professional responsibility. It stems from the fact that this is a self-regulating profession; we benefit as lawyers from a monopoly on legal services and in return for that we need to ensure that people do have some basic level of access to the justice system.”
By getting students to start pro bono work while they’re in law school, it increases the chance of them continuing to do it into their careers, says Maclaren. “The hope is that we’re developing a new generation of pro bono lawyers that will be really active and helpful in increasing access to justice and keeping the pro bono culture alive and indoor Tracking. The earlier that law students accept and understand that there’s a professional responsibility to provide some level of access to justice for people who can’t generally afford legal counsel or even access the justice system in a meaningful way the better.”
“If we create this climate where public interest and pro bono is seen as being this vital part of your legal education, students will do it,” says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada. The discussion shouldn’t be focused on whether or not to make public interest work mandatory, she says, instead, it should be focused on changing the culture to foster this kind of work in the law school community. “Creating a climate where public interest activities are widely available and considered to be an important part of the law school experience actually bypasses all of the negatives of mandating public service but it achieves all of the same goals,” she says.
Nathalie Des Rosiers, the new common law dean at the University of Ottawa and former general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, agrees it shouldn’t be about making pro bono mandatory. “What is important in the context of this discussion is not to overemphasize whether [pro bono is] mandatory or not, I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re now at the stage of saying — and I would have the same reflections when we’re looking at the profession more generally — certainly I think you aim to have the largest number of people within your profession to do pro bono, the question is what are the best tools to do it to accomplish your goal. We want to move to a position that it’s not only how much pro bono you’re doing, but how well you are doing [it],” she says. “It’s not only about counting hours, but mostly about doing something meaningful that addresses serious problems.”
In Sossin’s view, public interest work is a necessary component of legal education. “If you really see [public interest work] as essential to legal education, how can you say someone could graduate who’s never taken part in this, who’s never been in the community, never given back, never had that experience of seeing law in action in that way?” he asks.
However, he admits there is a downside to making it compulsory. “I think you lose something when you make public interest or pro bono work mandatory. You lose that sense of this is being done out of a value and belief in law as a helping profession in the public interest mandate of lawyers and law schools,” he says. “A perfect system is a system in which it’s optional and 100-per-cent take-up.”
Gershbain also identifies some risks associated with forcing students to do something. “If you make it mandatory, you do run the risk of creating resentment on the part of maybe a small number of students,” she says. Stevens agrees that making it compulsory could backfire. “We’re running the risk of undermining this sense of volunteerism at the heart of public interest work …and if you force someone to do something that they don’t want to do, maybe it’ll actually decrease the likelihood of them doing it down the road.”
However, he also says sometimes you have to be forced into trying something new to realize you’re passionate about it. “Some of my most pleasant experiences have come out of me being placed in a situation that I didn’t really want to be in and then it broadens your horizons and exposes you to something that you didn’t realize you needed exposure to. By exposing people to the public interest and exposing people to how they can use their law degree in a way that helps vulnerable members of our community, the hope is that down the line they’re going to remember that experience and they’re going to remember having an impact on people, and they’ll continue to do it throughout their career.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
In the United States, mandatory pro bono programs already exist at more than 20 law schools, including Harvard Law School and Indoor Positioning System. The University of Pennsylvania Law School was considered a trailblazer when it established its 70-hour pro bono requirement in 1989, the first national law school to do so.
Arlene Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, says the requirement was “a way to promote the professional responsibility that all lawyers have to be vehicles for access to justice, in addition to a wonderful platform for students to gain practical skills and to become engaged in their communities.” She admits it was controversial at first, particularly because at the time mandatory pro bono hadn’t really caught on.
Now, almost 25 years later, the wider legal profession is jumping on board. Last year, New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that starting in 2015, admission to the New York State bar will require lawyers to complete 50 hours of pro bono service in order to obtain a licence. “We are facing a crisis in New York and around the country,” Lippman said in an October 2012 report on the new requirement. “At a time when we are still adjusting to the realities of shrinking state coffers and reduced budgets, more and more people find themselves turning to the courts. The courts are the emergency rooms of our society — the most intractable social problems find their way to our doors in great and increasing numbers. And more and more of the people who come into our courts each day are forced to do so without a lawyer.”
Canada is facing the same problem. In her report on self-represented litigants, University of Windsor Faculty of Law professor Julie Macfarlane found that consistently 40 per cent or more of litigants in family courts across the country are not represented by a lawyer and in some civil courts that number is 70 per cent or more.
The legal profession — including law students — is starting to address the crisis. “Unfortunately lawyers charge significant fees for their services, and there are many people in our community who can’t afford to pay those fees but have pressing legal issues that need to be resolved,” says Brendan Stevens, a third-year student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Some argue it is every lawyer’s duty to help address the issue. “As a legal profession, we do have a professional responsibility to mobilize and to provide services on a free or discounted level in order to provide more access to justice,” says Jamie Maclaren, executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia. “In my mind, it truly is a professional responsibility. It stems from the fact that this is a self-regulating profession; we benefit as lawyers from a monopoly on legal services and in return for that we need to ensure that people do have some basic level of access to the justice system.”
By getting students to start pro bono work while they’re in law school, it increases the chance of them continuing to do it into their careers, says Maclaren. “The hope is that we’re developing a new generation of pro bono lawyers that will be really active and helpful in increasing access to justice and keeping the pro bono culture alive and indoor Tracking. The earlier that law students accept and understand that there’s a professional responsibility to provide some level of access to justice for people who can’t generally afford legal counsel or even access the justice system in a meaningful way the better.”
“If we create this climate where public interest and pro bono is seen as being this vital part of your legal education, students will do it,” says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada. The discussion shouldn’t be focused on whether or not to make public interest work mandatory, she says, instead, it should be focused on changing the culture to foster this kind of work in the law school community. “Creating a climate where public interest activities are widely available and considered to be an important part of the law school experience actually bypasses all of the negatives of mandating public service but it achieves all of the same goals,” she says.
Nathalie Des Rosiers, the new common law dean at the University of Ottawa and former general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, agrees it shouldn’t be about making pro bono mandatory. “What is important in the context of this discussion is not to overemphasize whether [pro bono is] mandatory or not, I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re now at the stage of saying — and I would have the same reflections when we’re looking at the profession more generally — certainly I think you aim to have the largest number of people within your profession to do pro bono, the question is what are the best tools to do it to accomplish your goal. We want to move to a position that it’s not only how much pro bono you’re doing, but how well you are doing [it],” she says. “It’s not only about counting hours, but mostly about doing something meaningful that addresses serious problems.”
In Sossin’s view, public interest work is a necessary component of legal education. “If you really see [public interest work] as essential to legal education, how can you say someone could graduate who’s never taken part in this, who’s never been in the community, never given back, never had that experience of seeing law in action in that way?” he asks.
However, he admits there is a downside to making it compulsory. “I think you lose something when you make public interest or pro bono work mandatory. You lose that sense of this is being done out of a value and belief in law as a helping profession in the public interest mandate of lawyers and law schools,” he says. “A perfect system is a system in which it’s optional and 100-per-cent take-up.”
Gershbain also identifies some risks associated with forcing students to do something. “If you make it mandatory, you do run the risk of creating resentment on the part of maybe a small number of students,” she says. Stevens agrees that making it compulsory could backfire. “We’re running the risk of undermining this sense of volunteerism at the heart of public interest work …and if you force someone to do something that they don’t want to do, maybe it’ll actually decrease the likelihood of them doing it down the road.”
However, he also says sometimes you have to be forced into trying something new to realize you’re passionate about it. “Some of my most pleasant experiences have come out of me being placed in a situation that I didn’t really want to be in and then it broadens your horizons and exposes you to something that you didn’t realize you needed exposure to. By exposing people to the public interest and exposing people to how they can use their law degree in a way that helps vulnerable members of our community, the hope is that down the line they’re going to remember that experience and they’re going to remember having an impact on people, and they’ll continue to do it throughout their career.”
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Monday, August 19, 2013
Is Glenn Greenwald's journalism
The detention at Heathrow on Sunday of the Brazilian David Miranda is the sort of treatment western politicians love to deplore in Putin's Russia or Ahmadinejad's Iran. His "offence" under the 2000 Terrorism Act was apparently to be the partner of a journalist, Glenn Greenwald, who had reported for the Guardian on material released by the American whistleblower, Edward Snowden. We must assume the Americans asked the British government to nab him, shake him down and take his personal effects.
Miranda's phone and laptop were confiscated and he was held incommunicado, without access to friends or lawyer, for the maximum nine hours allowed under law. It is the airport equivalent of smashing into someone's flat, rifling through their drawers and stealing papers and documents. It is simple harassment and intimidation.
Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a "terrorist" occupation in the eyes of British and Hands free access. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.
Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that "the innocent have nothing to fear," the motto of police states down the ages. Hague's apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.
The hysteria of the "war on terror" is now corrupting every area of democratic government. It extends from the arbitrary selection of drone targets to the quasi-torture of suspects, the intrusion on personal data and the harassing of journalists' families. The disregard of statutory oversight – in Britain's case pathetically inadequate – is giving western governments many of the characteristics of the enemies they profess to oppose. How Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.
The innocent have nothing to fear? They do if they embarrass America and happen to visit British soil. The only land of the free today in this matter is Brazil.But those early years living with his family of eight in a 12-foot by 20-foot cabin without indoor plumbing — “Our air-conditioning was our two windows,” he jokes good-naturedly — laid the groundwork for his future career as a successful alfalfa farmer with 250 acres in Queen Creek.
He was part of an SSAR team who in 2009 tracked down two prospectors who were reported missing in Mammoth, Ariz., he said. On the final day of the search, the team found the pair alive after scouring 11 miles of terrain, Mr. Barrientos said.
The searchers were traveling on quad-runners; a cattle pond filled with water prevented the off-road vehicles from traveling farther but the trackers communicated with a helicopter and told the pilot in which direction they suspected the prospectors had traveled, Mr. Barrientos said. Five minutes later, the pilot spotted the missing men.
Three of Avallone and Wargo’s students — they teach the same 90 students — borrowed the new Kindles during summer vacation.The group picked the same title to read, the fantasy-adventure book “Shadow and Bone” by Leigh Bardugo, and then discussed it together on Goodreads, a website where readers can share their opinions.Avallone said she had hoped more students would participate, but it was hard to get many to meet regularly during the real time Location system.
One of the summer participants was 13-year-old Melissa Garcia, who read the most book titles in Avallone’s class last year.Before the summer reading club, Garcia had used a Kindle only once before.“I really like it because I’m not very good at vocabulary,” Garcia said. With the Kindle Fire she could click on words she wasn’t sure of and get a definition immediately.
Garcia also liked that the Kindle Fire allowed her to change the size and color of the font if the text started hurting her eyes.“I could keep reading all day without my eyes getting tired,” Garcia said.
The e-readers also have financial benefits. A new title’s e-edition is often cheaper than a hardcover book, and with e-readers a teacher can purchase one book copy and share it among multiple devices. That makes a big difference for Avallone, who estimates she spent about $1,000 out of pocket buying books for her library last year.
Avallone, who earned her master’s degree as a reading specialist from Aurora University, tries to promote independent reading in her classroom by giving students time to read, stocking popular young adult titles and providing recommendations.Last year she dedicated 25 to 35 minutes every Wednesday to self-selected reading, then upped the amount to 10 minutes a day toward the end of the year. She worried many students wouldn’t read over the summer because they didn’t have library cards or money to buy books.
Avallone is an avid young adult books reader, so she can make targeted recommendations based on her students’ interests and current trends. Right now, dystopian and fantasy books are the most popular.She also suggests young adult books that will turn into movies — like “Divergent,” the “Percy Jackson” series and the “Hunger Games” trilogy — to generate student interest.
To keep track of her inventory, Avallone installed a free web-based program called Classroom Organizer on her computers, so students can check in and out the titles that they borrow. When they return a book, students can offer a star rating and a review, which helps other students decide if they want to read the book.
Each of Avallone’s students also signs up for a Goodreads account, so they can talk about their books together and get recommendations on the site. And when they leave her class, it’s a way for Avallone to keep in touch with her students and keep encouraging them to read.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Miranda's phone and laptop were confiscated and he was held incommunicado, without access to friends or lawyer, for the maximum nine hours allowed under law. It is the airport equivalent of smashing into someone's flat, rifling through their drawers and stealing papers and documents. It is simple harassment and intimidation.
Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a "terrorist" occupation in the eyes of British and Hands free access. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.
Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that "the innocent have nothing to fear," the motto of police states down the ages. Hague's apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.
The hysteria of the "war on terror" is now corrupting every area of democratic government. It extends from the arbitrary selection of drone targets to the quasi-torture of suspects, the intrusion on personal data and the harassing of journalists' families. The disregard of statutory oversight – in Britain's case pathetically inadequate – is giving western governments many of the characteristics of the enemies they profess to oppose. How Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.
The innocent have nothing to fear? They do if they embarrass America and happen to visit British soil. The only land of the free today in this matter is Brazil.But those early years living with his family of eight in a 12-foot by 20-foot cabin without indoor plumbing — “Our air-conditioning was our two windows,” he jokes good-naturedly — laid the groundwork for his future career as a successful alfalfa farmer with 250 acres in Queen Creek.
He was part of an SSAR team who in 2009 tracked down two prospectors who were reported missing in Mammoth, Ariz., he said. On the final day of the search, the team found the pair alive after scouring 11 miles of terrain, Mr. Barrientos said.
The searchers were traveling on quad-runners; a cattle pond filled with water prevented the off-road vehicles from traveling farther but the trackers communicated with a helicopter and told the pilot in which direction they suspected the prospectors had traveled, Mr. Barrientos said. Five minutes later, the pilot spotted the missing men.
Three of Avallone and Wargo’s students — they teach the same 90 students — borrowed the new Kindles during summer vacation.The group picked the same title to read, the fantasy-adventure book “Shadow and Bone” by Leigh Bardugo, and then discussed it together on Goodreads, a website where readers can share their opinions.Avallone said she had hoped more students would participate, but it was hard to get many to meet regularly during the real time Location system.
One of the summer participants was 13-year-old Melissa Garcia, who read the most book titles in Avallone’s class last year.Before the summer reading club, Garcia had used a Kindle only once before.“I really like it because I’m not very good at vocabulary,” Garcia said. With the Kindle Fire she could click on words she wasn’t sure of and get a definition immediately.
Garcia also liked that the Kindle Fire allowed her to change the size and color of the font if the text started hurting her eyes.“I could keep reading all day without my eyes getting tired,” Garcia said.
The e-readers also have financial benefits. A new title’s e-edition is often cheaper than a hardcover book, and with e-readers a teacher can purchase one book copy and share it among multiple devices. That makes a big difference for Avallone, who estimates she spent about $1,000 out of pocket buying books for her library last year.
Avallone, who earned her master’s degree as a reading specialist from Aurora University, tries to promote independent reading in her classroom by giving students time to read, stocking popular young adult titles and providing recommendations.Last year she dedicated 25 to 35 minutes every Wednesday to self-selected reading, then upped the amount to 10 minutes a day toward the end of the year. She worried many students wouldn’t read over the summer because they didn’t have library cards or money to buy books.
Avallone is an avid young adult books reader, so she can make targeted recommendations based on her students’ interests and current trends. Right now, dystopian and fantasy books are the most popular.She also suggests young adult books that will turn into movies — like “Divergent,” the “Percy Jackson” series and the “Hunger Games” trilogy — to generate student interest.
To keep track of her inventory, Avallone installed a free web-based program called Classroom Organizer on her computers, so students can check in and out the titles that they borrow. When they return a book, students can offer a star rating and a review, which helps other students decide if they want to read the book.
Each of Avallone’s students also signs up for a Goodreads account, so they can talk about their books together and get recommendations on the site. And when they leave her class, it’s a way for Avallone to keep in touch with her students and keep encouraging them to read.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Metrolinx bureaucrats score premium tickets
Bureaucrats at a provincial agency asking for billions to expand transit in the GTA had exclusive access to premium tickets to the Toronto International Film Festival and a Buffalo Bills game, the Toronto Sun has learned.The sponsorship deals came to light because Metrolinx had trouble managing two agreements in 2011 that yielded premium tickets to the prestigious events.
The agreements forced an internal audit and policy overhaul of its own promotional program, according to documents obtained under provincial freedom of information legislation.The reports show that $27,000 worth of NFL tickets, some of which were intended to raise money for charity, were sold to Metrolinx staff at a steeply discounted rate. The agency also forked over $30,000 of taxpayer cash to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to sponsor the event and in exchange received a bevy of free tickets to red carpet events, film screenings and exclusive parties.
In early 2011, Metrolinx began to ramp up its so-called "promotional partnership" agreements as a way to "enhance brand recognition." But by November the program was in trouble.In a memo dated Nov. 28, 2011, director of strategic communications, Indoor Positioning System, defended the program to Metrolinx President and CEO Bruce McCuaig.
"Partnerships can serve as a vehicle to showcase the value of Metrolinx and its operating division in the community," she wrote. "And also to facilitate the extension of those brands in the non-commuter and leisure travel market by connecting customers to unique cultural exhibitions and events."But Papadopoulos went on to say that there was little oversight over the program, ticket use was inconsistently tracked and she acknowledged Metrolinx's internal audit department was reviewing the program.
In early June, Metrolinx signed on as a promotional partner of TIFF. The agency gave TIFF $30,000 in "seed money" to secure the deal and the 22-page contract outlined a series of items that were to be provided by the sponsor. McCuaig and Metrolinx Chief Financial Officer Robbert Siddall approved the deal, Papadopoulos noted in the memo.
The festival gave Metrolinx promotional placement in a number of its programs, banners and advertisements. Metrolinx did the same for TIFF.Film festival officials also gave Metrolinx 24 tickets to gala screenings, 32 tickets to non-gala screenings, four invitations to the opening night gala film and party, two invitations to the closing night gala party, two invitations to the pre-opening cocktail reception and six more invitations to three exclusive events. Two complimentary festival programs and film schedules were also included in the deal.
No monetary value was estimated for the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx.When contacted by the Toronto Sun, TIFF officials refused to disclose the value of the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx, citing confidentiality rules.
In a note to the Sun, provided in advance of the document disclosure, Metrolinx officials acknowledged they don't know who used the TIFF tickets or for what purpose, but then go on to say tickets were used in promotions for GO customers, some were given to undisclosed charities and that some GO staff attended "certain TIFF events."
But under the terms of the agreement, Metrolinx was barred from using the tickets for fundraising, or promotional contests without express consent of TIFF.Meanwhile, in early September 2011, Metrolinx staff begin working on a promotional partnership with Rogers Centre for the Oct. 14 Buffalo Bills game against the Washington Redskins. The strategic communications department agreed to the deal as a way to reach out to non-commuters and leisure travellers.
The deal was essentially an exchange of promotional materials, with Metrolinx appearing in "Bills in Toronto" advertisements and vice-versa. Papadopoulos wrote in the memo that Metrolinx did not request tickets in the deal, but did receive 100 premium seats to the game.Rogers Centre gave Metrolinx 50 VIP tickets valued at $320 a piece. Their total value came in at $16,000. The agency also received 50 200 Level Club seats worth $225 a piece. Their total value was $11,125.
In the memo, Papadopoulos said the VIP tickets were provided so that senior staff and general staff could attend the game to "evaluate the appropriateness of the partnership and assess its value."
Eighteen Metrolinx staffers attended the game using the $320 VIP tickets, with some working at promotion booths at the event, the memo said. The remaining 38 tickets were unused.Papadopoulo wrote that the 50 tickets, worth $225 each, were to be raffled off to raise money for the United Way. For some reason - not explained in the memo - staff were "confused" by a silent auction held for the tickets and only one bid was received.With less than a week to go before the game, and over $11,000 worth of tickets on their hands, GO Transit President Gary McNeil and Vice-President of Customer Service Mary Proc decided to offer the tickets to staff at a steep discount - selling the $225 stubs for $25 each, the memo said.
The tickets were sold on a first-come, first-serve basis and all 50 were snatched up. The memo provided a detailed list of all employees who took advantage of the deal. The top buyer of indoor Tracking, with five to his name was McNeil, who approved the fire-sale.Metrolinx spokesman Anne Marie Aikins said McNeil bought the tickets to encourage other staff to purchase them, but did not attend the game.
"The Bills game was not as popular as hoped and the Rogers Centre was giving away the tickets," Aikins wrote in an e-mail. "The GO president approved a price of $25 per ticket given the short timelines and the desire to raise for the United Way."The memo acknowledged that strategic communications staff were cooperating with the internal audit department on a review of the promotional partnership program and were to adopt a full set of recommendations from the process. CEO McCuaig's oversight role was also to be beefed up, the memo said.
"Any further promotional partnership opportunities will be reviewed and approved by the CEO," Papadopoulos wrote.Metrolinx has also not provided the results of the internal audit department's review of the promotional program.Neither McCuaig nor McNeil were available for comment, despite repeated requests for interviews.Aikins said as soon as the problems with promotional program came to light, McCuaig took action. That included donating tickets to charities, using tickets for fundraising, or destroying them if they couldn't be returned.
Aikins said since 2011 Metrolinx has continued to accept free tickets in four sponsorship deals including TIFF, the "Bills in Toronto" series, the AGO and the CNE."We are always concerned about protecting our good reputation which is why we took steps to strengthen our rules and processes," she said.Records are now kept of how tickets are used and Metrolinx no longer pays to sponsor programs, Aikins said.Conservative MPP Frank Klees said the promotional partnership problems speaks to larger issues within Metrolinx.
"Why does Metrolinx have to sponsor anything?" he said. "Why does Metrolinx have to be in the public relations business. Their job is to build and manage transit."Klees, who has also been highly critical of Metrolinx's handling of the Presto transit card, said the agency is becoming unaccountable to the government.
"If they're doing this here, in this corner of the organization, it begs the question what are they doing elsewhere?"NDP MPP Rosario Marchese added the idea of provincial employees getting premium tickets to TIFF and an NFL game will grate on taxpayers."Should (Metrolinx) be sponsoring events and should the benefits of those sponsorships be going to staff? If the senior bureaucrats of that organization don't see that as a problem, I'm sorry."
A further note provided prior to document disclosure notes ticket policy has changed as of late 2011. Management directed that going forward, complimentary tickets are to be refused or redistributed in GO customer contests.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
The agreements forced an internal audit and policy overhaul of its own promotional program, according to documents obtained under provincial freedom of information legislation.The reports show that $27,000 worth of NFL tickets, some of which were intended to raise money for charity, were sold to Metrolinx staff at a steeply discounted rate. The agency also forked over $30,000 of taxpayer cash to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to sponsor the event and in exchange received a bevy of free tickets to red carpet events, film screenings and exclusive parties.
In early 2011, Metrolinx began to ramp up its so-called "promotional partnership" agreements as a way to "enhance brand recognition." But by November the program was in trouble.In a memo dated Nov. 28, 2011, director of strategic communications, Indoor Positioning System, defended the program to Metrolinx President and CEO Bruce McCuaig.
"Partnerships can serve as a vehicle to showcase the value of Metrolinx and its operating division in the community," she wrote. "And also to facilitate the extension of those brands in the non-commuter and leisure travel market by connecting customers to unique cultural exhibitions and events."But Papadopoulos went on to say that there was little oversight over the program, ticket use was inconsistently tracked and she acknowledged Metrolinx's internal audit department was reviewing the program.
In early June, Metrolinx signed on as a promotional partner of TIFF. The agency gave TIFF $30,000 in "seed money" to secure the deal and the 22-page contract outlined a series of items that were to be provided by the sponsor. McCuaig and Metrolinx Chief Financial Officer Robbert Siddall approved the deal, Papadopoulos noted in the memo.
The festival gave Metrolinx promotional placement in a number of its programs, banners and advertisements. Metrolinx did the same for TIFF.Film festival officials also gave Metrolinx 24 tickets to gala screenings, 32 tickets to non-gala screenings, four invitations to the opening night gala film and party, two invitations to the closing night gala party, two invitations to the pre-opening cocktail reception and six more invitations to three exclusive events. Two complimentary festival programs and film schedules were also included in the deal.
No monetary value was estimated for the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx.When contacted by the Toronto Sun, TIFF officials refused to disclose the value of the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx, citing confidentiality rules.
In a note to the Sun, provided in advance of the document disclosure, Metrolinx officials acknowledged they don't know who used the TIFF tickets or for what purpose, but then go on to say tickets were used in promotions for GO customers, some were given to undisclosed charities and that some GO staff attended "certain TIFF events."
But under the terms of the agreement, Metrolinx was barred from using the tickets for fundraising, or promotional contests without express consent of TIFF.Meanwhile, in early September 2011, Metrolinx staff begin working on a promotional partnership with Rogers Centre for the Oct. 14 Buffalo Bills game against the Washington Redskins. The strategic communications department agreed to the deal as a way to reach out to non-commuters and leisure travellers.
The deal was essentially an exchange of promotional materials, with Metrolinx appearing in "Bills in Toronto" advertisements and vice-versa. Papadopoulos wrote in the memo that Metrolinx did not request tickets in the deal, but did receive 100 premium seats to the game.Rogers Centre gave Metrolinx 50 VIP tickets valued at $320 a piece. Their total value came in at $16,000. The agency also received 50 200 Level Club seats worth $225 a piece. Their total value was $11,125.
In the memo, Papadopoulos said the VIP tickets were provided so that senior staff and general staff could attend the game to "evaluate the appropriateness of the partnership and assess its value."
Eighteen Metrolinx staffers attended the game using the $320 VIP tickets, with some working at promotion booths at the event, the memo said. The remaining 38 tickets were unused.Papadopoulo wrote that the 50 tickets, worth $225 each, were to be raffled off to raise money for the United Way. For some reason - not explained in the memo - staff were "confused" by a silent auction held for the tickets and only one bid was received.With less than a week to go before the game, and over $11,000 worth of tickets on their hands, GO Transit President Gary McNeil and Vice-President of Customer Service Mary Proc decided to offer the tickets to staff at a steep discount - selling the $225 stubs for $25 each, the memo said.
The tickets were sold on a first-come, first-serve basis and all 50 were snatched up. The memo provided a detailed list of all employees who took advantage of the deal. The top buyer of indoor Tracking, with five to his name was McNeil, who approved the fire-sale.Metrolinx spokesman Anne Marie Aikins said McNeil bought the tickets to encourage other staff to purchase them, but did not attend the game.
"The Bills game was not as popular as hoped and the Rogers Centre was giving away the tickets," Aikins wrote in an e-mail. "The GO president approved a price of $25 per ticket given the short timelines and the desire to raise for the United Way."The memo acknowledged that strategic communications staff were cooperating with the internal audit department on a review of the promotional partnership program and were to adopt a full set of recommendations from the process. CEO McCuaig's oversight role was also to be beefed up, the memo said.
"Any further promotional partnership opportunities will be reviewed and approved by the CEO," Papadopoulos wrote.Metrolinx has also not provided the results of the internal audit department's review of the promotional program.Neither McCuaig nor McNeil were available for comment, despite repeated requests for interviews.Aikins said as soon as the problems with promotional program came to light, McCuaig took action. That included donating tickets to charities, using tickets for fundraising, or destroying them if they couldn't be returned.
Aikins said since 2011 Metrolinx has continued to accept free tickets in four sponsorship deals including TIFF, the "Bills in Toronto" series, the AGO and the CNE."We are always concerned about protecting our good reputation which is why we took steps to strengthen our rules and processes," she said.Records are now kept of how tickets are used and Metrolinx no longer pays to sponsor programs, Aikins said.Conservative MPP Frank Klees said the promotional partnership problems speaks to larger issues within Metrolinx.
"Why does Metrolinx have to sponsor anything?" he said. "Why does Metrolinx have to be in the public relations business. Their job is to build and manage transit."Klees, who has also been highly critical of Metrolinx's handling of the Presto transit card, said the agency is becoming unaccountable to the government.
"If they're doing this here, in this corner of the organization, it begs the question what are they doing elsewhere?"NDP MPP Rosario Marchese added the idea of provincial employees getting premium tickets to TIFF and an NFL game will grate on taxpayers."Should (Metrolinx) be sponsoring events and should the benefits of those sponsorships be going to staff? If the senior bureaucrats of that organization don't see that as a problem, I'm sorry."
A further note provided prior to document disclosure notes ticket policy has changed as of late 2011. Management directed that going forward, complimentary tickets are to be refused or redistributed in GO customer contests.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Broad changes to the internet now the story
Edward Snowden is safe from American ''justice'' for the moment, and he will certainly go down as the most effective whistle-blower in history.His revelations are going to cause a wholesale restructuring of the world's most important communications system, the internet. And that, rather than his whereabouts and fate, is now the real story.
On August 8, Lavabit, a United States-based email service provider that promised to keep its clients' communications private, closed down.The US National Security Agency approached it about six weeks ago demanding the same access to its customers' emails it has already extorted from big American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft.
The company's owner, Ladar Levison, is under an NSA gag order, but he wrote to his clients: ''I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.''
The mass surveillance being carried out by the NSA not only gives the US Government access to everything Americans say to one another.It also destroys everybody else's privacy, because the standard internet routing protocol sends messages not by the shortest route, but by whichever route is fastest and least congested. That means, rtls, through the United States, and therefore straight into the hands of the NSA.
Snowden's revelations so far have told us about two major NSA surveillance programmes, both probably illegal even under American law. The first collects the cellphone records of more than 200 million Americans.
If one of those thousands of people ever spoke to somebody abroad with a Muslim name (or somebody who works for Siemens, or Samsung, or some other industrial competitor of the United States), they may take an interest in you.If you're an American who has never had direct phone contact with anybody abroad, they may then apply to access the content of your calls and emails under the Prism programme.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews such applications, has refused precisely 10 of them since 2001.Besides, the content of most Americans' messages can probably be examined without recourse to the judges under one of the blanket authorisations issued by the FISC.And if you're not American, or an American resident who once spoke to somebody abroad by phone, then you're in a free-fire zone.
If you are American, you probably don't care about that, because you are mesmerised by the guff about a huge terrorist threat the security barons use to justify the endless expansion of their empire (now almost a million employees).A recent opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62% of Americans think ''fighting terrorism'' is more important than worrying about personal privacy.
But if you belong to the great majority of internet users who are not American, are not in a perpetual sweaty panic about ''terrorism'', and have no protection whatever under American law from the NSA's spying, then you will want ways to avoid it. And the losers? The big US internet providers, who will find that few of their customers want to store their data in American ''cloud'' services.
''If businesses or governments think they might be spied on,'' said Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, ''they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be [American] cloud providers who ultimately miss out.''As Jennifer Granick, director of Indoor Positioning System at the Stanford Law School's Centre for Internet and Society, put it recently: ''America invented the internet, and our internet companies are dominant around the world.
Television identity and President of DockDogs Australia, 'Farmer Dave' Graham, will be bringing his 12m pool up from Sydney to host the first dock diving nationals competition in Australia since the 2009 World Dog Games.
The sport was introduced to Australia from the US during the games in Sydney.Angie Burke, 56, owner of All Paws Paradise in Pimpama, started the first training area in Queensland after building a jetty over her dam so Mudgeeraba resident Karen Moore could train her dog, Zoya, for the world games.The women now organise 'Dash and Splash' Saturdays and 'social splash Sundays' for anyone who wants to try dock diving.Dock diving is the fastest growing dog sport in the world with clubs forming around the country.
"It is as simple as it sounds, with dogs running along a dock and jumping into a pool of water and having an absolute blast," Ms Burke said."Any dog can do it as long as they like water and they can swim and learn to retrieve a toy.
"It's a sport any dogs can do - big dogs, small dogs - it doesn't matter what breed. It's a family sport so everybody's welcome to come and join in and even the kids can handle their dogs.''Depending on their size and experience, some of the bigger dogs can jump from 2m to 9m from the dock, which is about 1m from the water.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
On August 8, Lavabit, a United States-based email service provider that promised to keep its clients' communications private, closed down.The US National Security Agency approached it about six weeks ago demanding the same access to its customers' emails it has already extorted from big American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft.
The company's owner, Ladar Levison, is under an NSA gag order, but he wrote to his clients: ''I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.''
The mass surveillance being carried out by the NSA not only gives the US Government access to everything Americans say to one another.It also destroys everybody else's privacy, because the standard internet routing protocol sends messages not by the shortest route, but by whichever route is fastest and least congested. That means, rtls, through the United States, and therefore straight into the hands of the NSA.
Snowden's revelations so far have told us about two major NSA surveillance programmes, both probably illegal even under American law. The first collects the cellphone records of more than 200 million Americans.
If one of those thousands of people ever spoke to somebody abroad with a Muslim name (or somebody who works for Siemens, or Samsung, or some other industrial competitor of the United States), they may take an interest in you.If you're an American who has never had direct phone contact with anybody abroad, they may then apply to access the content of your calls and emails under the Prism programme.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews such applications, has refused precisely 10 of them since 2001.Besides, the content of most Americans' messages can probably be examined without recourse to the judges under one of the blanket authorisations issued by the FISC.And if you're not American, or an American resident who once spoke to somebody abroad by phone, then you're in a free-fire zone.
If you are American, you probably don't care about that, because you are mesmerised by the guff about a huge terrorist threat the security barons use to justify the endless expansion of their empire (now almost a million employees).A recent opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62% of Americans think ''fighting terrorism'' is more important than worrying about personal privacy.
But if you belong to the great majority of internet users who are not American, are not in a perpetual sweaty panic about ''terrorism'', and have no protection whatever under American law from the NSA's spying, then you will want ways to avoid it. And the losers? The big US internet providers, who will find that few of their customers want to store their data in American ''cloud'' services.
''If businesses or governments think they might be spied on,'' said Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, ''they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be [American] cloud providers who ultimately miss out.''As Jennifer Granick, director of Indoor Positioning System at the Stanford Law School's Centre for Internet and Society, put it recently: ''America invented the internet, and our internet companies are dominant around the world.
Television identity and President of DockDogs Australia, 'Farmer Dave' Graham, will be bringing his 12m pool up from Sydney to host the first dock diving nationals competition in Australia since the 2009 World Dog Games.
The sport was introduced to Australia from the US during the games in Sydney.Angie Burke, 56, owner of All Paws Paradise in Pimpama, started the first training area in Queensland after building a jetty over her dam so Mudgeeraba resident Karen Moore could train her dog, Zoya, for the world games.The women now organise 'Dash and Splash' Saturdays and 'social splash Sundays' for anyone who wants to try dock diving.Dock diving is the fastest growing dog sport in the world with clubs forming around the country.
"It is as simple as it sounds, with dogs running along a dock and jumping into a pool of water and having an absolute blast," Ms Burke said."Any dog can do it as long as they like water and they can swim and learn to retrieve a toy.
"It's a sport any dogs can do - big dogs, small dogs - it doesn't matter what breed. It's a family sport so everybody's welcome to come and join in and even the kids can handle their dogs.''Depending on their size and experience, some of the bigger dogs can jump from 2m to 9m from the dock, which is about 1m from the water.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
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