Dan's Blog (2.0) » Politics

Conditions at Foxconn – Should we care?

Daniel Appelquist — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:39:07 +0000

I was greatly moved yesterday after listening to the This American Life episode on conditions at Foxconn, the plant in China than makes (among other things) iPhones, iPads, and most other Apple products. I just made a post on Facebook relating to this and a related Forbes article and I encourage you to chime in there or here. Is this just “business as usual,” or is there something wrong happening here that needs to be fixed?

Mobile Tech 4 Social Change London!

Daniel Appelquist — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:55:30 +0000

On U.S. election day last year, November 4th, I co-organized with Katrin Verclas of MobileActive a Barcamp style event we called “Mobile Tech 4 Social Change” focusing on the increasing role mobile technology is having in social activism, grass-roots organization, social development, and in the developing world. It’s possible we started a movement because MobileActive has gone on to run two more camps since then, in New York and Washington DC. Now Mobile Tech 4 Social Change is coming to London. I’ll be hosting this event on May 23^rd in at Vodafone’s offices in London. For all the details and to register, go to MobileActive.org’s page on the event. If you’re interesting in helping to build a bridge between the mobile industry and the social activism / social development space then I encourage you to attend!

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Military Tribunals at Guantanamo

Daniel Appelquist — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:43:00 +0000

Score one for the rule of law. See Reuters article (spelling seems OK).

W3C to Help the NSA Snoop Social Networks?

Daniel Appelquist — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:32:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting article on the unintended consequences of social networking. Basically, it is reported that the NSA is snooping social networking sites (with the juicy twist that it plans to do so using Semantic Web technology – more on that later). This seems to fit into the category of “examples of why it’s important to have some kind of user-controlled trust / privacy layer in the fabric of the Web.” Who should be able to see information you put online (including your links to others and the nature of these links) and who shouldn’t? P3P addressed some of these issues but it was never widely adopted. Liberty Alliance has built some interesting technology standards around federated identity, but they are not user-centric, they are provider-centric and they do not really cover privacy. An interesting effort called Dix seems to blend the two approaches, but after a quick read of some of their use cases, it doesn’t seem that they cover “prevent the government from snooping my network.”

Or is laying ourselves open to government surveillance the price we pay for living more of our lives in the digital realm?

Discuss!

By the way, on the whole Semantic Web issue, I think the link they are drawing in this article is tenuous at best, but it is true that the Semantic Web architecture is likewise lacking a coherent identity and trust mechanism.

I would just like to point out…

Daniel Appelquist — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:50:00 +0000

…that in October of last year I said that George Bush was putting my family at greater risk with this ill-conceived Iraq war. Last week’s bombing in London bears out those concerns. Instead of “making the world safer,” Bush has made the world even more dangerous by stoking the fires of extremism, through the Iraq war, prisoner abuse, etc… etc… But still he goes on with his “war on terror” message (he’s consistent, I’ll give him that). Unbelievable.

Journalists at Fox News Should Take Note

Daniel Appelquist — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 16:05:14 +0000

This report on the revolt of TV journalists in the Ukraine from BBC news online gives me hope for humanity. It’s the latest twist in what is turning into an edge-of-your seat story of politics on the brink. These people are putting despots on notice. More power to them.

International Election Observers

Daniel Appelquist — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:29:11 +0000

So every American should read this OSCE news releases. International observers (from the OSCE — Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) were monitoring our elections (invited by the U.S. State Department). This is a really good thing, because it helps to ensure transparency and fairness in the electoral process and it also sends a good message to the rest of the world. The news is actually pretty good, but the issues raised in their more detailed report are important ones to consider — especially allowing for greater access for international observers.

Well crap.

Daniel Appelquist — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:10:19 +0000

So if W wins the day, which looks inevitable at this point, what then? My worry is that the coalition of organizations that have come together in opposition of Bush in this last year have essentially “shot their wad.” What we will need is further organized resistance to Bush and his policies. I have been voting with my dollars and giving to Amnesty International since this summer and just now I became a member of the ACLU as well. Amnesty works around the world to oppose torture and human rights abuses and the ACLU works fights in the U.S. to preserve rights and liberties. Supporting the ACLU is especially important right now as they have recently withdrawn from a federal grant program because they refused to screen their current employees against a terrorist “watch list.” The strategy must be to marginalize and immobilize Bush and his cronies wherever possible – to oppose them at every turn. Otherwise, I worry very much that the America of four years hence will be quite unrecognizable. Looks like we’re in for a “long, hard slog.”

This Election Thing

Daniel Appelquist — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 23:21:25 +0000

Ok — This blog is not going to be predominantly political, because there are plenty of other blogs out there doing this (such as the highly recommended Shrillblog.) I will, however, say that I am really hoping we can kick this jack-ass out of the Whitehouse. Why? Because he has made the world a more dangerous place. For me, it’s primarily a personal issue: my family is at greater risk because of this nut-bar and his Iraq misadventure.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The view from here

Daniel Appelquist — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 17:15:26 +0000

Good BBC News article today, capturing some of the American expat experience during the election.

Call for Ending Torture

Daniel Appelquist — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:20:00 +0000

With all the political partisanship in the air, it was refreshing to see this release from Amnesty International, admonishing both presidential candidates to condemn torture and abuse of human rights.

We (the U.S.) are just not doing a good job here, as you can seem from Amnesty’s more detailed report, condemning the U.S. for all sorts of abuses and failures.

If we want to “lead the world” with “transformational liberty” (or whatever), this is not the way to do it.