Let those Cameras Roll !!!!

All of us can make the world a better place if we all take Bob Saget’s advice from “American Funniest Home Videos” and keep those camera’s rolling, because as off recently, the police have been the stars on TV, receiving anything but $10,000 for having the best video clip. Sadly these videos are neither funny nor worth joking about.
Camera’s have caught a lot of exciting material over the years ranging from hilarious crotch shots, to elephants humping rhinos and even amateur porn. But the social implications of having people on the street with cameras have done wonders for cleaning up the streets exposing excessively abusive cops because with cops like these, who needs bullies?
In 1991, Rodney King became an icon in an instant. Thanks to the amateur footage from George Holliday, he caught the whole incident on tape. After the video hit the television airwaves, people were up in arms at the LAPD, and change resulted after riots, killings and looting. Brutality was brought to the surface of social problems, and police realized they might indeed get caught on camera.
But is Baltimore the new L.A.? And is Eric Bush the new Rodney King? The newest chapter of brutality comes from the Baltimore harbor. If people didn’t trust the police now, I don’t know what they think after this. This one Baltimore officer in fact puts the “rut” in brutality. Officer Salvatore Rivieri of the Baltimore police was video taped being overly aggressive towards 14 year old Eric Bush. Officer Rivieri was taped was taped putting the child in a choke hold and dragging him to the ground.
But have we judged too soon? UC Campus Safety officer, Gary Hodgeson, thinks that people need to try and understand where Rivieri is coming from. Hodgeson senses Rivieri came from a “Strict Italian family, where rules are rules . . . and the kids he was dealing with are prototypical of the ones I deal with here . . . These kids think they are granted rights they really aren’t, and a police officers job is made more difficult.” He continued, “As the adult, he should have drawn the line and didn’t. He let anger and emotion gets the better of him.”
In a Baltimore Sun, Mayor Sheila Dixon called Rivieri a "bad apple" and the officer was immediately suspended. At the end of the video, Officer Rivieri yelps, “Is that camera on? If I find myself on. . .” What seems to be coming out is a “you” possibly referring to YouTube then the video cuts off . . . How quickly he knew how his own fate was sealed. Why cops still use excessive force in an age where anyone can post videos online at any time, why take the risk? It’s just silly. International cops don’t seem to be getting all this negative attention, why American’s? Maybe the end to Saget’s AFHV’s theme explains it . . . “Oh the funny things you do, America, America, this is you.”

Digital Black Out Sparks International game of Clue

Colonel Mustard, in the Mediterranean, with the boat anchor! There is an international mystery going on in the Middle East, and this may be the time we need a Colonel Mustard or James Bond to get to the bottom of this.
This international game of Clue, has eight main players, and no real lead to who is responsible. The players involved include: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India.

D.J. Morales of AllHeadlineNews reports,“(Last week) Countries all over the Middle East experienced a disruption in Internet services Wednesday when a communications cable in the Mediterranean Sea was cut for reasons still unknown.” He continues, "This cut has affected Internet services in Egypt with a partial disruption of 70 percent of the network nationwide." What Morales has failed to report, CNN has not. CNN reports that not one, but two main cables were cut.

CNN reports, “The two cables damaged are FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4 ( South East Asia Middle East Western Europe), a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies.” Angry bloggers in the Middle East sound off . . . Syrian blogger from the UAE "Dubai Jazz", blames an Egyptian fisherman for the breakdown of Internet communications in the region. He writes: “I couldn't do anything significant during the slow down. I couldn't even post comments on my own blog let alone others. G-mail was also down.YouTube? … Forget about it.” What bothers most people is the dependency of all these countries on undersea cables, and how easily they can be disrupted, or even worse, cut completely. But most developed nations, such as the United States are fairly dependent on the internet as well. In the same CNN article, it reads, “

An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity told AP it was believed that a boat's anchor might have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed.” The results of this disturbance have cost countries such as India millions of dollars and also a million headaches. Both the trading on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Delhi and the SENSEX exchange in Bombay has been disrupted.


SeaMeWe-4 line

Chaos has also broken out in the UAE. UAE's public and private sectors were also hit hard with the cable outage. This outage also reached the television and telephone lines that also rely on those cables for transmissions overseas.

Wadah Tahah, business strategies and development manager for state-owned construction company EMAAR warned CNN Arabic that, if the outage continued, "such a situation could create problems between brokers, companies, and investors due to loss of control." Coincidently Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon were spared the insanity because these countries traffic their Internet from a different route, and many Middle East governments have back up satellite systems in case of such a failure. Is this a case of International terrorism? Or just a “boat anchor accident?”

Check out a related story at: http://elbrennan.blogspot.com/

Has the Senate gone too far?

As the presidential race heats up and narrows down to 4 candidates, our 535 current members of Congress are dragging their feet on a controversial bill of privacy and security.

This bill better known as FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) originated in 1978, and was amended by Bush and his administration under the Protect America Actin 2007 to " ease restrictions on secret surveillance of alleged terrorist suspects" [1]. This bill grants immunity to all telecommunications companies, giving them the power to share with the government all phone calls, emails, instant messages, and text messages done over their lines, no warrant necessary.

On January 25th, The Philadelphia Inquirerposted a story titled "Senate backs Protections for Telecoms",online informing the public ,“In a 60-36 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal from the Senate Judiciary Committee that did not include immunity for the telecoms."

The ramifications of these warrant-less taps draw up constitutional debates over illegal search and seizure, a right granted to all Americans in the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." [2]

An ElectronicFrontierFoundation.comblog is making a call for change. On the page, the author states their case by noting,”The Senate should not let the telecoms off the hook. Granting immunity sets a dangerous precedent, sending the message that lawbreaking is acceptable and that the rights of Americans can be freely infringed by private companies in defiance of the law. . . the Senate should let Americans have their day in court.”

Currently this bill has angered many democratic senators, Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt being one. Leahy said in a CBS.com storyin November that, “granting immunity would give the Bush administration a "blank check." He continued, "When we give the government sweeping surveillance powers, there need to be clear rules and checks and balances to prevent abuses against the American people.”

As democrats such as Leahy attempt to rewrite bills, eliminating the immunity clause, republicans such as Bush has threatened a veto if the bill does not include the immunity clause.

Currently the FISA bill was up for extermination in early February. But the republicans fought hard and as CNN reported online Tuesday January 29th,“Congress (Tuesday) passed a 15-day extension of a temporary surveillance law set to expire later this week, buying itself more time to come up with a permanent fix for the measure.”

This gives the democrats a chance to come up with revisions to the bill, and make this bill more favorable in their minds for the American people.

Carla Giampa,Ursinus College senior and politics major is concerned with the current legislation. Giampa expresses that, "Our founding fathers fought the American Revolution and took immense care in drafting a constitution that protected the rights of its citizens from a strong central government. Allowing any government such a power will strip American citizens of the rights the founding fathers fought so hard to preserve."

If you oppose the bill like Carla, let your senators know by calling them or filling out a quick and easy form on the following link. ACT NOW!!!