Scientists Join Protests Against Award in Honor of African Dictator

Scientists, including two Nobel Laureates, and public health groups have joined protests against a new, highly controversial UNESCO award sponsored by and named after Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea. In a letter sent yesterday to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Director-General Irina Georgieva Bokova, a group of organizations and individuals in the field of public and global health asks that UNESCO “reconsider … and abolish” the prize.

The charge against the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences—which may be announced this week and is slated to be awarded next month—has been led by human-rights organizations. But yesterday’s letter, coordinated by the Open Society Institute Public Health Program, points out that human-rights violations and corruption aren’t the only problems in Equatorial Guinea. Despite massive oil revenues, “health indicators reflect shockingly poor governance and widespread suffering,” it says. The letter notes that the life expectancy in Equatorial Guinea stands at 49.9 years, only 43% of the population has clean drinking water, and one in five children does not survive until their 5th birthday.

A source close to the Paris-based U.N. agency tells ScienceInsider that frantic, closed-door talks about the award are still going on and that there’s still a chance that the prize could be postponed pending a review.

How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence

Nonviolence can be a major force for democratic social change, but not when it becomes a tool for covert intervention.

A close-cropped, no-nonsense infantry officer, Col. Robert Helvey was studying at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs on an Army fellowship. One day in 1987, he happened upon a seminar led by Gene Sharp, a draft resister imprisoned for refusing to serve in Korea and a systematic scholar of the kind of strategic non-violence that activists of my generation had helped to develop in the free speech, civil rights, and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

“I had an image of nonviolence as being a bunch of long-haired hippies,” Col. Helvey recalled. But Dr. Sharp had come a long way from his Gandhism roots, and Helvey quickly realized that the older man’s approach had “nothing to do with pacifism.” Sharp was talking “about seizing political power or denying it to others,” and doing it without having to break things or kill people.

The idea fascinated Col. Helvey. He invited Sharp to lunch, spent time at the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), which Sharp had created in Cambridge in 1983, and came to see his new mentor as “the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement.” An energetic disciple, Col. Helvey would in time become president of AEI and a forceful champion of nonviolent conflict as a weapon of American intervention in other countries.

Were these interventions good or bad? In my opinion, they had elements of both, at least at the start. But they have become a major danger to democracy, not least our own, and an increasing threat to the lives of those that the United States and its allies encourage to make nonviolent revolutions.

It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a … Weapon?

NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

EFF Releases How-To Guide to Fight Government Spying

‘Surveillance Self-Defense’ Gives Practical Advice on Protecting Your Private Data

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched its Surveillance Self-Defense project today — an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. You can find the project at http://ssd.eff.org.

EFF created the Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government’s hands. The guide includes tips on assessing the security risks to your personal computer files and communications, strategies for interacting with law enforcement, and articles on specific defensive technologies such as encryption that can help protect the privacy of your data.