Brazil’s internet now has its own bill of rights. On 23 April, the country’s president, Dima Rousseff, signed the Marco Civil da Internet, a bill that sets out new guidelines for freedom of expression, net neutrality and data privacy for the country’s 100 million internet users. (1)
Can freedom be determined by a… law?
Can freedom be determined on the basis of “obligations”?
Can freedom be determined on the bases of “you can’t do that”?
Only when law matures enough that we do not need (not even) one, will we be truly free…
A $1m (£610,000) painting by Pablo Picasso has been won by a US man who paid just 100 euros (£83) for a ticket in an online charity raffle. (1)
Art is and has always been expensive. It is as if the rich want to keep the priviledge of dreams and emotions to themselves. Art was more reachable in the primitive societies than today. A museum cannot accommodate the needs of the masses for intellectual stimulus.
Oppression can take weird forms.
If only the masses wanted more Picasso rather than more iPhones.
Oppression could be targeting willing victims after all…
A premier science museum in North Carolina has sparked some controversy by refusing to show an hour-long film about climate change and rising sea levels. “The suppression of information is not in in the spirit of what a museum ought to do,” says Charles “Pete” Peterson, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. (1)
But museum officials deny any attempt to avoid the topic. “I have a track record of dealing with these issues head on”, says Emlyn Koster, who directs the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position. It is part of a state agency, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The state government has been perceived as hostile to action on climate change; last year, the legislature passed a bill forbidding the state coastal commission from defining rates of sea-level rise for regulation before 2016. Although Koster is a state employee who is exempt from some civil service protections and serves at the pleasure of Governor Pat McCrory (R), he stresses his independence. “At no time have I been told what to do or what to think”.
Besides the obvious joke here (“define rates of sea level rise for regulation”?!? Are you serious?!?), I believe it is a matter of grave importance to define suppression and oppression here. Not allowing a specific opinion to be heard is suppression. But is it not oppression to impose the hearing of a specific opinion as well? If there are places where the opinion A can be heard, why have the need to impose everyone hosting this opinion, especially when this opinion is mutually exclusive with opinion B?
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s proposal to ban cohabitation for male and female students has garnered criticism nationwide. (1)
Should religion or anyone else impose values? If not, what would happen if we have NO values whatsoever?
Is banning pre-marital sex right? Is fucking around like pornstars right? Surely now we are somewhere in the middle. But towards WHERE do we want to go? What is our value target?
And last but not least: When the MAJORITY of a country WANTS to be oppressed, what can you do? 😉
