Pre-empting lesé majesté?-PPT
26-03-09
[FACT comments: This would be a highly sensible way for Thai government to extricate itself from the current lese majeste imbroglio, and please both ultra-Royalists and the international community, all without really changing anything.]
Pre-empting lesé majesté?
Political Prisoners in Thailand: March 26, 2009
http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/new-pre-empting-lese-majeste/
PPT earlier reported on Democrat government-Army co-operation on a plan to spend 1 billion baht toweaken the pro-Thaksin red shirt movement and to promote loyalty to the monarchy.
In a report in the Nation (26 March 2009: “Red shirts plan long siege”), Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said “the special Bt1-billion budget for Internal Security Operations Command projects would be used to dilute anti-government protests. Suthep, who is in charge of security affairs, said that since the country was facing a serious political divide, the funds would be spent to boost loyalty to the monarch among the people and pre-empt lese majeste cases that could destabilise the country.”
THAILAND: MONARCHY AND DEMOCRACY
Taking time to consider lese majeste law
Atiya Achakulwisut
Bangkok Post: March 25, 2009
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/13931/taking-time-to-consider-lese-majeste-law
The controversy over the lese majesty law and how it has been used ostensibly for political gains has prompted a group of academics to petition the Abhisit government to “reform” the legislation.
Before anything can be done, however, there is arguably a need to understand the issue better, from all angles.
That is why a seminar was held last week at Thammasat University on the many dimensions of the lese majeste law. One of the topics discussed was the role of the monarchy in democracy.
Citing an interview His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej granted the BBC in 1979, in which he said, “Monarchy in this country has always been on the move,” one of the seminar’s speakers, Tongthong Chandrangsu, emphasised that the role and expectation of the monarchy in Thailand has constantly evolved.
While it is true that the landmark change to the institution of monarchy was the 1932 Revolution which ended absolute monarchy in Thailand, Mr Tongthong, former deputy permanent secretary for justice, argued that the Thai monarchy had evolved along with the changing world since the reign of King Rama IV and V.
His Majesty King Bhumibol has the most experience with democracy – 63 out of the 77 years that the country has been under the regime.
“The role of the monarchy during the initial years, when the King had just come back from overseas and the country had a seasoned Prime Minister, Field Marshal Pibulsongkram, was different from that during the tenure of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat or at present when His Majesty’s experience and charisma has grown,” Mr Tongthong said.
When it comes to the Crown’s relationship with mechanisms of democracy, the government, Parliament and the court, Mr Tongthong said that as the Thai constitutional democracy is modelled after the British one, the institution very much exercises the similar right to be consulted, to advise and to warn.
“The dilemma is that a government is liable to public opinions, which can be positive or negative. For a government to consult the monarchy is thus a private matter that should be kept confidential. That is a duty of the government,” Mr Tongthong said.
Prominent historian Nidhi Eoseewong referred back to the watershed 1932 Revolution and the resulting status of the monarchy according to the Constitution, which he believes remains debatable.
One stream of thinkers regarded sovereignty as belonging to the Thai people. According to this way of thinking, “constitutional monarchy” is thus considered a new entity that is no longer part of absolute monarchy which had existed before King Rama VII signed his name to the country’s first Constitution.
The other group interpreted the 1932 change as the monarchy allowing the Thai people to exercise sovereignty. According to this school of thought, if a constitution is aborted, the sovereignty returns to the King.
Prof Nidhi noted, however, that both the 1932 revolutionaries and the leaders after that recognised the importance of the monarchy. They never considered republicanism as an option for the country’s governing regime.
With a new set of “powers” coming in between the monarchy and the public, deriving either from elections or the barrel of a gun after 1932, there is no question that the institute of monarchy had to change. But how?
According to Prof Nidhi, what should be the institution’s role in politics has been a subject of argument since 1932 up to the present, evidently with no clear resolution.
The other question which the historian thinks has yet to be resolved is: Where is the proper line between what he terms a “sacred” and a public space.
He defines the sacred space as areas that are not open to the general public to partake, criticise or change without facing a penalty.
“Naturally, when the sacred space is enlarged, it encroaches on the public space,” Prof Nidhi said. He added that Thai society still seems unable to find where the appropriate line should be. He also cautioned that as society is never static, it is quite possible that the so-called appropriate line will not stay at the same place all the time, either.
Looking back in history, Prof Nidhi said there was an attempt to rearrange the sacred/public areas through an amendment to the Criminal Code which was enacted during the period of absolute monarchy.
The amended Criminal Code of 1946 made a distinction between the King and the institution of the monarchy as well as limited the protection to the King, Queen, Crown Prince and Regent. Still, an application of the law – the fact that accusations can be made by anybody in public space – leaves a lot of room for abuses that are not beneficial to the Crown.
Political scientist Kasian Tejapira said one implication of the 1932 Revolution was the shift of support for monarchy from state coercion to popular consent. In this light, people who propose that the state employ more coercive means to protect the institution may end up eroding the consensual support that has so far protected the monarchy better than any iron wall, without realising it.
Like Prof Nidhi, Mr Kasian said that the change to a constitutional monarchy in 1932 was a “historic compromise” between King Rama VII and the People’s Party.
“It was a consensus that the Thai nation would not return to absolute monarchy nor would it want to embrace republicanism. This is a done deal in the Thai history.”
In this perspective, any attempt to return sovereignty to the King, petition His Majesty to appoint a prime minister or stage a coup d’etat, is an effort to undo that historic compromise. It is tantamount to asking Thai society to make a decision again regarding whether the King is above or under the Constitution, or to whom does sovereignty belong?
Mr Kasian believes that while the Thai authorities should listen and take into account opinions of the international community regarding the lese majeste law, the right to retain or change the legislation remains ours.
Hence, we can manage to take the time to consider the issue carefully.
However, he warned that since the country’s ruling elite have faced dramatic changes and severe conflicts for a long time, they have developed anxiety and fear, which can turn into paranoia. These feelings are not healthy. Indeed, they could be downright dangerous if they got out of control, Mr Kasian said.
YouTube Blocked in China for 2nd Day After Tibet Clip (Update2)
Brian Womack and John Liu
Bloomberg News: March 25, 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=atvd6DajMBNk&refer=us
YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google Inc., was inaccessible in China for at least a second day after Tibet’s government-in-exile released video it said showed Chinese police beating protestors.
The Web site, which lets users post videos for others to watch, is working to resolve the shutdown, Google spokesman Scott Rubin said yesterday. He said he didn’t know the cause of the near total blockage, which is restricting access to video clips. Marsha Wang, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Google, declined to comment when contacted today.
The footage showing men in green military fatigues beating men — some in Buddhist monks’ robes — lying handcuffed on the ground, was released by Tibet’s Dharamsala, India-based government-in-exile on March 20 and described as a fabrication by China’s official Xinhua News Agency yesterday. In March of last year, China ordered 25 Web sites to stop showing videos because they provided content that it said was pornographic or violent, endangered state security or wasn’t licensed properly.
“China’s government manages the Internet according to law,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday at a briefing in Beijing in response to a question about YouTube. The ministry today referred questions about Google to Qin’s comments.
The seven-minute video was available on YouTube’s Web site outside China today.
The government-in-exile said the footage was taken from protests in Tibet in March 2008 that were the region’s biggest riots in almost two decades. YouTube was blocked in China during the protests last year.
Tibetan Uprising Anniversary
This month is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that resulted in the Dalai Lama, the nation’s spiritual leader, fleeing into exile. China, which annexed Tibet in 1951, rejects criticism of its policies there and says it saved the population from feudal serfdom. Chinese authorities have declared March 28 as “Serfs’ Emancipation Day” to mark the date troops put down the armed revolt.
At least 19 people were killed in the Tibetan riots in March last year, most of them ethnic Han Chinese, according to China’s central government. In the ensuing crackdown, more than 200 Tibetans were killed, according to Tibet’s government-in- exile.
More than 1,000 people in an ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern China’s Qinghai province protested on March 21 after the disappearance of a monk who was detained by local police, according to the Students for a Free Tibet Web site. The monk had been detained for flying a Tibetan flag and distributing leaflets calling for the nation’s independence, the group said.
Biggest Web Market
China had 298 million Internet users at the end of 2008, according to the government-backed China Internet Network Information Center. It passed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest Web market by users in the first half of last year.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, fell 0.4 percent to $347.17 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have risen 13 percent this year.
YouTube was also blocked in Thailand in April 2007 after the site showed clips that the government said were offensive to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The nation lifted the ban in August that year after YouTube agreed to block clips that are illegal or that Thai people deem offensive.
YouTube blocked in China-NY Times
26-03-09
YouTube Blocked in China, Google Says
Miguel Helft
The New York Times: March 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/technology/internet/25youtube.html?_r=1&hp
Google said Tuesday that its YouTube video-sharing Web site had been blocked in China.
Google said it did not know why the site had been blocked, but a report by the official Xinhua news agency of China on Tuesday said that supporters of the Dalai Lama had fabricated a video that appeared to show Chinese police officers brutally beating Tibetans after riots last year in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
Xinhua did not identify the video, but based on the description it appears to match a video available on YouTube that was recently released by the Tibetan government in exile.
It purports to show police officers storming a monastery after riots in Lhasa last March, kicking and beating protesters. It includes other instances of brutality and graphic images of a protester’s wounds. According to the video, the protester later died.
“We don’t know the reason for the block,” a Google spokesman, Scott Rubin, said. “Our government relations people are trying to resolve it.”
Mr. Rubin said that the company first noticed traffic from China had decreased sharply late Monday. By early Tuesday, he said, it had dropped to nearly zero.
China routinely filters Internet content and blocks material that is critical of its policies. It also frequently blocks individual videos on YouTube. YouTube was not blocked Tuesday or Wednesday in Hong Kong, the largely autonomous region of China. Beijing has not interfered with Internet sites there.
“The instant speculation is that YouTube is being blocked because the Tibetan government in exile released a particular video,” said Xiao Qiang, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of China Digital Times, a news Web site that chronicles political and economic changes in China.
Mr. Xiao said that the blocking of YouTube fit with what appeared to be an effort by China to step up its censorship of the Internet in recent months. Mr. Xiao said he was not surprised that YouTube was a target. It also hosts videos about the Tiananmen Square protests and many other subjects that Chinese authorities find objectionable.
The video about the beatings was pieced together from different places, Xinhua said on Tuesday, citing an unidentified official with the Tibetan regional government in China.
There has been no independent assessment of whether the video is authentic. In a statement sent via e-mail, Lobsang Nyandak, a representative of the Tibetan government in exile, said that the video was authentic.
The government did not directly address whether YouTube had been blocked. When asked about the matter at a news conference, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said: “Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact, it is just the opposite.”
Even as China steps up its censorship efforts, the country’s Internet participation is booming. Often, critics often find a way to avoid censors and debate controversial topics.
Ai Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist, has been using his blog on Sina.com to criticize the government’s management of the rescue and relief efforts after the devastating earthquake in May in Sichuan Province.
In recent months, Beijing has announced major crackdowns on pornographic Web sites, even citing Google and other large companies for listing the sites on their search engines. Many critics say they believe that Beijing is using the word “pornography” as a rationale to eliminate Web sites that it deems troublesome.
YouTube has been blocked for varying periods of time in several countries, including Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey. These countries often state directly why they have acted.
David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai.
Kids just love ‘sexting’-Wired
26-03-09
[FACT comments: Here’s a good example of moral crusaders out-of-control. But wait, they hold the power of freedom or a criminal record...]
ACLU Sues Prosecutor Over ‘Sexting’ Child Porn Charges
Kim Zetter
Wired: March 25, 2009
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/aclu-sues-da-ov.html
The American Civil Liberties Union is helping three teenage girls fight back against a Pennsylvania prosecutor who has threatened to charge the girls with felony child porn violations over digital photos they took of themselves.
In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Pennsylvania, ACLU lawyers accuse District Attorney George P. Skumanick, Jr. (.pdf) of violating the civil rights of the girls. The lawsuit says the threat to prosecute the minors “is unprecedented and stands anti-child-pornography laws on their head.”
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a string of cases around the country in which teens have been arrested on child porn charges for making and distributing nude and semi-nude photos of themselves.
At issue in the case are photos seized from student cellphones last year by officials of the Tunkhannock School District in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. The practice of taking nude or semi-nude self-portraits and distributing them via a cellphone or the internet has come to be called “sexting” and has resulted in teens being arrested in a number of states under child porn production, distribution and possession charges.
The Tunkhannock case involves two photos depicting the three girls. One photo of Marissa Miller and Grace Kelly shows them two years ago at age 13 lying side by side while one talks on the phone and the other makes a peace sign with her fingers, according to the ACLU complaint. The two are photographed from the waist up and are wearing white opaque bras. A second photo shows a girl referred to in the court document as “Jane Doe” photographed outside a shower with a towel wrapped around her waist. Her breasts are bared.
Last October, Tunkhannock school officials discovered that male students had been trading these and other photos, showing various states of undress, on their phones. Officials confiscated the phones and turned them over to Skumanick’s office, which began a criminal investigation.
Skumanick told an assembly of students that possessing inappropriate images of minors could be prosecuted under state child porn laws. Anyone convicted under the laws faces a possible seven year sentence and a felony conviction on their record. Under a state sex offender law, they must also register as a sex offender for 10 years and have their name and photo posted on the state’s sex offender website — the latter requirement will include juvenile offenders when the law is amended later this year.
Skumanick, who is running for re-election in May, also sent a letter to 20 students, including the three girls, who were found in possession of images. In a meeting with the students and their parents, he said he would file felony charges against the students unless they agreed to six months of probation, among other terms. He gave the parents 48 hours to agree. The parents of the three girls in the ACLU suit refused to sign.
Skumanick then threatened to charge the girls with producing child porn unless their parents agreed to the probation, and sent the teenagers to a five-week, 10-hour education program to discuss why what they did was wrong and what it means to be a girl in today’s society. The girls would also have to subject themselves to drug testing — a standard probation term in the county.
In an interview with Threat Level, Skumanick defended his actions, and said he offered the agreement in an attempt to avoid prosecution while still teaching the teens a lesson.
“In other places around the country, they’ve simply charged [teens] and not given them an opportunity to avoid a criminal record,” the prosecutor said. “Frankly, it would have been simpler to just charge them and force them to do what we wanted them to do. But then they’d end up with criminal records, and we felt this was a better approach. We were trying to do the right thing by helping them out.”
He pointed to an incident last year in Ohio to emphasize the dangers of sexting. In that case, a teenage girl killed herself over a nude photo she sent to her boyfriend, which he’d redistributed to other students, who taunted her.
“Once these photos are out, God only know who’s going to get them,” Skumanick said.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania is representing the three girls and their parents. In its lawsuit – filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania — the organization charges that Skumanick violated the girls’ First Amendment rights. The lawsuit says the photos do not constitute child pornography under Pennsylvania’s criminal code since they depict no sexual activity and do not display the pubic area of the girls’ bodies.
The ACLU wants a federal judge to bar the prosecutor from charging the girls.
“Skumanick’s threatened prosecution chills Plaintiff’s First Amendment right of expression, causing them concern about whether they may photograph their daughters, or whether the girls may allow themselves to be photographed, wearing a two-piece bathing suit,” the ACLU wrote.
The lawsuit also claims the demand that the parents agree to place their girls in an education program violates the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to direct the upbringing of their own children.
When lawyers for the parents asked for a copy of the photos that would be used to charge their children, Skumanick reportedly refused on grounds that he would be committing a crime by sharing child porn.
Skumanick still insists the images are child porn under the state law, which makes it a felony to possess or distribute images depicting a minor engaged in a sex act or the “lewd” depiction of genitalia or nudity that is meant to arouse or titillate.
“Just depicting nudity could be considered a sex act,” he told Threat Level.
He said the photo of Miller and Kelly “at least constitutes open lewdness” — which is a misdemeanor in the state — and the picture of “Jane Doe” standing outside the shower “frankly is child porn under the statute.” He said school administrators confiscated other pictures that showed even more nudity.
Witold Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, disagreed with Skumanick’s definition of child porn.
“It’s not just pictures of kids that may show a little bit of flesh. It’s either got to depict sexual activity or it’s got to be some lascivious display,” he said. “If you’ve just got kids standing upright outside a shower, that’s not lascivious. … If anyone needs to understand this, it’s prosecutors who have this heavy hammer they can bring down on people.”
Walczak said that “sexting” is a problem that parents and educators need to address. But felony charges aren’t the answer.
“Teens are stupid and impulsive and clueless,” he said. “But that doesn’t make them criminals. Child porn charges that land you on an internet registry even if you’re a juvenile? That’s a heck of a way to teach a kid a lesson about not being careless.”
He added that beyond the problem inherent in charging teens for child porn are Fourth Amendment issues related to the school district having searched the phones of his clients and other students to uncover stored images.
He said the ACLU is looking at bringing suit against school administrators either in Tunkhannock or elsewhere to challenge the searches.
This story was updated with comments from Skumanick and the ACLU.
Hacked filter reveals blacklist in 30 seconds
Brett Winterford
iTnews: March 24, 2009
http://mobile.itnews.com.au/Article.aspx?CIID=140731&type=News&page=0&showall=true
A 30-second hack of a NetAlert-approved family-friendly filter exposes a list of websites banned in Australia.
The vulnerability, leaked to iTnews over the weekend and verified by IT security consultants, is due to a flaw in the Integard internet filtering software developed by Brisbane’s Race River Corporation.
A source claimed to iTnews that Integard can be reverse-engineered with a hex editor to reveal material the software is designed to keep secret.
iTnews asked three IT security specialists for their opinions.
They all refused to go on the record but they said the list of banned URLs is exposed in a process that takes about 30 seconds.
“Put it this way: it took longer to download Integard than to hack it,” said a senior security researcher speaking on condition of anonymity.
iTnews has been asking Integard managing director John Hedges for comment since yesterday.
ISP’s and content hosts in Australia are required by law to remove locally-hosted websites deemed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to be illegal under Australian law.
Sites deemed illegal that are hosted overseas are added to a blacklist ACMA sends as regular updates to the manufacturers of client-based internet filters. These sites would potentially be blocked under the network-level mandatory ISP filtering scheme currently on trial.
Wikileaks domain holder raided
Brett Winterford
iTnews: March 25, 2009
http://mobile.itnews.com.au/Article.aspx?CIID=140821&type=News&page=0&showall=true
Wikileaks claims the homes of the owner of its German domain (wikileaks.de) has been raided by Police in what the whistle-blowing site claims is a reaction to the publication of blacklists from Australia, Thailand and Denmark.
Theodor Reppe, who owns the domain for the German Wikileaks site at wikileaks.de, claims that seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched his homes on Monday.
German police documents state that the reason for the search was for “distribution of pornographic material” and “discovery of evidence”.
Mr Reppe claims he was not contacted by Police prior to the search.
“It is therefore not totally clear why the search was made, however Wikileaks, in its role as a defender of press freedoms, has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries that include links to pornographic sites,” Wikileaks said in a press statement.
Wikileaks claims the search was initiated due to Reppe’s links with the site.
But Mr Reppe also runs one of Germany’s most popular TOR anonymising proxy servers, which allows users to mask the source of Internet traffic.
TOR servers have, among far more legitimate uses, been used for the anonymous distribution of child sexual abuse material.
Authorities in Germany have raided data centres in the past to seize servers used in TOR networks in an attempt to crack down on the distribution of child sexual abuse material.
“The raid appears to be related to a recent German social hysteria around child pornography and the political battle for a national censorship system under the German family minister Ursula von der Leyen,” Wikileaks said.
“It comes just a few weeks after a member of parliament, SPD minister Joerg Tauss had his office and private house searched by police and German bloggers discussing the subject were similarly raided.”
Wikileaks said Mr Reppe is “not involved in the Wikileaks project” outside of sponsoring the German domain registration.
ACMA blacklist proves too popular for Wikileaks
iTnews: March 23, 2009
http://mobile.itnews.com.au/Article.aspx?CIID=140566&type=News&page=0&showall=true
An updated version of the ACMA blacklist has proven too popular for the servers at whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, which has been out of action for most of the weekend.
Wikileaks claimed late Friday night to be in possession of a new complete ACMA blacklist, but within hours the entire Wikileaks site was out of action.
“Wikileaks is overloaded by global interest,” the site reads, before a brief message calling on supporters to donate to the site.
“Wikileaks is down due to high traffic, hardware failures and weekend unavailabilities,” the organisation later wrote in its Twitter feed. “Nothing is lost, nothing got censored.”
The Stockholm-based site had previously uploaded a list purporting to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s blacklist, but the authenticity of the list was questioned by ACMA, several Internet filtering vendors and Australia’s communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy.
One of the main points of contention was the list’s size and that the latest URLs added to the list appeared to be entered in August 2008.
Late Friday evening Wikileaks posted a new list that included URL’s submitted up to March 18.
Administrators at Wikileaks used the opportunity to take a further swipe at Senator Conroy’s threat to prosecute those responsible for the leak.
“Under the Swedish Constitution’s Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right,” the organisation said.
“Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights.”
[FACT comments: We have excerpted below netizens’ real bandwidth needs. In Thailand, most people get by on 1mbps, though consumers can pay for 2 or even 4mpbs. Of course, in reality we only achieve half this speed at best. The USA and Canada get 4-8 mbps on cable or ADSL; in some areas one can pay for up to 12. Europe offers mostly 12-20 mbps, Singapore 30, South Korea up to 50mbps. Even this is shown to be inadequate. When will Thai ISPs offer even enough bandwidth to watch YouTube videos? Hell, just block YouTube!]
How Much Bandwidth Does America Really Need?
App-Rising: March 24, 2009
http://app-rising.com/2009/03/how_much_bandwidth_do_we_reall.html
Now here’s a contentious question: how much bandwidth does America really need?
…
Let’s start by taking a look at a recent ITIF report entitled, “The Need for Speed: The Importance of Next-Generation Broadband Networks.”
In it, ITIF makes a strong case for the need to support the deployment of “next-generation broadband networks.”
They define “next-generation broadband” as at least 20Mbps and ideally 50Mbps or upwards downstream and at least 10Mbps or higher upstream.
While I definitely agree that getting us from 5Mbps to 50Mbps will enable the creation of a host of new applications, what’s odd is that their own report suggests that 50Mbps is too low a goal to set for next-generation broadband, even in the near-term.
Take this section, for example:
“It is not a stretch to envision a household of the near-future having at least the following demands for high-speed broadband Internet access: Mom engaged in a videoconference for her home-based business; dad watching a live HDTV football game; daughter using the computer to access streaming video of a college course lecture; son playing a real-time interactive game; relatives, perhaps grandparents, in town with one downloading an episode of a high-definition movie and another connected to an uninterruptible medical video feed to a remote monitoring facility. In the background home appliances are being monitored and video home security devices are sending video feeds back to the home security company’s emergency operations management center. This home would easily consume more than 90Mbps of aggregate bandwidth (both directions): 15Mbps per HDTV stream x 2 HDTV streams, 80Kbps for gaming, 18Mbps for high-definition two-way video conferencing (requiring 18Mbps both upstream and downstream), 15Mbps for a video course lecture, and 10Mbps for home security and home-based monitoring uses.”
So by their own calculations the household of the near-future will require at least 90Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth.
This is especially interesting as it legitimizes the goal of achieving a 100Mbps Nation by 2015 as not being based in idealism but instead reflecting the very realistic demands for bandwidth of what a truly networked world will look like.
But given that broadband equals infrastructure, we can’t only be thinking about things in terms of a few years into the future. We need to look ahead at least twenty so that we’re not sinking money into investments that will be outdated before their lifespan is done.
Let’s visit another section from ITIF’s report:
“Within the next decade, 2160P ‘QuadHDTV’ will come onto the market, driving demand for bandwidth consumption up to 64Mbps for good-quality 2160P. On the technology frontier lies ultra high-definition video (UltraHD), which Japan is currently experimenting with. UltraHD video, operating at 7680×4320 resolution and requiring 256Mbps, will bring cinematic quality video to wall-sized video displays, and will eventually become as common and affordable as the 1080P HDTV sets of today. UltraHD television and video will require substantial amounts of and become a leading consumer of broadband going forward.”
So within the next decade we’ll be moving from HD video to QuadHD, which will at a minimum increase our demand for bandwidth four-fold as all video applications will have four times as much resolution. So now we’ve gone from 90Mbps symmetrical to 360Mbps.
Looking a bit further ahead, in the not too distant future we’re going to be living in an UltraHD world, which has 16 times the resolution of HD, bringing our demand for bandwidth up from 90Mbps to almost 1.5Gbps.
And remember, ITIF’s calculations of future household bandwidth demands admit that they’re only taking into account the applications we know about today and that there will undoubtedly be a host of new applications that are created as a result of having this much capacity that we can’t imagine today.
So really these numbers should be considered as the baseline goals not the end-game of what we’ll need, and it’s likely our demands will grow even larger.
Let’s review:
- To fully support the technologies we have today to deliver HD video a household needs at least 90Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth.
- To fully support the technologies of ten years from now to deliver QuadHD video a household will need at least 360Mbps.
- To handle the technologies of twenty years from now to deliver UltraHD a household will need at least 1.5Gbps.
With all this in mind it would be irresponsible to set goals for next-generation broadband at anything less than 100Mbps, and really we should leave the 100Mbps Nation behind and start talking about a 1Gbps Nation and beyond.
And given these goals, we should be focusing government subsidies on networks capable of supporting these speeds moving forward.
Getting everyone today’s broadband is not good enough. We need to set bold goals that reflect the growing demands of these clear technological trends. Otherwise we’re going to set ourselves up to be on the lagging edge of broadband for decades to come.
No nukes…anywhere!-AlterNet
26-03-09
[FACT comments: This article may seem a little out of the loop for FACT. The fact is, nuclear power like nuclear weapons equals human censorship. Nuclear power is motivated by greed not altruism and all commentary to the controversy is simply, lobbying, whitewash and scam. Thailand is considering nuclear power. We all have a responsibility to make sure that never happens. FACT emphasis below.]
The French Nuclear Industry Is Bad Enough in France; Let’s Not Expand It to the U.S.
Linda Gunter
AlterNet: March 23, 2009.
Areva, France’s nuclear industry, has a solid reputation, but a trail of radioactive waste and deaths in Africa follow its wake.
“Why can’t the Americans be more like the French?” It’s the prevailing pro-nuclear refrain, the latest in the nuclear industry’s efforts at fictional reinvention.
And until the collapse of his ill-fated and poorly orchestrated presidential run, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the choirmaster, saying: “If France can produce 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power, why can’t we?”
This clarion call to newfound Francophilia (remember “freedom fries?”) is based on a number of false assumptions, the most obvious being that if France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, this equates with success.
A poodlish U.S. press corps has largely lapped up the spoon-fed propaganda that everything nuclear French is magnifique, conveniently forgetting its post 9/11 self-flagellation after it meekly buckled to the Bush administration’s misjudged bellicosity.
But France’s monopolistic dependency on splitting the atom to turn on the lights has come with a huge price — not only financially but in environmental and health costs. In reality, France is a radioactive mess, additionally burdened with an overwhelming amount of radioactive waste, much of which is simply dispersed into the surrounding environment.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Areva, the French nuclear corporation and biggest atomic operator in the world, is almost wholly owned by the French government. Consequently, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone into high marketing gear — the Washington Post anointed him “the world’s most aggressive nuclear salesman” — pushing nuclear power to any country willing to pay, most notably in the Middle East.
This proliferation-friendly profiteering, however, ignores an ugly situation at home and in other countries where Areva has left its radioactive footprint.
France has 210 abandoned uranium mines. The leftover radioactive dirt — known as tailings — along with radioactively contaminated rocks, have been used in school playgrounds and ski-resort parking lots. Efforts to force Areva to clean up its mess have been met with resistance from the company.
Historically, uranium mining corporations, including those in the U.S., have not been obliged to pay for cleanup. Many sites remain contaminated today, and disused uranium mine sites carry no warning signs. When a French documentary exposing the French uranium mining mess was scheduled to air on national television in February, Areva tried unsuccessfully to block it from the airwaves.
Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon proclaims transparency as one of the hallmarks of her company. But its failed censorship attempt, coupled with the July 2008 cover-up when a major uranium spill at a nuclear processing plant went unreported to the public for 14 hours, belies that assertion.
Areva’s subsidiary at Tricastin, the huge nuclear complex where the spill occurred — contaminating two rivers, kept quiet about the accident and then denied the spill endangered human health. Nevertheless, drinking and bathing in the water was temporarily banned, and Tricastin wine growers have struggled to market their products since the accident.
Three more accidents in the region followed, prompting the French environment minister to order radioactive readings at all 58 operating French reactors.
The dirtiest French nuclear site — with the cleanest of reputations — is the vast reprocessing plant at La Hague on the Normandy coast. The nuclear industry has successfully cast reprocessing as “recycling,” but nothing about reprocessing could be further from the collections of newspapers and soda cans that recycling conjures in the public’s mind’s eye.
La Hague takes in irradiated reactor fuel — domestic and from other countries — and, through a chemical process, separates the plutonium and uranium for theoretical reuse as new reactor fuel. The plutonium is mixed with uranium to make a fuel known as MOX.
However, fewer than 20 French reactors use MOX fuel, which in turn can handle only minimal proportions of plutonium, and the waste these reactors produce cannot be reprocessed. Since all reactors also produce plutonium during the fission process — as much as 40 atomic bombs worth per year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council — the net reduction of plutonium by MOX reactors is virtually zero and contributes nothing to the recycling of waste fuel.
Instead, 80 tons of surplus plutonium remain at La Hague in the equivalent of hundreds of soda-can-size containers. About 30 tons result from imported irradiated fuel from client countries, most of whom have now canceled their reprocessing contracts. This is despite a French law that mandates reprocessed waste fuel be returned to its country of origin.
Most of the uranium isn’t “recycled” either. Ninety-five percent of the mass of spent French reactor fuel consists of uranium that is so contaminated with other fission products that it cannot be reused as reactor fuel at all (although France ships some of it to Russia). The vast majority of the uranium from reprocessing — nonfissile uranium 238 — cannot be recycled either and will need to be permanently secured.
Furthermore, reprocessing creates huge volumes of liquid radioactive waste and radioactive gases. These are simply dispersed into the sea and air.
As much as 100 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste a year is pumped from La Hague into the English Channel and has radioactively contaminated the seas as far as the Arctic Circle. These liquid wastes have been measured at 17 million times more radioactive than normal sea water according to an analysis by a French laboratory at the University of Breme.
In 1998, a Belgian laboratory at the University of Gent measured the aerial discharges from La Hague. The lab found they contained radioactive krypton-85 at 90,000 times higher values than natural levels. Krypton gas released from La Hague has been traced across the globe.
Illness clusters
Two independent medical studies have found high rates of leukemia in communities close to La Hague. Beaches, fishing and swimming areas have been closed due to concerns about radioactive contamination of the sea water. Exposure to radiation is generally considered one of the four most likely causes of leukemia (along with exposure to chemicals, viruses and genetics).
Far from recycling radioactive waste, the French face the same dilemma as everyone else: they don’t know what to do with it. France has no scientifically accepted or operating high-level radioactive waste repository. The sole site identified to date — at Bure close to the Champagne region in eastern France — has been met with organized opposition and has encountered technical difficulties.
France has so much radioactive waste that the government recently approached 3,511 communities suggesting they become home to the so-called low-level radioactive wastes that have nowhere to go. ANDRA, the French national agency responsible for the disposal of nuclear waste, billed the dump project as a boon to local development but refused to publicly identify the handful of communities it says responded positively to the idea of hosting the country’s nuclear detritus.
In fact, there is no French love affair with nuclear energy, but rather a deep mistrust of this most secretive of industries. Some of this suspicion dates to the Chernobyl accident in 1986, when a French government spokesman assured the population that the radioactive cloud from the Ukrainian reactor explosion (which eventually dispersed across the globe) had stopped at the French border. Unlike other Western European countries, France mandated no precautionary actions. Consequently, there are numerous hot spots, particularly in eastern France, where radioactive fallout was extremely high.
This deception spawned the formation of an investigative laboratory — CRIIRAD or Commission for Independent Research and Information — as well as a burgeoning network of close to 815 French anti-nuclear organizations.
In an annual fall poll, up to 60 percent of the French public consistently calls for a phase-out of nuclear energy. On March 17, 2007, 62,000 French citizens demonstrated across France against a proposed new reactor in Normandy. On the same day, a national anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., turned out one-third that amount.
Areva’s radioactive footprint also reaches beyond the borders of France. Nowhere is this more evident than in Niger and Gabon, where Areva, under its former incarnation, Cogema, and now under various subsidiaries, has mined uranium, the raw ingredient needed for reactor fuel (and for nuclear weapons) for more than 40 years.
The Gabon site is now closed, but joint investigations in Gabon and Niger by an organization of French lawyers — SHERPA — along with CRIIRAD — found significant levels of radioactive contamination and serious health issues in both countries.
In Niger, ranked as one of the poorest countries on the planet and, like Gabon, a former French colony, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding that places Areva directly at the center, along with the Niger government, of what may yet flare into civil war.
After four decades of uranium mining by Areva subsidiaries in the poorer northern region of the country — at Arlit and Akokan in the Sahara Desert — the country faces an environmental catastrophe that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of the surrounding communities.
Radioactive dust is everywhere. Water sources — already scarce in this desert region — have been depleted and contaminated. Radioactive metals resulting from uranium processing, have been discarded as scrap or sold in the local markets and used by villagers in household items.
Areva, via its Niger subsidiaries SOMAIR and COMINAK, constructed two hospitals at Arlit and Akokan, which are only open to mine workers, and it supplies and pays the doctors who work there. The doctors publicly insist they have never seen uranium-mining-related illnesses caused by radiation exposure, a conclusion CRIIRAD and SHERPA strongly dispute based on the evidence they uncovered in their 2004-2005 investigations in Niger.
SHERPA subsequently found a company doctor who admitted that pulmonary and respiratory illnesses or cancers were never officially diagnosed, because this could harm the company’s reputation. One anonymous source told SHERPA that patients with these diseases were told they suffered from malaria and AIDS. Patients who sought a second opinion at the public hospital at Agadez were met with incredulousness by doctors there, who could not understand how their illnesses could have been “missed.”
SHERPA found one case of a mine worker with advanced leukemia who was refused health evacuation by SOMAIR and who died on the job at the age of 41 leaving behind five children.
Around Arlit and Akokan, CRIIRAD found unacceptably high levels of radioactivity — particularly difficult-to-detect alpha emitters — in the water, sand and in discarded metals. Water was found to be 10 times more radioactively contaminated than the World Health Organization’s “acceptable” level for safe drinking water. Yet Areva’s press materials state there is no contamination of drinking water at the two sites.
In 2007, CRIIRAD found radioactive rocks outside Areva’s Akokan hospital that were 100 times more radioactive than background levels. A letter from CRIIRAD to Areva CEO Lauvergeon pointing out the problem went ignored. Areva eventually cleaned up the site.
Areva’s uranium-mining monopoly in Niger ended in 2007 but existing contracts with the Niger government were renewed, and the company was recently awarded the contract for the huge new Imouraren uranium mine, the largest in Africa and due to open in 2012.
The Niger government, meanwhile, has declared open season on northern Niger, awarding close to 140 prospecting licenses to uranium-mining companies from China, India, Canada, the United States and elsewhere in its efforts to become the world’s top exporter of uranium — it currently ranks fifth.
Faced with large swathes of the country virtually cordoned off for new mines, some in Niger are fighting back, predominantly the Tuareg, the poorest and most deprived of Niger’s northern population.
A largely nomadic people, the Tuareg have seen little of the benefits of uranium mining (they make up 3 percent of the workforce), and their traditional lifestyle has been the hardest hit. They view the government’s new mining plans as a “pillaging” of the land, with the Tuareg sacrificed for corporate profit.
Some have taken up arms. Others, including exiled leaders in France, are leading advocacy efforts to draw international attention to the plight of their people. Growing desertification in the Sahara has been compounded by the dual effects of climate change and mineral extraction. The Tuareg are dependent on clean water for grazing their animals and growing crops and want to see no more uranium mining until the environmental devastation is cleaned up. They point out that none of the profits from current mining efforts has been injected back into their struggling communities.
The Niger government has responded by attempting to eliminate the Tuareg. Amnesty International has identified numerous human rights abuses, including disappearances, torture and summary executions. The Tuareg, fearing an attempted genocide, point to slaughter of their livestock by the Niger military in a further effort to eliminate their way of life. Some observers fear a smaller-scale Darfur in the making.
Areva has actively encouraged the Niger government to deal with the Tuareg problem, and late last year, an Areva vice president told a French government committee that the Tuareg were simply a romantic “illusion,” urging his government to aid Niger in crushing them.
Niger is not without U.S. help as well. According to a March 2009 article published by In These Times, Congress authorized $500 million in 2005 for a six-year period to counter “terrorism” in the region, despite little evidence of Islamic extremism.
With its human rights track record largely a well-kept secret, Areva has been welcomed into the United States, where the company has quietly established 42 offices with 5,300 employees. Its U.S. tentacles extend to virtually every phase of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium enrichment to radioactive-waste management. With the smoke and mirrors resurgence of nuclear power gaining political and public traction, Areva — read the French government — smells huge profits, and the U.S. is prime prey.
Areva is behind the push to revive nuclear-waste reprocessing in the U.S. The separated plutonium would then be blended into MOX fuel and used in U.S. reactors, none of which is adapted to handle the hotter plutonium fuel.
Until recently, Areva, in partnership with the U.S. Shaw Group, was running MOX fuel test assemblies at Duke Energy’s Catawba nuclear plant in South Carolina before the operation was shut down prematurely for safety reasons. The U.S. MOX fuel was made at the French MOX fuel-fabrication plant at Cadarache, a facility that had been closed due to the danger of earthquakes in the area. The plant was reopened solely to accommodate the U.S. fuel, a move that was challenged as illegal by French anti-nuclear advocates.
Areva recently won a contract to build and operate a new uranium-enrichment facility in Idaho. It operates more than 50 percent of this country’s dry cask storage operations, where all of the U.S. spent reactor fuel still sits at the 65 reactor sites (there are 104 operating reactors in the U.S.) At least 30 percent of U.S. reactors use Areva-supplied fuel.
The company’s U.S. plans also extend to new reactors, where it hopes to grab at least 33 percent of the U.S. market according to its Web site. This includes a proposal for seven of its unproven “generation three” design, the Evolutionary Power Reactor, billed as the world’s largest reactor. (It is called the European Pressurized Reactor everywhere but the U.S.)
Seven EPR reactors are slated for six U.S. sites, although so far only two sites — at Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Calloway near St. Louis — have filed initial applications. George Vanderheyden, chief executive for UniStar, the company hoping to build the EPR at Calvert Cliffs, says the EPR “will be one of the most expensive technologies in the United States to build.” UniStar has partnered with the French state electricity company, lectricit de France (EDF), on the project. However, cost may not be the only challenge.
The two Areva EPR reactors under way — in Finland and France — have already run into trouble. The Finnish reactor at the Olkiluoto nuclear site started first, in August 2005, but has already fallen three years behind schedule after safety and quality-assurance problems with the piping, containment liner and concrete base slab were discovered. This has put the Finnish EPR 50 percent over budget at a current estimated cost of at least $6.7 billion. Areva partner Siemens has pulled out of the project, leaving Areva to buy out Siemens’ share at an estimated cost to the company of $2.6 billion.
When construction began in December 2007 on a second EPR at the Flamanville site in France on the Normandy coast, similar problems quickly arose. By the summer of 2008, the French security agency had shut down the construction site — managed by EDF — due to safety concerns about technical and quality-control problems with the reinforced steel used in the concrete base. EDF insists the Flamanville EPR will open on schedule in 2012 despite news reports that put the project nine months behind schedule after just nine months of construction. But in early March this year, EDF ran afoul of the European Commission, which raided the company’s offices, suspecting EDF of antitrust violations and illegal price hikes.
EDF has come into the public spotlight before. In May 2006, a confidential security report prepared by EDF was leaked to French activists and the media. The document claimed to show that because the EPR could withstand the impact of a military jet it could also defend against a commercial jet airliner.
But when analyzed by John Large, an independent nuclear engineer in the U.K., these claims were deemed to be “entirely unjustified.” Large said the documents showed the EPR had “an almost total lack of preparation to defend against the inevitability of a terrorist attack.”
Congress and the White House have not yet been asked why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to flow to a French corporation for new nuclear projects on U.S. soil. Or why so many new nuclear installations are even needed when the cheaper, cleaner and safer alternatives of renewable energy are readily available. And especially why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to enrich a corporation with such an ugly track record on human rights.
Before another genocide in Africa is too late to stop, it is time those questions were asked.
Linda Gunter is the co-founder of Beyond Nuclear.
